Beard Family Walk

Section B…Row 7

For some hours during the darkness of my early morning I have sat…held by the Denmark Strait. As I ponder, within my oversized chair, rain falls creating rhythms and influencing themes for the day. I have duties but with these grey skies and abundance of rainfall…first I will walk…before I trek… …my previous duties now seem irrelevant…remembrance comes first.

With this 2024 day, I look back to 24 May 1941, when HMS Hood was sunk by the German battleship Bismarck at about 0600. Hood received a devastating blow that broke its back taking the pride of the Royal Navy to the deep sea of the Irminger Basin. Only three Royal Navy sailors survived – Briggs, Tilburn and Dundas. At least 1,415 of Hood’s complement became memories to friends and families. Their voices lost…their stories remembered.

Three Royal Canadian Navy midshipman, all from British Columbia served aboard HMS Hood…Thomas Norman Kemp Beard (Age 20. Victoria)…Francis Llewelyn Lloyd Jones (Age 20. Revelstoke)…Christopher John Birdwood Norman (Age 19. Victoria). Additionally, 16 sailors from Newfoundland (before it became Canada’s 10^th province in 1949) were lost. One Royal Navy sailor, Samuel Charles Milburn, born in Halifax, Nova Scotia is not recorded in Canadian war dead records.

With my change in appointment, I set off into the rain passing through the ginnel towards my car – we must drive before we walk. I have gathered my notes and determined that today’s writing shall be about the walk…similar to previous steps as Kate Palmer’s Walk (Woods Military Cemetery,) or John Macnaughton’s Walk (Dickebusch New Military Cemetery) both of West-Vlaanderen, Belgium. Our visit today… with the parents of Thomas Beard…Commander Charles Taschereau Beard and Kathleen Adele Beard at God’s Acre – Veterans Cemetery, Esquimalt.

I am familiar with this place having been here for family with the loss of Uncle Bob, a former Royal Canadian Navy sailor and where my own father resides amongst his armed forces brethren. There is not a step I can take, at this place, without thinking of them. On site, I walk towards the far fence and place a reminder for my one to know I have returned this day. I acknowledge my chat with him…a debriefing, so to speak, on life’s events and knowing in life he would be interested in today’s wander.

And then I walk and read – read and walk – row by row – using my own interpretation of naval Zig-Zag Though it is easy enough to walk to the gardener’s cabin and peruse the map layout for Area B – it is of considerable comfort to wander. There is no golf today though the sounds of mowers and leaf blowers is present and not dissimilar to the noise of harvesters near to Villers Station Cemetery, France. I am alone here save for the few Robins wrestling with those which wiggle from the rain-drenched earth.

I have now wandered one half of Veterans Cemetery, bordered to three sides by golf course. I am unsure of the fourth border. It starts from the path on a gentle incline towards the pin. Sand traps to the left and right with its uppermost crest a border of tall trees. I continue to the gardener’s shed (also about mid-distance) and view the map and find my grid – Section B. I walk towards the family Beard and find them amidst the other names here – some of which are marked with painted poppy stones with brief inscriptions. The rain has rather drenched the two family Beard markers but for this day it is perfect here amongst the acre.

Today is about a gentle walk for the Beard family son Thomas…and to his parents on this the day of the Denmark Strait. With each step a thought of all those aboard HMS Hood this fateful day and of its final rest within the Denmark Strait – 2,845 meters below the surface…a depth of 1.7 miles (9,334 feet).