On Tuesday, November 12, 2013 Pilot Mound's Sentinel Courier published an article entitled “In Response to his Great-Grandson.” It was written by Dad’s oldest pal, Clare Geddes, in response to his 9-year-old great-grandson’s questions about Clare’s service in World War II. Here is the article, in full:
Clare Geddes receives a letter from his 9-year-old great-grandson asking questions about the war
Dear Great-Grandpa,
I have some questions for you about your time in the war.
1. Wich [sic] world war were you in?
2. Could you maybe write a little story about your time in the war?
3. How long were you in the war?
4. Where did you go during the war?
5. What was it like in war?
Sincerely, Kaden
[age 9, son of Sohmer Solomon, daughter of Earl Geddes]
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| L-R: RCAF veterans Clare Geddes, T.S. Taylor, and Murray Fraser, April 2010. |
Kaden,
To start, I joined up with Tom Taylor, who was working at Canada Packers for 28¢ an hour. I was in a grocery and dry goods store getting $10 a week.
We went to Manning Depot in Toronto. It used to be the fairgrounds but the call to arms took over. A manning depot is a place where servicemen are held until they have a location to be sent to.
Finally, we got a posting to Quebec City. We were put on a train and no one was told where we were going. Can you imagine 500 young men getting off at the station and being willing to line up and march to a new manning depot?
We were so terrible that we were to be held with no leave and no privileges. They took us on parade the next day and we performed so well we were forgiven.
From there, after four weeks, we were sent to Sherbrooke, Quebec for I.T.S. (Initial Training School). We all did well on the course and were lined up at attention and the adjutant – an Englishman with a big moustache – said, “You all done well, but we have plenty of recruits now for pilots. Take one step forward to be a navigator.”
I said to the fellow next to me, “I guess we volunteered, shall we oblige?”
We did one step and it changed my life. I might have ended up being one of the thousands of pilots and navigators who never came home.
They had no school open for navigators so we got 6 weeks leave.
Then I was posted to No. 2 OTS [Officer Training School] at Portage la Prairie, Manitoba. We did some flying, but when it came to book work and learning to navigate, I hadn’t taken trigonometry. (I looked it up in the dictionary. It’s about triangles and all that to find your way home from a bombing raid.)
I was washed out – not fit as air crew – so I was sent to Trenton, Ontario to wait for a posting to remuster [get reassigned] to a trade.
In 1938-39 I’d been to my mother’s sister’s home in Kindersley, Saskatchewan to go to a commercial school where we took typing, shorthand and administration. So when I was up to remuster, I took clerk administration – no more air crew.
I was posted with a bunch of army and airmen overseas. We went on the Ile de France – a huge French ship, administered by the British government.
The nasty part was that the meat was horse meat. It wasn’t good, but it filled you up. I just stayed in my bunk in case I got seasick. Seven days and we were in dock at Greenock, Scotland, then on to a train for Gloucester, England, a sea port. It had been a resort area with lots of hotels, made up for servicemen with lots of beds.
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| Clare always had a ready smile. |
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| Clare seemed to lean to his right in his photos. |
We were held there until a posting came in and I was sent to 408 Squadron near York in Yorkshire, where all the squadrons were for #6 group.
We were all issued bikes and we used to bike to a place near York where they had dances. We’d travelled in the dark – no lights for bombers to see. When I was back to York after the war, I saw that the trip was about 12 miles.
From 408 I was posted to 432 Squadron, still in Yorkshire. That’s where all the bomber squadrons were.
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| Murray and Clare were both posted to #6 Group bomber command squadrons in Yorkshire (Dad to 426, Clare to 408, 432, and 415). |
From there I was posted to 415 Squadron, which was booking in a new bunch of pilots and crew that had been flying coastal patrol with flying boats (sea planes). I was booking them in and met a young man from near home. He went out on the first raid and never came back.
Our squadron took part in the 1000 bomber raid [on Cologne, 30/31 May 1942] and a lot of them mustered (gathered) over our station. Can you imagine thousands of bombers gathering to take part in the raid? We lost 60 planes that night, with seven crew members in each plane.
Lancasters were new, and only 73 of them were part of the 1000-bomber raid in 1942. 755 bombers were twin-engine types, including Hampdens, Wellingtons, and Manchesters.
Not many months after that I was given the job of writing home to Canada to tell the mothers and dads the last we’d heard of their sons’ planes: if it crashed; if the crew had escaped or it might have burnt. Anyway we didn’t know if he was hurt, taken prisoner, or had headed off on his own, hoping to meet up with the French underground and get back to Britain. It wasn’t a pleasant job, but it had to be done. The Commanding Officer would add a line at the last and sign it.
I’ll call that enough Kaden. Hope you can read it.
Love,
Great-Grandpa Geddes
P.S. I’ll show you and your mom my photographs
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| Clare holding his Brownie camera. |
The following photos were taken by Clare when the King and Queen came to visit his squadron:
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| A young Princess Elizabeth accompanied her parents. |
Busy with administrative duties, Clare did not get released until 1946. He invited his friend Murray Fraser (who had arrived home in January of that year), to do some travelling before settling back in Pilot Mound:
Letter from Cpl. Geddes
