Burma Star Association - B.C. Chapter
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George enlisted in Toronto on Jan.5/43. He took his basic training at Jarvis and Crumlin, Ontario. His advanced training was in Course No. l at #5 OTU at Boundary Bay, B.C. He served on 159 Squadron on Liberators.
Probably his most memorable day operationally was the day he slipped on the bomb bay catwalk and banged his knee. He had heard only shortly before this, that a fellow squadron member had bled to death from a knee wound.
Later that same day, while on a mission, bombing a bridge in Burma, a burst of incoming machine gun fire took the top corner off the bombing panel beside him. There was a terrible bang and the cabin filled with smoke. George felt a sharp pain in his knee making him feel that he too, was going to bleed to death. On sober reflection he sat up and shook his leg only to discover the cause of the pain. A spent bullet had lodged against his sore knee! He made the mistake of showing the bullet to all the crew who professed a keen interest in seeing his souvenir. Unfortunately some one appropriated it and all George had to show for his experience was the piece of the bombing panel.
Another vivid memory has of his tour with 159 Squadron involved watching one of their Liberators, piloted by George Schroeder. His bomb bay took fire causing the plane to crash into a nearby hill near the target of the day. It was not until several years later, on reading the attack orders of that day, that George found that Sid Staniloff, Gordie Slark, Ted Foot and Roy Borthwick had all been circling the target at that time. (Strangely these men were all to meet up again as members of the Vancouver Branch of the Burma Star Association which was not founded until the late eighties.)
Years later as a member of a " Canada Remembers" group of Burma veterans, chosen to tour the wartime sites, George located their neatly maintained graves in a military cemetery north of Rangoon.