Thomas Edward Davis
As Remembrance Day approaches, we’re telling the stories of servicemen from Birch Cliff who made the ultimate sacrifice in World War II. In part two of our series – Thomas Edward Davis.
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Thomas Edward Davis lived at 30 Red Deer Avenue prior to World War II, and his final resting place is less than five kilometres from his home.
That’s because Davis was killed in Canadian waters on October 14, 1944.
He was 23-years old.
Anti-submarine warfare
Davis was a Petty Officer with the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve and served aboard the HMCS Magog.
The Magog was a River-class frigate commissioned into the RCN in 1944 as an anti-submarine convoy escort.
Its job was to protect ships in the Gulf of St. Lawrence and lower St. Lawrence River, where German U-boats sank three Canadian warships and several merchant ships between May 1942 and November 1944.
HMCS Magog
Magog sunk by torpedo
On October 14, 1944 at 7:25 pm, the Magog was in the area of Pointe-des-Marie when it hit by a torpedo from U-1223, shearing off 65 feet of her stern.
Out of a crew of 150, only three people died – one of them was Thomas Edward Davis of Birch Cliff.
There is a rather graphic first-hand account of Davis’ death in the book U-Boats Against Canada: German Submarines in Canadian Waters:
Aerial photograph of Canadian frigate HMCS Magog after being torpedoed by U-1223
19-year old Engine Roof Artificer George Gordon Hunter, RCNVR, of Winnipeg, recalled at the time “standing on the gun platform at the moment of impact, when “the whole quarterdeck lifted up and folded over the top of (his) head,” coming to rest on the gun that saved his life. Beside him, Hunter recalls, lay the mangled body of Thomas Davis: the blast had cut him in half.
Thomas Edward Davis’ grave
A local grave
Thomas Davis was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas E. Davis of Red Deer Avenue and is buried at Resthaven Memorial Gardens at the corner of Kingston Road and Brimley.
This morning I went to visit his grave and left a poppy.
It’s been 68 years since Thomas Davis died in the name of freedom…but we remember.
Part one of our series: Leonard Wilfred Lehman of 115 Kalmar Avenue.
