Joe Byway: Portrait of a Sailor
My father, Joe Byway, was a lanky 17-year-old in April of 1941 when he boarded a train in his hometown of London, Ontario to begin a four-year journey that would end July 4th, 1945 when he was discharged from the Royal Canadian Navy. My grandfather and grandmother, George and Daisy Byway, had just emigrated to Canada from Stoke Golding in Leicestershire to begin a new life in Canada a generation earlier. George, my grandfather, had served in the British Army during WWI. My father consequently felt an obvious connection to the plight of Britain in 1939 and 1940, so he willingly volunteered to serve in the Canadian Navy.
When my historian son sent me the link for this Oxford project, my interest was immediately piqued. My father kept a diary documenting in detail the ships he served on as well as anecdotes and pictures of the action he saw and about life aboard a Canadian destroyer during his four years of military service. Growing up, dad's diary was something that my brother and I would look at and relate to the stories he told about his convoy duties as part of the Lend Lease agreement. My dad loved to draw and so included within his diary entries are cartoons of men he served with as well as the ships and everyday life events for a seaman. Dad was trained as a torpedo man and in one of his diary entries, complete with a cartoon drawing, he narrowly escaped an enemy shell that landed only inches away from him. Perhaps one of the most interesting entries is the one dated June 6, 1944. Dad's ship, the HMCS Algonquin, was one of the first Canadian destroyers moored off the coast of Normandy. Of course, this is documented in his diary and includes his personal account of what he saw the day of the invasion.
Unfortunately, my dad died too young at age 59. As my brother and I reflected on his life, it became important to us to not let his diary sit in a box and be forgotten. Dad became an historian of sorts over his lifetime. The term "picker" probably applied to him long before the term was popularized. And so, he continued with his vision to preserve history. This time the focus was on Canadian railways. He collected memorabilia from old railway stations that were forced to close down in southwestern Ontario. He even moved one of these stations to his property close to London and completely restored it to its former grandeur. One piece of memorabilia he found in the attic of an abandoned station was a telegram with Alexander Graham Bell's signature on it. This he archived and stored in his files.
My brother and I took dad's original diary to a talented graphic designer and put together a book of his navy memoirs. His diary contents were scanned and it was from these scanned documents that the book was compiled. The original scanned contents were too extensive to all be included, unfortunately, but the history has been preserved in digital form.
It is important that what my father documented during his navy years be shared with others. Some examples from his diary include the mascot drawing from the HMCS Fennel, which we were told was drawn by dad; his recollection of his first experience in the crow's nest aboard the Fennel; his comment to the Coxswain at the end of his tour that he would, "see him at the end of the war. I am here to stay"; the picture of Lieutenant Commander D.W. Piers' address to the crew of the Algonquin en route to the invasion beachhead; the sinking of the HMS Swift after it had struck a mine; and a photo of the survivors being taken off the HMS Nabob after it was torpedoed during a raid on the German battleship Tirpitiz. Perhaps one of the most poignant entries is the story of how my dad and his best friend, Bud Drew, changed the date on Bud's birth certificate so that Bud could join the RCAF. Bud was shot down in a bombing raid over Germany at the age of 19. His remains rest in a cemetery in Germany.
Dad came home in July of 1945 and immediately married his sweetheart, with whom he had corresponded faithfully during the war. I still have these letters that dad sent to mom during his time overseas. In true Canadian fashion, they went to Toronto for their honeymoon, stayed at the Royal York and went to a Maple Leaf's hockey game. Like dad's letters, I still have the program for this game from December 1945.
Dad joined the Canadian National Railway as a police officer after the war. During one shift in the 1950s he caught a young miscreant shooting out light bulbs on the lamp posts outside the Sarnia station, but he decided to exercise leniency and let the young lad off with a warning. A little over a decade later, that young man and I met at university and married. During their first meeting, my future husband recognized Archie immediately, but dad never let on that he remembered their first encounter. That was his character. He was still working as an officer when he was diagnosed with brain cancer in 1981. He died the following year.
With my son's assistance, we have included some images from dad's navy diary. I know both my dad and brother, who is also no longer with us, would be pleased to know that others might gain insight into the life of an ordinary seaman during extraordinary times.
