Veteran Stories

There’s a reason why it’s called The Greatest Generation – and former RCAF photographer Yvonne Valleau Wildman of Kindersley, Saskatchewan is a shining example.

Fred Sutherland of Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, is now Canada’s last surviving Dambuster — one of only two left in the world. He’s also a member of my extended family, because he was married to my mother’s cousin Margaret.

Eugenie Francoeur Turner served at a bomber station in Yorkshire, where she witnessed horrific crashes, dodged bombs, and worked around the clock on D-Day. It was the most exciting time of her life.

My admiration is boundless when it comes to the Canadian wartime nurses who bravely carried out their grim duties — so it was an honour to interview Jessie Middleton of Abbotsford, British Columbia. I was especially keen to meet Jessie because my column has not paid enough attention to wartime nurses — our Canadian women […]

Jack Dye, a brave young bomb aimer from Regina, Saskatchewan, saved everyone on his Halifax bomber but lost his own life.

Author and journalist Tony Cashman is famous for his lifelong contribution to the history of Edmonton, Alberta — but less known for the significant role he played in World War Two, completing a full tour of thirty operations as the navigator in a Halifax bomber. Tony Cashman passed away on June 3, 2024 at the […]

Hank Herzberg of Chicago learned what had happened to his boyhood friend from Hanover, Germany, by reading my post called The German Jew Who Bombed Berlin. And his own story as a Ritchie Boy is also extraordinary!

Thanks to a body part donation from another Lancaster called Lady Orchid, one Canadian Lancaster bomber is still flying. And the man indirectly responsible was Lady Orchid’s pilot, Ron Jenkins. His daughter Deb explains the fascinating chain of events.

I had two personal reasons for visiting the museum at Peenemünde in Germany, where the Nazis invented their deadly V-weapons: because it plays a role in my wartime novel about aerial photo interpretation, and because my father-in-law Kurt Drews worked here during the war.

Danesfield House is now a luxury hotel, but during the war it was requisitioned by the Royal Air Force, renamed RAF Medmenham, and served as the headquarters for aerial photographic interpretation. It has personal meaning for me, too. I visited this lovely place in 2022, when I was invited to be the guest speaker at a […]