Remembrance Day - A Personal Journey

(originally published in November, 2007)

Wiping a tear from his eye, my Dad said, “If someone had told me that my youngest son would one day be sitting in that same seat as me, I never would have believed them.”

Last summer, my Dad and I paid a visit to an old friend of his.  A Halifax bomber that has been restored and resides in Trenton, Ontario.  It was a road trip with my hero.

My Dad is a World War II veteran, living in Ontario.  He just turned 88.  He flew 34 missions, bombing targets “in the Ruhr Valley – the Germans’ back yard”, as he says.  He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and has been quoted in a few books about the war, and his squadron number 426, ‘The Thunderbirds’.

This is my father in June 1944, at base camp in England, scanned from “Thunderbirds At War:  Diary of a Bomber Squadron”, Laurence Motiuk, 1998.

He arrived in Europe early in June of 1944 to begin flying sorties.  On D-Day, he flew two missions.  He flew Halifax’s.

In Trenton, Ontario, a restored Halifax pays tribute to the war effort, lovingly restored by teams of volunteers over a period of several years:

This is the story of my trip, with my Dad, to see the aircraft he flew for me, for us, so many years ago.

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I heard about this aircraft a few years ago, and just before the exhibit was open to the public, my Dad and my brother in Ontario took a trip up to see it.  They let my Dad go inside, and re-live a lot of memories.  He told me he was affected for a few days by that experience.  I can’t imagine the memories that came back to him.  He went to see it again with my brother from out west, and our trip together was his third to see the plane.  He says now, it’s a little easier.

When he came home from the war, he didn’t fly for over 20 years.  “You can’t explain it”, he says, referring to why he rarely spoke of the war, or why he didn’t care for flying.  When I asked him if he ever just flew for fun during any downtimes in the war, he said no – “it was a job”.

He has, however, told me stories of flak exploding off his wing tips, or being caught in the search lights, and being lucky enough to escape them, through skill and the good fortune of finding some cover in the smoke rising from the fires of bombed targets.

One in ten men did not return.  And usually, the first 5 missions, or the last 5, were the deadliest.

On this trip, I heard another story.  The time a young airman insisted my Dad go to his quarters to see the pictures of his wife and two daughters.  “Two more missions”, he told my Dad, “and I can go home.”  He didn’t come back that night.  And it was my Dad’s job, as it was every night, to take some wax and erase the names of those who didn’t return, and put new names in their places.

“They said ‘We can sustain 10% losses every mission’”, said my Dad.  He shakes his head.  “Every night there were 80 aircraft with 7 or 8 men aboard each plane.”  He doesn’t say anything else as he contemplates that.  I’m silent too.  I can’t think of anything to say either, at the callousness of war.

You can’t help but be impressed by the size of the aircraft when you enter the exhibition area.  “They didn’t really look that big out in a field with a few dozen others around”, said my Dad.  I couldn’t imagine that.  I stood near the nose of the aircraft and looked up at the bomb aimer’s position.  It had to be a few stories high.

My eyes naturally went to the cockpit.  My Dad was the pilot, and I imagined him sitting there.  At 24 years old, commander of his crew of 7 other young men.  Responsible for their lives.  The same crew he would be with on every mission during the war.

Before every mission “I used to stand <on the ground> under where I would sit, and look at the night”, said my Dad, “I’d wonder every time if this was the last time I’d see the sky”.  How brave is that?

We wandered around the exhibit, and while I studied the details of the aircraft, my Dad glanced at this or that.  He knew every detail, already.  We came upon “Bob”, the man inside the ropes, there to answer questions.  Bob told me the story of this particular aircraft, what it was doing, how it was shot down, where it was found, and how many hours it took to restore.

We wandered some more, to some small CCTV monitors, they had set up to show various angles from inside the plane.  I knew that both my brothers had been actually inside the aircraft, and I longed to be inside, too.

We went back up to Bob, and chatted, hoping to ‘warm him up’ for a behind the scenes tour.  He offered to my Dad, “You want to go up?”  My Dad said, no, that he’d already been inside, but that he’d like me to see it.  Bob said, sure.  And the gate opened.  I thought I had won the lottery.

Bob took me around to the port side of the plane, where the crew embarked on every mission.  I looked up, way up, at the cockpit.  I was tingling.  I crawled in the opening, and my immediate impression, was how small the inside is, compared to the behemoth impression you get looking at the machine on the outside. The next thing that struck me, was how steep the incline is to go forward.

First you go through the “safety cage” (“Yeah, right, like THAT was a lot of good”, chuckles my Dad) where the crew sat for take-off’s and landings.  I had to literally crawl what felt like straight up.  I came to the forward part of the aircraft.

Bob, continually behind me, points out the various crew positions.  “That was your father’s position”, Bob tells me.  A tiny chair, on the port side of the aircraft, on the side of the passageway to the bomb aimer’s position.  Underneath, his co-pilot and ‘wireless operator’ in spaces which seem no bigger than a hotel fridge.

I make my way to the bomb aimer’s position.  “Left skipper”, I can hear him saying.  “Bombs away!”

“Put your hand on the seat, and use the step on the right” Bob instructs me, pointing at the pilot’s seat.  I look to the right, and there’s nothing but a little one inch knob of metal jutting out of the inner fuselage.  That must be the ‘step’.  I get myself into the chair.

It was overwhelming; looking at the view my father had, all those years ago.  The old instruments, the windows with little view, the smell of the old bird.  I look out the port side window, and there is my Dad, looking up at me, in his chair.  He took this picture:

There was my father, war hero, looking at me in his seat, over 60 years later.

I wanted time to stop.  To absorb it all, as a dozen war movies flashed through my mind.  Trying to picture my Dad giving orders, the terror of the mission, the relief of seeing England upon his return.  Bob said, “We have to go”.  I felt sad the experience had to end.  The complete polar opposite of what my Dad likely felt when he left that aircraft.

We spent another moment with the Halifax.  “It’s all covered in dust – they should wash it”, said my Dad.  He still maintains a reverence for the machine that brought him home.  “I used to stand those things on their wing tips”, he said, referring to the way he used to pilot the craft.  I’ll bet you did.  I would have loved to watch you fly like a bird.

“I still remember seeing the runway.  The last mission, I still remember seeing our landing strip and thinking ‘I’ve made it.  I’m going home’”, said my Dad.  I think I’d remember that, too.

“I don’t know why I made it.  I must have been meant for something else”.  Maybe, that was to have me, so I could tell the story of one soldier’s story, to the thousands who visit this web site on a regular basis.

This Remembrance Day, think about the heroes who made it possible for our lives today, and those who continually sacrifice for our way of life.  The experiences they have, and the silent memories they carry, forever pay for the comfort we enjoy.

And to my Dad, I would like to say thank you.  For all you’ve done, I am very proud of you.  More than you will ever know.

You will forever be, my hero.

(Flt. Lt. J.T. Sheridan, DFC, passed away, peacefully, in March 2008).