Teamwork

Heroes Remember

Teamwork

Transcript

Well, first, one thing, you know, that we've talked about is, is depending on one another. That's the training that you got, and that's what you wanted right from the start with the training. But you have to get along with that person. There's a lot of personalities involved in this, too. And unless you've got a crew that can, a crew that can mesh together, I don't know... You know, there was so many crews that went up and that went down on their first trip. Whether inexperience or whatever it is, it doesn't matter, but they still went down, but... The crew, we used to go out, well, if we weren't flying, on Thursday nights. We used to go to this little spot in Nantes, and we, lots of times we'd take the ground crew with us and we'd go and have a chicken dinner, just the bunch of us, but that's about... But you didn't wander, at least I didn't, I wasn't involved too much in that other stuff. But drinking, I didn't drink. I'd maybe have a Coke with the, with the, with the crew, you know. But it didn't matter to me whether they drank or not, as long as they were sober in the morning. Because if we were going to go flying, I had no business flying with them. But it... but it's companionship, it's, it's... you get to know the other person pretty eminently, like, you know that you can rely on me and trust them to do the job. That means a lot, means a lot. And you get to be just like brothers, you know, you do. You really, you miss these people. You just, they're part of your life. But now, nowadays, of course, you don't see much of them, because most of them are gone. It's only myself and the pilots that's left of our crew, so... And the other thing about it is people being thrown together, just for instance, because they're from all over the place. Our wireless OP was from Detroit, Michigan, and the, and the other gunner lived out in Vancouver, B.C. Navigator came from Lindsay, Ontario. Pilot was from Moncton, Ontario. And our, our bomb-aimer was from Bristol, England. And the flight engineer was from Scotland. So, it, it... you know... but to get people to come together, as, as you never knew in your life before and get that, that close together, there's a reason. And if it works out, fine. We did, it worked out for us.

Description

Mr. Garrison describes the interdependence and diversity of an air crew.

Glenn Garrison

Mr. Garrison was born in 1925 in Sarnia, Ontario. His family moved to Blackville, Ontario, in 1930. Although his father was a boiler maker with the Canadian National Railroad, Mr. Garrison's family was poor. When old enough, he went to work in a factory, then enlisted in 1943. He received his Air Gunner training in Lachine, Quebec, then shipped overseas on the Mauritania. He was a member of 428 Squadron. The Mid-Upper and Tail gunner positions were extremely vulnerable and he was fortunate to survive many bombing missions over France and Germany. These missions included the bombing of submarine pens in Southern France and the industrial area of the Ruhr Valley. At the age of 18, Mr. Garrison returned to Canada with 43 missions to his credit. At 19, he became a flying instructor at Fingor, then CO of the Turrets and Gunnery school at Mountain view. Mr. Garrison and his wife live on a farm in Sarnia. He has his own air plane and is still flying.

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