279 www.on.legion.ca ONTARIO COMMAND RYAN, Benedict J. “Benny” Benny was born on December 20, 1918 in Newcastle, New Brunswick. He joined the Army on September 15, 1939, completed his basic training in Petawawa then was sent off to England as part of the 5th Regiment. Assigned to the south coast near Dover where a German Invasion might be expected, the defenders were poorly equipped and had little ammunition. At the beginning of July 1944, he took part in the Normandy Invasion, fought in the battle to take Caen and to close the “gap” at Falaise. Benny moved with the 2nd Division to Dunkirk then Dieppe and through to Antwerp and Nijmegen for the winter of 1944. In the spring of 1945, Benny was part of the invasion of Germany and in July 1945 he was shipped back to England and then Canada in August. He was discharged in Fredericton on September 15, 1945. In 1943, he married June Pace and raised seven children. Benny was a member of Richmond and District Legion Branch 625 for twenty-five years before he passed away on October 4, 1997. SCHRAMN, Orville J. Orville was born in Stratford Ontario on May 4, 1925. He joined the Army in 1942 and served in Canada, England, France, Italy and Holland during World War II. He served on the front lines in France and was in Italy on his 18th birthday. Orville almost drowned crossing the Rhine River and was wounded by a bazooka in Holland six days before the end of the war. He returned home with the Fighting Perth Regiment in January 1946 and was discharged. Orville was awarded the War of England, the Italy Star, the France and Germany Star, the Service 1939-1945 and the Victory Medal. He married Pearl Schneider in November 1946, had three children, and returned to the job he had prior to enlisting, that of Foreman at Hastings Foundry in Stratford where he worked for nineteen years. He also worked as a Foreman at Cranes for twenty-seven years until his retirement in 1988. Orville was a member of Stratford Legion Branch 8 for more than forty years before he passed away on May 3, 2013. SANDHAM, Jack M. Jack was born on December 13, 1913 in Toronto, Ontario and he moved to Hamilton, Ontario after getting married to Olive Negus in 1941. On July 20, 1942, he joined the Royal Canadian Ordnance Corps and served in Canada, England and Continental Europe during World War II. After he was discharged on November 15, 1945, he had a florist delivery service then worked for Imperial Oil as a tanker truck driver. After retirement from Esso, he worked for the Red Cross in Hamilton. Jack would never discuss the war and as a result of it, he suffered terrible nightmares until his death on May 1, 1993.
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