Duncan Munro sitting on a shell crate in front of a tank. He was a gunner with the 6th Armoured Division in France in 1943. He borrowed Ted William's Agfa camera and returned it with this and the previous (P986.6.1) photo.

Mr. Munro

Duncan Munro, a resident of Prince George, B.C., holding an anti-tank shell in France during World War II. The back of the photo reads: I delivered a few of these to Jerry. Got two tanks in five minutes one day. The same day we were one of three out of sixteen tanks to return!  
When I was a little kid back in the 1950's, Mr. Munro ran Munro's Hardware store in my neighborhood.  He had a full case of "Dinkie" toys on display in a glass case on the counter.  We used to go in and drool over these incredibly well made toys.  Any toys we got were cheap plastic toys purchased very cheaply from the big Kreskies department store downtown.  One day I and my good friend Dougie Harper went in and with great stealth stole every Dinkie toy in the display, a great achievement considering that we had to distract Mr. Munro, and open the sliding glass doors and make off with all twenty of the toys.  I was discovered playing with my share of the loot in my room by my mom, she was shocked and aghast.  She marched me down to Munro's Hardware, I was ordered to return the toys and apologize.  I will never forget Mr. Munro's sad, tired gaze as I tearfully appologized.  He simply smiled quietly, thanked me for my "honesty" and returned the toys to the case.  I think I now know why the fact of a little kid stealing a few toys did not register as a major event in Mr. Munro's life.  He had experienced things a lot worse in his lifetime.  I read Mr. Munro's obituary a year ago and it simply stated that he had "Served 4 years in the Canadian Army during the Second World War."  I found the photo in the archives of the Prince George, B.C. museum.  Prince George was the mill-town I grew up in during the 1950's.

Old Mr. Munro .. proprietor of Munro's Hardware. 

Reg Ford in uniform. On the back of the photo it reads: Killed in Italy, 1944.