THE ROYAL CANADIAN LEGION ALBERTA-NWT COMMAND www.abnwtlegion.com 143 Egglestone, Stewart Stewart “Stu” Egglestone grew up in Calgary, attended Crescent Heights High School, and then volunteered for the RCAF in 1942. He became a Leading Aircraftsman (Specialty Electrical) and went to England to RCAF 432 Squadron (Halifax and Lancaster Bombers). From September 1944 to July 1945, he served in the Italian campaign with RCAF 417 Squadron (Spitfire fighters). After the war, he married a British War Bride named Edith and settled back in Calgary. He was an active member of the Royal Canadian Legion Kensington Branch 264 for many years and later on he had a special connection with the 289 Killarney-Glengarry Branch. In 2014, he was chosen as a Veteran Delegate by the Federal Government and travelled to Italy for World War Two commemorations. Stu always had a keen interest in history and three of his war related memories are as follows: Stu arrived in Naples, Italy in September 1944 and they were then shipped out in boxcars to their base. “Anyway, there was this big fat Italian guy walking along the side of the train and he was carrying a couple of bags. All of a sudden, we heard a shot. We went out and the Italian was lying there. An American sentry had shot him because above the tracks was a sign in Italian. It said ‘Forbidden’. We weren’t sure if he was dead. I guess they were really worried about sabotage. That was an awakening about being in a war zone!” Stu liked to tell this “sand in the engine” memory beside the Seafire aircraft at the Military Museums (Calgary). “The airfield was on a beach less than ten yards from the Adriatic Sea (near Bellaria, Italy). It was facing east of the sea. It was here we began to lose aircraft. I didn’t see any of them crash but did see them searching for downed aircraft. After losing a number of planes and pilots, they were shut down for three days. To prevent sand from getting in the engines, they came up with two ideas that seemed to fix the problem. First, they eventually made a wooden plug to go over the intake of the Spitfire while they were parked. Second, they would perform a maximum engine ‘run up’ prior to take off. Three ground crew held the tail down as the Spitfire was nose heavy. Two crew faced forward towards the nose of the aircraft. A third crew straddled the fuselage and was facing backwards. The back two crew shoved their faces into the armpits of the jerkin of the crewman straddling the fuselage. This stopped some of the sandblast from hitting the faces of the crew on the horizontal stabilizers.” Stewart travelled on two famous ocean liners that were troop ships. He left NewYork on the “Queen Mary” in October 1943 and returned to NewYork on the “Queen Elizabeth” in December 1945. He always followed the history of those ships in later years. Ek, Eddie Eddie was born in Sweden in 1921. His family immigrated to Canada in 1929 and lived in Calgary and Meeting Creek, Alberta. Eddie joined the Army in 1942 and served for several months before being discharged following a military accident. Eddie moved to Burdett, Alberta and then farmed at Grassy Lake for several years before moving to Creston, BC where he owned and operated Skyway Service. He and his wife then moved to Qualicum Beach, BC where Eddie enjoyed being by the ocean. But in 2003, they moved back to Alberta where they lived in Lethbridge until Eddie passed away in 2011. Eddie was a member of The Royal Canadian Legion Branch 4 in Lethbridge for several years.
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