"My Uncle Fred was born to Minnie Kate Goodwin and Walter Bootland in Haileybury, Ontario. He was my Mother's brother. According to Fred's military records he died in the battle for the Sheldt and was removed from the front to hospital. He died of a sniper gunshot wound to the head received the day before on October 20, 1944. He enlisted at the age of 19 and had received just three months training before being deployed to the front. He was initially buried in a nearby grave and then interred at Schoonselfhof Cemetery. His older two brothers, George and John (Jack) Bootland were also enlisted overseas at the same time. Sometime near or around the end of the war, my father who was serving with the brothers visited his temporary grave with George and Jack. Fred had a sweetheart back in Haileybury and they had plans to marry after the war. Fred was apparently a lovely lad and the apple of his Mother's eye. His father Walter had died four years earlier in 1940 from leukemia. Walter was from Harrogate England and my grandmother, Minnie Kate from Cheltenham, England. They met and married in Harrogate and shortly after, emigrated to Ontario Canada where Walter worked as a mine man (foreman/supervisor) in the Kingdon Lead Mines. He was buried in Noranda, Quebec close to the Noranda mines where he last worked." Provided by Sharon Robb, Private Bootland's Maternal Neice.
Fallen
