Chevalier Jerry Billing
The Gospel of St. Matthew tells us that a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country. Jerry Billing is a minor god in Malta and Normandy and mainly unknown and ignored in Canada. He has probably seen more of life, death, and near-death than any other Canadian, yet, his 1995 nomination for the Order of Canada is buried somewhere in the Chancellery of Rideau Hall.
That same year, 1995, France knighted Jerry for his deeds in the air as a Spitfire fighter pilot over Normandy. The president of the Republic of France named him a Chevalier dans l’Ordre National du Merite (Knight of the Order of Merit) on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II.
The Normandy town of Brehal awarded him their Medal of Honour and made him an honorary citizen. The Island of Malta awarded him the Malta George Cross (commemorative 50th anniversary medal), and he was mentioned in dispatch. He wears four campaign stars — 1939–1945, Air Crew Europe, France and Germany, and Africa — and bars to two of them. Jerry flew more than 250 aerial combat sorties off Malta and over Normandy.
Billing was barely out of high school when he joined the RCAF in 1940. He had never been in the cockpit of an airplane. All that would soon change. The cocky kid from South Woodslee, Ontario, would soon be flying with George Beurling, “Hap” Kennedy, Stan Turner, Robert Hyndman, “Laddie” Lucas, and Johnny Johnson.
Malta was a key base in the Mediterranean: the Allies held it, Field Marshal Erwin Rommel wanted it, and German and Italian bombers and fighters pounded the island relentlessly on a daily basis. In fact, King George VI awarded the island of Malta a George Cross for its bravery in preventing the fortress from falling into enemy hands.
Life on Malta was a living hell for a fighter pilot. Fighter planes had to be flown in off aircraft carriers. The temperature was unbearable and rations were in short supply. Pilots suffered from “Malta Dog” (dysentery), and sand fleas made life miserable. Staple rations were a couple of slices of bread, hardtack biscuits, and gulls’ eggs.
In 1943, Jerry destroyed a German Ju52 off the coast of Sicily, and much later another “probable” Ju52 kill was confirmed. He shot down a Ju88 over Normandy during the D-Day invasion.
“The Luftwaffe sent 13 Ju88 night fighters from the Bay of Biscay and we got them all but one. I closed in on one and while I was attacking, two crew members bailed out. I saw the Ju88 crash in the Orne River estuary.” Some 35 years later, that Ju88 was found with the pilot still in it. Because of the place, time, two crew bailing out, and the French folk viewing the attack, the kill was confirmed. “Robert Hyndman of Old Chelsea, Quebec, was a Spitfire pilot himself in France and he painted an oil of my attack on the Ju88. It now hangs in the Bayeux Museum.”
Museums in Malta and Bayeux display many pieces of Jerry’s wartime memorabilia — his flight helmet, Mae West life jacket, tunic, boots, ribbons, and pieces of his Spitfires. There are even pieces of Jerry. When the two knees he banged up in his Normandy crash were replaced last year, he preserved pieces of bone in bottles of formaldehyde and sent them off to Bayeux Museum.
Jerry was shot down twice by enemy fighters over the Mediterranean and once by enemy flak over Normandy. He parachuted to the relative safety of a dinghy and was picked up by fast motor rescue launches. Floating under a parachute canopy or floating in a rubber raft were not always guarantees of safety. German and Italian fighters were known to machine gun pilots in the air or in their rafts.
Jerry’s third crash landing was not as soft. His Spitfire was travelling 258 kmph, when he executed a wheels-up landing. Cumberland doctor Hap Kennedy flew overheard in his Spit and gave Jerry landing tips and covering fire. Every Christmas since 1944, Hap has sent Jerry a card inscribed with his last radio transmission: “There’s a good field off to your left wing. It looks long enough (to crash-land in).” A month later, Kennedy was shot down over Normandy, parachuted into occupied territory and, like Jerry, was befriended by a local farmer and the Marquis. He evaded capture for a month before linking up with U.S. forces.
Kennedy was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross and bar. He destroyed 14 enemy aircraft and shared three other kills. His diary of a Spitfire fighter pilot, Black Crosses Off My Wingtip, is a classic chronicle of winged warfare. Hap was also overhead on one of the occasions Jerry had to bail out near Malta.
For a month, Jerry eluded German patrols that were searching for him. He hid in bulrushes and mud pools and ate grass and an occasional stolen cabbage. He brazenly walked past German sentries by playing a drooling village idiot. The Germans picked him up twice and twice he escaped from chicken coop jails. Once, he avoided capture by knifing a German soldier. Finally, he was befriended by an elderly farmer in Brehal, and the entire town of 2,500 sheltered him until he was liberated by U.S. troops weeks later. The underground provided false identity papers. Jerry was able to walk about and even drew rations from the Hun.
Very seldom did Jerry return to base with any unexpended shells in his wing cannons. After one sortie, his “Erk” (rigger/technician) hopped on a wing and asked: “What’d you get, Jerry?”
“One church, one pill box, a train, a couple of Eyeties I know of and I hope that Jesus submarine blew up,” he said. “Make it three Eyeties; I blew one off the sub.”
The submarine attack happened just off Malta.
“I dove and at 300 feet I opened fire. His return fire was early and accurate. I could see tracer bullets coming at me. My bullets hit the sub’s conning tire. I saw one sailor blown off the deck. I banked for another attack. I began firing 600 yards [549 m] out. I saw something explode within the conning tower. Climbing away, I looked back and saw the smoking craft. I headed for home because my fuel supply wasn’t too good.”
When Jerry talks of his daily dance with death, he becomes nostalgic. It was all over “just when I was getting the hang of it.”
When the war ended, Jerry kept on flying. He taught fighter tactics on Sabre jets. He test-flew supersonic jets for two years in England, was a test pilot for DeHavilland in Europe on multi-engine aircraft, and he ferried planes to Vietnam. He has no idea how many hours he has logged in the air: “I’ve gone through four logbooks.” He probably belongs in the Guinness Book of Records for his hours in the cockpit of a Spitfire. He flew a Spit for 52 years, 23 of them as movie actor Cliff Robertson’s personal Spitfire pilot. Robertson bought a war surplus Spitfire for $60,000 and sold it to a Seattle aviation buff for $1.2 million U.S.
Robertson’s plane — a Mark 1X Spitfire (serial number 923) — flew air cover with RAF 126 Squadron over Normandy on D-Day and shot down two ME109s. In 1961, it flew as an “extra” in the movie, The Longest Day while, on the ground, Robertson appeared in a starring role. Cliff Robertson has said that Jerry Billing was “a magnificent pilot, a brave and great patriot, a treasured friend, and one of the last true knights of battle.” Jerry’s romance with Spitfires ended in 1994 when he had two in-flight engine failures.
Jerry and his wife, Karen, and their two grandsons, Kyle and Mitchell, did a two-week tour of Normandy, courtesy of Michael Potter, with whom Jerry had worked in Ottawa. Once in France, Jerry and his family were guests of Brehal and the Bayeux Museum. There were no shortages of red carpets, complimentary hotel suites, limousines, and civic receptions. Normandy’s “Canadian Knight” was home.
Jerry’s wingmen back home in South Woodslee anxiously awaited his return. A gaggle of 30 to 40 Canada geese fly with him when he takes his 65 hp Aeronca up every day.