Veteran's loving words for daughter and family hidden away for 75 years
The weathered ink from Cpl. Sidney Wilson's letters say the words he was never able to bring himself to utter again after he returned from the Second World War: "I love you."
The words were written in 1944, four years into Wilson's service, and were addressed to his family, including his daughter Connie Regier — now 81-years-old.
"I cried and cried and cried. I opened them and saw his handwriting and I realized how vulnerable he was. He was so young," Regier said.
The letters were found in the attic of a Weyburn home, some 75 year after they were first written by Wilson in 1944. By then, he had been gone four years and most of it was spent on the front lines.
Wilson enlisted at the age of 22 and his service would see him deployed to France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. He would return a changed man, Regier remembers.
She said she would hide behind a chair, unable to talk to her father because she was told never to speak to strangers.
Derek Madigan recently found the letters while renovating his home. When he read them he knew they had to be turned over. So, Madigan took the letters — signed "love to the kids, dad" — to Weyburn's local legion.
"I have been thinking about you and the kids all day, wishing I was spending this new year with you," reads one of Wilson's notes from the war.
The letters were given to Connie Nightingale, manager at the Legion, who would meet Regier the very next day. Regier was there to speak about her father and a poem she wrote.
"[Regier] told me his name and I just about fell out of my chair," Nightingale recalled.
Regier doesn't remember her father ever saying he loved her.
However, in the letters, love is all Wilson shows for family.
