It was probably some time between 1940-1943 that this watch was lost/discarded at an army camp in West Sussex. On 5th May 2019 it was unearthed by Dave Clark. The owner, Private John Kenneth McLaughlin of the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps is pictured above. The camp was mainly for Canadians in transit to Europe. There were several other camps dotted around the southern counties. I understand that some of the Canadians were also responsible for the defence of that area and many spent a long time in these camps – and in the nearby pubs! Private McLaughlin served in Italy, France, Belgium and Holland. He originated from Hespeler, Cambridge City, Ontario, where he was born on 17th April 1918 and died on 12th February 2007. His brothers Bruce and Alex also served. In 1944, Bruce was killed and Alex wounded. The watch will eventually be returned to his daughter. Meanwhile, it is in the hands of his nephew, James Hillis, pictured below. James is a writer and hopes to have a story about the watch published in “Our Canada”.
My research started on the website “Ancestry” (to which Bexley library card holders have free access). The rest was via Google search where typing in the name and place of birth revealed all. The city of Cambridge have honoured many of their war veterans by naming streets after them and there are a couple of hundred pages of information. Google also led me to another website – The Cooper Street Relic, which is run by James. It is about local goings on and history. From this I made contact with him.
(I thought this article would be of interest to all visitors to the site so I made it public. If you want to know the name of the farm where the camp was, check out where we searched on 5th May [meeting place, Pease Pottage].)
Chairman Joe.
