Wartime letters written by fallen soldier now in his family's possession
CBC
Love letters that were penned by a fallen soldier in the Second World War have finally made their way back to his family after being discovered by a woman in Hampton, N.B.
Alice Kennedy said she found the letters written to her aunt, Mary Calebrese, in 1943 after going through a box of family photos following her mother's death in 2008.
"They've been in my possession for over 10 years, and for a long time I felt that they were too personal, so I didn't do anything with them," Kennedy said.
Lt. Norman Alexander MacNeill wrote three letters to her aunt before dying while deployed in Ortona, Italy on Christmas in 1943.
Kennedy decided to reach out for help in finding his family soon after Remembrance Day.
After an article was published about the letters in the Kings County Record, it wasn't long before someone in her church community reached out to say they knew his niece, Mary Phillips.
"He was very fond of Alice Kennedy's aunt," said Phillips, who is originally from Sussex, N.B., but now lives in Wolfville, N.S.
"I was quite delighted and very surprised to hear that there were letters in existence."
The letters show the two met while working together at the Bank of Nova Scotia in Minto.
According to a newspaper clipping that was saved by Calebrese alongside the letters, MacNeill was born in Moncton in 1916.
He worked at the bank in Minto for three years before joining the New Brunswick Rangers, and then left for training in Brockville, Ont., in the 1940s.
Calabrese later joined the Royal Canadian Air Force as a sergeant and worked as a decoder from 1941 to 1945, spending most of her time in Ottawa, Kennedy said.
The last time the two saw each other was at the train station in Fredericton Junction, N.B.
While MacNeill was clearly enamoured of Calabrese, it's apparent through the letters that she only wanted to be friends.