Remembrance Day: A banner salute to three London war veterans

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Flags on lamp posts around downtown’s Victoria Park, home to the Cenotaph, honour 33 local veterans and salute their sacrifice. Each bears a face and a name – but LFP reporter Beatriz Baleeiro dug a little deeper. In the run-up to Remembrance Day, she spoke with families of three of the veterans to know more about their lives and service.

EDITH STREET

Edith Street was the only one in her family, among four brothers and three sisters, to join the military.

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At 17, Street enlisted in the British Army amid her father’s opposition – “but she did it anyway,” said Street’s daughter, Margaret Smith.

Street served in an auxiliary territorial service from 1943 to 1945 in England.

The beginning of the bombing by Germans in London, the sirens going off at night, and running with her family to shelters “praying they’d be OK” are some of the stories Smith remembers her mother would tell.

“She didn’t talk a whole lot about it (her time in the army),” Smith said. “Only that was pretty bad in England with all the bombings.”

In those days, women were not fighting on the frontlines. Street worked with soldiers loading shells into British anti-aircraft guns. Street was later transferred to Aldershot, England and worked in a bakery, making bread for the troops.

Street spent most of her life following the war living in Canada, where she worked in retail until her retirement while running a club for women veterans in London. Her husband, George Smith, also served in the Canadian Army during the Second World War.

“I was brought up having so much respect for the women veterans and also because she was involved in that club with all the women veterans, and I got to know quite a few of them, and I’m just very proud of them,” Smith said.

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Street died in August 2023 at the age of 98. Her banner is located at Dufferin Avenue, between Clarence and Wellington streets.

FREDERICK DOROSHENKO

Frederick Doroshenko, a veteran of the Second World War who took part in the Dieppe Raid, enlisted in London a month after turning 18.

Doroshenko was born in Poland in 1921 and moved to Canada with his family in 1929. He joined the Royal Canadian Engineer Corps in 1939, mere weeks into legal adulthood.

Doroshenko began training at Western Fairgrounds before being deployed to England, where he became an engineer.

Soon after landing in the German-occupied port of northern France for the Dieppe Raid operation, Doroshenko was wounded by shrapnel and had to return to England to recover.

“His commanding officer had told him that because he was wounded, he had to return to Canada to promote the war effort,” recalled his son, Dan Doroshenko. “But he said the only way he could go back was if all of his friends he had signed up with could go (back) with them.”

After recovering, Doroshenko returned to the frontlines. From the beginning of the war to D-Day in Normandy to the liberation of Holland and entering Germany at the end of the war, his father “progressed through,” Dan Doroshenko said.

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But not all of his compatriots did. Doroshenko was marching down a street while deployed in Belgium when a soldier on a motorcycle called his name. It turned out to be a good friend who lived across the street from him in London’s Soho neighbourhood, just south of downtown.

“He was a dispatch rider,” Dan Doroshenko said. “He said to my dad that he had to go and deliver a package and would be back home but never made it back. He was killed in action.”

Upon returning to Canada in October 1945 after being discharged, Doroshenko became involved in the Royal Canadian Legion. He held several positions at Byron-Springbank branch, including as chair of its poppy campaign.

“He was able to participate and provide information to people . . . so that a younger generation has a better understanding of what the poppy means and what occurred,” his son said.

Doroshenko died in 2013 at 93. His banner is located on Wellington Street at Wolfe Street.

EDWARD MILES

Edward (Ted) Miles joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1941, serving for 29 years.

Captain Miles was a fighter pilot in the Second World War and then became a search-and-rescue pilot after the war.

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Sometimes away for a day or weeks due to his post-war duties, Mile’s daughter, Nancy Warden, recalls how excited she was to see her father come home.

“I can still picture him standing in the kitchen wearing his flight suit and having a great big smile on his face,” she said.

Warden said her father always tried to turn stories about difficult moments in the military into funny ones, hoping not to scare his children.

“He had a missing bone in his forehead because of an engine that blew up,” she said. ”I remember him saying, ‘here, touch this’ and he would laugh. But it’s amazing that he was able to survive.”

Miles earned seven medals, and being honoured with a memorial banner makes Warden feel “overwhelmed and proud,” she said.

“I think about him quite often. And I have warm memories (of him) growing up,” she said. “Remembrance Day is always a time that brings us to a point of really having an appreciation for our father.”

Miles died in 2006 at 83.

His banner, placed on Dufferin Avenue between Clarence and Wellington streets, shows a photo of him flying as a pilot.

bbaleeiro@postmedia.com

REMEMBRANCE DAY IN LONDON

This year’s London Remembrance Day Ceremony will be held at the London Cenotaph in Victoria Park on Monday, Nov. 11 from 10:45 to 11:20 a.m.

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