The public-speaking appearance was half done. At intermission, last Friday night in the central-Alberta city of Camrose, I sat at a table signing books and listening to feedback from members of the audience.
A woman approached; with her British accent she offered her take on the subject of my evening talk, the Battle of Britain. She was a child in London during the Blitz in the summer of 1940, when she said her father had served in the London fire brigade fighting fires German bombers ignited each night.
“When he came home in the morning after fighting fires all night, I remember his face was completely black with soot,” she said, then drawing imaginary circles around her eyes, “except the white around his eyes where he’d warn protective goggles.” (more…)
A moment in history captured by an equally historic painting.
It’s one of those iconic Canadian images – when you’re a Canadian kid growing up with history books and images of Canadiana all around – that registers permanently.
It shows a biplane – really little more than a pair of kite-type wings with a man, Douglas McCurdy, sitting on the lower wing at the controls – flying over a wintry scene. It’s the Silver Dart, flying just a few feet above the frozen surface of Bras d’Or Lake near Baddeck, Nova Scotia, on Feb. 23, 1909. And as iconic as the image is, I only learned this week who captured it.
“I’m Kathryn Bradford Stevens,” said the speaker at the function I attended this week. “I’m the daughter of aviation artist Robert Bradford.” (more…)
Wellington bomber crew at RCAF No. 407 Squadron, Chivenor, England. Back (l-r) second pilot Sgt H.S. Butcher; WAG Sgt A. Dunn; navigator F/Sgt G.B. Dunlop; pilot P/O D.E. Rollins. Front (l-r) WAG F/Sgt J. Mills; WAG W/O T.C. Newbury. Photo courtesy Doug Rollins.
Pilot Don Rollins likely missed it on the first reading of his overseas certification as a bomber pilot in October 1942. It was three years into WWII, and the RCAF trainee from Estevan, Sask., had successfully completed his operational training to fly Wellington bombers in daytime and nighttime missions.
All the 22-year-old Canadian wanted, however, was to fly combat operations against the Germans. Still, at the bottom of the certification, his training officer had added a further endorsement:
Joe English (centre) and his Lancaster crew volunteered for the Dutch Food Drops in April 1945.
He didn’t have to do it. Still in an RCAF uniform and duty-bound to King and Country in April 1945, nevertheless Joe English stepped up. He and his entire Lancaster crew had completed the requisite 30 operations, a full tour, over occupied Europe. They all had done their bit in the war, but Joe and his entire crew volunteered for one more flight.
Operation Manna delivered 10,000 tons of food to starving Dutch civilians.
“The Germans say they’ll permit bombers to fly in low over the big Dutch cities – Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Utrecht, the Hague,” their RAF commanders told them. “People are starving there. They need us to drop tons of food.”
“As far as I was concerned,” Joe said, “it was about improving people’s lives.” (more…)
Roger Parliament swears oath of allegiance at RCAF recruiting office, in front of his father, Garnott Parliament
When he turned 18, in 1941, Roger Parliament travelled to a recruiting office in downtown Toronto to join up for wartime service. He’d prepared all his enlistment papers and anticipated vision and hearing tests.
Then, LAC Parliament officially signed up.
But perhaps the most critical part of his decision to enlist in the armed services occurred when he came before the second-in-command at the recruiting office on Bay Street.
“I’ve decided to join the Air Force,” he told the pilot officer he faced.
Across the table from him was Pilot Officer Garnott Parliament, Roger’s father. (more…)
Arnold Hodgkins’ portrait of war trauma. “Victim ’43”
Some things are just meant to happen. About five years ago, a woman in Port Perry made a decision about the artwork that had accumulated around her home for half a century. A large private collection of sketches, water colours and other paintings created by Carol Hodgkins-Smith’s father, Arnold Hodgkins, suddenly went public. The calendar was approaching Nov. 11, and Carol decided her father’s war art deserved a viewing right then and there in her home.
“I think it’s finally time to share my dad’s artwork with the rest of the world,” she told me. She even decided that she would allow some of the artwork to be sold as individual items. (more…)
Barbara Frum and Alan Maitland, co-hosts of “As It Happens” on CBC Radio in 1970s.
It was our first winter in Alberta. A few months earlier, I’d abandoned a broadcast position in Saskatoon for some writing opportunities in Edmonton. We’d tried to find a house to buy, but in Alberta, then in the middle of a boom, interest rates were north of 12 per cent. So, we rented a bungalow and settled in – my wife, our two-year-old daughter, and our second infant daughter, barely a month old.
As I remember, it was cold and (on Dec. 24, 1979) dark by 4:30 p.m. Out of habit, because we’re dedicated radio people, Jayne and I turned on CBC Radio for “The World at Six” national newscast and at 6:30 the Monday-night edition of “As It Happens.” And that night for the first time, we heard Barbara Frum’s co-host Alan Maitland launch into a Christmas reading.
“While waiting for control tower to clear me for take-off,” Maitland began, “I glanced out through the cockpit canopy at the German countryside…” (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.
50 young RAF officers marched with pictures of the 50 murdered officers.
The rain was steady. The air must have been as cold as the day they were commemorating – a few degrees just above zero. The years had changed the way the place looked. But neither the weather nor time had washed away the memory. During the 70th anniversary ceremony of The Great Escape, I witnessed, 50 young Royal Air Force officers marched in single file past the reviewing stand. Each contemporary soldier carried the photo of one of the 50 air officers murdered following famous prison breakout in March 1944. One of the commemorating airmen was Simon Flynn.
Simon Flynn
“I loved the movie, but I knew it wasn’t fact,” Flynn said. “But I feel honoured to be part of the commemoration.”
The more I attend these observances harkening back to wartime events of the 20th century, the more I’m reminded that these conflicts happened nearly two generations ago. People wonder out loud to me in another generation whether anyone will remember, whether anyone will care. If you’ll allow me this column to respond to that suggestion, I’d like to illustrate why stories such as The Great Escape will not die with its last witnesses, but will continue to capture the public’s imagination and prompt further questions, research and more stories.
Simon Flynn, a 25-year-old helicopter pilot in the RAF, is a primary example. Yes, he is military. Yes, he does have a direct armed forces connection – via the air force – with the story of the Commonwealth air officers who built the famous tunnels out of Stalag Luft III in 1943-44. And yes, he’s been taught to preserve the past while serving the future.
But the difference was that on the day following the commemoration of the escape – March 24 – he and the other 49 RAF air officers marching in that rainy ceremony were going further. On March 25, they packed up their kit bags and marched for four days on foot 107 miles to the town of Poznan where the cremated remains of the 50 murdered officers are housed today. And Flynn wasn’t just following his superior’s orders. He’d volunteered.
“We all went through 10 weeks of training,” he said. “We walked four-to-five miles a day at first; but then we worked up to 18 miles a day near the end.”
Jon England beside his line of portraits of the 50.
But the unique commemoration instinct was not limited to the RAF officers. The first day I spent in Zagan, Poland, the town adjacent to the wartime German POW camp, I met a young contemporary artist named Jon England. In fact, he joined me over dinner at a reception staged by Alexandra Bugailiskis, the Canadian ambassador to Poland. I asked why a man as young as he – in his 20s – cared about something as apparently ancient as The Great Escape.
“The story,” he said. “It’s such a compelling story.”
An artist from Somerset, England, Jon England had originally become interested in the story because of its ties to his part of the U.K. But more than that, the young artist became curious about the day-to-day life among the POWs at Stalag Luft III during the war. In particular, he was drawn to the product called “Klim” (milk spelled backwards) and its versatility in the lives of the prisoners-of-war.
Not only did the contents of the Klim cans – powdered milk – sustain the men in their diets. But 750 of the empty tins (when put together) became the ventilation duct for the tunnellers in the escape Tunnel “Harry.” Jon England felt so inspired by the Klim, that he reconstituted the milk powder into sepia-toned paint, which he then used to paint portraits of the 50 slain officers.
“There’s a particular physical and metaphorical resonance in utilizing milk to reproduce the identity card photos of the 50,” England said. “It is the most basic, humble, elemental foodstuff, sustaining life by multiple means.”
The portraits lined the reception hall on the anniversary of the escape.
WO Maxine Staple
And beside me as we dined that night in our best bib and tucker, I met British Warrant Officer Maxine Staple, the young woman who had assisted RAF Group Captain David Houghton orchestrate the formal reception on the anniversary. Not unlike artist Jon England WO Staple had dedicated much time and effort to this event. She had helped arrange for the RAF band, the food catering, the speakers’ list and even the civilian guest list, including myself and another dozen Canadians who’d travelled 3,000 miles to pay our respects to the survivors of Stalag Luft III and the murdered 50 officers. Yes, it was her duty, as an officer in the Royal Army, but like RAF chopper pilot Simon Flynn there was more than duty here.
“We are here to honour the men who were killed,” Flynn said. “But we’re also here to learn what gave them the spirit, the strength, the courage to survive and become the actual legend of The Great Escape.”
Memorial to the 50 at Stalag Luft III POW compound
