THE AUSTRAILIANS AND NEW ZEALANDERS:

In the last blog I commented about the Aussies and the New Zealanders doing their flight training in Fort Macleod. They were full of fun and a "devil may care attitude". Perhaps it was the knowledge, that the war was going on, and that they soon would be part of it; they wanted to live life to the fullest, before putting it on the line. Whatever it was, they had lots of joy of living, making it fun to be around them. Take their training for instance; they started their training in a great little by-plane called the Tiger Moth. Later they graduated to the Avro Anson bombers. They were pretty careful with the bombers, but with the Tiger Moths, as soon as they could solo it, they wanted to have some fun.

The Macleod to Calgary road was a one hundred and six mile ribbon across the flat prairie without any telephone poles and very few trees. In those days, there was very little traffic, so the trainees thought it would be fun to fly a few feet off the ground, then pull up and over any vehicle they encountered. This scared the hell out of the motorists and a few even tried to pull off the road and ended into the ditch. This was great fun until one of them did this to a car that contained the commanding officer. He got the tail number and grounded the pilot. This stopped the practice and motorists could drive the highway without staring out the windshield at an oncoming plane.

Two Aussies were courting a young lady from an outlying farm. They both decided to take two Tiger Moths and fly out to the farm. They must have been rivals, as they started to do some aerobatic's over her home to impress her. Unfortunately, they collided in mid air and both were killed. Not a nice story, but a true one. This led to the banning of all aerobatics except while training with an instructor. Lastly, when flying along, if they saw some farmer up on his haystack, they thought nothing of diving down, and although not that close, frightened the farmer into jumping for his life.

Telling these stories now, years after they happened may make many think that these trainees were pretty stupid. But these same men gave their lives in bombing raids over Germany, or, as with Walter Buckwell, were shot out of the sky by some enemy fighter. Telling these stories doesn't have much to do with life on the farm, nor does it? Just one more story…

Not far from Ft. Macleod was a prisoner of war camp. Many German army and air force prisoners were shipped over there for detention during the war. Many of them volunteered to work on local farms, under guard of course. Guarding was not a big deal as the prisoners were happy to have a chance to do some farm work, were fed very well by the farmers and were not too anxious to get back home to Germany. The prisoners made good workers and at the end of the war, many plead with the Canadian Government to let them stay in Canada as free men. I understand that although they were all repatriated to Germany after the war, many found their way back to Canada at a later time.

Just as many Canadian and American service men and women went back to the farm after the war, so did the Germans. It's too bad they couldn't have stayed on the farm in the first place.

What a waste of human life is war, and we are still doing it. I doubt it will ever end; it has been going on for thousands of years. My mother used to say. "Put all the old men and politicians in the trenches and wars will soon be outlawed".