Volume 6 - Legion BC/Yukon Command Website

British ColumBia / Yukon CommandRosewall, Norman William GeorgeNorman was born in Nanaimo, BC in 1921. He was a sailor aboard Q080, oneof the Fairmile Motor Launches during the Battle for the Gulf of St. Lawrencefrom 1942 on. Based in the Gaspé, the launches travelled through the Gulf toBay Bulls, NL and to Rimouski, QC. On one trip, the small boats encounteredsuch fierce storms and high waves that the crew lost sight of the mast tops of thelead ship and it took eighteen hours to reach Pictou, NS. They tied up alongsidea lend lease destroyer from the U.S. and the destroyer’s Captain sent Norman’screw double hot rums. Norman’s crew went ashore to eat for the first time in aday and a half and were so bedraggled people thought they were shipwrecksurvivors. The Q080 later went to Boston, New York, Norfolk, Savannah,Miami, where it was based at the Miami Yacht Club, and Havana, Cuba whereit anchored off the Isle of Pines, a prison island. Norman was a member ofLegion Branch #257 in Lantzville, BC for fifty-one years. He died in 2007.Roste, Lyle ElsworthLyle was born on his family’s farm near Hinchcliffe, SK on July 8, 1924. He joinedthe Navy on February 21, 1944 and served as a torpedo-man on HMCS St. Thomas,Ferret, Niobe, Reindeer, Peregrine, Grau and Sioux. He was on convoy escort duty inthe North Atlantic, on patrol in the seas around Britain and in the Mediterranean Seaoff North Africa and sailed to Murmansk in northern Russia in winter where the crewhad to chip off the ice formed by waves washing over the ship’s decks and themselvesto prevent the ship sinking. When the war ended in Europe, Lyle volunteered forservice against Japan but the war in the Pacific ended while he was enroute. He wasdischarged in Esquimalt on January 8, 1946. He was awarded the 1939-1945 Star, theFrance and Germany Star, the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal and Clasp, and theWar Medal 1939-1945. Lyle returned home to SK and later moved to Quesnel, BC.He was a member of the Legion in Preeceville and Endeavour, SK before joiningBranch #94 in Quesnel. Lyle died on November 24 1989.Rowberry, AlfredAlfred was born in Hereford, England in 1889. After immigrating toCanada, he enlisted in the 2 nd Canadian Mounted Rifles in Vernon, BC. Heserved in Canada, England, France, and Belgium during World War One andobtained a battlefield commission to the rank of Captain. Alfred was alsoMentioned in Dispatches. He lived in the Fraser Valley in BC after the War.Alfred died in 1978.www.legionbcyukon.ca241