Research Help - Private Emil Ulrich

[automaton 3]

On a whim while in Ottawa we walked into the National Archives looking for service information for my Great Uncle, who was a radio operator/gunner during WWII. His bomber did not return from a mission and was never found. It was presumed that they crashed landed into the ocean with no survivors.

We were able to locate and pull his entire service record. It was absolutely fascinating. There were even a few photos of him in the file that my family didn't know existed. We ordered the entire file photocopied and it was sent to us a few weeks later.

I'd try there.

NSFW!

The photo is too big to post.
1911 census.
Scratch Walter... his other brother was Albert. His dad worked 60 hours a week and made $300 per year. Karl was German Maria was Austrian

Edit: This may or may not be him
Edit, Edit... not him.
Edit, Edit, Edit...salary

[Table 5]

Puxlut, if this is him, that is mighty impressive work.

[cam_wmh]

This thread makes me love people.

[Northendzone]

all i can say is wow - i hope the op can find some of the information he is looking for.

So it turns out he had some more siblings. Found his sister Lily's obit.
http://passages.winnipegfreepress.co...7CASC/page-54/

And there was a manifest from Immigration into the States? I can't really read it:

It was from before the war.

[opendoor]

Originally Posted by Puxlut

The photo is too big to post.
1911 census.
Scratch Walter... his other brother was Albert. His dad worked 60 hours a week and made $300 per week. Karl was German Maria was Austrian

Edit: This may or may not be him
Edit, Edit... not him.

I imagine the $300 is annual salary, as $300 a week would be about $350K a year in today's dollars.

Some of those wage figures really put things into perspective. It's a little over a 20:1 ratio from today's dollars to 1910 dollars, so most of those people were only earning the equivalent of $6000-8000 a year while working 60+ hours a week.

[karl262]

So, I don't know how to thank everyone for being so helpful. I have taken all of your suggestions and have been so busy sorting it all out that posting hasn't been easy.

Finding his grave is literally a family mystery solved. Now there are so many new things to try to figure out, like why his family wasn't notified about his death or funeral? Was there any sort of death announcement? What had he been doing for all those years after the war? He supposedly worked for Canadian Pacific Railway from time to time, but always moved around, so did he make a full career out of it?

Then the whole military career needs to be researched too.

I'm about to sent in an application for military service information to Library and Archives Canada, you have to send it in by mail. They have a section asking what documents are you requesting? 3 boxes to check: Copy of Discharge Cert., Genealogy Package, or Other. I'm going to check all 3 boxes and in the "Other" line write: any records at all. This request is supposed to take 6 months, but I wouldn't be surprised to find its entire contents posted by all you helpful research wizards within the hour. Seriously it's like Gandalf is my research buddy here.

This is the email I sent to the cemetery admin office:

Hello,

I am looking for some information about Private Emil J Ulrich who died Dec 21, 1980 and is buried at the Riverside Memorial Park Cemetery. He was my great uncle and no one in my family knew when or where he died until finding his grave there yesterday online. He had basically vanished from all contact after returning home from WWII, and the only way to contact him was to write a letter to the military, from which he was retired. So finding him is pretty cool.

I am looking for any information you could provide, such as a death cert., was it a military burial, what funeral home did the service, anything at all that could help me trace his life backwards from his death.

He was a pretty interesting guy from what I've learned so far. Captured in the Dieppe raid after some conduct that earned him the Military Medal, he went on to a prisoner of war camp where he helped other people escape and assisted the underground movement. I was only able to find his grave there after asking for research help in a public forum, where the response has been wonderful, check it out:

http://forum.calgarypuck.com/showthread.php?t=131791

Any kind of information at all would be helpful.

Kind Regards,

[tete]

Sadly you won't get a death certificate from the cemetery - in Sask, death records are held confidential for 70 years (way too long in my opinion). Prior to that, you need to be an immediate family member.

http://www.ehealthsask.ca/vitalstats...s/default.aspx

That said, they MIGHT release a burial record.

WTG, Puxlut on the searching! I keep meaning to sit down and do a chunk of genealogy but always get sidetracked and don't do anything (Ironic, considering I wrote my master's thesis on genealogy)

[CaptainCrunch]

I think there used to be a Dieppe veteran's group out there, I don't know how active it would be anymore but it might not hurt to search them out. The neat thing is if there are any veteran's out there that went on the raid they might have known Ulrich and might be willing to talk about it.

That would take a lot of work.

There are also a lot of Canadian Military forums and military history forums, it wouldn't hurt to postyour questions to those as well.

http://forums.army.ca/ - great forum by the way

Here's a contact page for the U of C center for military and strategic studies.

http://cmss.ucalgary.ca/contact

BTW I think that JL Granatstein is a research fellow there and one of the best Military historians in terms of Canadian Military History in this country.

Just some thoughts

I'm sorry to say: it's likely that your great aunt (Emil's sister) was a Canucks fan.


Thoughts and prayers.

http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-...qga/ahq010.pdf
A little light reading.
Declassified accounts of the actual raid on Dieppe. You army types might get alot more out of it than me. And it's pretty long. But interesting!

[bigtmac19]

There are only two Essex & Kent Scottish veterans left now. Only one made it over to Dieppe when we were there last year, he is in pretty poor health.

[ae118]

This is really great - awesome work Pux. Since you have a lot of bookmarks, would love a list of Canadian resources you've found useful. I do my own research when I have time but love to see what other sites people have had luck with.

My mom helped with this one... not sure how she got it and she's not very techno savy, so I'm pretty sure she just took pics with her Ipod and then downloaded them.


[IMG][/IMG]


The elusive Emil Ulrich:

And a wedding notice for his parents:

[burn_this_city]

Do you secretly work for the NSA?

Maybe I should hire myself out? Do you think I could make any money on this?

[browna]

Originally Posted by Puxlut

Maybe I should hire myself out? Do you think I could make any money on this?

http://genealogy.about.com/od/geneal...a/business.htm

Thanks for the support dear.

I meant that as a joke.

Sheesh! Way to support your wife.