War memories from idyllic Prince Edward Island

On the north shore of Canada’s Prince Edward Island is one of the most eloquent tributes to war dead I’ve ever seen.

The stone monument, just a few feet high, stands along a dunes trail near the main beach at Cavendish, a locality well known as the site of the Anne of Green Gables house and a popular tourist attraction. Beyond the dunes lies the placid Gulf of St. Lawrence. Both land and sea are wondrous to the eye.

My wife and I came across the simple, dignified stone while walking the trail this month during our vacation on the island. Under an outline of a maple leaf, the words are etched in both English and French for tourists from all over the world to see:

“They will never know the beauty of this place, see the seasons change, enjoy nature’s chorus. All we enjoy we owe to them, men and women who lie buried in the earth of foreign lands and in the seven seas. Dedicated to the memory of Canadians who died overseas in the service of their country and so preserved our heritage.”

Days later, we met a Canadian with a deeply personal connection to wartime sacrifice and courage.

We were walking along the harbor of Charlottetown, the maritime province’s capital, when we saw an elderly woman sitting alone on a boardwalk bench. She stood up when we spoke with her.

I pointed to a fiercely dark cloud directly overhead, and wondered aloud why all of the other clouds around it were the brightest white. She said it seemed that a hand was going to reach down from the angry cloud and grab us.

The woman was Imelda Trainor, a native of New Brunswick soon to be ninety-nine years old. She lives in a condo just yards away and had stepped out for some air. Almost immediately, she was proudly telling us about her late husband.

Charlie, she said, was a Spitfire ace in World War II.

Flight Lieutenant Hugh Charles Trainor, a squadron leader in the Royal Canadian Air Force, racked up 8.5 kills. (You were an ace if you had five or more.)

Trainor, of 411 Squadron, was flying a Spitfire Mk IX-T when he shot down two Messerschmitt Bf 109s in Normandy over two days in June 1944, after D-Day. They were his third and fourth victories, according to Richard Bryant on Flickr.

Trainor became an ace the next month at the controls of a different Spitfire when he destroyed two more Me-109s on a single flight, Bryant says.

On September 19, 1944, while flying with 401 Squadron, Trainor took off from Belgium in a Spitfire LF Mk IX. The plane’s engine stopped because of problems with the fuel feed, according to the Aviation Safety Network. He bailed out over the Netherlands and was captured by the Germans.

Trainor was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Distinguished Service Order.

Back home in Atlantic Canada, he and Imelda were married in 1951. She was a nurse and flight attendant, and her husband a commercial pilot. They lived in Charlottetown and raised a family. Imelda said their son, forty years old, was struck by lightning while leading fellow construction workers off a Florida field. It grieved her to talk about it.

There was another World War II combat flier in Imelda’s family, her brother Gerald Vautour of the RCAF. He flew Mosquito fighter-bombers, she said, and was killed in 1944.

We walked with Imelda for a while, hugged her goodbye and watched as she turned on unsteady legs and made her way home.