Heroes: The Greatest Generation and the Second World War

Landing was potentially more dangerous than taking off. Although they never flew in formation, aircraft could frequently land within minutes of each other. Often the Halifaxes would be damaged, and were nearly always low on fuel. ‘One night my hydraulics were shot away and I couldn’t use the flaps and even the undercarriage didn’t want to come down.’ This was where experience came in. Bill eventually got the wheels down by diving the aircraft and then pulling back up; the force of gravity eventually locked them into place. Even so, without flaps, he hit the ground at 170 knots rather than 130. ‘I went off the end of the runway,’ he said.

Having finally landed and switched off the engines, a van would arrive and take them off for debriefing. There was coffee and a slug of rum, but Bill never touched either. Back then, he was not a great drinker. ‘I can make an ass of myself without drinking,’ he says, ‘that’s the way I look at it.’ The Intelligence Officer would ask them about the mission. What did they see? Were they attacked? What was their view over the target? Each of the Halifaxes had a camera. As soon as the bombs were released they would take pictures, with the fourth snapping as the bombs hit the ground. ‘You couldn’t come back and say, “We definitely hit the target.” You had to wait for the pictures to be developed for that.’ Bill tells me about the time one aircraft went out on a mission then flew up and down the North Sea. Unbeknown to the pilot, he was being tracked by British radar and when he returned had not taken any pictures either. ‘He was scared. There were people…sometimes people broke down.’ Not that Bill ever saw anyone really fall to pieces. Those suffering from shattered nerves were whisked away off the station immediately, before the other men could see. ‘LMF,’ said Bill. ‘That’s what they called it. Lack of Moral Fibre. But you could only take so much; everyone will break down after a while.’

But not Bill, despite chalking up over thirty missions in ten months of front-line duty. ‘I was lucky. A very lucky pilot,’ he told me. One time, they were flying over Germany. It was quite dark – they were nowhere near their target – when tracer started streaming past and cannon shell bursts exploded in front of them. They’d been picked up by radar and now had a night-fighter attacking them. Bill immediately changed course, weaving back and forth as shells continued to explode either side of him. In the end he was forced to ‘corkscrew’ and eventually managed to shake off the enemy fighter. Another time they were flying over a city and flak – anti-aircraft shell bursts – began exploding all around. A near explosion could severely jolt the aircraft, but on this occasion Bill had just dropped his bombs and had selected the bomb doors to close, when the flak burst beneath them and flipped the Halifax onto its back. ‘The gyro was telling me I was upside-down, and we were falling fast, so I immediately rolled out of it.’ But they were still in a dive, with the airspeed indicator pointing at over 300 miles per hour, far in excess of the Halifax’s maximum speed. ‘I thought, “I’d better not pull out too fast or I’ll pull the wings off,” so I kept the throttle back and let her slow down a bit.’ Eventually they levelled out and began climbing once more. But in that short space of time, they’d dropped around 5,000 feet. ‘I heard a hell of a noise from the airplane, but the strangest thing was we suffered no damage at all. We checked everything. The crew had been holding their breath and I heard a loud “Pheww!” once everything had been ticked off.’ Bill chuckles. Another time they came back and there were 173 holes in the plane. But they’d still made it home.

They could often be in the air for long periods of time, especially if flying to Germany and back. Not only did he have to concentrate on piloting and be ready to take evasive action at any moment, he had to do so in freezing temperatures. At the kind of height they were operating from – and the higher they flew the safer they were and the better the engines ran – temperatures could drop to fifty below. ‘There was heat coming off the engine,’ said Bill, ‘but no insulation. When it’s that cold, you soon feel it.’ He always wore silk underwear, silk gloves and a long white silk scarf under his flying jacket, so managed to keep his upper body warm enough. The problem was his feet, with which he operated the rudder. ‘Most of the time, I couldn’t really feel them.’ Despite the length of some journeys and the mental and physical exhaustion these missions entailed, he rarely felt too tired to fly. ‘If I did, I’d open the side window and that cold air would slap me round the face.’

As well as relieving himself before he got into the plane, he also always needed to go as they began the bomb run. ‘It was strange. I’ve never had the strongest kidneys, but I’d have to pull out and pee into this pipe. It led straight out and would just suck out the moisture. So I peed on every German city I flew over…’

What about dropping bombs on civilians? I ask him. ‘You don’t think about the people getting hit,’ he said. ‘I didn’t build the airplanes; I didn’t build the bombs; I didn’t gas them – I just went there and back – the guilt was shared by all of us, you know.’ He paused again, then said, ‘You can’t help but feel a certain amount – well, you wished it never happened, at any rate. You can’t divorce yourself from it because you had something to do with it, but I don’t feel responsible for the whole thing.’

On D-Day, he and his crew took part in their first-ever daylight mission. Nearly a thousand of Bomber Command’s aircraft were directed against the Normandy coastal batteries. Crossing the Channel as dawn was breaking, navigator Bill Morison suddenly noticed hundreds of white blips on his H2S radar set. Informing his skipper, they soon after saw the sea full of ships from one end of the horizon to the other. Like everyone else, they had been kept in the dark about exactly when the landings would be. Despite this exciting bird’s eye view of the invasion, they found the experience unsettling. In order to improve their accuracy, they flew over the target at 10,000 feet, far lower than they were used to. ‘There were not many enemy fighters,’ recalled Bill Morison, ‘but the flak was definitely a problem.’

They flew a number of other missions over Normandy, until, on 18 July 1944, they chalked up their final and thirty-fourth mission as a crew – Bill had flown two more than the rest. It was an attack on German flying-bomb sites near Caen, and was largely uneventful – they found their markers, dropped the bombs, then Bill banked the plane, pulled back on the control column, climbed the Halifax to safety, and turned for home. Afterwards, there was a little bit of rejoicing, but not too much. Their relief at surviving was marred by the knowledge that they would now be split up and sent to different parts of the country. Their services were now needed as instructors to train the final batches of crews in the endgame to the bomber war. They were briefly reunited a few weeks later, however. Although the war still had ten months to run, Bill’s combat flying career was now over so he and Lil decided to marry right away. ‘It was a very happy occasion,’ said Bill Morison, who, in the absence of George, was the best man.

Bill still hadn’t given up complete hope for his brother, and when the war was finally over, he went back down to the south coast to meet the POWs coming back. ‘I talked to lots of them – some I even knew. I wanted to check whether anyone had heard anything about my brother’s crew.’ They hadn’t. By the time he finally returned home to Vancouver, he had become ‘300 per cent certain’ his brother had gone down into the sea that night. ‘You’ve got to have hope and your mind rolls over all kinds of possibilities, but eventually…’ George’s navigator came from British Columbia too. He’d been married with a couple of kids and his father came down to see Bill. He wanted to know whether there was any chance that his son was still alive. ‘And even though you want to give them hope, I said no. No way.’

It was, he admitted, a hard thing to say, but added, ‘Well, wars make you hard. I used to take care of the chart that listed the crews. When the guys got shot down it was my job to take them off and put a new name on there. The first time I rubbed a guy’s name off – gee whiz, it hurt me. He’s gone. Shot down. No more. But after a while I was just going through the motions. I’m telling you: people get hard.’

We looked through Bill’s old photographs. There were a number of him and George together from their flying training days. It’s uncanny, but they really did look identical. Same smile, same eyes, same hair. You could see why any girl would have fallen for them. There was his citation for his DFC, and old newspaper cuttings, too. Local newspapers often proudly reported the progress of their gallant sons and the Byers’s corner of Vancouver was no exception. One piece was about them joining 429 Squadron together. ‘When they arrived on the squadron, the boys craved action. They got it. Within 24 hours they were off on their first operation. “We sure are glad we have been able to stay together,” said Bill.’

Bill still thinks a lot about George. ‘I wonder what kind of life I would’ve had if he’d been here. He was the only brother I had and we were so close, you know.’ And what about the war? Do you still think about it a lot? I asked. He paused a moment and said, ‘The war seems like a dream now. After the war, nobody talked about anything – it wasn’t until about ten years after that you started to get some books on it, but it takes thirty or forty years before a person wants to tell his experiences or say anything about it and then it relieves him somewhat.’ He paused again. ‘It makes it easier as time goes on; your mind gets a little more reasonable with it. I don’t mind talking about it now. Time heals. In a way it’s better to share it with somebody. It helps you.’ Another pause and Bill looked at some distant spot on the wall. ‘I think it does anyway.’

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