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2 Friday, November 5, 2021 brooklintowncrier.com "Proud to be a Brooklinite" Founded in 2000 and published 24 times per year. Editor, Richard Bercuson 613-769-8629 • editorofbtc@gmail.com The Brooklin Town Crier is locally owned and operated and is a publication of Appletree Graphic Design Inc. We accept advertising in good faith but do not endorse advertisers nor advertisements. All editorial submissions are subject to editing. For advertising information, contact: 905.706.0482 Email: mulcahy42@rogers.com Next Issue: Friday, November 19, 2021 Deadline: Friday, November 12 2021 During COVID-19 dates are subject to change. It's early September. You've been obtaining your welding license after high school, which wasn't an entirely successful experience, except for math. There are no prospects for much adventure, so your future seems humdrum. However, a war has broken out across the ocean and your buddies boast about joining up. None has ever left the city, let alone the country. A short war, you hear, seems like an exciting way to visit faraway lands. You enlist in the army though your heart is, inexplicably, with the air force. However the army, the Royal Montreal Regiment, does a lot of marching and fixing bayonets on its Westmount parade grounds. Time to investigate the air force's downtown enlistment office. You've tried to enlist and they tell you time and again your blood pressure is too low to fly. Finally, on a warm day, you run around the block a few times then go back in, sweaty and panting. This time your blood pressure has risen enough for you to be accepted. With little drilling and no need for bayonets, the air force trains you to become a WAG, a wireless air gunner, and you develop an expertise in Morse code. But first they assign you a special job. You're in a unit tasked with flying planes to Britain for use in its defense against the Germans. In Ferry Command, you pick up planes at Montreal's Dorval field. They're manufactured in the U.S. and either flown or driven across the border in pieces on trucks since the Americans are not yet in the fight. You fly the planes to Gander and from there to England. It's a long cold trip. Once, you needed to switch gas tanks over the North Atlantic. You clambered back in the fuselage and strained to turn the crank till suddenly the pilot yelled that you were turning it the wrong way, that they'll soon be empty. On one landing, soldiers greet the plane, cheering and running to the aircraft. Appreciating the reception, you quickly learn their cheers are for the crates of Cokes and sandwiches you're bringing. You're then stationed in Doncaster, England, and fly Halifax bombers over Europe. A crash landing on a British beach ends your active service. Four crew members are killed and you spend months in hospital recuperating. Decades after the war, having never really talked about what went on, you secretly meet with other Air Force vets to reminisce. Upon your return, your mother had thrown out your service uniform, but you rescued the flight helmet, boots, and bag. Years later, one son unearths the trove in a closet and wears the flight boots to school in winter, his books in the flight bag. Your other son dons the flight helmet on Halloween. But every November 11, you sit silently in front of the TV, watching the ceremony from the National War Memorial in Ottawa, eyes red and welling up, remembering. Remembering... Less than half the picture by Richard Bercuson