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In memory of:

Rifleman Gordon Leroy Kimmel

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Military service

Service number: K/53748
Age: 28
Rank: Rifleman
Force: Army
Unit/Regiment: Royal Winnipeg Rifles
Birth: March 19, 1916 Lancaster
Enlistment: June 20, 1940 British Columbia
Death: June 8, 1944

Burial/memorial information

BRETTEVILLE-SUR-LAIZE CANADIAN WAR CEMETERY
Grave reference: XXIII. A. 4.
Additional information

Son of Harry Ellsworth and Sylvia Janet Kimmel (1961 National Memorial (Silver) Cross Mother), of Milner, British Columbia. Husband of Audrey Irene Kimmel, of Gosport, Hampshire, England.

Brother of Harry Leonard Kimmel of Grand Forks, British Columbia, Richard Kenneth Kimmel deceased June 18, 1944 and Clifford Howard Kimmel deceased December 5, 1944.

Both the Langley and Mission Branches of the Royal Canadian Legion supplied her with a cloth coat, however, when Mrs. Kimmel arrived in Ottawa, the weather was very cold and Harry, her husband, knew he would have to get Mrs. Kimmel a warmer coat, so off they went to Timothy Eatons.

As they were shopping for a coat, they got to talking with the clerk, and the story came out about the Silver Cross Mother without an appropriate coat, for the ceremony at the War Memorial, which lead the clerk to excuse himself. Soon he was back and he told the Kimmels that the store manager said that Eatons would buy Mrs. Kimmel any coat that she wanted. Mrs. Kimmel continued looking at the wool coats. The clerk said that there were some in another area that she might like better and he took her to the fur department where Mrs. Kimmel picked a lovely black mink coat.

Related media

Second World War (1939 – 1945)

In the Books of Remembrance

Commemorated on:

Page 352 of the Second World War Book of Remembrance.
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BRETTEVILLE-SUR-LAIZE CANADIAN WAR CEMETERY Calvados, France

This cemetery lies on the west side of the main road from Caen to Falaise (route N158) and just north of the village of Cintheaux. Bretteville-sur-Laize is a village and commune in the department of the Calvados, some 16 kilometres south of Caen. The village of Bretteville lies 3 kilometres south-west of the Cemetery. Buried here are those who died during the later stages of the battle of Normandy, the capture of Caen and the thrust southwards (led initially by the 4th Canadian and 1st Polish Armoured Divisions), to close the Falaise Gap, and thus seal off the German divisions fighting desperately to escape being trapped west of the Seine. Almost every unit of Canadian 2nd Corps is represented in the Cemetery. There are about 3,000 allied forces casualties of the Second World War commemorated in this site.

For more information, visit Commonwealth War Graves Commission.

 

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