The North Warning Support facility on Airport Road across from 22 Wing wears the name of Canadian airman, Warrant Officer 1 Edward William Goodchild. It was dedicated, with his family present, on October 12, 1994, on the 50th anniversary of his death.
This remarkable man who, it was said, was typical of RCAF radar personnel in the Second World War, in his courage and character—a man who earned the everlasting devotion of those who met him and who paid the price of his life because of his selflessness.
Born 1918, at Hamilton, Ontario, Goodchild was one of the original recruits into Canadian air defence, answering the RCAF’s October 10, 1940, call for radio mechanics. (Called “technicians” now, in the Second World War other ranks were termed “mechanics”.) After completing radar training in the United Kingdom, he was posted to an air defence site on the Isle of Islay, Scotland. In July 1941 he was promoted to corporal, and on August 29, 1941, posted to South East Asia. November 1, he was promoted to sergeant, and sometime afterwards to flight sergeant, equivalent to warrant officer.
Where Goodchild was stationed and what he did in air defence is unknown, other than he was possibly on the Malay Peninsula or Singapore—in early 1942 the Japanese poured down on Southeast Asia, cracking wide the British Army, and inciting a headlong rush of Allied forces to escape. All records and documentation of air defence units were destroyed or lost in the chaos.
Goodchild managed to elude the Japanese for about a month, but was captured around March 8, 1942, near Batavia (now Jakarta), on the island of Java, in Indonesia. The circumstances of his capture are also unknown.
In April 1943, he was one of 2,000 Allied prisoners of war transferred from Java to the island of Haruka, near New Guinea, as labour to build an airfield. The prisoner of war camp was a pit of filth, starvation and disease, conditions and brutality on par with Dachau. The prisoners slaved at their work in crushing heat. Rain fell day after day. Men too weak to work were left to die or shot, deemed no longer of value by the Japanese.
Goodchild did his best to keep prisoners’ spirits up. One British prisoner, C.H. Stanley, was flattened by dysentery. For weeks, after slaving on the airfield, Goodchild visited Stanley, fetching him cups of water, and cleaning him, and washing him of the bodily wastes that exuded from Stanley because of the disease.
Then Goodchild contracted dysentery. He already was suffering from beriberi, another disease brought on by starvation and the appalling conditions of the camp. Yet, except in the worst stages, that laid him immobile, Goodchild would not be bedridden, spending his days of sickness helping the camp’s overworked medical orderlies.
In the summer of 1944, Goodchild was in charge of a work party of 40 prisoners. One stole wood chips from the construction site to build a cooking fire. The Japanese ordered the 1,000 prisoners on parade and dragged the man in front. Then the Japanese sergeant in charge of the camp ordered Goodchild to beat him. Goodchild refused. Five or six guards, working in pairs, pounded him to the dirt. The Japanese sergeant repeated the order. Again Goodchild refused. The guards beat him savagely. A third time, the order was given. Goodchild stood his ground. The guards hammered the Canadian harder. The order was repeated. No. Goodchild was beaten senseless. The Japanese sergeant weighed the situation—and gave up. On top of his uplifting the spirits of the entire camp, thanks to Goodchild the Japanese never again ordered an Allied NCO to beat his men.
But the punishment, diseases and hunger caught up to Goodchild. In mid-September 1944, 650 prisoners were loaded onto two ships for a nine-week voyage to Indonesia. The conditions were a horror; 307 prisoners died enroute. One was Goodchild. On October 11, weak as a kitten, his flesh shrink-wrapped to his emaciated frame, he fell into delirium. The next day he died. He was buried at sea, with a simple service.
In 1946, a British survivor wrote to Goodchild’s parents, stating, “Goodchild never complained, never grumbled ... he has left a very clean memory of how a man should die.”
Although unsure of his status, the RCAF promoted him during his internment to Warrant Officer 1, equivalent of Chief Warrant Officer. Goodchild proved the promotion (which he never got to learn of) was unequivocally deserved.
In fact, Edward William Goodchild was, in how he acted and how he conducted himself, a card carrying example of the 6,000-plus men and women who enlisted in radar--and air defence--in the Second World War. He and the 6,000-plus are why the 75th anniversary is special and we should take a moment to celebrate it.
