DEN BURG, Netherlands – On Christmas Day on a small Dutch island, Bram van Dijk will place a Yule decoration on the grave of a Canadian airman and wonder about Raymond Norman McCleery’s family in Canada.
“My wife Dide makes decorations from conifer leaves, flowers and a candle and we light them on six graves as a symbol all the 167 Allied airmen who died on our island (during the Second World War). We think it is a special time for all these young boys.”
Van Dijk, 75, lives on Texel, an island in the North Sea, and has dedicated his retirement years to connecting with the families of those airmen around the world to ensure they know their father, grandfather or uncle is being honoured.
McCleery is one of two remaining men from a list of 15 Canadians for which he still hopes to find family members.
The former fisherman vividly remembers the moment in November 1942 when he saw the crashed carcass of a Halifax bomber in which two other Canadian airmen died.
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“When I close my eyes I see it all again like when I was just four years and two months old. I will never forget that.”
The incident stuck indelibly with the child and as an adult he has become the guardian of the memories of Allied airmen who died on Texel.
Van Dijk has little information on McCleery other than the grave register entry which notes Flight Officer McCleery was 28-years-old, with the RCAF 44 Squadron and was the son of Capt. Edward J. McCleery and Jessie Isobel McCleery of Ottawa. He was buried in Den Burg’s Allied cemetery on Dec. 22, 1942.
“McCleery had been an observer on the Lancaster W4126 KM-B which crashed Dec. 17, 1942,” van Dijk said. “According to the grave register, McCleery may have been a school teacher.”
If he can find McCleery’s relatives, he wants to assure them that the airman is held in high regard and his sacrifice is honoured in a digital book of remembrance at the immaculate cemetery Texel maintains for Allied airmen.
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And he hopes, if found, he can get information and photos of McCleery to add to that book of remembrance.
Texel, now a now a popular tourist haven for cyclists and birders, was under one of the main routes bombers took from Britain to the north of Germany during the war and many planes crippled by anti-aircraft fire tried emergency landings on and around the island.
The other Canadian van Dijk hasn’t been able to track, E.H. Kingsland, hometown unknown, was aboard the Halifax that was damaged on a bombing run and crashed near his home as it limped back to Britain.
Van Dijk began the intensive research that led him to his hunt for the families of airmen like McCleery and Kingsland in 1985. His first contact was with the widow of the Canadian air gunner on the Halifax, who came to Holland from Saskatchewan to see her husband’s gravesite.
“Her appreciation was so great and I understood so well what this meant to the families I decided to look for information on all 167 victims buried on Texel.”
That led him to create the Aviation and War Museum on the island in 1996.
He had taken several trips to Canada to meet the families of downed airmen and in 2011, a newspaper story connected him to the families of three more Canadians who perished on Texel. Relatives of Herb Zealand and Albert Ellis of Hamilton and James Loree of Toronto were delighted to confirm just where their lost loved ones were buried and that they were being recognized.
“It just touched our hearts,” said Lorne Ellis of Hamilton, whose uncle Albert died when his bomber crashed in the sea near the island. “It was also important for our children to know how the Dutch honour Canadians who fought in the war.”
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