Battle Of The Ruhr Valley Analysis

GERRY AND IRMA GRUNDMANN foot note 42

The Battle of the Ruhr Valley was a 5 month long campaign of strategic bombing by the Allies from March 1943 to July 1943 targeting coke plants, steelworks, and 10 synthetic oil plants. The targets included Essen, Dusseldorf and Cologne. The rate of bombers destroyed in these raids varied from 3, 4, and 5 percent and twice they lost 8 percent. On May 17, the bouncing bombs breached the Mohne and Elder Dams, featured in the 1954 British movie The Dam Busters when the aircraft loss was 40%.

Gerry Grundmann was born in 1931 in the town of Gelsenkirchen in Germany which was heavily bombed during the war to destroy its industries. The Grundmann house was destroyed, and
He landed in Halifax, and made his way by train to Toronto. For two weeks he stayed in a camp for immigrant men at Ajax, just outside of Toronto, where the government looked after them, perhaps for a month. He heard of a job in Sault Ste Marie so he began hitch hiking to go there. On the way he met a man who told him to come back to Toronto and he would give him a job. The job was making meals for passengers that were taking planes out of Toronto. His next job that lasted twelve years was looking after the parts that would be made into new planes at De Haviland . They worked in the progress department. As the plane moved along the assembly line, they had to make sure that the various parts were available . It was mainly a paper work job. There he met Jerry Higginson who invited him to visit him in Meaford. When Jerry and his wife visited Meaford, they liked the area, and they bought a property for a future restaurant.

Irma was born in 1941 in the town of Ludwigslust, Germany, whose railway yards were heavily bombed by the Allies. After the war, as a very young woman, Irma worked for several summers at the hotel that Jerry's parents ran. Before the war, it was a cafe with an hotel above it. The building survived the bombing of the war. When Jerry returned to visit his parents in the late fifties , he met Irma, and they fell in
Irma and Gerry Grundmann. Courtesy of Irma Grundmann.

In July 1957, Jerry became a Canadian citizen and in January 1964 Irma became a citizen , both ceremonies done in Toronto. Jerry joined the Pythagoras Lodge and later the Scottish Rite. He died in 2006. Irma has returned to Germany over 14 times, and is happy to visit with her siblings and their children. She is grateful to be living in such a beautiful country as Canada.

Their son James was born in 1965, and married Pamela McConnel, and has an optometrist practice in Wiarton. Bryan born in 1968, also married a Meaford lady, Cynthia Labinski. He works in finance and insurance in Toronto. He works part time for the advertisement department in the magazine Mountain Life.

Insert image ( Grundman 3)here. The Starlight Restaurant, east of Meaford on highway 26. Courtesy of Irma