Toward the end of 1943 a pregnant Mardell Speers saw her new husband off.  He was off to Polebrook near the Brittish coast close to the English Channel. She didn’t know if she would ever see her husband Richard, (Dick a.k.a.” Papa D” to his great grand-kids) Speers again, or if he would ever meet their son.

Papa D served as the navigator on the B17 “Piccadilly Commando.”  On December 31st 1943 the 351st set out on a bombing run to Bordeaux, France. They completed their mission and began to fly back to their base. As they neared the English Channel they were  attacked by Nazi forces. Many, many planes went down with their crew, never to return home. Papa D’s bomber was hit. They could not get back to England and were forced to ditch. They were able to successfully bring the plane down into the water near Guernsey Island.

I could go into many more details but I won’t. The short story is, he was captured by the Nazis and thrown into a prison camp for the next year and a half.

While, he was imprisoned, his wife and new baby stayed at home waiting for letters or telegrams or any news on their beloved husband or father.

Papa d, my grandpa, was great at writing letters home, if only to say that he loved his family and missed them and asked when he would hear from them.  We are fortunate to have those letters and can see the love they had for each other.  Growing up we never heard much about the time that we was a POW. Then, in 1990 a dive group found the Picadilly Commando at the bottom of the English Channel and wanted to know the story of it’s occupants.

That broke the ice and Grandpa started to share some of the stories of how things happened and what life was like in the Nazi prison camp.  One of the things I remember most is that when asked how he made it through he said it was the picture that he had of Grandma, lovingly taped to the inside of his Red Cross issued journal.  Everyone in the camp knew of Mardell, he talked about her all the time and in his journal are several renderings of that image by different soldiers.  When we would talk with the other members of his crew even 60 years later they would say how much he missed her and talked about his Mardell all the time.

I wish I had a scan of that image right now, but I don’t, the image I am attaching to this is of my grandma playing with her oldest son, Robert at her family’s’ home in Utah. It stands as a reminder that a simple photograph and the memories it holds can be so powerful, can evoke strength, can lift spirits and can unite families even across generations.