Chance to witness historic WWII liberation moment

WWII glider pilot, Martin Maxwell, attending Dutch Liberation observance, in 2015.

Early in May, almost 75 years ago, a Second World War glider pilot named Martin Maxwell tasted freedom for the first time in nearly eight months. On Sept. 17, 1944, during his second airborne operation, he had delivered British soldiers and equipment in a controlled crash landing near Arnhem, Holland, during Operation Market Garden, only to be wounded and captured days later. But on May 1, 1945, with the Germans surrendering all over Europe, Maxwell regained his freedom.

“A British tank came into our POW camp,” he said, “and we were liberated.”

This May of 2020, Martin Maxwell, a 96-year-old WWII veteran, will relive that moment, three-quarters of a century ago, as he re-joins me and our Merit Travel group for a 12-day tour marking the 75th anniversary of the Allies’ liberation of the Netherlands in 1944-45.

You can join us. Our tour plans include visiting the place where Maxwell was captured at the “Bridge Too Far” site in Arnhem. We’ll participate in the emotional “Silent March.” And we’ll tour the Scheldt estuary where 5,000 Canadians died clearing the way to the port of Antwerp and the final push against German Armies to liberate Europe.

Canadian vet Martin Maxwell receives adoring cheers and handshakes in VE Day parade at Apeldoorn, in 2015.

To this day, Martin Maxwell recalls every moment of liberation. Even with the war officially over after May 8, 1945, and now freed by advancing Allied armies, pilot Maxwell found ways to assist the oppressed people he encountered in former Nazi-occupied Europe. To speed their way home, he and a friend traded a navigation watch to a Russian officer for a jeep and six containers of fuel. They packed the jeep with biscuits and cheese and soon came upon Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

“In a small corner of the camp, called Kinder Heim (children’s home,) we found dozens of children dead and dying. A little girl ran up to my friend, threw her arms around his leg and called out, ‘Papa! Papa!’”

A woman in the home informed Maxwell that Hannah, this little girl, thought anyone in uniform was her father. Maxwell promised to return the next day with food and provisions for the children. He even traded four cigarettes for a doll he planned to give to little Hannah.

“The next day, we handed out the food and water,” Maxwell said. “And I searched for the little girl to receive this precious doll. A woman emerged shaking her head. Hannah had died in the night.”

The Second World War left deep scars on civilians and soldiers. That’s why veteran Martin Maxwell, at 96, insists that neither the freedom he and his comrades restored, nor the sacrifice Canadians made for peace, can be forgotten. If you’d like to join Martin and me – May 1-12, 2020 – seats on our Dutch Liberation Tour are still available.

Follow this link: https://merittravel.com/product/holland-liberation-tour/

Barris calls Dam Busters raid a turning point in WWII

Ted Barris brings lives of 30 Canadians in the Dam Buster raid centre-stage at Alberta war museum. (Richard de Boer photo)

It seemed all the world came to Nanton, Alberta, on the August 24-25, 2018 weekend. This small southern Alberta town – home to about 2,000 people under normal circumstances – played host to a special late summer event. People travelled from across Canada and the U.S. to attend the 75th anniversary commemoration of Bomber Command’s famous Dam Buster raid of 1943.

“They breached the dams,” author Ted Barris said, “and turned the tide of the Second World War.”

Sons, daughters and other relatives of the Canadian Dam Busters pose in front of museum Lancaster.

 

HarperCollins publishers and author Ted Barris joined the Bomber Command Museum of Canada, at Nanton, in a pre-publication date launch of Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid Against Nazi Germany, Ted Barris’s 18th non-fiction book. The official publication date is Sept. 11, 2018.

In addition to regular patrons of the museum, event organizers managed to attract the members of families representing 16 of the 30 Canadians who participated in the famous raid on the Ruhr River dams on May 16-17, 1943.

In the Second World War, when Nazi Germany threatened the very existence of Britain, the Royal Air Force called on its military aviators, and thousands more from around the Commonwealth, to take the war to its enemies. Under Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris, Bomber Command often put a thousand aircraft per night in the air against Nazi targets. More than 55,000 aircrew died in those actions, 10,000 of them Canadians. Perhaps the most daring bombing attack happened after weeks of secret training of the Lancaster crews to conduct a low-level raid on the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams; the crews breached the first two dams, damaged the third, and crippled production in the Ruhr valley substantially. But the cost was dear; 53 of the 133 airmen died in the raid.

An evening for the Dam Buster families at Nanton. (Richard de Boer photo)

On Friday night, the BCMC hosted a meet-and-greet with just the 50-or-so members of the families of the Canadian airmen who participated in the raid. Nearly half of the 30 Canadians who flew from England that night, did not survive this hi-risk mission. Barris spoke to the families at the Friday social, applauding their commitment to come from so far to pay tribute to their fathers, uncles or grandfathers who’d served in Operation Chastise, which unleashed the famous bouncing bomb against the hydo-electirc dams of industrialized Nazi Germany.

Bomber Command Museum’s Lancaster with replica bouncing bomb in the aircraft’s bomb bay.

That evening members of the BCMC Lancaster crew brought out their prized Ian Bazelgette Memorial Lanc (altered temporarily to show the markings of one of the Dam Buster bombers – AJ-M). The crew not only fired up the Lancs Merlin engines, but spun a replica Upkeep bouncing bomb in the Lancs belly complete with aldis-lamp attitude lamps, while 200 museum visitors watched.

On Saturday afternoon, Barris presented a 70-minute talk/presentation to walk the audience – about 700 visitors in the BCMC hangar – through the details of the dams raid, but more importantly to tell the stories of the Canadian airmen who took part. With a number of Air Force personnel in the audience as well, Barris made sure nobody left the room without knowing just how powerful the Canadian role in the attack had been; he mimicked a line in the 1955 movie The Dam Busters, in which a British RAF officer notes in preparation for the raid, “We mustn’t forget the English.”

Barris pointed out emphatically, “No. We mustn’t forget the Canadians!”

Barris recognizes the forgotten Dam Busters during talk at Warplane Heritage Museum

It’s a repeating theme in much of his published work, but this week perhaps more than most, Ted Barris’s focus on unheralded Canadian heroism during the Second World War appears to have some resonance.

In recognition of the 75th anniversary of the famous bombing raid against the Ruhr River valley war munitions factories of the Third Reich, Ted Barris offered his first ever talk/presentation on the story of the famous “Dam Busters” raid at the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Hamilton.

About 500 museum members, history buffs, some veterans and the general public filled seats in front of the museum’s WWII Lancaster inside the main hangar to hear the talk. Barris borrowed a comment from one of the Royal Air Force officers featured in the 1955 movie The Dam Busters who told Guy Gibson, the wing commander of No. 617 Squadron, “We mustn’t forget the English” when hand-picking airmen for the raid.

“We mustn’t forget the Canadians,!” Barris emphasized in response.

During the 50-minute presentation, Barris drew on research, interviews and narrative featured in his forthcoming book, Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid against Nazi Germany, to be published by HarperCollins this year. The raid on May 16-17, 1943 required 19 specially modified Lancaster bombers to travel at treetop altitude – less than 100 feet off the ground and the water – from Scampton air base in Britain to the Ruhr Valley in the heart of Germany to attempt to destroy the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams. They breached the first two and damaged the third, but in the course of the combat operation lost eight bombers including 56 airmen.

Barris pointed out that of the 133 airmen specially chosen and trained in seven and a half weeks prior to the raid, nearly a quarter of those were Canadians. Thirty aircrew – pilots, navigators, flight engineers, wireless radio operators, bomb aimers and gunners – came from nearly every province in the country. What made the story equally important as a Canadian story, Barris pointed out, was that nearly half those chosen for the raid received their training in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan operated principally in Canada between 1939 and 1945.

“The elephant in the room is that almost half the Dam Busters received their air training in Canada,” Barris said, “and that’s not been recognized before.”

The Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, who staged the presentation, houses among the largest collections of air-worthy wartime aircraft, including the Mynarski Memorial Lancaster, which towered over Barris and the audience during the presentation.

Dam Busters: Canadian Airmen and the Secret Raid against Nazi Germany is due for release in September, as a Patrick Crean Edition book from HarperCollins Canada.

(Photographs courtesy Eric Dumigan Photography – more images at: http://www.airic.ca/html/2018cwhdbraid.html)

Ted Barris invited to join honoured neighbourhood

Meet “150 Neighbours,” and be inspired by the stories of those who work tirelessly to enhance community for all residents in a way that makes this uniquely Scarborough, and uniquely Canada.

“150 Neighbours” is a photo-documentary series marking Canada’s sesquicentennial, celebrating local accomplishments as part of our national festivities. This social-media driven and crowd-sourced campaign has featured 150 Scarborough community and nation builders—past and present—over 150 days, from Saturday July 1st to Tuesday November 28th.

For more information about the “150 Neighbours” doc and a short feature about the invitation to join, go to: http://www.150neighbours.ca/ted-barris/

Celebrating Sir John A. in Orillia

 

Sir John A. Macdonald shakes hands with speaker Barris on Jan. 14, 2017. Photo Patrick Bales. Orillia Packet & Times.

The Hermitage Ballroom at the Best Western Mariposa Inn was the room with the Sir John A view Saturday night.

The 19th annual Sir John A Macdonald Celebration was once again sold out, with approximately 200 people on hand to show their support for the Orillia Museum of Art and History while feting one of the Fathers of Confederation.

The celebration took on an added significance this year, as 2017 not only marks the 150th anniversaries of both Confederation and the incorporation of Orillia, but also the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Vimy Ridge, pointed to as pivotal moment in making Canada the nation it is today.

That made Ted Barris a fitting speaker for the evening. He has written extensively on the country around the time of Confederation, as well as specifically on Vimy, in 2007’s Victory at Vimy.

Read the full story: http://www.orilliapacket.com/2017/01/15/celebrating-sir-john-in-orillia

Barris story recognized by RCAF Association

On December 30, 2016, RCAF Association News website announced:

“As 2016 comes to a close, the RCAF Association would like to wish its members, partners and other industry professionals a safe and happy holiday season. As we reflect on the past year for the industry, we would like to provide the readers of the RCAF Assocation News a look at the most accessed articles from the year…”

Among them was “Bringing the Hally home,” published by the National Post.

Read the full story at: http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/ted-barris-bringing-the-hally-home

U.S. Stalag Luft III Prisoners of War Association presents Barris with Certificate of Honor

Stalag Luft III Prisoners of War Association Certificate of Honor
In late August 2014, members of the Stalag Luft III Prisoners of War Association in the U.S. presented Ted Barris with a “Certificate of Honor” for his work on The Great Escape: A Canadian Story, the historical account of the famous 1944 breakout in the Second World War.

The Great Escape: A Canadian Story has received its first recognition in the United States. In late August 2014, members of the Stalag Luft III Prisoners of War Association in the U.S. presented Ted Barris with a “Certificate of Honor” for his work on publishing the historical account of the famous 1944 breakout in the Second World War.

Barris delivered the keynote at the association’s annual reunion, this year in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Then, during the reunion’s formal banquet – featuring the parading of the colours, the lighting of candles in honour of the fallen, and recognition of service to the veterans – the U.S. reunion co-chairs Marilyn Walton and Mike Eberhardt (both the offspring of former Stalag Luft III POWs) presented Certificates of Honor for what the association called service above and beyond.

They recognized five civilians, including: Mary Elizabeth Ruwell, an archivist at the U.S. Air Force Academy; Ben van Drogenbroek, a Dutch researcher; Val Burgess, an American oral historian; Marek Lazarz, the director of the Stalag Luft III Museum in Poland; and a Canadian author/historian whose writing, they said, has brought valuable attention to the Stalag Luft III story… Ted Barris. They handed recipients only copies of the certificate, because the originals will be housed permanently at the U.S. Air Force Academy archives in Colorado Springs.

Great Escape wins Libris Award

LIBRIS_OFFICIAL_PHOTO_LORES_EOn June 2, 2014, the Retail Council of Canada hosted the annual Libris Awards, at a gala in the Toronto Congress Centre. Having voted on their choices for the best in Canadian literature for the year, Canadian booksellers within the RCC handed out the Libris Awards in a variety of categories. Among the awards presented, The Great Escape: A Canadian Story received the 2014 Libris Best Non-Fiction Book Award (sharing the award, because judges declared a tie in the category, with Chris Hadfield for his book An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth.)
 
In announcing the award, author Terry Fallis, the host of the evening, said this as the envelope was about to be opened: “At its best, non-fiction helps us to explore the believable and the unbelievable, to question and to find meaning – not what do think, but how to think. The award for non-fiction book of the year goes to a Canadian work of non-fiction published in 2013 that made a lasting impression on the Canadian book selling industry, through wide media attention, increased traffic to bookstores and strong sales… And the winner is… We have a tie. The Libris Award for Best Non-Fiction Book of 2013 goes to The Great Escape: A Canadian Story (published by Dundurn) by Ted Barris … and to An Astronaut’s Guide to Life On Earth (published by Random House Canada) by Chris Hadfield.”
 
Here are a few thoughts Ted Barris offered on receiving the recognition: “Through nearly 40 years as a professional writer and 17 books, I have received applause and praise from the Canadians whose lives and accomplishments I’ve tried to capture in print. Thanks to this Libris Award, now the acclaim comes to the word-pictures I’ve created, their accuracy and their style. I am humbled and proud at the same time.”

Great Escape in Port Colborne

Photo courtesy Dave Johnson
Photo courtesy Dave Johnson

By Dave Johnson (Erie Media)

On the night of March 24, 1944, 80 Commonwealth airmen crawled through a 400-foot long tunnel, escaping Stalag Luft III, a POW camp near Sagan, Poland.

Of those 80 men, including Canadians, British, Poles, Greeks, Australians and others, only three — two Norwegians and a Dutch pilot — successfully escaped.

The remaining 77 were caught by the Germans, and of those, 50 were murdered by the Gestapo on the orders of Adolf Hitler.

The Great Escape, as it was known, was considered the greatest prison breakout in the history of the Second World War.

And, despite what the Hollywood movie of the same name would have everyone believe, it was not planned and carried out by Americans. No one escaped by motorcycle or plane and the 50 murdered men were not all shot at the same time.

“Hollywood never let facts get in the way of telling a good story,” Canadian author Ted Barris told a packed house at Readings at Roselawn Thursday evening.

Barris wrote The Great Escape: A Canadian Story, and told the real story of how Canadians were behind it all.

The Great Escape, the third most popular war film, has stars like Richard Attenborough as a British soldier who masterminds the whole plan, with Charles Bronson as a Polish trench-digging expert, James Garner as an American with a talent for theft, Donald Pleasence as a master forger, and Steve McQueen as an American rebel.

“Hollywood would have us believe the tunnel king was Charles Bronson … it was Wally Floody from Chatham, Ont., not a Polish RAF officer”

Barris said Floody worked gold and ore mines of northern Ontario, and it was there he learned his tunnelling skills.

The real scrounger in the escape from Stalag Luft III was Barry Davidson, of Calgary, who had offered to fly for Chinese General Chiang Kai-shek against the Japanese.

Davidson had learned to fly well before the Second World War.

Tony Pengelly, of Truro, Nova Scotia, Barris said, was the master forger in the operation, and flew all manner of planes when he was with the RAF.

Barris revealed a local connection to the Great Escape during his talk.

He said Gordon Kidder, of St. Catharines, who was one of the 50 officers murdered by the Germans, was instrumental in teaching other escapees German.

One day before his talk, Barris had been in Poland at the former POW camp with Kidder’s nephew.

“It was a moving time.”

Photo courtesy Dave Johnson
Photo courtesy Dave Johnson

He said the Great Escape was actually years in the making.

Many of those involved in the action had been in other POW camps and had made many unsuccessful escape attempts.

Several of the men, he said, were together in Stalag Luft I near Barth, Germany.

“Escape was a private enterprise then,” said Barris, adding there 47 tunnels dug at Stalag Luft I.

Stalag Luft III was the Luftwaffe’s main POW camp for those prisoners considered to be troublemakers, meaning those who had tried to escape from other camps.

With the German air force running the facility, it abided by the Geneva Convention, which meant officers didn’t have to work. All they had to do was show up for roll call.

Barris said it freed them up to plan the escape.

With the camp built in the middle of a pine forest on powdery white sand, the escapees had to find a way to dispose of the coarse yellow sand found 30 feet below ground where the tunnels were.

One element the Hollywood movie got right, the author said, was how soil was disposed of. Prisoners, called penguins, had bags of sand in their legs and dispersed it near a fire pool that had been dug in the ground and had the same coarse yellow sand.

The sand was later dumped underneath a theatre built on site. The theatre had a basement, and unlike every other building, a solid foundation.

Barris said the POW’s buildings were built on stilts so the Germans could watch and make sure no one was tunnelling below.

The prisoners, however, exploited the one weakness of the buildings – the chimneys, which were built of concrete and went into the ground. They went through that concrete and rebuilt a floor system so perfectly, the Germans never knew it had been broken through.

Barris said the POW’s had a system set up with stooges, basically lookouts, in the camp to alert the men tunnelling.

“They could close up a tunnel in 60 seconds if they had to,” he said.

30 Days to the Great Escape – March 24, 2014

It appeared even during the Great Escape, Hank Birkland's job was still never done.
It appeared even during the Great Escape, Hank Birkland’s job was still never done.

Just before 9 p.m., on March 24, Les “Johnny” Bull became the first man through the trapdoor under the stove in Room 23 of Hut 104 on his way to open the exit shaft to freedom. In Tunnel “Harry” itself, Bull stretched himself face down on the trolley, and dog-paddled his way to Piccadilly, the first half-way house, a hundred feet up the tunnel. Once there, he jerked the rope for Johnny Marshall, who would act as underground conductor for the first hour and once his 10 men were through would exit the tunnel in the number 11 spot. The two men repeated the travel sequence past the Leicester Square half-way house and at the base of the exit shaft climbed to the top of the shaft to make the final cut through the ceiling boards and sod beyond in the pine forest.

It took Bull and Marshall nearly 30 minutes to break through the ceiling since the planks had swollen with dampness and frozen in the sub-zero temperatures. They’d stripped off the civilian clothing that would disguise them at the train station and in their underwear finally pulled the wood free and poked into the grass roots and snow above. That’s when the two discovered Tunnel “Harry” was 10 feet short of the pine forest and in plain view of the goon tower and fence-line sentries 40 feet away. They improvised and rigged a rope from the exit shaft hole to a blind in the woods and implemented a tug-on-the-rope system for each kriegie to interpret as an all-clear signal for the dash to the woods.

Bob Nelson had helped to engineer Tunnel "Harry." He also had to save it from falling apart at the last minute.
Bob Nelson had helped to engineer Tunnel “Harry.” He also had to save it from falling apart at the last minute.

Of all the legendary personal stories involving escapers on the 360-foot trolley ride to the exit shaft and beyond, among the more compelling involved Canadians Hank Birkland and Briton Bob Nelson (who later immigrated to Canada). As some of the hard-arsers rolled their way through “Harry” some (because of their nervousness, claustrophobia, or just because they were so bulky with clothing, bundled blankets and provisions) inadvertently bumped the tunnel timber causing cave-ins.

Tom Kirby-Green, 13th in the tunnel, accidentally derailed the trolley between Piccadilly and Leicester Square breaking some of the bunk boards in the tunnel walls and sand began to pour in and bury him. Digger Hank Birkland realized the problem, crawled to Kirby-Green and freed him from the sand. Bob Nelson remembered a similar incident.

“When I was hauling (James Long) through the tunnel, the roof fell on top of him,” Nelson said. “I had to pull him out and then when he got past me, I then had to go up the tunnel on my elbows and toes to repair the roof and clear the sand.”

The difficulty of manoeuvring broad-shouldered men wrapped with as much clothing as they might need to fend off the cold and hauling enough food to fuel their progress, meant the narrow passageways became even narrower. At the trapdoor entrance, Robert Ker-Ramsey and Tony Pengelly made the difficult decision to trim back hard-arsers’ layers of clothing and carrying gear. The hard-arsers understood the safety factor, but feared the impact on their survivability. Keith Ogilvie’s thoughts summed up their fears.

“They hoped for the sake of fellas like myself, going hard-ass, that our chances of hiding out in the woods or getting something to eat would be a little better,” Ogilvie said, “but (once out and on the run) it was really cold and frosty.”

Through the night the flow of escapers continued until nearly 80 were either out of the tunnel or already on the run. The months and years of planning and trial and error had yielded not 200 escapers outside the wire (as Bushell had hoped), but it had delivered sufficient numbers to divert as many as 70,000 German troops, police and civilians – in the hours that followed – in an all-out effort to recapture the escapers.