By Henry and Patricia Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian
The
Guardian has done an
excellent job in bringing the public’s attention to the sad
plight of the
Munves, as Jim fights P.E.I. bureaucrats in order to bring his
wife Barbara
back home from a nursing facility where she is being confined
against her will.
Following
your initial news
story, there has been an outpouring of support for them, and
many letters have
been published. It’s exactly what the function of a newspaper
should be.
We
would like to add our voices
to the chorus of Islanders who demand justice for them. We
have known Jim and
Barbara since coming to Prince Edward Island 25 years ago, and
would like to
mention something about them that none of the other letter
writers have touched
upon.
Jim
served in the U.S. Army
fighting Hitler in World War II. He was in the 51st
Armored Infantry
Battalion of the Fourth Armoured Division in General George
Patton’s Third
Army.
During
severe shelling by the
Nazis in Lorraine, near the German border, in December 1944,
his outfit took
heavy casualties, and Jim was seriously wounded on Dec. 1.
Strapped
onto a stretcher, he was
taken behind the lines, stabilized, and then sent, first, to a
hospital in
Paris, and then onto another medical centre near Birmingham,
England, to
recover. He spent three months there before he was sent back
to the U.S.
Barbara,
then in England, spent
many a night in a bomb shelter in the naval town of
Portsmouth, as it was being
bombed by German aircraft.
With
Jim’s loving encouragement,
Barbara has written and published two novels under her maiden
name, Barbara
Parsons. They are based on her life in her native England and
on her
experiences working for many years, around the world, in the
British Diplomatic
Service.
Today,
Barbara’s right even
to leave her ward at the Atlantic Baptist Home has been
revoked without
warning, and she is deprived of the meaningful and
stimulating
activity that she has been accustomed to her entire adult
life.
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