Lieutenant Frank Palen

Lieutenant Palen was a CANLOAN officer who was posted to the 12th Parachute Battalion on the 8th March 1945, serving as Assistant Adjutant. He had previously joined the 2nd Battalion The South Staffordshire Regiment on the 20th August 1944, but missed Arnhem as he attended parachute course 132 at Ringway from the 4th to 14th September 1944.

The above photograph accompanied an article in the Ottawa Citizen on the 21st April 1945; the introduction reads: "Lieut. Frank Palen, 23, son of Mr. and Mrs. Fred A. Palen of 56 Fourth avenue, who was reported missing while serving with a British airborne division on March 24, has been freed from a German field hospital near Apeldoorn by Canadian troops. Lt. Palen received shrapnel wounds in the arm and chest, but is now doing well." Most of the main article is unintelligible but the last half reads:

"The major said that when patients were well enough to be moved they were sent to north Holland for convalescence. The last batch included at least one Canadian, an airborne lieutenant, James Erskine of Vancouver, who left March 31 for Heemsteads.

Lt Palen, who is 23 years old, is a son of Mr and Mrs Fred A. Palen of 56th Fourth avenue. He enlisted as a gunner while attending the University of Toronto and was commissioned at Gordon Head officers training school at Victoria in 1943. He was then posted as an instructor to a combined operations school on the West Coast.

He transferred to the British army and was posted to the first British Airborne Division as a paratroop officer. After Arnhem he went into the 6th British Airborne Division and was reported missing on March 24.

Lt Palen attended Ottawa public school, Glebe Collegiate and Toronto University. A brother, Sgt Edward Palen, is serving in the RCAF and a sister Mrs C G Tea[?] is in Ottawa. His father is an employee of the production branch of the Department of Munitions and Supply.

His father learned for the first time the extent of Lt. Palen's injury when The Citizen called to inform him of the officer's liberation late yesterday."