Canadian Armed Forces Discharge Papers

Jimmie 'did his bit'

In the war, Jim Mosher was a good shot at two things: shooting the enemy — as expected — and shooting pictures, in contravention of military policy.

As a tail gunner, flying bombing missions over Nazi-occupied Europe, shooting down enemy planes was his duty. But he also wanted his own personal history of the war. Using his own camera, he shot wartime pictures, despite orders prohibiting it. PHOTO ZONE: Snapshots of WWII

You could say Mosher fought the war with a machine gun in one hand and a camera in the other. Fortunately, both Mosher and the nearly 200 photos he shot survived the Second World War, and Mosher lived a long life.

Mosher died at his Ancaster home August 12 at 92 of pneumonia.

At his funeral, friends and neighbours were surprised to see the wartime album he had carefully put together.

The photographs show battle scenes, crosses and helmets marking fresh shallow graves of the dead, tanks blown apart, soldiers in the trenches, destroyed Normandy towns, captured German airfields and more. It also includes his deployment and discharge papers.

Mosher — called Jimmie as a child — was born in Hamilton in 1919. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was a few months old, and he was raised by his father and grandmother.

As a boy, he was fascinated with military memorabilia, said his son Michael. “He was an avid collector and spent his allowance buying World War One German helmets from a local veteran of the Great War, staying on to hear stories of what it was like in the trenches.”

Mosher’s own grandfather was a sergeant major in the colonial British army, who gave his uniform to the Dundurn Castle museum in Hamilton.

Michael feels free now to tell the story of one of his father’s youthful escapades that created quite a stir in this city.

While a teenager, a mischievous Mosher convinced a buddy to help him steal a First World War heavy machine gun from a monument at Upper Wellington Street and Fennell Avenue East. When his dad found out, he made Mosher bury it in their back yard to avoid detection.

What To Do With Paper Clutter?

I always find references like this very handy because I have a problem of keeping too much paper around. I went through my filing cabinet and purged a lot of stuff recently.

I also stopped keeping all my receipts and started trashing them or refusing them at the cash much more often. Errors on my credit card statement happen so rarely, it just isn’t worth keeping them.

Thanks for the handy list!

Nice work here. I haven’t been doing taxes long enough to store it for 7 years, but I plan on keeping them forever (or at least a lot longer than 7 years). My parents still have their returns from the early 90s.

Same goes for my bank statements, I’ve had a bank account like 5 years ago, I still have the statements from there. But over the past year or so, all my statements have been electronic.

And as for general receipts, I am not someone that returns items even if I don’t need it (I have a lot of stuff around here that I don’t need), so I usually don’t hang on to that receipt for very long.

I’ll admit that I’m horrible with filing and my bills, statements & receipts are all over the dining room table, counter top, study table – it’s quite an embarassing sight. I sometimes wonder why I keep letting the bills come to the house, when I’m tracking & paying everything online?

Once every six months (plus or minus), I’ll sit down for 3 straight hours and get it all sorted out. Until the next round I guess.. lol

Because of the number of stocks I own, I’ve had to start making adjustments to the volume of annual reports and investment-related material arriving at my doorstep.

I’ve noticed a decrease but I still have to work on it some more. Paper clutter can become overwhelming at times and it doesn’t take long for things to add up if you’re not organized.

I tend to deal with my mail every day; that way, things are always organized and I’m on top of everything.

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