POSTING #47

Memories of an Arthur Snow Storm; Some Royal Canadian Air force Stories; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Memories of an Arthur Snow Storm

Last week as I was getting ready to speak about my Russian experiences to a small group of history buffs at our local library, a man wanted to know where I was from. I told him I was from a village that he had probably never heard of, Arthur.

"Oh", he said, "I know it well and I have some very unpleasant memories of the Arthur District High School."

I forgot my nerves about the upcoming talk (it went well), and had to find out about his Arthur experiences.

It turns out that he was working at the University of Guelph in 1972, had been active in the Progressive Conservative Party, and had been invited by someone senior in the Party to run as a candidate in the federal election that was expected later in 1972.

The local Member of Parliament, Marvin (Marnie) Howe, an Arthur storeowner, had decided to retire. The Wellington- Grey-Dufferin-Waterloo constituency was as safe a seat as the Conservatives had in Ontario, and with the unpopularity of the Trudeau Government it was likely that whoever won the Conservative nomination would be a shoo-in for a seat in Parliament.

Bob Stanfield, the leader of the Party and Leader of the Opposition, planned to speak at the meeting, which was scheduled for March in the Arthur District High School auditorium.

Apparently Arthur was hit by one of its infamous March snow storms on the day of the nomination and Stanfield was not able to get through the snow drifts to the meeting.

The nomination process went ahead but I gather that without Stanfield's presence, it didn't evolve quite as the party brass had hoped.

In the end, a 22-year old from a well-know family in Fergus won the nomination, and at the general election held in October 1972 that young man, Perrin Beatty, won the seat.

I could understand why the fellow at the library had unpleasant memories of the Arthur District High School.

I told him that the high school had since been closed, with the students being bused to Mount Forest.

He didn't seem upset about that.


Some Royal Canadian Air force Stories

While I was researching the stories about Bill Attewell, a Wing Commander in the RCAF during the second world war (see Posting #45, November7, 2009) , I kept remembering and running into stories about the RCAF.

Here are some of them.

In the mid-years of the war, I used to rush home after school to listen to the CBC's weekly program, 'L for Lanky'. Crouched by the large speaker in our floor model radio I would listen for the RCAF March Past that introduced the program. Perhaps because of that early exposure to it, the March Past remains one of my favourite marches. (Click here for a video of the music played by the Air Command Band---isn't it a great march?)


Thank to a great website, www.airmuseum.ca, here is a brief description of
'L for Lanky'

"The CBC radio programme, "L for Lanky," was a very imaginative program which many of us remember fondly from our childhoods. "L for Lanky" means the Lancaster bomber that was the central figure in the show. It was about a WWII flight crew and their adventures going out on raids with this bomber -- but the "narrator" of the program was the Lancaster bomber itself. The plane was given a voice and a personality, and it began each show setting up the premise, in a slightly echoed voice with airplane sound behind it, and it always started out by saying "I'm L for Lanky. I'm a Lancaster bomber....." And on it went from there, setting up that week's story and then the regular actors as airmen took over. The voice of Lanky was played by an actor named Herb Gott. A great example of how well radio tapped into the theatre of the mind - one simply bought the premise without question. Otherwise they were standard WW2 air adventures. Apparently most of the ETs [Blogger's note: I'm not sure what ETs are, but assume they are scripts and/or recordings. J.H.] were destroyed after the war and apparently there is little evidence of the show in the CBC archives. There are rumours of excerpts still in existence. "

The program was full of suspense as the bomber tried to avoid or shoot down German fighter aircraft or dodge bursts of anti-aircraft flack. Despite the problems, the Lancaster was usually able to drop its 'payload' on some enemy target.

Looking back, I guess one could say the program was a form of war-time propaganda but we needed some reassurance during parts of the war when the enemy seemed to be winning, especially with their brutal bombing of London and other cities in England.

ooo

In the Canadian Immigration Office in Leeds, Yorkshire, when I was there in the early 1960s there were two RCAF veterans, Cal Willis and Vic Smith.

They never talked about the war unless I prompted them.

Cal had a small, golden, squiggly lapel pin that he wore each day. When I asked him about it he said that it meant that he was a member of the Caterpillar Club, that he had bailed out of a disabled bomber over France and survived, thanks to the parachute. The caterpillar was chosen as the symbol for the club "because the parachute canopy was made of silk and because caterpillars have to climb out of their cocoons and fly away". (Click here for more information on the Caterpillar Club.)

Cal had been rescued by a French farm family and hidden from the Nazi's until the French Resistance could smuggle him to the English channel and to a boat that could take him back to Britain.

If the Germans had found Cal, they would have executed the family and probably shot him as well.

Twenty years later, while he was in Leeds, Cal contacted the family and invited them to join him, his wife and his little boy for lunch at a posh restaurant in the Eiffel Tower.

I wondered how the lunch would go. Would the farm family feel uncomfortable in the fancy restaurant? Would language be a problem?

When I asked Cal, he just beamed broadly.

It had gone perfectly.

ooo

Vic Smith was a navigator on a bomber He said he was viewed by the pilot and the engineer, both in their early 20s, as an 'old' man who was, after all, 30 and married to boot.

Returning from flights over Germany, the pilot liked to relax by finding a radio station playing pop music and then pump it through the intercom system so the gunners, the bomb aimer, the wireless operator and Vic could enjoy it.

The problem was, Vic said, that while the others could relax he had to get them back to base. Using information from speed and altitude gauges, his charts and sometimes celestial navigation if the night were clear he had to chart a path back to the British air base. In a pre-computer era, he was always frantically busy with his slide rule and pencil and paper calculations.

He protested to the pilot that he couldn't do his calculations with the music blaring in his ears. The pilot ignored the 'old man'.

Vic said that he would then turn off his intercom. This was potentially dangerous---what if they were hit and the pilot ordered the crew to parachute out.

But it was more important to get home safely.

I'm told that the attrition rate during bombing raids was at least 5% per raid. My memory is that Vic and his crew flew almost 50 missions.

They beat the odds, thanks in part to the 'old man' and his calculations.

ooo

Here is a story that either Cal or Willis told me.

Some Canadian crews flew daylight missions over Europe to photograph the damage that the night-time bombing had done and to identify new targets.

One crew flew several missions trying to locate a German ammunition dump. They followed the coordinates provided by reports from intelligence officials, took strips of photos but couldn't see anything that looked like an ammunition dump.

Back in Britain, a Canadian who had been raised on a farm, analyzed the photos but he couldn't see a dump.

Where the dump was supposed to be was just a pasture with cows grazing peacefully.

Then it hit him.

He called over his superior, "See those cows, they are always facing in the same direction, in each of the photos."

"So?", the city-born officer said.

"But cows always face the wind. The wind wouldn't come from the same direction day after day. Those aren't real cows."

The next night a bombing crew had the satisfaction of seeing huge explosions when they bombed the 'cows'


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Here is another air force story, one that I heard a few times while living in Britain.

Here is the www.airmuseum.ca website's version of that story.

"A World War II pilot is reminiscing before school children about his days in the air force. "There I was over Germany in 1942," he says, "the situation was really tough. The Germans had a very strong air force. I remember," he continues, "one day I was protecting the bombers and suddenly, out of the clouds, these fokkers appeared. (At this point, several of the children giggle). I looked up, and right above me was one of them. I aimed at him and shot him down. They were swarming. I immediately realized that there was another fokker behind me."
At this instant the girls in the auditorium start to giggle and boys start to laugh. The teacher stands up and says, "I think I should point out that 'Fokker' was the name of the German-Dutch aircraft company."
"That's true," says the pilot, "but these fokkers were flying Messerschmidts."

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See you next Sunday for Posting #48 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.