ON ARRIVAL AT NO. 2 REPATRIATION DEPOT, RAF Station Warrington, Lancashire, I was allocated quarters in an officers’ barrack block. There were rows of beds, like in any barrack block, but the beds were better than I had been accustomed to.
The officers’ mess opened my eyes. For the first time, I was entering one as a member. In the dining room, we were treated to white table cloths, elegant dishes, silver tableware, side tables with coffee and other sundries, and were served by airmen stewards. I thought about how these officers had enjoyed these luxuries while I and my squadron sergeant comrades had been living and eating in tents, and sleeping on straw pallets on the ground. I imagined how much better it must be to return to this from an op instead of to my former primitive quarters.
At breakfast, I had just rejected a smoked kipper that lay on the plate, its one eye staring accusingly at me, and eaten some cold toast and resurrected, desiccated eggs when the Tannoy blared out that all officers were to report to the parade square.
On the square, I joined a mixed group of junior officers, sergeants, corporals, and airmen, all under the supervision of an RAF warrant officer (another one of those!). He brought our little parade to attention, and called out in a pompous manner, “Fall out the sick, the halt, and the lame. Move to it smartly now.” After a roll call we were curtly dismissed.
I had not been looking for a hero’s welcome, but this treatment was demeaning; for my remaining days at the depot, I ignored the calls to morning parade.
Our small group put in our time with daily visits to the town of Warrington, to attend afternoon flicks and evening dances at the local “palais.”
On our fourth day we were summoned to buses, which transported our officer group, and another group of NCOs and airmen, to the historic city of Chester. There we were formed up by a squadron leader into flights, and marched for over a mile to a soccer field. At the start of our march, rain had begun to fall, and by the time we were formed up on the soccer field, facing a covered band shell, the cold, light downpour was soaking through our uniforms. We had been told that the commanding officer of our station and the mayor of Chester were involved in some sort of ceremony, and we were there to lend atmosphere to the proceedings. A small air force band was also in attendance.
We stood there, at ease, wet and shivering, for a good half-hour before staff cars arrived bearing our commanding officer, whom none of us had met, and the mayor with his councillors. We were brought to attention, the band played a suitable tune, and the ceremony, shielded from the rain by the band shell roof, began. Our CO, in a long speech, accepted silver candlestick holders from the mayor.
As I peered through the light drizzle towards the bandstand, I recognized the group captain making the speech. It was Denton Massey, who had been the commanding officer of No. 1 Manning Depot, Toronto, when I was sent there on enlistment. He was the officer who had given us a long send-off speech when we left that basic training course for Initial Training School in July 1940, over three years before, and he was still at it.
The next morning, I was called to the CO’s quarters. He greeted me warmly, while I took in the sumptuous furnishings of his suite and the boxes of Laura Secord chocolates sitting on the end tables, all topped by the startling leopard-skin pattern of his dressing gown.
He offered me a chocolate, said he had noticed from the roll-call lists that I was from Toronto, and wondered if I would do him a small favour. His wife did volunteer work at the Red Cross canteen on Adelaide Street, and since I would be going home on leave, he thought I might deliver a package to her. Then he gave me a large, brown envelope and his profuse thanks.
The first week of August our group of repats was transported to the docks of Liverpool to board the imposing liner the Empress of Scotland. This ship had been the Empress of Japan, and had been renamed following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and entry into the now-global war.
Our departure from Liverpool was routine. We were not part of a convoy, nor would we have an escort. The speed of this vessel was considered enough to evade the U-boats.
I was allocated a small, comfortable cabin on the top passenger deck that I was to share with an RCAF squadron leader accounts officer. He was friendly enough, but uncommunicative, so we did little fraternizing. We didn’t even keep company at meal hours in the dining room. Perhaps I was too junior in rank for his company.
On the second day, I began the habit of spending many daytime hours at the stern railing, watching the ship’s frothing wake as it gradually flattened to leave a white streak in the blue sea, which seemed to stretch all the way to the horizon. Suddenly, I was hit with the emotional impact of leaving behind all the bittersweet events that had so filled my days in the past two years. Images of names, faces, and places paraded in front of me across the endless expanse of water. In spite of my many operational hours, I had the feeling that I was deserting the team. At that moment, I was not as happy or satisfied with myself as I ought to have been. I felt a great let-down.
The crossing was uneventful. We had thought that our port of destination was Halifax, so we were surprised when we entered and berthed at the harbour of Norfolk, Virginia.
First down the gangplanks were some hundred German prisoners of war we hadn’t even known were aboard. We watched as they were received on the dock by armed American soldiers, who booted them brutally from table to table as they were documented. The behaviour of the Americans was not that of battle-seasoned troops.
Our transport to a waiting train was swift and memorable. As our train pulled out of the station, a left and a right side window shattered as a bullet passed through the coach, grazing and blooding the cheek of an airman sitting across the aisle from me. The train proceeded; apparently no one else was aware of the incident. We could only guess that an excited guard had fired at or over the head of an unruly German.
Our three-day rail journey ended at the central station in Ottawa, where our group of about thirty aircrew officers boarded a bus for the reception unit at RCAF Station Rockcliffe on the outskirts of the capital. There, our documents were examined and I was surprised to be sent directly to the Ottawa Civic Hospital for a two-week stay, during which I was given several tests for intestinal parasites, stomach ulcers, and spinal meningitis, and X-rays of my knees. My medical documents must have alarmed somebody.
When I was given a reasonably clear bill of health, I made my way to the home of Bill Dixon’s parents in Ottawa. They knew of me from Bill, who had been home on his leaves from instructing duties at No. 34 OTU, Pennfield Ridge, New Brunswick.
I was greeted warmly by Mr. and Mrs. Dixon, but Mr. Dixon was shocked to hear that I had not told my parents that I had arrived home. For some strange reason, I didn’t know how to greet them after my long absence, and had been procrastinating. Bill’s father solved my dilemma by immediately calling my parents in Toronto. My father answered the phone, and his cry of surprise and joy brought my mother running from the kitchen to grab the phone from father. It was an emotional moment.
I was soon given three weeks “disembarkation leave” and headed for home. When the taxi approached the house, I needed a few moments to compose myself, and asked the driver to circle the block slowly.
The family had been watching from the front door all morning, and when my taxi door opened, father fairly flew down the walk to grasp me with both arms. Mother and sister Marjorie followed, and I was smothered in embraces. Everyone’s face was streaked with tears. I was home; I had survived. As father confided to me, mother’s years of fitful nights and nightmares were over. My family was relieved that my legs were intact — when the message arrived that I had been wounded, they feared that I had lost a leg.
At this stage of the war, campaign medals and ribbons had not been issued, so there was nothing on my uniform to indicate that I was anything but a new graduate of aircrew training about to go overseas. I remember well the Toronto barber who said to me, “Well, you’re all dolled up and ready to go overseas, eh?” This disturbed me; I looked into the barber’s mirror. Surely, I thought, my face reflected some of the trials and tribulations I had undergone. Apparently not!
As promised, I delivered the package Group Captain Massey had entrusted to me. Mrs. Massey was effusive in her thanks. I didn’t reveal that, while aboard ship, I had not resisted the temptation to peek at the contents of the large envelope. Inside was a brief covering note, and twenty or thirty large, professional-quality photographs, each one showing the group captain as the principal at ceremonies and parades (including the presentation of the candlestick holders).
My leave over, it was several weeks before I was posted to instruct at the RCAF wireless training base at Burtch, south of Brantford, Ontario. It was a short stay, as I was transferred to No. 6 Bombing and Gunnery School at Mountain View, on the near-island south of Belleville, Ontario.
After a brief introduction to administrative duties, I was appointed station signals officer, my main task to improve the state of communications between ground and air for flying exercises.
On my first pay day on that station one of my earlier follies caught up with me. I was shocked to find my pay $80.00 short. I had to reimburse the British Army Service Corps for the desert kit that I had failed to turn in on leaving Great Britain. I couldn’t, of course — it was at the bottom of the Red Sea!
I was one of the few officers on the station with overseas operational experience, but this was not something that we discussed. It therefore came as a surprise to the station personnel, as it was to me, when I was called to the front of the morning’s parade by the commanding officer, Group Captain R.F. Gibb, nicknamed “Smiler” because of an old football injury that had paralyzed his face muscles.
As I stood at attention in front of him, the CO read from a document he held:
This is to certify that, on the authority of the chief of the Air Staff, Flying Officer Thomas William Howard Hewer has been awarded the Operational Wings of the Royal Canadian Air Force in recognition of gallant service, in that he has completed a tour of operational duty in action against the enemy.
— Signed this 12th day of September, 1944
E. MacKell, Air Commodore
After the CO handed me the award and shook my hand, I saluted and returned to my place in formation. This award entitled me to wear the gold, winged “O” badge of the operationally experienced on the left breast pocket of my uniform. Thereafter, I became something of a celebrity, and was embarrassed by the exaggerated respect I received from some of the other ranks and from fellow officers in the mess. Soon afterwards, campaign medals were awarded, and the ribbons on our uniforms clearly labelled those who had served overseas.
One incident that summer defined the rest of my life. An officer friend invited me on a Sunday picnic that his girlfriend had organized with another couple and a young woman who was to be my blind date. I had nothing better to do, so I accepted.
When I was introduced to my date, I looked at this beautiful young woman and was instantly overcome with feelings I had never experienced before. It was love at first sight! Luckily, Doris Pigden of Madoc, just north of Belleville, was soon similarly smitten, and we were married on 4 January 1945, having waited impatiently until then to satisfy the propriety of both families. Doris located a small flat for rent in Belleville, and we happily set up our first housekeeping nest.
In February 1945, I was posted to No. 1 Air Command Headquarters, at RCAF Station Trenton, just eight miles west of Belleville. Predated only by the airfield at Camp Borden, Ontario, Trenton became known as the home of the RCAF. I was soon immersed in personnel work related to postings and the release from the service of aircrew returning from overseas. I was also appointed to staff and liaison duties with the growing number of air cadet squadrons in Ontario and Quebec. This was a valuable introduction to air force staff work, which was to stand me in good stead when being considered later for retention in the post-war regular air force.
By March, dramatic events signalled the end of the war in Europe. The great airborne crossing of the Rhine at Wesel was successfully completed, RCAF bombers and fighters sharing in the assaults that prepared the way for the operation; in the last heavy bomber attack carried out by the RCAF’s No. 6 Group, 192 Lancasters and Halifaxes dropped over 902 tons of bombs on coastal defences; on 4 May, the German forces opposing Field Marshal Montgomery’s 21st Army Group surrendered at Luneburg Heath; on 7 May, all German land, air, and sea forces surrendered unconditionally, the cease-fire to be effective at 2300 hours on 8 May; the final instrument of surrender was signed at Berlin late on V-E Day.
Everyone at Trenton joined the rest of Canada, and most of the world, in the celebrations of V-E Day, on 8 May.
Canada, like all the Allied nations, paid a heavy price for victory. Of the million who served, 40,042 died, and 54,414 were wounded. Air force casualties were disproportionately high. From 10 September 1939 to the end of hostilities in 1945, RCAF aircrew fatalities totalled 16,953, more than half of them in the Allied Bomber Offensive, in which 44,573 British and Commonwealth airmen lost their lives.
Although the European war was over, the war with Japan in the Pacific was not. Plans were made to form a “Tiger Force” of eight RCAF heavy bomber squadrons for participation in the Pacific campaign. Accordingly, eight Canadian squadrons flew home across the Atlantic with 165 Canadian-built Lancaster X bombers.
For Tiger Force recruitment, the Air Force issued a memorandum calling upon trained aircrew to volunteer for the Pacific campaign. For those of us who had recently returned from a long period of operations in Europe, this request posed a dilemma. We knew there were enough trained aircrew in Canada who had not seen operational service to satisfy the demand, and most of us thought that they ought to be the ones to volunteer.
In my own case, when the issue arose I felt that I had to make some kind of statement to clear the air. My immediate superior was Group Captain Walter Kennedy, the senior personnel staff officer, and I made my case to him, pointing out that I was recently married, that I had served two-and-a-half years overseas, one year of which was on Bomber Command squadrons, and I would find it hard to tell my wife that I was now volunteering to take off for the Pacific war. Not, I added, that I would refuse the duty if ordered. At the same time, I felt it was someone else’s turn.
The group captain agreed, and explained that the request was directed more to the trained but untried aircrew in Canada than to the veterans.
The war in the Pacific ended before the squadrons could be re-equipped with new Lincoln bombers, as had been intended. All eight squadrons were disbanded in September.
On 14 August, Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration of 26 July, agreeing to unconditional surrender. On 2 September, V-J Day, Japan officially signed the terms of surrender.
I had been promoted to flight lieutenant, and it was in this rank that I celebrated the end of hostilities.