鈥淚 guess I won鈥檛 be seeing you again,鈥� Clare Gibbons said, knowing that his young brother-in-law Jack Friesen would be returning to his military service before Clare came home from work.

 It was a prophetic statement.

Jack Friesen died in far-off Burma when his plane crashed on takeoff, April 1, 1945, while flying supplies to guerrillas working behind Japanese lines.

 鈥淚 never knew my Uncle Jack,鈥� Rich Gibbons commented about his mother鈥檚 youngest brother.

鈥淗is last letter home was to Mom congratulating her on my birth.鈥�

Jack Friesen is buried in a cemetery in Chittagong, in what is now Bangladesh.

 A simple white cross with Friesen's name now stands at the cenotaph in Winfield, where Berry Road and Bottom Wood Lake Road cross.

It鈥檚 one of 27 crosses commemorating the lives of local men 鈥�  all men in those days 鈥� who died serving their country in World Wars I and II.

 The crosses are a project of Lake Country Rotary Club, led by Sandy Wightman.

 Wightman freely admits that he 鈥渂orrowed鈥� the idea of these crosses from 琉璃神社 (220 crosses), who borrowed their idea from Calgary (3,000 or so crosses).

Although Lake Country鈥檚 numbers are smaller, the impact was probably greater.

In the first World War, Winfield and Oyama would have had a population of around 400. Five never came back.

In World War II, out of a possible 1000 residents, 22 never came back.

 The Anglican Church in Okanagan Centre 鈥� now the Okanagan Centre Hall -- was never completed; too many of the community鈥檚 capable young men went away to war and never came back.

 Similarly, the once-thriving community of Walhachin near Kamloops faded out of existence when too few servicemen returned to maintain its irrigation flumes.

Wightman has a personal interest in the two wars, having previously researched and published a book based on the service of his grandfather Captain Alec W. Jack, 54th Kootenay Battalion, in the trenches of World War 1.

Alec Jack enlisted while a bank clerk in Hedley, in the Similkameen.

His example inspired 17 young men, almost the entire young male population of the town, to join him.

 In an effort to make those men鈥檚 sacrifices more visible, Wightman personally researched the losses felt in Lake Country.

鈥淚 only found four names I was unable to verify鈥� through federal and provincial records, he says.

Names were sometimes spelled differently, in different documents.

Some may also have enlisted with British or American forces. Flying ace Billy Bishop, for example, flew for the British RAF, never for Canada, as Canada didn鈥檛 have an air force yet.

 Some records have disappeared. Two men were supposed to have memorial plaques in Winfield United Church.

If so, the plaques may have vanished when the church on Berry Road burned in 1955.

They certainly didn鈥檛 go when Winfield United moved Oct. 31, 2004, to its current location on Woodsdale Road.

Wightman and his crew of Rotary volunteers created a cross for each recorded death.

 Last Sunday, they planted the 27 crosses, each identified by a decal printed by UBR Services, in preparation for the civic Remembrance Day ceremony November 11.

The crosses will stay there for 10 days, then be stored for succeeding years.