Legacy Series Episode 4 - Comrades in Arms

0:13

To be working in a field where I could contribute to the war effort—I really felt happy.

0:27

Sending Morse Code was interesting.

0:31

The shift work was a pain, but helping the war effort, that was important to me.

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I worked at a factory in Amherst, and they built the Avro Anson;

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but I ended up in the office, filing stuff.

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The welding part was downstairs on the floor; we could see them.

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And I discovered they were making more money on the floor watching

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and, being nosey, I was all this.

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And I said, “Well it didn’t look hard,” and “What do we do?”

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And we had to take a course in welding.

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And I remember the first night I took it: the guy that was teaching me laid a hot pipe

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down in front of me.

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And I picked it up to put the lugs on, or whatever you call those little things (laughs),

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and I burned my hand and they took me in to the doctor.

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And because my then-fiancé who became my husband,

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he was standing there smiling,

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I think they were trying to make me say something—ouch, or something.

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And I was bound I wasn’t going to show, because if you’re going to work downstairs

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with the guys, you better be brave, you know.

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I think they were just testing my mettle, you know: kind of see how much I could take.

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It might have had to do with what we had to do as women; I don’t know.

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When we took the course, we’d just put our initial, first initial,

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so they wouldn’t know whether we were women or men;

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and they tested us that way, too.

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And they discovered that all the women were passing it more than the men.

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And the explanation they gave, it was something to do with we were used to sewing, and when

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you’re making the weld, we would make it very even,

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where the men would make it bumpy, sort of.

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The men were making sixty cents an hour,

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and the women were only making forty cents an hour.

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And of course they had a union; but of course we weren’t allowed to join it.

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But it never affected our feelings.

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Like, we didn't hate the men.

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We’d just put up with it; it was just part of the world in those days.

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Oh, I suppose some of the boys teased us a lot, maybe,

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we had to wear a white coverall.

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And we hated it.

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I don’t know what you’d call them now: the whole one-piece that workers wear.

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They would always say “Oh you have pink pants on today.”

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Because they would see it through the slit where the pocket was.

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But you just stood up to them, and think of something to do.

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I wouldn’t give him the torch when he wanted it, or something.

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You know, you’d just play little tricks on them.

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I wouldn’t give him the torch when he wanted it, or something.

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You know, you’d just play little tricks on them.

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When I worked at the factory or the bank, the sense of patriotism with me was there,

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because my brother was a mid-upper gunner in a plane.

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And we were very proud of what we were doing—anyone that I knew was.

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I wasn’t terribly concerned about the plane I was working on: what it would do in the

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war, how it would help us.

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I just knew we had to make a lot of them—and make them fast, because the Germans were getting

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stronger and stronger in that sense.

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It was the only thing we’d ever talk about.

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We just felt we had to do everything we could to help the war effort.

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How many of these trainers were built in Canada?

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Not sure.

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But plenty.

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And many other types of aircraft too…This damn war.

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Got things all twisted inside out.

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At home, even women are working in factories to keep us supplied with aircraft.

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Makes you feel that we’re not fighting hard enough to end this mess sooner.

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Women shouldn’t have to work.

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It’s not right.

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That quite a sexist comment.

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It's a what comment?

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Let me put it another way.

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You don’t think a woman can do a man’s job?

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Sure.

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Sure they can.

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They’re proving themselves over here and at home, aren’t they?

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But because us men are over here fighting,

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the gals back home have an opportunity to work.

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You tell me Andy, what’s goin’ happen when all the fighting is over and all of us men

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go home looking for work?

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You think all those women working now, are going to want to give that up?

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You might be in for a surprise how it all turns out.

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Oh yeah?

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Morse Code is a bunch of dots and dashes.

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We were taught first the dots: you called them “dit.”

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And the dashes you’d call “dah.”

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When they told me I was going to go to Gander, I was very excited.

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Two reasons: one, I‘d get to use the Code I knew

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and secondly, I would fly to another country,

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because Newfoundland was not part of Canada then.

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And that was exciting.

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My job in Gander— I was one of, oh,

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twenty, I guess, radio operators,

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sending and receiving messages.

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These messages were on little squares of paper.

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And they were encoded: five capital letters, a space, five capital letters, a space,

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five capital letters—all mixed-up capital letters.

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When they gave me a message to send, I would see these five letters, and I would use the

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bug and send in dots and dashes.

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Say, Q: dash-dash-dot-dash—so, dah-dah-dit-dah!

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Sending or receiving messages, we were concerned about what they contained,

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and some people said, “Weather reports,”

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Well, I imagine they’d sent more than that.

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I suspect that the RAF would rather have their messages that the receiver would understand,

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and hopefully that the enemy would not.

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I guess the most stressful part of the job was

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well, trying to be civil all the time.

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Because you’re fighting being tired, for one thing.

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You’re meeting in difficult situations, and when people are talking about their homes

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and their families and they’re lonely, trying to give sympathy,

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you just wish you could help a little more.

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I think I’m the kind of person that a lot of people confide in.

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I don’t know what it is about me that makes me friendly and willing to listen—

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being a woman, possibly it would, it would help.

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Dames.

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You can tell them anything.

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Always lending an ear when things get a little too tough over here.

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There’s just something about them that makes you just naturally want to open up to them.

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You know what I’m saying?

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I guess it’s the “mom” thing, right?

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They’re always there for you?

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Yeah…Don’t we sound like a couple of pathetic sods?

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Whatever that means…Anyway, here’s something else for you to chew on, many believe that

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there would be a lot less wars if women ran the world.

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Hmm…

12:08

I was in the WAAF, the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force,

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which was a branch of the RAF.

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And I was stationed at Beacon Hill in Kent, and I worked in the Ops Room.

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Beacon Hill was Fighter Command, which took in most of the southeast quarter of Britain.

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So it was a very busy sector, because, mostly, we were very close to France, and the Germans used

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to quite often make quick flights across to Britain.

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My job as a plotter: I would use a long rod with a magnet on the end.

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We used metallic arrows, which were coloured.

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That arrow would indicate the direction of the plane.

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And you just leaned over, and put it wherever the radar operator was telling you,

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from a radar station on the coast.

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They would tell us if it was a friendly or a foe, and we would also get the information

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how high it was and the number, because quite often it would be ten-plus, twenty-plus.

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We were pushing the arrow in the direction of the flight

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of the plane—or planes, it could be.

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It was very important that you put your plot in the right place, because so many people

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were relying on that: particularly the officers who were in contact with the aerodrome,

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and the fighter pilots who were eventually going to intercept the German planes.

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If the plot wasn’t in the right place, then the planes that would be sent to intercept

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would be going to the wrong place.

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Well, at first, I was a little nervous, and wanted to make sure I was going to do it right.

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Because sometimes those plots were coming across in your ears;

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you were hearing them very fast.

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Because it wasn’t just one German plane coming over:

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quite often, you’d get two or three groups of them.

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While I was plotting the German planes coming in,

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I think you’d get a mixed feeling, you know.

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You just hope that they get brought down, and that they don’t do that much damage.

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Yeah, well I felt good, because I thought was helping the war, you know.

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And the other thing was I’d had a kind of lonely life, because my parents had separated

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when I was young, and I was brought up by my grandmother and my father.

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So, going into the Air Force was kind of fun for me.

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And when I was in the WAAFs, I made a lot of good friends.

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And if you’d ever look in our wedding picture, they’re all in our wedding picture.

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I often wonder where they all are, those girls I was with.

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They were a nice bunch.

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Wow.

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I never realized that being a plotter had such life and death consequences attached to it.

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Sometimes it’s the little things, like pushing small wooden figures across a

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huge map of Europe that can have the greatest impact on a sortie Andy.

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Everything is connected some way or another.

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When I worked at the factory, there were posters

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on the walls.

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And it would be a picture of someone holding their finger to their mouth and going “Sssh,”

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because you were not supposed to discuss even, I presume, anything that was going on in the factory.

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That’s how I took it.

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And we were checked at night when we left.

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And when we came in with a parcel, we had to let them inspect it—the secrecy.

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And I was used to that because, writing to John, the letters were all blacked out wherever

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they didn’t want us to say things.

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But it never bothered us, because we knew a lot of people’s lives depended on this.

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When I was in Gander, we were not allowed on the airfield until after the war.

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We were to go straight to the hangar or the cafeteria because of the war.

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They kept the airfield quite secret.

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I would say finally that whatever we did on base, we never broadcast it, and we kept it to ourselves.

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Because we were still at war,

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so you had to be careful what you said and did.

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It must have been tough for those involved in the war to not talk about it.

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To keep it all to themselves.

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Loose lips sink ships.

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There are a lot of spies out there, on both sides, just waiting to soak up a juicy secret

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from a leaky faucet.

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How was that prevented from happening?

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By keeping information at a need to know basis.

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By limiting the fraternization between various military and civilian organizations.

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But sometimes…sometimes each side would leak misinformation to confuse one another.

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Really.

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So things haven’t changed that much.

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My job as an arms tech was to make sure the

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machine guns were working properly.

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We had to remove them from the wings, carry them to our tent, repair whatever was wrong,

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and then put them back on the planes.

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Our repair tent was right there on the airfield.

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On each wing there was two 303s and one 0.5 gun.

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When you’re working with live ammunition, it’s dangerous all the time.

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You need to take precautions all the time.

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Dismantling, cleaning, reloading, and replacing the guns—

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you couldn’t drag your feet about it.

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You had to do the work as quick as possible, because you never knew when the order would

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come down for the plane to take off.

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When the job was done on a plane, you had to sign a ticket.

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It was serious work, and it didn’t matter which plane you worked on—

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loading bombs onto Lancasters, or whatever—you had to sign your name on the ticket

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when the work was done.

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If someone’s signature was on a gun that had not been functional, well, that person

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would have been called up to the CO’s office and questioned as to what had happened.

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And, depending on what he said or the reasons why the work hadn’t been done properly,

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he might face a court martial.

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It’s not just that person, it’s the pilot’s life, too.

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If the gun jams and the pilot can’t fire the gun, what can he do?

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His life’s on the line.

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The pilots and officers would always show us respect.

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Because when they’d take that plane up, they knew we had done our job right.

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The pilots wouldn’t mix too much with the others.

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It isn’t that they were in a higher class than the rest of us—not at all.

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We were all there for the same reason: to defend the country we were in.

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Bottom line, we were defending our own country, too.

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Were your bombs and munitions ever improperly loaded onto your Lanc Johnny?

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Sure. It happens.

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Reports are filed and you hope it doesn’t happen again.

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Having everything documented keeps everyone on their toes.

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Things can go sideways real fast, if it isn’t.

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Did you ever pull aside your ground crew and chew them out?

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No.

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No. I wouldn't do that.

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Why?

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Why?

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Because it’s like I said, it’s all documented…And the bottom line is we all respect one another

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and the tough jobs we all have to do.

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We might keep to ourselves on the ground, as aircrews and ground crews usually don’t mix,

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but in the air, the sortie’s success relies on teamwork.

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Before takeoff, we’d be loaded up with our bombs

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That one time, we had six tons of bombs, and about 2,000 gallons of gasoline on board.

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Loaded full-up.

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We took off.

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At about 100 or 200 feet from the ground, all of a sudden, our right wing dips like that.

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We lost our right engine.

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Normally that would be a death sentence, but our pilot was such an exceptional pilot that

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he managed to maintain control of the plane.

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At about a thousand feet up, he said: “Guys, we have a choice.

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Either we circle the base for five or six hours in order to burn enough fuel to land

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safely with our bombs, or, we fly a hundred miles off the coast, drop our bombs in the

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sea, and make our way home with the fuel.

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What do you say?”

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Dropping our bombs in the sea was quicker, so we said let’s do that.

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So we started a slow climb.

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At about 12,000 feet, we were about a hundred miles from the coast.

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Everything was under control, our main prop was stopped.

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The pilot said: “Things are looking good from where I sit.

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What do you say we go on?”

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We all said: “Let’s do it!”

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So we flew on to our target.

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Our speed was reduced, so when we got to the target, everyone had already left.

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We were all alone above Germany, which was a good thing, because the bomb aimer had perfect

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sighting, right on top of the target.

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So he drops the bombs.

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We take a nice picture.

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And we turn back home, all proud of ourselves.

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Not much later, our mid-top gunner says: “Skipper, six enemy fighter planes coming our way.”

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Not a good position to be in.

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Skipper says, “Take it easy, guys, specially you gunners.

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Don’t shoot first.

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Wait till they shoot at us before you open fire.”

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Through some kind of miracle, the German fighters turned around and flew back to Germany.

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And we flew back to England.

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We got to the base an hour late.

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We’d disappeared.

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We’d been listed as “MIA”—missing in action.

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But there we were, proud as peacocks, and very happy to be there.

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We were sure our pilot would receive a decoration for bravery.

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The next morning, the whole squadron is gathered, and the CO is standing in front of us, and

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he says, “Is Sergeant Beaudoin somewhere in the crowd?”

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Aha!

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This means the Distinguished Flying Medal for sure!

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“I want everybody to look at this man.

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Yesterday, Flight Sergeant Beaudoin, here, lost an engine on takeoff,

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and yet he continued on to the target.”

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Here it comes, we thought.

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“Sergeant Beaudoin, all I can say is: I admire your courage, but you haven’t got

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two cents’ worth of judgement or intelligence.”

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That was all he got for his bravery.

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The worst of it all for us is that in the previous six months, in our squadron,

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two crews had had problems on their way to the target, had decided to proceed anyways, and

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dropped their bombs before returning home.

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Immediately, both those pilots had been awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross;

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pilots were awarded crosses, non-commissioned officers were awarded medals.

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Our pilot was a sergeant.

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Maybe sergeants weren’t as intelligent as commissioned officers.

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Have I explained how come he became a sergeant?

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At the end of flight training, when you got your wings either as a pilot, a navigator

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or whatever, you were automatically promoted to the rank of sergeant.

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If your marks were exceptionally good, you received an officer’s commission;

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you became a Pilot Officer.

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Sergeant Beaudoin was an exceptional pilot, even if he wasn’t highly educated and he

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didn’t speak very good English.

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His instructor had asked him, “How do you feel about going overseas?”

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Sergeant Beaudoin answered as best he could, in his faulty English, “I don’t care.”

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“Aha! This man does not care to go overseas!”

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And that’s why Sergeant Beaudoin wasn’t offered a commission from Her Majesty.

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I can't believe it

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Just because the instructor misunderstood what the pilot said

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He didn't become an officer?

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And, because of that he didn't get the medal he deserved?

28:13

That's messed up

28:15

That's the size of it, not surprising though.

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I can't understand half of what the other allied pilots are saying over here.

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Not even the upper crust British ones

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But somehow, we make it work

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Even though at times, things get lots in translation

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Maybe it was more important that we understand the cause that we're fighting for,

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not understanding each other, but still.

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It sucks that this heroic pilot didn't get the recognition he deserved.

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It happens more often than you think