Melancholy news reached Winchester, Ontario on October 17, 1944, in the midst of the Second World War: A local soldier – Lieutenant Thomas Edward Annable – had been killed in action. Annable, whose unit was fighting the Germans in Belgium, had been seriously wounded in combat a week before. He had since died of his wounds.

Annable (pictured below) was a resident of Winchester and employed as a high school teacher when he volunteered to join the Stormont, Dundas & Glengarry Highlanders in 1942. He had studied at Queen’s University and at the University of Toronto, and he had aspirations of becoming a lawyer. In the Canadian Army he quickly rose to the rank of lieutenant and was reported to be “proud of doing his duty.”

Annable’s family history included a notable direct ancestor who also served his king and country. His great-great-grandfather was Sergeant John Annable, a Loyalist soldier who served during the American Revolutionary War (1775-1783). Sergeant Annable survived that war but sacrificed his home in the Thirteen Colonies, and all his possessions, when he joined the King’s Royal Regiment of New York in 1776. For his loyalty he was also imprisoned in an Albany prison, from which he soon made his escape and fled to Canada. After the end of that war, he was resettled in what eventually became Eastern Ontario.

With a heavy heart, a reporter with The Winchester Press announced Lieutenant Thomas Edward Annable’s death in the newspaper’s October 19, 1944 issue. The reporter noted that Annable had “died a hero’s death, a glorious deed to do for one’s country, but a sacrifice, the importance of which all decent living citizens should ever remember.”

While Lieutenant Annable was single when he joined the army, he had married a young woman in England only a few months before his death. His bride, Maria Jones, was not from England but instead hailed from Los Angeles, California. After her husband’s death, she later moved to Seattle, Washington and married a man named McMillan.

Lieutenant Thomas Edward Annable is buried in Adegem Canadian War Cemetery, in Belgium (pictured below). His great-great-grandfather Sergeant John Annable’s burial location is likely St. Andrew’s United Church Cemetery in the “Lost Village” of Moulinette, a cemetery that is now underwater.

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