Posts with the Norman Goodspeed tag

Barris Beat

Reluctant hero 80 years on

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Pilot Officer Albert Wallace wearing his air gunner’s brevet.

In the dead of night in western Poland, Albert Wallace made sand disappear. That winter of 1944, he trekked through snow, his RCAF airman’s pants concealing long sacks of sand excavated from secret escape tunnels. Inside a now darkened theatre, his German captors had allowed POWs to build inside their prison compound, Wallace quietly stepped into a designated row of seats.

“I was told to sit there because that’s where the trapdoor was,” Wallace said. “I sat in seat Number 13, pulled the sack strings and emptied the sand inside my pants through a trapdoor hidden under the seat.” (more…)

Barris Beat

Remembrance from witnesses and moviemakers

Written by Ted Barris on . Leave a comment
Commander Ericson (Jack Hawkins) makes life and death decision in “The Cruel Sea.”

Commander George Ericson is crouched on the bridge of his corvette warship. He’s peering through a sighting device, lining up his counterattack against an enemy he can’t see, a submerged U-boat in the Atlantic waters directly ahead of him.

“What’s it look like now, Number One?” Ericson calls to his first officer, who is on a sonar device.

“It’s the firmest contact we’ve ever had,” the sonar operator shouts back from below deck.

There’s sudden consternation on Cmdr Ericson’s face. Merchant sailors whose ship has just been torpedoed are thrashing about in the water. They’re shouting for help. “There’s men in the water just about there,” Ericson says.

“Well, there’s a U-boat just underneath them.”

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