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Dave Smith[_1_]

On 2018-11-12 7:01 AM, wrote:
> On Sun, 11 Nov 2018 18:54:10 -0700, graham > wrote:

>> My paternal grandfather was wounded in the trenches and it must have
>> been serious as he was sent back to Lincolnshire to recover (where he
>> met a nurse who became my grandmother).
>> Which battle? He never spoke of his experiences and even my father had
>> no idea in which battle he had been wounded.
>
> Same thing with my father - I only found out all about his WWII career
> when contacted by an author several years ago and subsequently the
> publishing house. The nice thing about that is that the book
> generated a wonderful web site, still maintained, and added to by many
> who sailed and served together. Without the net that would never
> have happened. I wish he had been alive to see all that.

I knew that my father had been in the air force during the war, but was
under the impression that he had been on ground crew servicing Spitfire
and Hurricane aircraft. Then in 1968, after the 25 year secrecy thing
was up, a fellow from Denmark looked him up and came to interview him
about his war time experience. It turned out that he had re-mustered to
air crew and was in an elite squadron of Pathfinders, the guys who flew
ahead to mark the target. On his 19th operational flight the plane was
hit by flak, forcing them to abort.

On their way back to England they were losing altitude and dropped their
bomb load on an air base that turned out to be Pennemunde. Shortly after
that they were attacked by a night fighter. Dad was the only survivor.
Thanks to their being an extra crew member, a new pilot on an
orientation flight, there were enough bodies that the Germans never
bothered to look for him. He walked across the Danish Island of
Sjaelland to Copenhagen and connected with the Danish Resistance.

The Resistance smuggled him across the Belt to Malmo Sweden where he was
jailed for a few days for illegal entry and then given temporary asylum
and after a couple weeks he caught a flight back to the UK. He was sent
back to Canada for a while. Because of his experience with the
Resistance he was not allowed to fly operations anymore and was later
sent back to Canada for good and spent the last year of the war training
pilots in the B25.