Late veteran’s love letters give daughter window into father she never knew
VERNON, B.C. — As Cathy Gaetz-Brothen opened the box to show her book club the hundreds of love letters her father had written her mother during the war, she recalls several people recoiling.
Nestled alongside what may be the largest surviving collection of Second World War correspondence from a Canadian army soldier was a soiled, red armband decorated with the unmistakable sign of a swastika.
Gaetz-Brothen explained how her father, Joseph Gaetz, had been given the artifact, along with several other pieces of Nazi memorabilia, from enemy prisoners at the wind down of the conflict in Europe.
“In the letters, he talks about being given an armband as a memento,” she said during an interview at her home in Vernon, B.C. “And some of the soldiers who were prisoners at the end of the war gave him some of their badges.”