Guelph man pens father’s story based on journals from the Second World War
Chris Wren will sign books at Indigo on Saturday, Nov. 8.
“The War Diaries of Louis E. Wren” tell a first-hand account of the Second World War, from experiences in the British Merchant Navy to the Royal Air Force.
By Joy Struthers
Guelph Mercury Sunday, November 2, 2025
Many of us have learned about the Second World War in history class and heard stories on Remembrance Day, but first-hand accounts are now so few and far between.
Chris Wren, who grew up in Guelph, has published a book based on his father’s daily journals during the war, which tell about his travels with the British Merchant Navy and the Royal Air Force.
Wren is holding a book-signing event at Indigo in Stone Road Mall (435 Stone Rd. W.) on Saturday, Nov. 8, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., to showcase his work “The War Diaries of Louis E. Wren.”
He is a University of Guelph graduate also attended Centennial Collegiate Vocational Institute and now lives in the countryside near Markdale, Ont., but said Guelph will always be home.
“My father ended up in Guelph after the war and was a member of the legion and very involved in local initiatives,” Wren said. “England was broken, absolutely shattered after the war, so my family came to Canada in 1947.”
He hopes friends and members of the community will come out to learn about his journey to research his father’s experiences. So far, he said he’s had a great response to the book.
“One of the interesting things about this story is that the book I ended up publishing started out just for family. I wanted my children and my father’s grandchildren to know his history and what he had done,” Wren said.
Louis Wren died in 1978 from illness and never got to tell them his stories.
“I didn’t know he kept journals during the war until after he passed away,” Wren said. “He did talk a little bit about the war, but these shed a whole new light on what he had seen and done.”
Wren said he had the entries typed up and held onto them for decades. Then one day, he started doing research of his own. He knew his father, being from England, started off in the British Merchant Navy and then joined the Royal Air Force.
“He was in the services from 1939,” Wren said. “He was there the day war broke out and had already volunteered, much to my mother’s chagrin, and was in it right until the end, in 1945.”
Wren said the British Merchant Navy was comprised of private ships carrying supplies, which included food, oil, guns and everything England needed. “With England being an island, the British merchants were absolutely critical,” he said.
When the Germans invaded France and took over the Mediterranean, the merchants could no longer access their regular route and instead had to travel to South America to get shipments of oil, then up the coast to Halifax, N.S., and convoy across the Atlantic Ocean to Liverpool, England.
“It became known as the Battle of the Atlantic, because Germany knew how important these supplies were and put the full force of their U-boats and surface ships to attack these convoys,” Wren said. “They sank hundreds and thousands of ships.”
When the war broke out, his father was on one convoy and out of the 40 ships, 11 were sunk in one night.
“It was a tremendous loss of people and materials and the ships were not allowed to pick up sailors because they would then become targets themselves. It was quite a horrific situation,” Wren said.
And not only was his father living the real fear of not knowing what was happening, where he was going or if he would survive, but Louis was also concerned his family back home might be in danger, with the looming threat of an invasion in England.
“After getting chased across the Atlantic a number of times and his convoys being attacked, he got out and joined the Royal Air Force and was sent to North Africa for the last two years of the war,” said Wren. “In the book, it describes a three-month voyage that was quite an adventure, to put it mildly.”
As part of his research, Wren went to search archives in London, England and even sailed as a passenger on a private merchant ship, a container ship, he said, in 2019 from Halifax to Liverpool.
“It would have been the same route as his convoy, 80 years earlier,” he said. “So that was a big thrill for me.”
Revisiting his father’s journals, writing and researching brought him closer to his family and his father after so many years.
“It’s a wonderful sense of accomplishment for me and I’m very proud of my father,” he said. “My sister and I talk about this often, because it’s her story as much as it is mine, of course.”
Though he started telling the story to pass down to the next generation of their family, he realized it was a good story for everyone. Whether you are reading it from an academic or personal perspective, the Second World War is everyone’s story.
And one his family, who came from the moors of England to the city of Guelph, will remember.
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