Close Calls

Interviewer: Were you ever worried about someone being such a bad gunnery student that they might actually hit you? I remember one day when we landed, I figured something was wrong and this (inaudible) Lacey from New Zealand, I said, "Hey, take a look." Well right behind me there were four bullet holes, they're the size of a dime, .303...well, sometimes these guys got trigger happy. He saw that and he said, "There's the bullet hole and there's the gas tank." So we marched into the Plotting office and we got the Flying Officer in charge and showed him and, those two guys got cashiered out of there, they were cut right then. They got cashiered out. They just dropped them out of the course and shipped them back home. We did the same thing, we had bombers on the thing as well. And one day a week we'd go out to the bombing huts where they, there was a bombing hut here and a half mile down there was another bombing hut and the targets, 300 yards in front of us, and these bombers would drop their bombs so, I remember one day I'm sitting here and boom. I'm like, "What the hell?" Twenty feet from my hut they dropped a bomb. We washed four guys out on a deal like that and that's too close. If you're, "Hey St. Peter, my time isn't up yet!"

Mr. Abdallah talks about a couple of close calls he had while stationed in Paulson.

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.