Sometimes things happen in my life that I forget about my forgotten hobby. Sometimes it’s the weather, but not today.
Post No.100 is not about a model airplane nor about a model ship because there is none available for this ship.
Collection Alfred Kuhn
It’s about the story of a German torpedoboat, two sailors and their sons. This is another view of the T24.
Collection Alfred Kuhn
I have never seen these two photos on the Internet before. They are from Alfred Kuhn’s collection a radio operator on the T24.
I have been writing on the T24 story on another blog. It was about the story of Willi Küllertz who was a sailor in the engine room on the T24 when it was attacked by RCAF 404 Squadron Beaufighters.
RCAF 404 Squadron archives
The T24 was the ship that sunk HMCS Athabaskan on April 29, 1944.
Archives Canada
Before July 2009 I knew nothing about HMCS Athabaskan. Then in a family reunion my wife’s 80 year-old uncle told us he was aboard a destroyer named HMCS Athabaskan. He was writing a letter to his parents in the engine room when…
BOOM!
He did not tell that much about the sinking and how he was rescued by HMCS Haida. I found out why after. Most veterans that I have met since 2009 didn’t want to relive what they went through during the war.
So I got curious back in 2009 and I created Souvenirs de guerre a blog on WordPress to tell the story of HMCS Athabaskan and the sinking. 10 years later Willi Küllertz’son found that blog and commented. He wanted to tell his father’s story.
I featured it on Souvenirs de guerre.
https://mpierrela.wordpress.com/2019/02/02/souvenirs-de-guerre-dun-marin-allemand/
Collection Willi Küllertz
But there was so much information that his father’s story was then featured on a different blog in three languages: French, English and German…
All this with the intent that someone might one day contact Willi Küllertz’s son…
Well that day has just finally arrived and I have 48 more names to add to the T24 story.
Collection Alfred Kuhn
Collection Alfred Kuhn
My Forgotten Hobby III 
I have two questions, Pierre. (1) Where do you find the time to do all this incredible research, and (2) what do you do for a living?
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Lots of time since being confined, and I don’t watch TV. For a living… retired teacher and freelance translator…and I type fast.
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When you were teaching, what subjects did you teach?
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First two years religion, then English, then History then English again, then 6th grade for 18 years and 5th grade for 7 years where all subjects are taught except Arts, English and Physical Education. My studies were in history as a major, with sociology and psychology as minors.
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Having taught history for only two years is what makes me write that much about the history of WWII… also building model airplanes since 1958 and watching the movie Air Force as a kid.
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On another note… I just can’t help helping out people who have stories to share. This one made my day after writing about Willi’s story. In fact I did not expect this at all. What Alfred Kuhn’s son has is about the same as Willi Kullertz’s son had. Both on the same ship, both made prisoners, both suffered during that period of being POWs… how the German prisoners of war were treated in France after the war is not a well known fact. As an amateur historian these stories have to be published somehow and the blog platform is the quickest way.
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What do I get from all this… the satisfaction of seeing relatives of these sailors learn more about their fathers or grandfathers. In this case both knew quite a lot and both are sharing all!
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