'IT'S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL'

'IT’S A SMALL WORLD AFTER ALL’
An experience my father relates to me gives credibility to the fact that indeed it is a ‘small world after all’. This extraordinary experience that he relates started in the most unlikely of places and came full circle, and back to the same name, some years later, again in another most unlikely place.

It seems to prove the ‘six degrees of separation’ theory, which states that on this earth we all are connected by just six ‘steps’ or ‘links’. Studies have shown it to be true.

My father’s story is quite intriguing. It is one of the many experiences he had while serving in the British Royal Navy in WW11 (1940-1946) that he shared with us, many others have never been verbalized I am sure.

As the story goes, in September of 1942 my father became ill and was admitted to the Naval Hospital in Colombo, Ceylon, now known as Sri Lanka. The hospital was comprised of small cottages with four patients to a cottage. He was suffering from ‘Malaria’, as were his three fellow cottage mates. After several days they had gotten to know each other, shared their life stories, their expectations and became quite familiar with each other’s lives, thus developing an unforgettable camaraderie.

One of the young men in the cottage, the same age as my father,just 21 years of age, had the surname ‘Tyler’. My father never ever forgot the names of those who suffered with him.

When my father told the young ‘Tyler’ that he was from Newfoundland, the youth told him that his own father had been in the Navy and served in WW1. Unfortunately he drowned when the ‘HMS RALEIGH’ went ashore on the coast of Labrador in 1922. This new friend of my father’s had been quite a young child at the time, he said, and after things had settled down for his mother, he, along with his older brother, were taken to an orphanage operated by the Royal Navy. The orphanage was operated for the sole purpose of caring for the children whose fathers were lost while serving in the Navy.

During the stay at the hospital my father, Stephen Jarvis, and Mr. Tyler became good friends, but never met again after their discharge from the hospital, much to Father’s dismay.

When the war ended my father returned to Newfoundland and joined the Newfoundland Ranger Force. In October 1947, he was posted to L’Anse au Clair, Labrador. On his first visit to L’Anse Amour and area he visited the Memorial Monument, and much to his surprise he found the name ‘Tyler’ in the list of names of those lost when the ‘HMS Raleigh’ met her fate.

The ‘HMS Raleigh’ was a British light cruiser, just three years old, that went ashore near Point Amour on August 8, 1922. The ‘Raleigh’ had been en route to Forteau Bay, where the officers were planning to go salmon fishing, indulging in an activity to give their bodies and souls a reprieve from the stressors with which they were overburdened.The ship lay upright on the shore for four years, after which time the British Admiralty ordered an explosive’s team to demolish her.

So, after discovering the monument and the resting place of his friend’s father at L’Anse Amour, my father attempted to get in touch with his young friend from earlier days, but was unsuccessful. He still, to this day, wants to find him and Dad is 85 years old now.

“So, it is a small world", says my father somewhat wistfully. He had made friends with a soldier named Tyler in 1942, in Sri Lanka, during wartime, and very far away from there he visited the resting place of his friend’s father, a victim of the ‘HMS Raleigh’, a disaster of a previous wartime.

His finding was bittersweet as it brought back memories of terrible sights and sounds, yet he had to be satisfied with staying connected to the friend he met during that time by visiting the grave of his father on the Labrador coast.

The story is amazing indeed considering the geography, the distance between my father’s experience in Sri Lanka, right to the coast of Labrador.

Yes, it is a small world, but a world of too many wars as conflicts seem to flare up anywhere and everywhere. Will there ever be a time when a little boy, with a father lost to the cold ocean, won’t have to be cared for by others than his own family, and then later has to head into war himself, and suffer as well?

‘Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me’, is the best and the least we can do to try to have a peaceful world.

We can only long for the day that we WILL have ‘Peace on Earth’, and fewer young people losing their precious lives, often for a cause that they truly do not understand.

As for Stephen Jarvis, and his friend, they did what was required to give us the world we have, fought for what they believed in, and although it is not a perfect world, it certainly would be worse if not for men, and women, such as these devoted souls.

Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe

Story ID:	2150
Written by:	Bonnie Jarvis-Lowe (bio, link, contact, other stories)
Organization:	Retired RN/Freelance Writer and Photographer
Story type:	Story
Location:	Sri Lanka and Labrador Newfoundland and Labrador Canada
Year:	1942
Person:	My father, Stephen Richard Jarvis