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Dave Smith[_1_]

On 2014-07-25 20:48, wrote:

> I don't think ANYBODY's dad spoke about anything to do with WW II. My
> uncle had what we now know as PTSD. My dad just talked about how
> nice the locals were; how grateful, and how he liked their food. It
> took my wife's uncle 60 years to talk about Iwo Jima, where he had
> been in the weapons company of the 28th Regiment. The 28th's Easy
> Company supplied the men that raised the flag above Mt. Suribachi.
>

All my friends had all sorts of grandiose stories about what their
fathers had done during the war. All my father did was work on ground
crew, servicing Spitfire and Hurricane fighters, and that he spent the
last year of the war in British Columbia. At least, that is all he had
told us.

It was not until I was almost 18 that I learned that there was much
more to that. A guy from Denmark contacted him wanting to interview him
about his war time experience. It turned out that he had been a flight
engineer (co pilot) in a bomber and on his 19th operational flight the
plane was shot down over Denmark. He was the sole survivor of the crash
and is documented as being the first Allied airman to escape from
occupied Denmark.
The reason he was in BC was that that after having been in contact
with the Danish Resistance, he was not allowed to fly over Europe again.
He was sent out there as a flight instructor.