American Comrades

Well this one thing I learned, I don’t know whether I expressed it in my book or not, but we tied in with the American Air Force, several occasions. They were fantastic people. They treated us royally and we treated them royally. Now, I’ll tell you a story. The CN Tower, oh this was about maybe thirty years ago, twenty-five years ago, I’m down in Toronto with my wife, and with, she’s got an aunt, an elderly aunt and we took her up the CN Tower. And we went up to the second pod. And they’re talking and I’m wandering around and all of a sudden I heard, “Hey Abby” Well, I froze. Nobody called me that since the Air Force. And I thought, I looked around and here this guy standing over.. with this silly look on his face and I recognized him. He was one of the engineers from this American Air Force that I first met in Plumetot. He, and I met him again in Holland, he lives in South Carolina and I hadn’t seen him since 1944, ‘45, so here I am in CN Tower and he’s from South Carolina, he’s in Toronto, and I’m there, we meet after all those years We stood and I bet for over an hour, we just shot the breeze. I mean, the wife and the aunt had gone in to get something to eat and, but, what are the odds of something like that happening? I don’t even remember his name. But they treated us royally. Several times we got cut off from stores for food and they’d, “C’mon over for Thanksgiving”, we went over there for their Thanksgiving, we went over there for Christmas the one year because it was either bully beef or SPAM. We went over for fresh turkey. They, they were good. I don’t care what anybody says, the Yankees are, they were alright.

Mr. Abdallah talks about the comradery that he experienced between the American and Canadian troops.

Wilf Abdallah

Mr. Abdallah was born in London, Ontario, in 1923. His father immigrated from Lebanon to the United States at the age of 12 and eventually ended up in London, Ontario, where he was a candy maker and owned a few stores in the area. In 1936 the family moved to Petrolia and then on to Sarnia. Mr Abdallah attended high school in Sarnia before moving back to London in 1939-40. After lying about his age Mr. Abdallah joined the Royal Canadian Air Force when he was seventeen. He went to Toronto for three weeks training at Manning Depot before going to Paulson, Manitoba, to complete his training. In March of 1944 he sailed on the Louis Pasteur to Bournemouth, England, where he was stationed with 129 Airfield. Mr. Abdallah worked with the tactical air force, building airfields and then joined the air force’s return salvage unit. He moved through France, Belgium and Holland recovering aircraft to be repaired or stripped for parts. When Mr. Abdallah returned to Canada after the war he went back to live the rest of his life in London, Ontario.