Last Remembrance Day I posted a brief remembrance of Emmett Patrick Sloan and Donald Michael Sloan. I’ve since come across a couple of brief but interesting newspaper notices relating to the two brothers. These I discovered through a search of the Google news archive (which is no longer easy to use and now seems like a bit of a hit-and-miss affair: see The Death of Google News Archivefor more information).
As per the article “Ottawa Flier Missing” (26 January 1945), his parents (John Percival Sloan and Mary Lillian Fagan) were informed by the RCAF casualty office (in late January 1945? or perhaps a bit earlier?) that Donald Michael Sloan was missing in action. No doubt they initially feared he was dead. In fact, he had been taken prisoner by the Germans. After spending time in a POW camp, he ended up in a military hospital in England, where his brother Emmett Patrick Sloan found him shortly after the war.
At findmypast.co.uk, there is this brief but tantalizing transcription:
Donald Michael Sloan survived the war, and returned to Ottawa with his brother. In 1947 he married Constance Ethel Renton, with whom he raised a family of five children.
