Rummaging through some old boxes recently, Gemma McIntyre-Gould stumbled across a fascinating piece of family history — and now she’s donated it to the local Legion branch.

The Dawson City, Yukon, woman found a letter written years ago by her great uncle Bill Gould, where he describes his harrowing experiences as a soldier in the Second World War, when he was part of the Allied invasion at Normandy and subsequently held as a prisoner of war by the Germans.

McIntyre-Gould has actually had the letter for years, but rediscovering it made her realize that it shouldn’t just be hidden away in an old box somewhere.

“We need to learn from our past because the past will always repeat itself,” she said.

Bill Gould was born in Dawson City and was conscripted into the army in May 1943. The letter appears to have been written to his brother John — McIntyre-Gould’s father — some years after the war. In it, Gould admits it took “quite a while to get into doing it because some memories bothered me.”

“It talks a lot [about] when he got conscripted and left Dawson,” McIntyre-Gould said. “He travelled all the way across the country doing different military training. He was in England for a bit, and then on D-Day stormed the beaches [of Normandy] with his battalion.”

Gould’s letter describes how he was then captured by Nazi troops on June 8, 1944.

“We were taken prisoners early that afternoon,” Gould wrote. “An hour later they lined us along the bank of a ravine with the intention of killing us. Fortunately an officer arrived and we proceeded with the march.”

Gould describes the following weeks and months as a prisoner of war, being taken to Germany to work in labour camps. He called being a POW his “worst experience of the war.”

Gould was in the German city of Chemnitz when it was devastated by Allied bombers in March 1945.

“He luckily survived that as well and that’s when they found out the war had ended,” said McIntyre-Gould.

After the war, Gould returned home to Dawson City.

McIntyre-Gould said it’s important to preserve stories like her great uncle’s, and that’s why she’s donated his letter to the Dawson City Legion.

“I mean, look at the world right now. We have a tendency to want to erase the bad things in the past, but I think we need to keep the bad things relevant and prominent and looking at us in the face,” she said.

“Because that’s what reminds us we don’t want to get back there.”

Christine Smith, president of the Dawson City Legion, says the town has a lot of highly decorated veterans whose stories aren’t often shared with the public. She said when people donate letters, pictures, or historical information to the Legion, it’s a way to keep those veterans’ stories alive.

“These people came back damaged,” Smith said. “Mentally, physically — and they suffered for what they did, so those people need to be brought to light.”

Smith said Bill Gould’s letter will be added to other letters and stories the Legion has collected over the years from Dawson City veterans. She said the public is welcome to visit and learn more about the contributions of local veterans, and impact wars have had on people in Dawson.

“The world needs to know that war is not the answer,” Smith told CBC News. “[People] don’t understand the struggles, and the toll it takes on people’s lives and they need to know that and understand that there’s better ways to deal with things.”