Private Joseph Charles Auguste Lalencette

Baptized Joseph Charles Auguste Lalancette. Son of Patrice (aka Patrick) Lalancette and Émilie Pelletier.

Enlisted in the Royal 22nd Regiment, he proved to be highly undisciplined. On April 7, 1942, he embarked for Great Britain and arrived in England on the 19th. Assigned to Force M on June 28, 1943, in the Mediterranean theater of operations, on the 29th it set sail to take part in the Allied landing on July 10, 1943, at Pachino, Sicily—Operation Husky. On the 30th, his troop transport, the SS Devis, a cargo ship owned by Lamport & Holt Ltd, set sail from Liverpool, England, bound for Sicily, where it was scheduled to arrive on July 11.

After passing off the coast of the Bay of Biscay and then entering the Strait of Gibraltar, on July 5, 1943, between the ports of Algiers and Oran (Algeria), at 3:43 p.m., U-593 fired two salvos of two torpedoes at Convoy KMS-18B northeast of Cape Bengut. The SS Devis, which was carrying about 20 men from the R22eR, was torpedoed and sunk. It was transporting Canadian soldiers and two British landing craft. There were 261 Canadians on board; 51 were reported killed or missing, 52 remained at the hospital in Bougie, Tunisia, and the others rejoined their unit on the 14th. Lalancette, assigned as a security guard aboard the Devis, was reported missing on July 5, 1943, and later presumed dead at sea. His body was never found.