When the moment of silence is held for Remembrance Day, Brian Rutherford will think about his dad, a deceased vet who spent nearly three years in a prisoner-of-war camp after the ill-fated raid on Dieppe during the Second World War.

He might recall tales of storming the beach through a hail of German fire, the yarn about his father trying to hide behind a buoy in the Dieppe raid aftermath or the vivid descriptions of gangly wrist manacles that prisoners had to wear.

Rutherford is a next generation storehouse of anecdotes from his dad, who served with the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry in the war and was a Hamilton firefighter in his postwar civilian life.

But there is one nagging missing link. Somewhere — probably in England as part of someone's collection of military artifacts — there is a blue-covered wartime diary from Cpl. Lloyd Rutherford, who died 20 years ago. And Brian would dearly love to find it.

"It would mean everything to me to get that diary," said Rutherford, 60, a Hamilton photographer and musician. "It would be the final chapter of my father sharing his stories to me."

It's not just a daybook of life in stalags VIII-B and II-D, both in German-held Poland. As described by an auction house in England that sold it for 250 pounds in 2006, the "scarce" wartime log of "Corporal L.B. Rutherford, Royal Hamilton Light Infantry ... comprises a most interesting record with numerous cartoon drawings, poems and inserts, the latter including several camp photographs ..."

Rutherford recently teamed up with Hamilton videographer Jim Unsworth to produce a 22-minute YouTube videoto reach out for information about the diary. The production was also a chance for the younger Rutherford to recall his dad's war stories on camera for posterity.

One trump card is Rutherford's half brother in England: Bruce Williams, a son from a short marriage Lloyd Rutherford had immediately after the war. Williams has also been searching, since 2012, when he heard about the sale and the book's existence.

London auction house Dix Noonan Webb — which specializes in coins, tokens, medals, militaria and paper money — won't divulge the name of the buyer for confidentiality reasons. But it agreed to approach the purchaser to explain the family's interest in the book.

But it's been two weeks since the auction house contacted the buyer and there is still no word.

"It's disappointing not hearing back from the buyer as yet — but I haven't given up hope!" Williams said in an online conversation.

The book is particularly intriguing because of a sketch reproduced online by the auction house at the time of the sale. It shows a drawing by Rutherford of black wrist manacles, the word "Dieppe" in large block letters along with the word "reprisal" and two dates: Oct. 8, 1942 and Nov. 22, 1943.

The drawing relates to a German decision to outfit Dieppe POWs with shackles as a reprisal for the Allied prisons allegedly doing the same thing with German prisoners around the time of the unsuccessful Dieppe raid in August 1942. The dates on the picture refer to the period the shackles policy was in force by the Germans.

Rutherford recalls his dad saying the manacles were not nearly the encumbrance one would expect. The prisoners quickly learned how to remove them by tapping them together a certain way. They'd take them off when the guards weren't looking and put them back on when they were.

Another trick by Dieppe POWs — according to a number of accounts by vets — was to use the keys from powdered milk tins or sardine cans to pick the lock on their shackles.

(The YouTube video, The Search for the Diary of Corporal L.B. Rutherford, can be found at http://goo.gl/G2hz9x.)