The War Diaries of Louis E. Wren: A Powerful First-Hand WWII Story Preserved — Aldridge Street Print & Media November, 2025 We Must Listen to Voices from the Front Lines One of the most effective ways to prevent war is to show what it’s really like: the night watch on a frigid steel deck, a […]
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 […]
September 3, 2025: Book Launch Presentation on National Merchant Navy Day, at Annesley United Church, Markdale, Ontario. 7-8 pm. The presentation can be watched on You Tube. Click below. UPCOMING EVENTS October 18, 2025. Chris will attend a book signing event at the Indigo book store at Heritage Mall, Owen Sound, from 11:00 to 1:00 […]
Author Chris Wren will give a presentation at Annesley United Church in his hometown of Markdale, Ontario, on National Merchant Navy Day, September 3, 2025. The talk will focus on his father’s experiences in the British Merchant Navy in the early phase of the Second World War. The U-boat commanders referred to this period as […]
A CITIZEN-WARRIOR’S TALE, DEFTLY TOLD BY HIS SON Many men who served in war talk little about their experiences when they come home. But some men leave behind written memoirs, hidden away in desks or boxes and discovered by their family after they die. Such a man was Louis Wren, whose two wartime journals were […]
In the fall of 2019 I booked a passage on a container ship on a voyage across the Atlantic Ocean from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to Liverpool, United Kingdom. I wanted to experience the ocean crossing and follow the same route that the convoys took during the Second World War some 80 years earlier. My father […]
The photograph on the front cover of the book is a studio photograph of my father in a naval uniform as indicated by the anchor on the hat, and double breasted jacket which was adapted by the British Navy in the 1800’s. A standard uniform for the Merchant Navy was introduced in 1918 but would […]