Born in 1924, Angelo was only 19 when he joined the Italian Army to fight against the Nazis.
In:
Veteran Stories
CONTACT US 0800 920 2222
.jpg "Aspira-Photo-Hand-Painting-04-LR (2)")
The little boat sailed across the open water almost silently, having no idea of what could be waiting below.
In 1944, 18-year-old Mary Greenwood made the 70-killometer trip across the open waters of the Bay of Fundy in what she calls “lifeboat situations.” During the two-and-a-half hour trip she had no idea that German U-boats were likely slumbering beneath her.
“When I went to take my course we went from St. John, NB, to Digby, NS, in lifeboat situations with our life packs, sailing all the way across,” Mary said. “We were 18, we didn’t know why we were doing this, nobody told us. This is it, we’re doing it.”
Mary was born in August 1926 in Toronto, Ontario. Her grandfather and both of her brothers served in the Navy, so when she came of age, with WWII going on, there was no other logical choice.
“Well the war was on, I was very patriotic, and I am from a Navy family,” Mary said. “There was no way I’d do anything else.”
Mary signed up for the war in the fall of 1944, and was quickly drafted as a sick berth attendant, the equivalent of a civilian nursing assistant. During her training, she worked in Halifax, NS, where most of her patients came in because their feet were in terrible shape from working in submarines.
At the time, girls weren’t allowed on the ships, and because she was only 18, Mary never went overseas. Instead she worked in a hospital in Victoria, British Columbia, for most of the war where she often had as many as 12 patients to look after, with only one nurse on the floor for her to report to.
“We were very busy and we had a lot of responsibility,” she said. “We thought the nurses were gods. Whatever they said was right.”
The hardest patient Mary looked after during the war came wrapped in an oxygen tent. The tent came over the whole bed, giving him a personal no-smoking zone. He’d developed an infection in his lungs, slightly more severe than pneumonia.
“He was quite sick, he was the sickest person we had,” she said. “I was real nervous or him, like you know, keep alive ― and he wasn’t anywhere near dead, but to my 18-year-old mind it was a big responsibility.”
The soldier did survive, and was eventually sent back home.
Mary stayed in Victoria for half a year after the end of the war, waiting for those who had joined the service before her to get home first. She enjoyed her time there, and has fond memories of her stay.
“I can remember, because we did the same thing in Toronto for training, going out to the park to get a hotdog or hamburger or something to eat in my pyjamas with my overcoat on. I did the same thing in Toronto Western, we went up on the roof to watch the fireworks at exhibition time and stuff like that. There were little things we did that were a little off, but we got away with it.”
After the war she stayed on in the reserves, and finished her schooling at Toronto Western Hospital as a nurse.
“I always wanted to be a nurse. In my day you were either a nurse or a secretary. Those were the two fields that you were given. My mother wanted me to be a nurse, and I trained at a good hospital.”
She said that her work in civilian and navy hospitals were similar, except that in the navy hospitals her patients were generally between the ages of 18 and 25. After the war, most of her patients were Japanese prisoners of war. They were transferred to her from another hospital, and so were usually in good condition by the time she looked them over.
“I was treated very well,” she said. “In those days they treated nurses and ministers with respect.”
After she had completed her RNs, Mary worked in the Navy for another four years ― two in Halifax, NS, and two in Cornwallis, NS.
“Of course in Cornwallis, it was a training centre, so 90 per cent of people were 18 year olds,” Mary said. “They got a little rowdy… I was a little shy when I was a young lady, but when they got a little rowdy I’d go down and say ‘these aren’t nutty bars on my shoulder!’ because you had your stripes up on your shoulder, and they’d go ‘OH!’”
As a reserve nurse, she had to work two weeks in the summer and one evening a week at a military Naval Base in Hamilton on top of her civilian job. Still, there were some perks.
Whenever royalty came over from England, an ambulance was required at the airport, meaning that Mary saw her fair share of royalty.
“We saw Princess Anne on two different trips… and when I was on the reserve in Hamilton we got to see the Queen Mother.”
During her time in Hamilton, Mary was invited to dine at a hotel where the Queen Mother was staying. After the meal she was walking around, thinking of socializing with some peers, when the unbelievable happened.
“They laid a carpet right down beside me, a red carpet, and I looked over and there she came, she didn’t stop of course, but you could have touched her! They were exciting times.”
Mary never took a break from service or got married, and she believes it’s part of the reason she was promoted higher than her peers. After spending six months as a sub-lieutenant she became a lieutenant.
One year, during the New Year’s celebrations, Mary noticed that the commander of her base couldn’t stop grinning. When she asked him “what are you smiling about?” he said he’d seen the lists for the new year, and that she was up for a promotion to Commander.
“And my god, New Year’s came and we got the message and I was very happy. I didn’t have to do anything different, except what I was doing, but it was nice,” Mary said. “I’m proud of it, I’m proud of getting in. But I’m no better than anyone else.”
She was the only nursing commander in Canada’s reserve force.
A navy commander is the same rank as a lieutenant-colonel in the army. After eight more years in the navy, and now in her late 50s, Mary decided to leave. She had put in over 22 years of service.
“I left because I thought I’d been in long enough and there were other people coming up in through the service.”
She retired from civilian nursing at the age of 60.
Today, Mary is 90 years old and a resident at Woods Park Care Centre in Barrie, where she lives with her cat. She speaks to her many nieces and nephews fairly frequently, and has one good friend left from her time in the war, who she speaks to every night.
“It’s very nice to talk to her every day,” Mary said. “Every single day we talk.”
Outside the plane, the world was washed white.
Don Monroe, a Flying Officer and flight instructor in the Royal Canadian Air Force, squinted, trying to see past the blizzard that had destroyed his visibility. He had been doing a cross-country trip in Ontario near Godridge when the spotty weather turned into a full-blown storm.
“All of a sudden it was a blizzard! White out!” Don said. “I was flying and I couldn’t see anything. It was all white.”
He dropped his plane down to 100 feet, trying to find his way back to Godridge. He had to follow his compass until he hit the shoreline, after that he swung north.
“I couldn’t find Godridge, so I turned south and followed the coast along. Finally I could see it. It was a 10-hour flight.”
Don was born in London, Ontario in June 1918. He joined the reserves as a teenager and enjoyed taking the machine guns apart and putting them back together.
“When the war came along they took all these young guys into the army,” Don said. “And of course we had to have a medical, and I had a medical and they said ‘you can’t go.’”
When Don asked why, he was told he had flat feet, and that he wouldn’t be able to march. “I said, ‘I can walk from London to Toronto and back.’”
But he still wasn’t accepted, so Don took matters into his own hands and joined the air force, where marching wasn’t much of an issue. He was 21 years old.
Don got married in 1942, while he was in training for the air force. He and his wife met in 1940, while he was working as an accountant at an automotive factory. She was the foreman’s daughter, and the two crossed-paths when she came in to work.
In 1943, Don’s wings were presented to him by WWI hero Air Marshal Billy Bishop at Aylmer in Ontario. He then went to the airport in Oshawa, Ontario, where he trained young pilots to fly Tiger Moth airplanes. In the two years he served as a flight instructor, Don logged 1,500 hours in the air.
He was then sent to England as a Flying Officer, and flew Hurricane and Spitfire fighting planes. He was stationed in Germany while the Allies were doing the thousand-plane raids. Don said the airport he was at always kept their lights on, even at night, despite the danger of enemy attack, because their planes often came back with wounded men.
“I was the duty officer of the control room one night, and at about 2 o’clock in the morning a German plane came across,” he said. The German plane was shooting 200mm cannons.
“I could see the bullets coming right at me,” Don said, “but they were going by me, to the railway station.”
Though not the German pilot’s immediate target, Don wondered about his future plans. “I thought that guy was going to come back and get me, but he never did.”
After the war ended in 1945, Don left the air force. He moved to Oshawa with his wife and got a job at a car dealership. Together, he and his wife had three children. Now 98, Don is a resident at Traditions of Durham Retirement Residence in Oshawa, where he enjoys doing anything active. He regularly plays bocce ball and horseshoes with his neighbours.
When asked if he would change anything, Don said no.
“I would have lived the same,” he said. “I had a great life and a wonderful wife and I wouldn’t change a thing.”
They stood together in the mess hall. Waiting. Wondering. There had to be an important reason the entire ship had been gathered, but what was it?
Gordon Weaver was born in Welland, Ontario, in April 1922. He joined the Canadian Army in 1942, at the age of 19, out of a sense of duty. He chose to join the infantry because he had no experience on either a plane or a ship. After signing up, he was almost immediately sent to England, where he trained in the country side for three years, often watching the bombs fall on London.
“We were in no danger from that, they were definitely after London,” Gordon said.
Almost everyone training with Gordon was his age or younger, and their training was mostly physical. Finally, after years of preparation, Gordon and his team got their orders. They were to cross the English Channel to France and join the war.
Not long into their journey they were gathered together in the mess hall by those in charge.
“We got half-way across the Channel and guess what? The war was declared over!” Gordon said. “We were all relieved and happy. It was incredible in fact, at that time, we thought it was, because they weren’t giving us all the news about the war so it was unexpected for us.”
Celebrations followed the news. Shortly after they docked in France, where they waited for another ship to come and take them back to Canada.
“It was totally uninteresting I guess, I mean other than the fact that we were sitting in the middle of England and training as a group of Canadians,” said Gordon, who is now a resident at Owen Hill Care Community in Barrie. “I mean, at that time of the war there was all kinds of strange things going on, you know? Different things, odd things.”
The map on the wall was updated daily. Markers showed enemy lines, stolen territory and surrendered land. Bernice Anderson looked at that map almost every day.
Born in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia in September 1926, Bernice’s parents both died before her first birthday, leaving her and her elder brother to be raised by her paternal grandmother, Ellen McPhee, whom Bernice describes as “a wonderful woman.”
By 1944 World War II was more than half over. Bernice was only 18, and fresh out of high school. She signed up for the army with one of her oldest friends, whom everyone called ‘Lee’.
“Everybody was going to Ontario to work in the war plants,” Bernice said. All of her friends had signed up to work in them. “[Lee] and I decided that we’d sign up for the war plants, and then it happened to be just further down the street that you could sign up for services, and we figured, well we’ll sign up for both of them, and whichever one we got that’s the one we’d go with.”
Both girls were called by the army and started basic training in Kitchener, ON. Afterwards, Bernice was sent to the No. 1 Canadian Woman’s Army Corps Advanced Training Centre in St. Annes, Quebec, where she trained to drive army vehicles. Lee was sent elsewhere, eventually making her way overseas. The two girls had grown up a stone’s throw away from each other, but they would rarely see one another after that.
Bernice had already been driving for a year, but at the camp she learned to drive jeeps, large trucks and double-clutch. At only 18, she wasn’t yet old enough to go overseas. She was sent to Halifax, NS, where she drove officers, a job she became tired of quite quickly.
“One day I was sitting in my car, and I wasn’t feeling too happy about my job and a captain came along and asked me what was wrong,” Bernice said. She told the captain that she was unhappy driving. “The captain said, ‘well I’ll get you another job,’ and he did.”
Bernice was moved to a personnel office in Halifax, where she worked for a short time before being stationed in Kingston. At the office, Bernice kept track of soldiers’ schedules, making notes about who had leave coming up, who was in the hospital, and who had been discharged from service.
“We watched the war,” Bernice said. “We had a big map on the wall, and we would get reports every day about what was happening overseas, and we kept track of what was going on.”
During her time in the office, she was raised to the rank of Corporal.
After World War II ended, Bernice went back to Glace Bay to live with her grandmother. Shortly after that she married Stewart Hillgrove, who she had known since before the war. Stewart worked as a telephone linesman in the military, and was posted in Kingston, ON, where he and Bernice had two children.
“That’s 70 years ago now,” Bernice, who is now 90, said from her suite at Royale Place Retirement Residence in Kingston. She lives close to her daughter now, and enjoys going down to the legion in the evenings. She enjoys the musical entertainment at Royale Place, especially fiddle music, and goes on almost all the outings. She is described as “a lovely lady,” by those who work there.
“There were a lot of women in the army,” Bernice said. “A lot of them were older than me when I joined, but there were a lot of us.”
The waters in the Bristol Channel are clear and glitter in the sun. In the fall of 1944, the hum of a single airplane broke their serenity as it streaked across the sky.
Arthur Stiff, who was a Hurricane Fighter Pilot in WWII, was searching for a bright-yellow tugboat carrying 50 escaped prisoners of war. The German pilots had escaped their camp in Wales and stolen a yellow aircraft tender, which is a small boat used to refuel sea planes. The escaped prisoners were making their way down the Bristol Channel and heading for Ireland, where a German U-boat was stationed to take them back to Germany.
“Now, the Bristol Channel is so big that it’s like looking out at an ocean, you can’t see from one shore to the other, it’s just too wide,” said Arthur.
The yellow boat was spotted at about 1 p.m., and Arthur flew out to keep an eye on their position, hoping that the British Navy showed up before the U-boats.
After nearly half an hour of circling the boat, Arthur could see the British Navy on the horizon.
Arthur was born in Toronto, Ontario, in May of 1922, to a fur-trading family. As a young teen he “was stuck on” making and flying model airplanes, which at the time were powered by an elastic band. He’d also often ride his bike out to Wilson Heights on the weekend to watch people learning how to fly Tiger Moth airplanes.
“That’s what got me into planes and the desire to be a pilot, the desire to fly rather than be in the army or the navy,” Arthur said.
In 1943, at the age of 20, Arthur married Florence, whom he had known since he was 16. Arthur signed-up for the air force only a few months later, leaving his new wife and his job at the family business, before he turned 21 and was conscripted into the army.
Arthur received his wings in March 1943 in Camp Bordon, Barrie. After that he should have had two weeks of leave to spend with his family, but the air force had other plans.
“Suddenly I’m shipped overseas from getting my wings,” Arthur said. “They rushed us down to the east coast and sent us over to England. There were 12,000 military people onboard that ship, but they were rushing us to get us into England prior to the D-Day landings.”
Once they landed in England, Arthur was transferred from the Royal Canadian Air Force to the British equivalent: the Royal Air Force. He would stay with them until the end of the war.
“Now we landed in England knowing how to fly,” Arthur said. “But we don’t know how to fly in a war.”
Arthur underwent additional flight training in England for six months. The D-Day landings took place only two months after he arrived in England, and though he didn’t fly in them, he can remember seeing the planes coming back in.
“I witnessed the parachutists flying over in squadrons of planes and returning with the cables hanging out of the side door where the parachute is,” he said. “They anticipated 10 per cent air losses on the D-Day landing, and instead of having 10 percent air losses they had .05 per cent. They thought the Germans were holding their air forces back, knowing that the landing was imminent.”
They later learned that the Germans hadn’t been holding back ― they didn’t have the air force the allies believed they did. Regardless, because their losses were less than expected, many pilots in the Allied Forces were kept in Britain as part of the reserves.
Back in Canada, Florence, Arthur’s wife, worked as a telegraph operator. She received Morse code messages from Ottawa, most of them containing horrible news from overseas that she would have to help deliver to a soldier’s family.
“I had to have a minister deliver the messages to anyone who had lost someone… and the thing was, I was always hoping the next one wasn’t for me. Every message, but I was lucky,” Florence said. “It was difficult, but I wasn’t the only one in town that was having a tough time. You can’t feel sorry for yourself. There are others who have the same problem.”
Even though he wasn’t usually in the line of enemy fire, Arthur and his friends faced other obstacles during their missions, the worst of which was the weather. Arthur said that often when they flew out it would be to clear skies, only to have the fog creep in 10 minutes later, destroying their visibility. To make matters worse, they had 2,000 foot mountains behind their runway, and when the fog settled down-to 500 feet it would hide the mountain peaks. On top of this, four to eight planes could be coming in to land at the same time. The maneuvers often got quite dangerous.
“You were practically skipping over the trees, but you didn’t want to take your eyes off the ground. That’s a hairy situation, we didn’t like it at all,” Arthur said. “We flew in weather, most of the time, where the birds wanted to walk.”
It was while Arthur was coming in from a cross-country trip that air control came in over the radio.
“I’m out in the air coming back into the airport. As I join the final flight into the airport, they come on the air and they say ‘Flying Officer Stiff, you’ve just become a new father. We just got a telegram in from Canada. Congratulations.’ And then they proceeded to talk me in, meanwhile there’s 2,000 people listening to all this going on, you see, so when I got down, everyone knew I was the new father.”
Arthur was treated to drinks at lunch. Later, he received a letter from Florence.
“After that first baby was born I wrote to him and said ‘you’re having the next one,’” Florence said with a laugh.
After the surrender of the Germans, Arthur was sent by boat back to Canada, with 30 days leave, before he was to be sent to fight against the Japanese.
“I’m going out to fight the war in Japan, and while we’re in the mid-Atlantic the Americans dropped their atomic bomb, and the war, suddenly, was over like that,” he said. “By the time we landed in Quebec City the war was over. And I say, I can still almost break out in tears now. What a joy it was. We were the second troop sent home after the Second World War, and they had tugboats in the river, playing jazz music.”
He travelled back to Toronto by train. At the time, Florence was staying with her family in Midland, Ontario.
“I didn’t see my son until he was 15 months old,” he said. “I used to say to him, ‘Tom do this’ and he’d look at me and he’d say ‘who the heck are you?’ you know, and I was used to, as a military officer, when I told someone to do something they’d snap their heels and do it, you know what I mean?” he said with a laugh.
“And I told him I wasn’t his bat boy,” Florence said.
Arthur laughed. “Yeah, that’s right she did.”
Five years later they had a daughter. Arthur went back to school and became a teacher. He taught industrial arts, math and science in North York for 25 years. He and Florence recently celebrated their 73 wedding anniversary and are happily enjoying their retirement at Woods Park Care Centre in Barrie, which is only a block or so from their daughter’s house. When asked if they would change anything, they both said no.
“We lived happily ever after,” Florence said.
The siren wailed, breaking the night’s calm.
Quartermaster Sergeant John Stringer assembled with the rest of the crew. One of the ships in their convoy had been hit with a German torpedo, and there was no telling how many U-boats were below them.
“We mustered and were told that the Saint Alina had been hit, and to look for survivors,” John said. “All the rest of the convoy dispersed, they just steamed into whatever ports they could get into, because nobody knew how many submarines there were.”
The convoy of between five and 10 ships had been sailing in the Mediterranean. They were headed to Italy, where Canadian troops were already fighting against the Germans. It was 1943. The Saint Alina had been carrying a mostly American crew.
“The ship didn’t sink though, what was left of it sailed into Bizerte Harbour in Africa and sank in the harbour,” he said. “There were no casualties, which is a miracle.”
The convoy would spend a month in Africa waiting for a ship to take them to Italy.
Born in Egham, England, in August 1920, John immigrated to Canada before he was a year old, and he says that Canada is the only home he’s ever known.
After finishing high school, John worked for a lumber company for three years. He had just started studying in Toronto to become a stationary engineer when the war broke out. In July 1940, at the age of 19, John joined the Canadian army.
“The war was on and it was not good for us in 1940,” John said. “I guess at that stage all young men thought it was their duty. We never dreamt the war was going to last six years. I never dreamt it! I thought if I get to England that’s as far as I will get.”
In 1941 John was sent to Aldershot, England, where he served as a training instructor. As new recruits came in he put them through the paces required of general military training. After that, he voluntarily reverted one rank, becoming a quartermaster sergeant, and was sent to Algiers, Algeria, eventually making his way up to Naples, Italy.
“The worst part of the war I spent in Italy,” John said. “The war in Italy was a vicious war, and our people were ― well, I won’t say starved, but half starved. You were always short of everything.”
As a quartermaster sergeant, John was responsible for ordering all of the supplies needed by those under his command, a job he took quite seriously.
“I would have to say… I made decisions, it was applicable to a group of men,” he said, when asked what everyday life during the war was like. “When you’re making decisions concerning a group, it has to be the right one.”
After the war, he was posted in Germany for a year, where he was raised back to the rank of Master Warrant Officer. After that he left the army, content to spend some time in civilian life.
He came back to Canada, finished school and wrote his stationary engineer exams, which he passed. He then took a job at Carling Breweries in Kitchener, Ontario. It was sometime after that that he met Regina Alischer. John was 27 at the time, and Regina was 19.
“I remember my mother said ‘he’s too old for you, he’s too old for you!’” Regina said from where she sat next to John. “I said, ‘Mum, I think I like him.’
The two were married in 1948, only a few months later, a captain came from London and made John an offer he couldn’t refuse. He’d go back into the army as a sergeant, and could stay in Kitchener.
“It looked pretty good to me at the time so I accepted. I went home to my wife and I said, ‘I think I’m going to join the army.’ She said, ‘Are you crazy?’” John said with a laugh.
“I didn’t know what that would mean,” Regina said. “I didn’t have a clue.”
John and Regina had three children: Stuart, Bruce and Karen. Because of John’s career, the family moved more than most, including a 2-year-stint in Germany. However, both he and Regina agree that they were lucky, as John’s postings were usually at least three years, and some were much longer.
“We were lucky, we never had that many postings,” Regina said. “Some people in their careers have 12 postings. We never had that many.”
But John also had missions and postings where he had to leave the family behind. Prior to his 2-year posting in Germany, John was posted to a Field Company and sent to Korea for a year. He was there for the peace signing.
“Oh, it was always hard,” John said about being away from his family. “I have a hell of a fine woman. Normally, when you have problems at home they phone, they phone, they phone… and you’ve got this group to look after and then you’ve got your own family, and they don’t always agree. But my wife has never done anything but support me.”
In August 1974, Corporal Bruce Stringer, John and Regina’s son, was on a UN Peace Keeping mission with the Canadian Air Force. His plane was shot down over Syria, killing him and eight other Canadians.
“He was 23-years-old and just married a year,” Regina said. “He’d just bought his first house.”
“His life was just starting to break for him,” John said.
In 2014, at a special ceremony held for National Peacekeepers’ Day, Regina was interviewed by CTV and is quoted saying: “It's a day of great honour… When our son went into the military I tried to tell him, ‘You're giving your life’ and he said, ‘This is my country and what I live for.’”
John retired from the army in 1975, at the age of 55. He had done 35 years of service.
Today, he and Regina live at Woods Park Care Centre in Barrie. Their two surviving children, Stuart and Karen, both live in Ontario. When asked what they enjoy doing now, whether it’s volunteering or just enjoying spending time together, John was quick to answer.
“It’s that last part. That’s the one,” he said.
Regina chuckled. “Thank you, dear.”
“That’s the correct answer,” John said with a smile.
Autobiography by Bill Smyth
As I am one of the last remaining Lancaster Bomber pilots still breathing, this tale should be most unique.
A massive daylight raid was laid on for the city of Cologne, Germany, after the Battle of the Bulge. The target was to be just one city block from the west end of the bridge. Unfortunately, that also happened to be just one city block from the back door to the Cologne Cathedral, one of the Architectural wonders of the world.
The trip over was fairly uneventful until we were a few miles from the city. The day was clear but the target could not be seen because the Germans had laid down a smoke screen all along the west side of the Rhine river, and as the wind was from the east, it covered the entire city in a blanket of dense white smoke. Unfortunately, it also outlined the bank of the river perfectly for our bombers. And since the blanket was only about a hundred feet deep, it allowed the spires of the Cathedral to stand up proudly through the smoke as if to shout, "Here 'tis". Any Bomb-aimer could easily line up on a spot exactly one city block away in broad daylight.
Because the target was so precise, and there were so many of us, our aircraft were stacked in layers about two thousand feet apart. This meant that the upper layers would drop their bombs through the layers below. A very, very, bad idea!
I told my Bomb-aimer, "Stay lined up on the spires and when you count down to 'two', I'll kick a little right rudder and that ought to put the eggs right in the basket.”… And then I looked up!
Directly above me, and a little to the left, was another Lancaster. As I watched, I saw the bomb-bay doors open and the full rack of bombs were in plain sight. "If he drops them on us we're dead meat". I looked to the right. There was a Lane just behind my right wing. I looked to the left. Same thing. Looking up, the bombs were beginning to fall like a string of beads on a necklace. By the time they reached me they would straddle my plane like a gigantic inescapable chain of death. “God Almighty, our bomber is about to be bombed!”
The string of deadly beads approached in slow motion. I could actually see the individual bombs. In the middle of the string there was a little space with one big five hundred-pounder in the center. The two little spaces on either side of the big bomb were the only possible escapes. But that was only two chances in a billion. The end kept coming but I kept focused on the two spaces.
At the last possible moment, I cranked the controls fully to the left and kicked rudder. The Lancaster responded as though it had entered a giant vortex. It turned completely over on its side and to my utter disbelief, it slipped through the space just ahead of the big bomb which fell between the wing and the tail so close I felt I could reach out and touch it. The next bomb fell on the right side exactly where my starboard engine would have been. The string of death had actually straddled the Lancaster and not one bomb had touched it. As I write this I still have trouble believing it.
Back on the level. I aimed at the spires and, at the count of 'two', I kicked a little right rudder and hoped my bombs would miss the Cathedral.
Photographs taken the next day were quite astonishing. Every conceivable structure for miles around was demolished with the sole exception of the Cathedral. Fifty years later, I was climbing the steps to the incredible building when I heard a tour-guide announce to her group that only God could have saved it on that fateful day. I thought:
The Lord works in mysterious ways
His miracles to perform
But
A little right rudder never hurts.
M. R. Smyth
Bill Smyth is a resident at Peninsula Retirement Residence in Surrey.
Autobiography by Audrey Yorke
I was born in England, in Bedford, in 1924.
In those days, unless your parents were wealthy and could send you to private school, you left school at age 14.
After working in a dry goods store until I was 16, I went into war work as a radio assembler for ships. A very interesting job, although I had to ride my bicycle six miles each way in the blackout during the winter. Only a small light was allowed on bicycles and there were no buses running when I needed one.
At the age of 17 ½, I decided I would join the army, the A.T.S., (Auxiliary Territorial Service) and had to get my parent's permission. My Dad said to me "You've made your bed my girl, now you have to sleep in it."
I joined the training camp in December 1941. After a couple of months, I was sent to one of the two largest Army Camps in England, near Aldershot. I was put into an office, given a typewriter and told to go to it, even though I had never used one before.
Our camp was part of several. One was the 5th Canadian Division Signal Corps, which is where I met my first husband. We were both moved to other locations, me to the other largest Army Camp in Yorkshire.
We managed to see one another at my parents’ home, on leave, usually for two weeks. Doug was shipped to Sicily, and then Italy, where he was wounded and shipped back to England in the spring of 1945, to the 11th Canadian General Hospital. Afraid that I might not be there when he came back from Canada, after the war ended, he asked me to marry him, which I did in March 1945.
He was brought to the Catholic Church by ambulance, and taken into the vestry at Slough, Buckinghamshire, on a stretcher in his pyjamas and housecoat. He insisted on standing for the marriage ceremony and walking out afterwards, back to the ambulance.
Two days later, he was sent home to Canada. I was still in the army until November 1945. War brides had to wait for transportation longer than those with children. I arrived in Vancouver in April 1946. My husband was still in Shaughnessy Veteran's Hospital, and was given permission to leave there for a month when I arrived. When he went beck for his check-up, they discovered that he had developed T.B. That was May 1946, and he died early August. Four weeks was all we had together.
Because of the food shortages still in effect in England, I decided to stay for at least a year.
Then one evening I met Ken at the Aristocratic Hamburgers, where he was a car hop, and to make a long story short, we have been married 58 years in October.
The only regret I have is that my parents only got to see their grandchildren once, when they spent a year with us in 1958.
My best friend, Adrienne Gayton, whom we met while we lived in Nelson, B.C., was one of the original members of Chapter A.F., Vancouver. I was invited to join in 1977, and I must admit it was one of the best decisions I've made to accept that invite. I've met so many wonderful ladies and have enjoyed all of our craft sessions, Christmas sales, and B.I.L. parties.
Thank you so much.
I am the proud owner of the 1939-45 Defence Medal and the Defence Medal.
Audrey Yorke is a resident at Pacifica Retirement Residence in Surrey.
The shell exploded.
Thirty-thousand feet above the ground, William Carr’s plane rocked violently as the anti-aircraft shell exploded just under his seat. Though he was not yet 22, he was certain he was going to die. A pilot in the Royale Canadian Air Force, William was flying in enemy airspace over Siena, Italy. The explosion had smashed the oil cooler radiator on the lower surface of the wing, and the plane was leaking oil.
“The loss of oil pressure in the engine made it certain failure would happen,” William said. “I put my hand under the seat, because the explosion had been there, and I pulled it out and there was some blood on my hand.”
For one horrible moment, he was certain that not only was the plane about to fall out of the sky, but that he was seriously wounded as well. He quickly realized he was still in control of the plane, and later discovered what was hanging below his seat was actually his ruined parachute and not part of his anatomy.
“The blood later proved to be a minor wound in the bum,” William said.
But with his parachute in tatters, there would be no escaping if the plane failed. He was going to have to fly back to base and land safely if he wanted to survive.
Home base was about 500 km away. The flight took over an hour.
“I made it, even though I had no oil in the engine, it kept on,” he said. “I survived.”
Within a few days, William was back in the air.
Born in Grand Bank Newfoundland on St. Patrick’s Day 1923, William joined the air force at the age of 18. He had just gotten his Bachelor of Arts and Commerce degree from Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, and felt it was his duty to help the war effort.
“I joined because of the war, we all joined because of the war. It was our duty,” he said.
During the war, William flew photo reconnaissance in a Spitfire plane. Unlike other planes in the war, Spitfires designed for photo reconnaissance did not have guns, armour or bullet-proof glass. Some did not have radios, and if they did they were expected to maintain radio silence, leaving the pilot very-much alone on a mission that could last up to seven hours. Spitfires were single-engine propeller planes designed to fly faster and higher than any other. They could reach speeds of over 630 km/h, and flew at an altitude of about 10,000 meters. Seventy-six years later, today’s commercial planes usually fly at about 869 km/h and at an altitude between 11-12,000 meters.
“Looking back on it, you wonder…” William said. He went on to speak about the time he was asked to fly out to Malta, a small island off the coast of Italy, from Oxford, England.
He was to fly there via Gibraltar. The nearly 5,000 km trip took him three days. “Well that’s a hell of a long way in a single-engine airplane… and looking back on it, I was 19 years old. I was told to work-up an airplane and fly it to Malta, and that was the extent of the briefing I was given. That’s the way it was. I did what I was told and I went to Malta,” he said.
By the time he was 22, William had flown 142 Spitfire missions over Nazi-occupied Europe. In 1944, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his efforts.
Mapping the Canadian North
In the summer of 1945, William was sent to help map the Canadian north, knowing that at any time he could be called to fly east and fight against the Japanese. At the time, more than half of Canada’s north was unmapped.
“Many of our… aeronautical charts were pages with little or no topographic detail, but with horizontal and vertical lines printed on them to indicate Latitude and Longitude,” he wrote in an article published by Vintage Wings of Canada titled ‘A Lake Called Victory’. “Coupled to this lack of navigation help was the decreased reliability of magnetic compasses as one headed north toward the Magnetic Pole.”
It was hard memory work and took a certain knack, according to William. He knew of a few people getting lost while mapping.
William and a group of other Royal Canadian Air Force pilots flew float-equipped Norseman aircraft, which were more of a work-horse than a speed devil, like the Spitfire. Most of the time, William was alone in the plane, only surveillance equipment for company, but at least no one was shooting at him.
“It made me realize what a vast and beautiful country we live in, and made us realize how little we knew about it,” he said.
“It was all new. You’re young, and it was exciting,” William said. “I think I was very lucky to have the opportunities to do the things I was able to do.”
There was a main base camp, where supplies were replenished and a powerful HF radio station was maintained by ground crew. William’s job was to survey the surrounding area, looking for a lake big enough for him to land on. He would then bring the surveying crew there, where they could do their observations.(1) He never imagined that one of those lakes would later be named after him: Carr Lake.
“Thinking back, it is a wonder to think how isolated we really were and how little we realized it or worried about it,” he wrote.(1)
On August 15, 1945, William woke up to news that would change everything.
“The BBC’s shortwave News service came in loud and clear, but much to my surprise, the BBC’s usual staid reporting was missing and a very voluble and excited announcer was talking about the surrender of the Japanese.”(1)
He quickly woke the surveyors in their tent, who, due to their late-night work, had slept in. From then on, the lake they had camped on would be known as Victory Lake.(1)
World War II was over. It had claimed the lives of over 17,000 airmen and women in the Royale Canadian Air Force.
“I guess a lot of us, subconsciously, were relieved that you made it [out of the war], because a lot of your buddies didn’t,” he said.
William would spend two more summers surveying the Canadian North.
Peace Time: Piloting the Queen, Leading the Air Force, and Earning an Honourary Doctorate at 93.
After the war, William was offered a full-time position with the air force and decided to stay. He continued to practice photo mapping. He also flew delegates, including Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Margaret, Charles De Gaulle and Prime Minister Diefenbaker.
While at the Air Force, he got his Master of Science Degree at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1949.
In 1960 he established the United Nations Air Transport Operation in the Congo, which was a huge UN peacekeeping mission during the Cold War. In 1974, at the age of 51, he was promoted to the rank of Lieutenant-General, and the following year he helped establish Air Command and became its first commander.
William retired from the military in 1978, and immediately became a vice-president of Canadair and Bombardier. He worked as a marketer, selling airplanes around the world, and is credited with helping to save the aerospace industry, a feat he is particularly proud of, and for which he won a C.D. Howe Award.
“I’m very grateful I had the opportunities I had,” he said. “I particularly enjoyed my peace time employment with Bombardier and selling airplanes around the world.”
An extraordinary Canadian, some of William’s many accolades include: the Venerable Order of Saint John, Commander of the Order of Military Merit, the Legion of Merit, and induction into the Veterans Hall of Honour.
He has been inducted into Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame and is widely considered the father of the modern Canadian air force.
Now 93, Lieutenant-General William Kier Carr continues to achieve extraordinary things. While at his retirement residence in Kanata, he received the news of having been awarded an honourary doctorate of law from Memorial University “for his achievements in both military and civil aviation, along with his proven leadership and organizational abilities and their outstanding benefit to Canada” (2)
Although he wasn’t able to attend the service, William said he “felt humbly honoured” about receiving the honourary doctorate. “I’ve won awards before, but this is particularly humbling at my age,” he said.
“Memorial will always respect and remember the legacy of [William’s] generation, and those who went before,” said Annette Staveley, deputy public orator at Memorial University, who gave a speech at William’s convocation. “…In our minds we can simultaneously conjure that day in 1942 when… Billy Bishop, awarded William Carr his wings; and today, in 2016, a mere 74 years later, we can salute William Kier Carr and vow that At the going down of the sun and in the morning we shall remember him, and all, who like him, inspire this new generation of graduates to take up the fight against ignorance, hatred and violence in our century.”
(1) Carr, William Kier. "A Lake Called Victory Vintage Wings of Canada." A Lake Called Victory Vintage Wings of Canada. Vintage Wings of Canada, n.d. Web. 21 July 2016.
(2) Cook, Mandy. "University Gathering." Gazette Memorial University of Newfoundland. Memorial University Gazette, 08 Apr. 2016. Web. 22 July 2016. https://gazette.mun.ca/student-life/university-gathering/
To learn more about General Carr, click on one of the stories below.
