Of all the connections made through Wartime Wednesdays, this is the most wonderful. Hank Herzberg of Chicago, aged 95, learned at last 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 is also extraordinary! First, the Georg Hein Story The […]
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© Elinor Florence 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. The Canadian Lancaster FM-213 is known as the Mynarski Lancaster, named after a brave […]
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I had two personal reasons for visiting the museum at Peenemünde in Germany, where the Nazis invented their deadly V-weapons during the war: the first because it plays a role in my novel about aerial photo interpretation, and the second because my father-in-law Kurt Drews worked here during the war. (My wartime novel Bird’s EyeView is fact-based fiction, the story of […]
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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. My wartime novel Bird’s Eye View is fact-based fiction, the story of a Canadian woman who works at RAF Medmenham as a photo […]
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My friend Russ Jeffs was a Royal Air Force veteran who rose to the rank of RAF Wingco, or Wing Commander, before leaving England in the 1950s and moving to Canada. He was an inveterate story-teller with an endless stream of anecdotes about his days in the air force. After Russ moved to Canada, he spent the next […]
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Bomber crews who flew toward the end of the war, when there were fewer German fighters in the air, were sometimes considered to have an easier ride. But not always, as told in this hair-raising excerpt from Leo Richer’s memoirs called I Flew the Lancaster Bomber. Before his death I was fortunate enough to interview this very […]
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Lou Marr called herself “the original turnip who fell off the back of the truck” when she joined the Royal Canadian Air Force Women’s Division and became a photographer. The job demanded hard work, but it also allowed her to fly right along with the men in training. For this farm girl, it was the thrill […]
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August 19, 2014 marked the 72nd anniversary of the Raid on Dieppe, a bloody fiasco in which thousands of Canadians were killed, wounded or captured. Journalist and historian Rob Alexander of Calgary, Alberta joins Wartime Wednesdays today with this gripping description of his grandfather’s experience on that terrible occasion, based on journals and letters. Pictured […]
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Canada’s greatest living fighter pilot, Stocky Edwards, is a legend in aviation circles. But when I visited him and his wife Toni at their home in Comox, British Columbia, this humble gentleman still attributed much of his success to simple luck, and prayer. Stocky Edwards passed away on May 14, 2022 at the age of 100. […]
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This band of EIGHT Ballendine brothers served in the Canadian Army during World War Two, following the path laid down by their father John Ballendine and his brother James, both crack snipers in the Great War. Pictured here are James on the left and his younger brother John on the right. They are wearing pre-war […]
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