Commanding Canadian and British Radar Technicians
Heroes Remember
Commanding Canadian and British Radar Technicians
Got to England, and they sent me to a night fighter squadron,
537 Squadron. And I was there for a short while. And the first
time I ever went out to service an aircraft, gee, this was real
stuff you see. So I determined it was that unit. And so I took
it out and brought it in the workshop. I said, “Has to be the
modulator, I think.” The officer said, “Did you kick it?”
“What?” “Did you kick it?” “No, I don’t kick it.” He said,
“Always kick a piece of equipment before you bring it in here.”
And from there, I went to an air observer school with another
Canadian. We were the only two Canadians on the unit. And
somewhere down the line, somebody put a recommendation in for me
to have a commission. I went up to, after a couple of boards, I
went up to group headquarters, which was in a little place
called Market Drayton, which was 25 miles outside of Crewe. And
I had to go up to Crewe the night before, and I met a friend of
mine who was also up there for the same thing. So the next
morning, we got up and it was great, because they’d evacuated a
lot of these girls in the British Civil Service. And we went to
the dance and it was about ten to one in our favour. Next
morning, we got up, went to the station. “Where is the train to
Crewe?” One of these accents, “Onze heure.” So we got on the
train about 25 miles. An hour later, it stopped. It had been
an express. We were up at Stafford. So I had to call back to
group headquarters, this chap, and I said, “Um, Russell and
Linden got on the wrong train. We won’t be there this morning.”
He said, “My God, and you expect to have a commission?”
Anyway, they did. I was successful and went through officer’s
training school there, and I was posted out to Italy. And I was
a wing radar officer on a heavy bomber wing, operating out of
Fadhiya, in the Fadhiya Plains. We originally had Wellingtons,
and then we converted onto Liberators about December, 1944.
Interesting enough, there was this mixture of Canadians, and
about a third of my mechanics were Canadians, and the rest were
British. And I had to be careful, because the British lads were
quite literal to command. If I said, “Crap!” the British lad
might say, “Where?” I had quite an experience working with
them. Again, in this place, I was the only Canadian officer in
the unit. When we first got out there, we were about 40 miles
behind the line. And the mechanics wore sparks, we called them
sparks. And for the first, while we were there, they had to
take those down. Eventually, the line moved up in Italy, and we
stayed there with the heavy bombing force. One of my tent
mates, Norman Canfield, was an electrical officer, and Norman
had been ... he had a couple of landings in Italy, and been shot
at several times, bombed at several times. And we had a slit
trench. Norman was very particular that any paper or anything
got in the duck walk, at the bottom of the slit trench. I said,
“Norman, Norman look, look. We got all these fighters around
here, all these aircraft, we don’t have any problem.” And so I
ignored it. And then one day, we did have a problem. And then
the raid went from white, to yellow, to red all of a sudden,
overhead. And I dove for the slit trench, and Norman landed on
top of me. And for the rest of the time, he said, “You’ll keep
this GD thing clean after this.” And then, I was posted home
after VE day, when the RCF decided that all RCF personnel who
were attached to Royal Air Force would be withdrawn.
And so we were withdrawn, en masse.
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