providing funds towards the research of this book.
As I began the search for original sources, several military aviation associations helped me. The executives and membership of the Canadian Harvard Aircraft Association, the Aircrew Association, and the Canadian Aviation Historical Society offered encouragement and lists of contacts to get me started. Along the way, numerous other organizations provided advice, leads, archival material, and support. Groups such as the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum, Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame, the Norwegian Consulate, the Italian Cultural Institute, the Toronto Harbour Commission, the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the National Film Board of Canada, the North Bay Nugget, the Uxbridge-Scott Historical Society, Western Canada Aviation Museum, Aviation World bookstore, and the Royal Canadian Military Institute gave me data on international and national aviation as well as life inside and around BCATP stations.
Several individuals at the Directorate of History, Department of National Defence, provided valuable advice and assistance. My initial contact, Norman Hillmer, provided direction as well as some of his own research, and at the DND itself, Carl Christie and W.A.B. Douglas helped me verify details of the plan.
Early on, as I attempted to tap the memories of a group of veterans— BCATP instructors, who have rarely, if ever, come forward to talk about their wartime experiences—I was allowed to broadcast my appeal for first-hand information on CBC Radio; in particular, I wish to thank Bill McNeil and Bob Burt for providing support and air time.
A number of individuals provided me access to their private files, diaries, log books, letters, films, photographs, and book collections and gave me introductions to instructors not previously quoted in published material on the BCATP. Among them were D’Alt Swift, Gerry Anglin, Bill Coffman, Frank Turner, Jean Bruce, Jeanne Muldoon, Eddy Souris, Don Cooper, and especially Dave MacDonald. My correspondence with Brian Howard, Rob Schweyer, Ken West, John Neal, Shirley Mills, and Iris Barr yielded valuable background stories and yet more contacts. Jack Meadows, John Evans, and Ken Smith allowed me to quote their personal memoirs freely. Babe Woollett travelled halfway around the world to tell me the story of the Air Observer Schools. Joe Clark helped me reconstruct the tale of Captains of the Clouds. Stevie Cameron offered unique material on her father Whitey Dahl. Bert Adkins provided information and leads on Buff Estes. Byron Christopher helped me reach the plan’s only woman instructor. Mary Jane Varo dug up material on eastern Canadian training stations. In particular, because of their long experience with the publication of aviation history, I am grateful to Larry Milberry and Hugh Halliday for their pathfinding work in this field.
Before I could write a single word of the manuscript, I was entirely dependent on a group of eager and dedicated transcribers— Margaret Gammon, Catherine Cripps, Kristine Morris, Jenny Kanis, Marlene Lumley, and Donna Morgan. In an extraordinarily short time, they waded through 150 audio cassettes and provided me with transcripts of more than 200 hours of interviews with former participants in the BCATP.
I was fortunate to meet three knowledgeable BCATP instructors: Charlie Konvalinka, Charley Fox, and John Campsie. Each knew the subject from a different perspective. Each understood the story I wished to tell. And each provided direction, comment, analysis, criticism, and advice on how to tell it best. I owe each of them a debt of gratitude for the hours they spent on the project. As BCATP instructors they helped scores of airmen win their wings, as unofficial editors of my work, they have given this book its wings.
The people at Macmillan Canada involved in this publication gave more than their job descriptions set out. Cover artist Garfield Ingram, designer David Montle, and editorial assistant Nancy Ceneviva all threw themselves whole-heartedly into this book. Above all, my greatest praise goes to editor-in-chief Philippa Campsie. Her initial discovery of the project, her ceaseless encouragement for its author, her critical eye for its detail, and her genuine love of its subject-matter helped advance this work from a six-page outline to a bound and printed book.
Through two and a half years of digging, chasing, organizing, and writing, I relied heavily on the encouragement of many people. Most of the instructors I interviewed or corresponded with endorsed the work right away. Others, who had little working knowledge of the BCATP itself, confirmed my belief that it could be done and befriended the venture from beginning to end. Among the most loyal friends of Behind the Glory are David Ross, Peter Jennings, Bill Edgar, Tom Best, Terry Clifton, Barb Pratt, Rob Mowat, Aaron Milrad, and, right from the beginning, Barry Broadfoot. I include my family— Jayne, Quenby, Whitney, and Kate—among the book’s and my best friends. But I give greatest thanks to my mother, Kay, for her steadfast confidence in me, and to my father, Alex, for the countless hours he spent checking library sources, transcribing interviews, proofreading copy, and believing in this work and its author.
Ted Barris
Uxbridge, 1992
Behind the Glory
IN THE SUMMER OF 1944, the troopship Aquitania completed a transatlantic crossing from Halifax to Scotland. Up the Firth of Clyde at the wartime docks of Gourock, she discharged a precious human cargo—thousands of freshly trained Allied air crew now ready for operational training and ultimately for active combat in the air war against Germany.
Among the thousands of disembarking servicemen was a young RCAF officer named Charlie Konvalinka. Three generations before, his ancestors had left Europe for a new life in America. Until now, he had never paid a return visit. Konvalinka’s first experience of Britain was a train ride in the middle of the night through blacked-out cities and villages. In the morning, he and his fellow air crew members arrived at the seaside resort town of Bournemouth, on the south coast of England.
Bournemouth was full of Canadians. For nearly four years, RCAF airmen like Konvalinka had arrived by the thousands to be billeted at city hotels. Wartime had transformed Bournemouth into No. 3 Personnel Reception Centre, and as such became the temporary quarters for air crewmen from Russia, Australia, New Zealand, France, Poland, South Africa, and the United States, but mostly from Canada.
With each new group of airmen that arrived in Bournemouth, there was processing to be done. Within the first few days of Konvalinka’s arrival, he and several hundred other former flying instructors were assembled for a briefing in one of Bournemouth’s old motion-picture theatres. The newly posted operational pilots were informed it would be a kind of orientation session, at which they would be told what life was like overseas. When all the pilots had taken their seats, out came an RCAF officer—a flight lieutenant, like Konvalinka—to begin the session.
“Well, you instructors are finally out here now,” he began. “Bloody bunch of cowards!”
This wasn’t at all what Konvalinka and his colleagues had expected.
“You guys probably don’t have the guts to do what we do,” the officer went on. “To fly a bomber on a straight and level when everybody’s shooting at you, or take on the enemy in a fighter one-on-one.”
The theatre remained silent. Konvalinka felt his blood boiling.
“If you had any guts at all you’d have been over here fighting. We’re the brave ones. You’re not!”
Konvalinka couldn’t restrain himself for another second. Before he realized what he was doing, he had called out, “And who, for Christ’s sake, taught you to fly? God?”
The presiding officer peered out into the theatre in search of the
