Description
Mr. Romanow tells of a modern ceremony for a missing crew.
Joseph Romanow
Mr. Romanow was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in 1921, to parents who immigrated to Canada in 1911. Mr. Romanow grew up in a Ukranian community and he learned to speak English from his playmates. He joined the Air Force from a youth group, was a mechanic for two years and then trained in Canada and England. He was able to fly in India and Europe, flying many different types of planes. After his university education he returned to the Air Force and worked with the Avro Arrow team.
Transcript
We went back to India when a Burmese hunter found a watch and on the watch was inscribed a regimental number and from, said from his mother, and this was Bill Rogers, a pilot from Halifax. This eventually got to the British High Commission in Rangoon. They passed it through, it was identified who the watch belonged to and it was one of the crews that didn't come back.
The Veterans Affairs, four years ago, assembled 25 members of the Squadron and 27 family members and flew us back out to India, for a full military funeral, and on the way there the families were, to give them some sense of closure, I thought I'd tell them, how at the same time, that they lost their, there were six people in the aircraft that went down, when they lost their lads, I had encountered a similar problem, only I survived.