Finding a War Bride in the Directorate of Movements Microfilms

After a year of writing new talks and updating my existing genealogy talks I finally took sometime this past month to do a bit of diving into the records of folks who married into my various lines in order to see what I was missing. One of those tasks was looking for folks found in the 1921 Census of England and also the 1939 Registration that took place in England. 

And that is where this story starts. 

I started looking into the life of Vera Beresford, born about 1920 in Manchester, England. I really didn't have much information about her, only what I gleaned from the service file of her husband Arnold Norman Richard Burfield. 

Arnold Burfield is my 3rd cousin once removed and he was born in Peterborough, Ontario, Canada on 2 Aug 1914. He enlisted to serve Canada in the Second World War and he was killing in action in Sicily on 23 Jul 1943 while with the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment. So I started by once again reviewing his service file which is now available online from Library and Archives Canada. The last time I had looked at his file was in 2012 and I actually had to go to LAC to view the original file. My genealogy research skills have advanced just a bit since then so I looked at his file a bit closer.

That is when I came across this memo in his file.

Canada, "Military Service Record: Burfield, Arnold Norman, Regimental Number C5652," memorandum from Director of Repatriation to Director of Records, dated 12 Jan 1945; Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa.

It is a memorandum from the Director of Repatriation to the Director of Records dated 12 Jan 1945.

I realized I had missed this important clue in my earlier reviews of the file. It meant that his wife, Vera, was a war bride. That note states that Vera and her son Norman had arrived from overseas, ex W 779 on 6 Jan 1945. It also provided the destination address of her mother-in-law.

But what is that "ex W 779"?

Honestly, that took a bit of Google-fu to find that answer. I found it in the document "TrainShipSchedules39 45" that was uploaded to Scribd by David A Ryan on 23 Oct 2019. For those researching mass military personnel movements within Canada and also for ships going across the ocean during the Second World War, this document is a real treasure trove. It is described as:

"This document lists the unit serial numbers and embarkation locations for various Canadian military units between 1939 and 1945. It includes divisions, brigades, batteries, regiments, pioneer battalions, medical and supply units. The units embarked from locations across Canada like Toronto, Montreal, Winnipeg, Edmonton and Vancouver as well as some from the UK."

Buried within that document I came across these items:

TS #	Serial #	Unit	Embarkation
1434	-	Ex-W-779 Dependents Special	Halifax
1435	-	Ex-W-779 Dependents Special	Halifax

The above table extract deals with the trains taking the dependents to their new Canadian homes.

The next two table extracts provide the dates, ships, and ports information.

Date	Destination	Date	Ship #	Ship Name
6-Jan-45	Halifax		W-779	Mauretania
6-Jan-45	Montreal		W-779	Mauretania
6-Jan-45	Various		W-779	Mauretania
6-Jan-45	Various		W-779	Mauretania

Ship#	Ship Name	Port	Sailing Date	Convoy
W-779	Mauretania	Halifax	6-Jan-45	-

So it looks like the ex W-779 in that memorandum is the ship Mauretania. No, this is not the Mauretania that was mentioned in the film "Titanic". This is the RMS Mauretania that was built in 1938.

Thanks to the posts by John Reid in his Anglo-Celtic Connections blog, the Canadian War Brides stories available on the British Isles Family History Society of Greater Ottawa site in their name index, and discussions with fellow researchers, I knew that many of the microfilms for the Directorate of Movements held by Library and Archives Canada and available in a digitized format on the Héritage might have additional information. What I didn't realize is that there are 198 microfilms with many of them having 5000+ images each to go through.

So it was time to rethink my approach of just diving in since I'm not going to wade through all of those millions of images to find the ship and hopefully documents I'm interested in. I need work smarter and not harder.

Since the microfilms came from Library and Archives Canada I decided to see what the Collection Search might give me. But what to search on?

• The obvious is the name of the ship, "Mauretania". 422 results were returned. I want to narrow it down just a bit.
• In the "About" tab for the Directorate of Movements topic page on Héritage it stated that the archival reference is "RG 24 C 24". From my own experience I know that "RG 24" is written as "RG24" on the LAC site and it is the Department of National Defence fonds. Adding "RG24 C 24" (the quotes are needed) to the search reduces it to 96 results. Not bad.
• Thinking a bit more about the "W" prefix for the ship number I realized that it probably indicated a westbound ship. So I added "westbound" (without quotes) and now I have 61 results. 
• Finally I filtered the date by the Year: 1945 since that is when the Mauretania arrived in Halifax. That got it down to 11 results. Now that it manageable!

Screen capture of the Library and Archives Canada Collection Search for 'mauretania "RG24 C 24" westbound" Date: 1945' showing the first of eleven results returned.

Scrolling though the results I came across this entry: "Westbound Personnel - MAURETANIA - Port of Departure - Halifax - Convoy TA-175 [United Kingdom to United States]". However, I wanted Halifax as the port of arrival. In the record information section it stated the date was 1945/01/07 (year/month/day formatted), it is found on microfilm reel number C-5717, and the file number is "HQTS-63-303-779-1". Hmmm, that 779 looks familiar though so I retained some hope that I could find the right microfilm and information about Vera and Norman.

Since microfilm C-5717 is on the Héritage site I decided to see what I could find.

Sigh.

5297 images and none of them are available for text searching. Time to hunker down and start walking through the microfilm images in the hope that this microfilm might have any information about the passage and maybe even find Vera and Norman Burfield listed somewhere.

On image 4 there I came across the Ship Allotment page.

Department of National Defence., "Directorate of Movements," images, Héritage (heritage.canadiana.ca : accessed 29 Jul 2024), Ship Allotment for the Mauretania, M.C. 303-779, Code AT 175; citing Library and Archives Canada microfilm C-5717, image 4. 

It appears that the file starts with the disembarkation in Halifax. It also seems to indicate that there are 630 dependents of Army, Air Force, Navy, and Firefighter personnel on this ship in addition to service members.

I started bouncing through the images in leaps of 20 to see if I might come across lists of passengers. And I got really lucky!

Department of National Defence., "Directorate of Movements," images, Héritage (heritage.canadiana.ca : accessed 29 Jul 2024), List of Canadian Dependents Arriving in Canada ex W-779, List No. 10, for M.D. 3, Sheet No. 2; citing Library and Archives Canada microfilm C-5717, image 200.

On image 200 there was Vera and Norman listed. Nothing new was discovered but the information matches that which was found in the memorandum I found in Arnold's service file. 

That "M.D. 3" on the top right of the page stands for "Military District 3" which, as of 1939, had its headquarters in Kingston, Ontario and included their destination of Peterborough. The various military districts in Canada from 1900 to 1999 can be found listed on the Canadian Soldiers site on their "Domestic Military Organization 1900-1999" page.

I will admit to having a chuckle when I came across pages and pages of letters and notes concerning lost luggage. Even 80 years ago luggage was being misplaced or lost and folks were trying to get compensation for the missing items.

There are pages detailing the need to trains to take the passengers to their destinations including a documents with the timings of the special trains that departed on 7 Jan 1945 starting at image 372. At the bottom of image 375 I found V. Burfield listed and that she had one suitcase and one box to start a new life in Canada as a war widow for her and her son.

I can't imagine coming to Canada from England in the midst of a Nova Scotia winter.

So what happened to Vera and Norman?

She remarried and in 1960 she went back to England with her new family where she passed away many years later.

Where else can you look for records and information? 

You might be able to find your war bride and children in the "UK and Ireland, Outward Passenger Lists, 1890-1960" collection on Ancestry and the "Passenger Lists Leaving UK 1890-1960" collection on Findmypast. There you might come across a record created by the Canadian Wives' Bureau - Civilian Repatriation Section like what we see here for Jaboca E Sauve departing on the Scythia out of Liverpool on 24 Oct 1946 bound for Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

"Passenger lists leaving UK 1890-1960," database with images, Findmypast (www.findmypast.com : accessed 29 Jul 2024), Jacoba E Sauve on board the Scythia departing from Liverpool on 24 Oct 1946; citing The National Archives (Kew), BT 27 Series, 129508.

However, not all the ships may be found in this collection. Such is the case for Vera and Norman Burfield.

Remember that the information about the ship movements were often a war secret. Details about the comings and goings of ships would not have been reported in the newspapers of the Allies, especially if the ships were carrying military personnel or supplies. However, the local newspapers where they were going to might have articles about welcoming the war brides to their new home.

Just keep in mind that this sort of research isn't simple or quick to do but it can be rewarding and even informative. In this case, I was lucky enough to have enough details to start looking for records and researching what might be found and it only took me a day or so of research to find what I did.

As with much of our research, all we need is a starting place. Often that starting place is already in the records we have and family stories we've been told.