One Day -- Two Anniversaries
Posted: Mon Dec 26, 2005 9:10 am
Source: Unknown
Krissie Rutherford, Special to the Beaver
May 7, 2005
One day -- two anniversaries
For World War II veteran Roy Brown, May 8 represents the best and worst
days of his life
Krissie Rutherford, Special to the Beaver
May 7, 2005
For Flying Officer Roy Brown, tomorrow brings back a flood of memories. On May 8, 1944, he was parachuting out of a burning Halifax Bomber that had been hit by a German night fighter. His pilot and navigator were killed, and four of his crewmates were taken prisoner. Brown will never forget that day - it was his worst.
Exactly one year later was one of his fondest memories of World War II - the end. The allied forces had won a battle they had fought for almost six years.
Brown, 81, has hazy memories about some parts of his war experience, but he talks about VE day like it was yesterday.
He remembers the party. He remembers going downtown in a fire truck. He even remembers two girls screaming from the second floor of a hotel.
"Remembering VE day is like knowing where you were when Kennedy was shot," he said. "It just stays with you."
The humble veteran seldom speaks of his wartime experience.
"I get too emotional," he said quietly. "I get uncomfortable."
But for the 60th anniversary of VE day, he agreed to open up.
A British Columbia native, Brown applied to the Royal Canadian Air Force at age19. Severe varicose veins in his right leg kept him out of the RCAF at first, but he wouldn't let that stop him. To pay for an operation to have them removed, he dropped out of high school, got a job, and took advantage of his company's medical benefits. In August 1942, he successfully reapplied, and a year later, he graduated as a Sgt. Gunner.
Brown was posted overseas soon after, and in England, he and a crew of six others started training in both Whitley and Halifax Bombers. An extra gun position was added to the Halifax, which meant crews had to fly with an extra gunner.
"I had been asked to fly a couple of times as a spare," Brown said. "I really wanted to do my first trip with my own crew, but when they asked me a third time, I thought I'd better go. I didn't want to get in trouble," he said. He didn't want to be accused of having what the RCAF called, 'a lack of moral fibre.'
Brown's first trip was also his last.
His crew successfully bombed their target in German-occupied Belgium, but on the return trip home they ran into trouble - a German night fighter.
Brown has just one word to describe being shot down -- terrible. Words won't do it justice.
The burning aircraft was plummeting to the ground, and the eight-man crew was struggling to evacuate. Brown saw a few of his crew members as he was parachuting through the air. That was the last time he would see them.
"I found out later two of the crew had been killed," he said. "The pilot and navigator didn't survive. Four of the other crew were taken prisoner. Only I and one other hap managed to evade capture."
Brown landed in a field in Aalbeke, Belgium. He was in a country completely occupied by Germans - and he was by himself. Luckily, though, he hadn't been injured by his fall. He suffered only a cut over his right eye.
"A piece of flesh was hanging down over my eye. I tried to put a stitch in it, but I didn't have enough guts to sew it up," he said.
"When I realized where I was and what had happened, I was anxious. Of course you're scared too."
Brown buried his parachute to hide it, and then walked a few miles before stopping in a farmer's field for the night. The next day, two women working in the field threw him some bread - that's when he knew they weren't going to turn him over to the Germans. He was safe. Sort of.
That night, he heard his national anthem. A man whistling 'O Canada' motioned for Brown to follow him - so he did.
"That man was Jules Werbrouk. I ended up hiding out where he took me, at the farm of Mister and Madam Jerome Holvoet," he said.
When Brown recounts his story, he may forget some details, but more often than not, he knows the names of the Belgian people who helped him. For Brown, those are the real heroes of the war - not him - he won't let you call him a hero.
He volunteered to die in the name of democracy, but call Brown a hero and he'll tell you you're wrong.
That's because he wouldn't have made it out alive had it not been for his 'helpers' - the members of the Belgian Underground who hid him from the German troops, who, by taking him into their homes, risked their own lives by mere association.
"My service wasn't all that great," he said. "I think the real story there is the Belgian people who helped me. By even talking to me, they were subject to being shot."
Brown was given civilian clothing, and his uniform and gun were taken from him - that evidence could prove costly if the Germans came by.
"I was passed from one person to another," he said. "Usually someone was on a bicycle, and I would follow far behind and then they would disappear and another person would pick me up." He went to a few different farmhouses to live with other families willing to put their lives on the line to hide him.
Brown eventually arrived at a village called Templeuve. "It was 54 Rue du Tournai, the home of Mme and Oscar Denille," he said - all from memory. "I arrived at this home due only to the valor and courage of a number of Belgian people. I'll be forever grateful for the sacrifices of these people and I'll never forget their courage."
There, he joined an American airman named Jim Levey, and they hid for three months.
In August, 1944, they moved again.
"We were taken to another house and they told us we were going to go through Switzerland and then back to England," Brown said. "But it was all a farce. We were in German hands."
An infamous traitor named Prosper De Zitter had betrayed them.
"They took us out to a garage and put us in the back of a truck and said we should lie down on the floor until we were moving," he said. "But before the truck moved, they had guns on us and told us they'd shoot if we tried to escape. There were well armed German soldiers surrounding us."
Brown remembers thinking he might die that day.
"It was hour by hour, day by day," he said. "It's scary, but you get into a mindset that what happens, happens."
The truck did leave the garage, but instead of bringing them to safety, it brought them to St. Giles Prison in Brussels. That's where Brown spent his 21st birthday.
"That experience was not very good," he said. "It was terrible."
He was strip searched and thrown into a 10 by 12-foot holding cell with four other men. Their mattresses were thin, flea infested beds of straw, and the bathroom was a pail in the corner. They were given one bowl of soup and a piece of stale, mouldy bread each day.
Several times, Brown was interrogated.
"The officer doing the interrogation would get really angry and threaten me with punishments, including being shot," he said.
But he refused to tell them anything they wanted to hear.
Luckily, Brown only had to spend a month in St. Giles Prison. The Allied armies were on their way through Brussels, so the Germans decided to evacuate the prison in early September, 1944. Brown didn't know it at the time, but the Germans planned on loading them on a train and taking them to Germany - to concentration camps.
Approximately 1,500 prisoners, including airmen, political prisoners and Belgian underground patriots were packed into about 30 train boxcars.
But that train never left the station.
"It wasn't anything we did that stopped that train from leaving," Brown said. "Again, I credit those Belgian people. It was the resisters outside the train who did it. They took important pieces off the engine so it wouldn't start. They did all these henanigans to prevent that train from leaving the station. It shunted in and out of Brussels for 24 hours, but it never did get out."
Had it got away, Brown knows it would have been a very different story. Perhaps one he would never have the chance to tell.
Prisoners waited until dark and then began jumping two, three at a time, and running to freedom. Brown escaped with three other men, including one of his cellmates.
"All I was thinking was 'Let's get the hell out of here!'" he said.
And that's just what they did. By the next morning, they caught up with the allied forces. After five months of hiding, Brown was safe.
That was September, 1944.
They hitched rides on supply army vehicles back to France, and then flew back to England.
Later that month, Brown was repatriated back to Canada - back to B.C.
"As an ex-prisoner of war, an escapee, you can't go back into the same theatre of operation," he said. He took an administration course in Toronto and became commanding Officer of a staging unit, coordinating the skill training of a group of soldiers in Terrace, B.C.
That's where he was on VE day.
In February, 1946, he was discharged.
He and his wife Mary, who is also a war veteran, have been living in Oakville for more than 20 years - and WW II is still very much a part of their lives.
"My dad marches in the Remembrance Day parades in town every year with
tears streaming down his face," said his daughter, Connie Morris. "I'm so proud of him."
Brown is also the secretary of the Royal Air Forces Escaping Society, a group of airmen who escaped or evaded capture, in most cases, because of the assistance of patriots in occupied countries - helpers. Their aim is to remember and assist these helpers, and to maintain those friendships.
In 1993, Mary and Roy visited France to meet his helpers.
"It was just a fantastic trip," he said. "I met the man who used to cut my hair. He knew all the people who were hiding out in the village in Belgium, and he would go around and cut all our hair."
He was just one helper Brown was able to reconnect with.
"The big write-up in the paper over there was that a Canadian airman had come back to visit his hairdresser," he said, smiling. "It was a very emotional trip."
Brown is also in close contact with some of the people he met during the war, like Joe Murphy, one of his cellmates in St. Giles, who visited just last year.
Tomorrow, Brown won't be thinking about how he put his life on the line to fight for his country. He'll be thinking about the helpers. He says he has been living on "borrowed time" for more than 60 years - and he has them to thank.
"My daughter keeps telling me, 'Oh, you're a hero,'" he said. "But that's not so. Those people who helped us were the heroes."
Tomorrow we remember a lot of heroes - heroes like Brown, and heroes like his helpers, whose contributions brought WW II to a victorious end.
Krissie Rutherford, Special to the Beaver
May 7, 2005
One day -- two anniversaries
For World War II veteran Roy Brown, May 8 represents the best and worst
days of his life
Krissie Rutherford, Special to the Beaver
May 7, 2005
For Flying Officer Roy Brown, tomorrow brings back a flood of memories. On May 8, 1944, he was parachuting out of a burning Halifax Bomber that had been hit by a German night fighter. His pilot and navigator were killed, and four of his crewmates were taken prisoner. Brown will never forget that day - it was his worst.
Exactly one year later was one of his fondest memories of World War II - the end. The allied forces had won a battle they had fought for almost six years.
Brown, 81, has hazy memories about some parts of his war experience, but he talks about VE day like it was yesterday.
He remembers the party. He remembers going downtown in a fire truck. He even remembers two girls screaming from the second floor of a hotel.
"Remembering VE day is like knowing where you were when Kennedy was shot," he said. "It just stays with you."
The humble veteran seldom speaks of his wartime experience.
"I get too emotional," he said quietly. "I get uncomfortable."
But for the 60th anniversary of VE day, he agreed to open up.
A British Columbia native, Brown applied to the Royal Canadian Air Force at age19. Severe varicose veins in his right leg kept him out of the RCAF at first, but he wouldn't let that stop him. To pay for an operation to have them removed, he dropped out of high school, got a job, and took advantage of his company's medical benefits. In August 1942, he successfully reapplied, and a year later, he graduated as a Sgt. Gunner.
Brown was posted overseas soon after, and in England, he and a crew of six others started training in both Whitley and Halifax Bombers. An extra gun position was added to the Halifax, which meant crews had to fly with an extra gunner.
"I had been asked to fly a couple of times as a spare," Brown said. "I really wanted to do my first trip with my own crew, but when they asked me a third time, I thought I'd better go. I didn't want to get in trouble," he said. He didn't want to be accused of having what the RCAF called, 'a lack of moral fibre.'
Brown's first trip was also his last.
His crew successfully bombed their target in German-occupied Belgium, but on the return trip home they ran into trouble - a German night fighter.
Brown has just one word to describe being shot down -- terrible. Words won't do it justice.
The burning aircraft was plummeting to the ground, and the eight-man crew was struggling to evacuate. Brown saw a few of his crew members as he was parachuting through the air. That was the last time he would see them.
"I found out later two of the crew had been killed," he said. "The pilot and navigator didn't survive. Four of the other crew were taken prisoner. Only I and one other hap managed to evade capture."
Brown landed in a field in Aalbeke, Belgium. He was in a country completely occupied by Germans - and he was by himself. Luckily, though, he hadn't been injured by his fall. He suffered only a cut over his right eye.
"A piece of flesh was hanging down over my eye. I tried to put a stitch in it, but I didn't have enough guts to sew it up," he said.
"When I realized where I was and what had happened, I was anxious. Of course you're scared too."
Brown buried his parachute to hide it, and then walked a few miles before stopping in a farmer's field for the night. The next day, two women working in the field threw him some bread - that's when he knew they weren't going to turn him over to the Germans. He was safe. Sort of.
That night, he heard his national anthem. A man whistling 'O Canada' motioned for Brown to follow him - so he did.
"That man was Jules Werbrouk. I ended up hiding out where he took me, at the farm of Mister and Madam Jerome Holvoet," he said.
When Brown recounts his story, he may forget some details, but more often than not, he knows the names of the Belgian people who helped him. For Brown, those are the real heroes of the war - not him - he won't let you call him a hero.
He volunteered to die in the name of democracy, but call Brown a hero and he'll tell you you're wrong.
That's because he wouldn't have made it out alive had it not been for his 'helpers' - the members of the Belgian Underground who hid him from the German troops, who, by taking him into their homes, risked their own lives by mere association.
"My service wasn't all that great," he said. "I think the real story there is the Belgian people who helped me. By even talking to me, they were subject to being shot."
Brown was given civilian clothing, and his uniform and gun were taken from him - that evidence could prove costly if the Germans came by.
"I was passed from one person to another," he said. "Usually someone was on a bicycle, and I would follow far behind and then they would disappear and another person would pick me up." He went to a few different farmhouses to live with other families willing to put their lives on the line to hide him.
Brown eventually arrived at a village called Templeuve. "It was 54 Rue du Tournai, the home of Mme and Oscar Denille," he said - all from memory. "I arrived at this home due only to the valor and courage of a number of Belgian people. I'll be forever grateful for the sacrifices of these people and I'll never forget their courage."
There, he joined an American airman named Jim Levey, and they hid for three months.
In August, 1944, they moved again.
"We were taken to another house and they told us we were going to go through Switzerland and then back to England," Brown said. "But it was all a farce. We were in German hands."
An infamous traitor named Prosper De Zitter had betrayed them.
"They took us out to a garage and put us in the back of a truck and said we should lie down on the floor until we were moving," he said. "But before the truck moved, they had guns on us and told us they'd shoot if we tried to escape. There were well armed German soldiers surrounding us."
Brown remembers thinking he might die that day.
"It was hour by hour, day by day," he said. "It's scary, but you get into a mindset that what happens, happens."
The truck did leave the garage, but instead of bringing them to safety, it brought them to St. Giles Prison in Brussels. That's where Brown spent his 21st birthday.
"That experience was not very good," he said. "It was terrible."
He was strip searched and thrown into a 10 by 12-foot holding cell with four other men. Their mattresses were thin, flea infested beds of straw, and the bathroom was a pail in the corner. They were given one bowl of soup and a piece of stale, mouldy bread each day.
Several times, Brown was interrogated.
"The officer doing the interrogation would get really angry and threaten me with punishments, including being shot," he said.
But he refused to tell them anything they wanted to hear.
Luckily, Brown only had to spend a month in St. Giles Prison. The Allied armies were on their way through Brussels, so the Germans decided to evacuate the prison in early September, 1944. Brown didn't know it at the time, but the Germans planned on loading them on a train and taking them to Germany - to concentration camps.
Approximately 1,500 prisoners, including airmen, political prisoners and Belgian underground patriots were packed into about 30 train boxcars.
But that train never left the station.
"It wasn't anything we did that stopped that train from leaving," Brown said. "Again, I credit those Belgian people. It was the resisters outside the train who did it. They took important pieces off the engine so it wouldn't start. They did all these henanigans to prevent that train from leaving the station. It shunted in and out of Brussels for 24 hours, but it never did get out."
Had it got away, Brown knows it would have been a very different story. Perhaps one he would never have the chance to tell.
Prisoners waited until dark and then began jumping two, three at a time, and running to freedom. Brown escaped with three other men, including one of his cellmates.
"All I was thinking was 'Let's get the hell out of here!'" he said.
And that's just what they did. By the next morning, they caught up with the allied forces. After five months of hiding, Brown was safe.
That was September, 1944.
They hitched rides on supply army vehicles back to France, and then flew back to England.
Later that month, Brown was repatriated back to Canada - back to B.C.
"As an ex-prisoner of war, an escapee, you can't go back into the same theatre of operation," he said. He took an administration course in Toronto and became commanding Officer of a staging unit, coordinating the skill training of a group of soldiers in Terrace, B.C.
That's where he was on VE day.
In February, 1946, he was discharged.
He and his wife Mary, who is also a war veteran, have been living in Oakville for more than 20 years - and WW II is still very much a part of their lives.
"My dad marches in the Remembrance Day parades in town every year with
tears streaming down his face," said his daughter, Connie Morris. "I'm so proud of him."
Brown is also the secretary of the Royal Air Forces Escaping Society, a group of airmen who escaped or evaded capture, in most cases, because of the assistance of patriots in occupied countries - helpers. Their aim is to remember and assist these helpers, and to maintain those friendships.
In 1993, Mary and Roy visited France to meet his helpers.
"It was just a fantastic trip," he said. "I met the man who used to cut my hair. He knew all the people who were hiding out in the village in Belgium, and he would go around and cut all our hair."
He was just one helper Brown was able to reconnect with.
"The big write-up in the paper over there was that a Canadian airman had come back to visit his hairdresser," he said, smiling. "It was a very emotional trip."
Brown is also in close contact with some of the people he met during the war, like Joe Murphy, one of his cellmates in St. Giles, who visited just last year.
Tomorrow, Brown won't be thinking about how he put his life on the line to fight for his country. He'll be thinking about the helpers. He says he has been living on "borrowed time" for more than 60 years - and he has them to thank.
"My daughter keeps telling me, 'Oh, you're a hero,'" he said. "But that's not so. Those people who helped us were the heroes."
Tomorrow we remember a lot of heroes - heroes like Brown, and heroes like his helpers, whose contributions brought WW II to a victorious end.