Thought you guys might find this interesting:
This past Friday a customer came in to my work with a broken down car. I ended up chatting with him, he was 81. He joined the RAF in 1939 as an 18 year old at the outbreak of the War, and spent the war as a mechanic servicing planes at front line RAF bases.
He said the most terrifying time was the Battle of Britain, as the frontline bases came under attack by the Luftwaffe regularly, and many of the mechanics and armourers that he worked with were killed during attacks.
He felt the Spit was a work of art, but the Hurricane was the workhorse. He pointed out (as many of us know) there were precious few Spits in the air during the B of B, and the Hurri helped turn the tide. He felt the Hurri was solidly built, easily serviceable, quicker to re-arm, and a real work horse of a plane.
His eyes got wet as he told me how, often a crippled plane would land, they'd pull the pilot to an ambulance, and he'd work with his crew to repair the plane while the cockpit was "mopped out" as he put it.
I offered that my grandfather was a Major in the Royal Army, in Command of the anti-aircraft emplacements in and around Coventry, and later along the coast prior to and during D-Day. He remarked that that was a selfless job. Coventry reduced to rubble and the Coastal Defence took the blame, Coventry was sacrificed he offered.
My new found friend offered between cigarettes that he met his wife in Canada, in 1940, while on training at the Commonwealth Air Training programme. Canada trained literally hundreds of thousands of pilots, aircrew, and technicians throughout the War under this programme. He met his wife here, they quickly married. At the end of the War she went to England to meet him. She was not happy with the post-war situation, so they emigrated to Canada. He worked for the Canadian National Railway as a mechanic, and when laid off in '47, his brother in law got him in with John Labatt (a huge Canadian brewer) where he worked for 37 years until retiring.
I asked him what brought him to the Ottawa area, and he told me he was here to take part in the Dieppe Memorials. His wife, you see, had lost an elder brother at Dieppe, so they came to Ottawa each year on the anniversary of Dieppe. His wife died two years ago, but he could not possibly not come. The brother had come to their Wedding after all. He felt he would be betraying her if he didn't continue to come to Dieppe Memorials. His only worry, at 81, he might not be able to drive much longer. So he plans to take the train next year.
And in it all, I never thought to get his name. He was such a friendly, amazing fellow.
Below is info on what Dieppe is all about. Few other than Canadians recognize it. I saw many memorials in the newspaper this past week, many with photos of the lost loved ones:
By LEAH MCLAREN
Tuesday, August 20, 2002 – Page A10
DIEPPE, FRANCE -- In this small city on France's Normandy coast, they figured half the population came out yesterday to cheer and clap as a parade of Canadian veterans, troops and government officials marched through their streets to the tune of a brass band.
Patisserie shop windows were plastered with Maple Leafs while residents thronged the cobblestone sidewalks and leaned out of windows to wave Canadian flags.
It was Canada Day in Dieppe, as the French, old and young, came out by the thousands to get a look at the men who fought a desperate and futile battle to liberate their town from German occupation on the same day 60 years earlier. But, as one innkeeper acknowledged, it is often Canada Day in Dieppe.
"The Canadians are very important to me," said Josianne Lorin, 60. "I was a newborn baby the year it happened, so I don't remember, but my parents always talked of how brave the Canadians were."
In a city where the 1942 war tragedy is taught in the early grades of school, and retold reverently at dinner tables, Canadian veterans continue to enjoy an awe they don't always find at home. Overlooking the English Channel are red-and-white flower beds in the shape of maple leaves. Younger Canadians visiting Dieppe still find restaurants and taxi drivers refusing to give them a bill.
"It's very moving for the people of Dieppe," said Lucy Boisard, a reporter for the area newspaper, Paris-Normandy. "Even schoolchildren are very aware of what the Canadians did. But people are saying maybe it will be the last big commemoration because soon the veterans will be all gone and no one will come back to tell their stories."
Yesterday's day of remembrance began early at the Canadian War Cemetery, on the outskirts of town. French, Canadian and British government and military officials gathered with townspeople in the hilltop war cemetery, amid rows of tidy white tombstones.
The lush and idyllic summer scenery seemed at odds with the dark reality of the inscriptions: Bendall, Morrison, Harding. Private, Captain, Trooper. Age 20, age 18, age 25. And scattered among the rows, every fourth or fifth grave with the plainest inscription of all: "A soldier of the Second World War. Known unto God."
Standing at the foot of a great stone crucifix, Veterans Affairs Minister Rey Pagtakhan told the crowd the story of the failed raid in which 907 Canadian soldiers died.
After acknowledging the horrendous loss of life due to flawed planning, Mr. Pagtakhan concluded with words of appreciation for the Canadian veterans who had come again to Dieppe: "The price of world peace was bought and paid for in large part in the blood, sweat and tears of you and your fallen comrades. Mercy, lest we forget."
