Dorothy Taylor holds my book; she was delighted to be recognized for her wartime service.
She’d sat pretty quietly a few rows in front of me – a woman with an intent look, a tailored leather jacket and a sparkle in her eye. Older than many in the room in Orillia where I spoke, her eyebrows responded continuously to my story – curving up when it was humorous, down when sad. When my talk was over, a man at the back of the room pointed out the very same woman and indicated she was his mother-in-law.
“She worked in war munitions in the Second World War,” he said, “but her most important work was in quality control at Victory Aviation.”
“You mean where they built the Lancaster bombers?” I asked.
“Ask her,” her son-in-law said. “And she’ll tell you she was in charge of rivets.” (more…)
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!”
Günter Kiel in full flight telling us about his favourite place – Dresden.
We were meeting for the very first time. I wanted to give my new acquaintance a gift that reflected where I came from and made a friendly first impression. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a souvenir. It was a lapel pin with the Canadian flag on it.
“Here,” I said, “please have a symbol of Canada – our flag pin.”
My acquaintance, one of the guides on our recent tour to Eastern Europe, looked back at me and said, “But I’m German,” meaning, “Why would I wear a pin that doesn’t represent who I am?”
I had to admit that Günter Kieb, our guide in Dresden, Germany, was absolutely correct. Why would a middle-aged German wear the emblem of Canada? Some hours later, however, when I was thanking Mr. Kieb for his service to us that day, I reminded him (and our touring group) that he had seemed perplexed by my Canada flag pin. “Not a problem,” I said. “But how about this?” And I pulled a small flask-shaped bottle from my backpack and gave it to him.
Günter’s eyes widened with delight. “Canadian whisky?” he asked.
“No. Better,” I laughed. “It’s maple syrup!” (more…)
Several years into the Second World War, a young teacher in a small Czechoslovak town made a decision. It nearly cost him his life. Oldrich Patrovsky, who taught primary grades so he could support his family, in 1942, watched Jewish neighbours uprooted and transported away. He chose to help some of them escape the Nazi dragnet. He was arrested and incarcerated inside the 18th century military fortress at Terezin. It’s a place in the former Czechoslovakia that the Nazis had transformed into a prison for political prisoners and a transit camp to redirect Jewish prisoners to death camps in Eastern Europe.
“His crime was being ‘a friend of Jews,’” Patrovsky’s great-granddaughter told me this week.
Behind glass at a busy museum in Poland, there’s a tattered leather suitcase sitting silent, but speaking volumes. Time and use have worn the brown polish off the corners of the bag. The latch has rusted. This piece of luggage, now nearly two generations old, has lost much of its shape and identity. Nevertheless, time has not erased perhaps the most important feature of this museum piece. Painted on the exterior is the name of its owner in 1940:
“Marie Kafka. Prag XIII-833,” the white, painted-on letters indicate. (more…)
WWII veteran Harry Watts addressing guests attending his 90th birthday in 2013.
About five years ago, I travelled to Kitchener to help a Second World War vet celebrate his 90th birthday. Harry Watts had served as a dispatch rider, a.k.a. motorcycle messenger, in Italy and Holland, 1943-45. Suddenly, during the birthday wishes and cake cutting for Harry, members of the Canadian Army of Veterans (CAV) pulled up on motorcycles to pay tribute to Harry, their eldest member.
“We’ve come to help you celebrate, Harry,” the CAV riders said.
“Thank you, brothers,” said Harry, his eyes welling up with emotion. (more…)
With a line on the grass between them, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth (Queen Mum) beyond meet airmen of the Dam Busters squadron at RAF Scampton in May 1943.
Everybody was new at this. Royalty meeting members of the public at such close range hadn’t really happened much before. The organizers of the meeting, however, went so far as to paint a white line on the grass – like marking side lines on a football field – to keep the planned inspection orderly. Two Royal family members walked on one side of the painted line, and members of the military being inspected stood on the other, including a Royal Air Force pilot named Dave Shannon.
“It’s Flight Lieutenant Shannon’s 21st birthday,” his commanding officer told the King and Queen as they paused before him.
“You seem to be a very well preserved 21,” King George VI told Shannon. “You must have a party tonight.”
The King could probably have spoken for the entire British Commonwealth that day, three-quarters of a century ago. (more…)
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.
I fear this anecdote I’m about to tell you may be all too familiar. On a fairly regular basis, my wife and I are asked by one of our daughters, or their husbands, to drive a grandchild to school, to buy a jug of milk on the way home, or to borrow a tool or something. Most of these requests come to us on our phones, but they’re usually preceded by that characteristic “ping” in our pockets, signalling a text.
“Can you pick up the kids?” the request reads in a bubble on the screen.
Whether my answer is “Yes” or “No,” I generally grab the phone – often my land-line – and call to find out if everything is all right, if there’s an emergency or not. For me it’s instinctive. My reaction is and has always been that I can gather more information by listening to a voice face-to-face, than if I wait for the bubble with the three dots (illuminating in sequence like a Mustang car turn signal) to give me an answer. (more…)
None of my family members – as much as they love me – wanted to consider what I was saying this week was possible. Certainly, my friends won’t believe me either. But I was up in a part of Ontario the weather forecasters call Huronia. It’s that stretch of the Georgian Bay shoreline that runs from about Victoria Harbour to Penetanguishene. Actually, it was along the Midland, Ont., waterfront. And when I got there to visit a friend, last Saturday, I looked at the bay in front of his home and said we had to walk.
“It’s my chance to walk on water,” I told him in fun. (more…)
