Tale Of War And Remembrance

Reprinted from the Toronto Star by George Gamster

www.thestar.com

Nov. 9, 2003. 01:00 AM

Tale of war and remembrance

World War II gunner survived the shooting down of his bomber

Wine, maggots healed his burns but deeper wounds still ling

GEORGE GAMESTER

So, Sam. Will you sleep okay these next two nights?

Always tough this time of year, isn't it? With so many faces, images and feelings popping into your head.

Lately, your phone has been ringing more than usual ? with memories on the line. "Hello? Yes, this is Sam Dunseith. Who's calling?" Then come those voices from yesteryear, triggering dormant emotions. And when you finally drift off to sleep, you have visions.

Dreams that whisk you back. All the way to that dreadful July night when you were 22, peering over your gun sights into the midnight sky, searching for your destiny ...

LOIRE VALLEY, OCCUPIED FRANCE, 1944: So here you are, Sam, perched in the tail-gun turret of an RAF Lancaster bomber dubbed Luck of the Irish cruising toward Stuttgart, Germany, with a special delivery cargo: 900 kilos of bombs. Long way from home for an Ontario farm boy.

What was that shadow in the moonlight? You're not sure ? until the bam-bam shock of cannon fire from a Junkers 88 Luftwaffe night fighter rakes the starboard side of your shuddering aircraft.

You hit? No. But turret jammed. Now skipper's voice crackling in your earphone. "Bail out," says Robbie Robinson. "Bail out!"

Damn! So bright. What's that ball of fire on starboard wing? The engine! Now everything's coming apart. A spurt of flaming oil hits you full in the face. Got to get out. But exit hatch jammed.

Any second, bomb load could explode. Now you're kicking at door. Burning oil running down your leg into your boot. Yikes!

Now what? Foot jammed in door. Plane spinning. Tear off that boot! One more push, and ... freeee-fal-ling-g-g now, from 20,000 feet. Pull ripcord for parachute. Damn! Cord burned through. Handle comes off in hand. Reach for broken end of cord. Pull! Pray! Pull!

Wooosh! Parachute deployed. Floating now. Whoa! Ground coming up fast. Looks like wheat field. THUDD. Back hurts. But nothing like the searing pain in your face. THUDD. Another parachute over there. Why, it's Jo Forman, the navigator. Where are the others? What will happen now ...

MARCHE NOIR FOREST: How long has Sergeant Sam been hiding here with the French Resistance forces? A month?

Well, he mustn't complain. For starters, he's so lucky to be alive. Four of the boys died in the plane. Robbie, the pilot, was chewed up pretty bad but would survive as a POW. And Jo Forman from Windsor came away with hardly a scratch. All he lost was his wristwatch.

Yes, it was Jo who saved him. What with his back injuries and terrible burns, Sam couldn't have survived without medical attention. Fortunately, Jo was able to get him to a farm near Orleans where the family was willing to risk their lives taking him in.

In time, Sam would be whisked away to a safer hiding place by a band of Maquis, armed civilian patriots and soldiers waging guerrilla war against the Germans occupying their homeland.

Not that Sam is able to join in the fighting or be channelled home via the underground escape network. A month after the crash, he remains blind and helpless in the Maquis camp, his eyes swollen shut and his head swathed in a filthy, crusted battledress.

It's the burns, you see. In the first days, he'd received some first aid from a sympathetic pharmacist. But it's the local veterinarian who takes drastic steps to treat the burns.

"He poured a bottle of wine over my head," Sam recalls, "then covered my face with a piece of heavy window curtain material which he told me to keep on for six weeks."

It gets worse. Unable to wash, the young Canadian airman soon becomes aware things are crawling under his bandage: Maggots.

"I could hear them chewing," he recalls. Disgusting thought, but good news ? as we'll explain later.

Meanwhile, Sam has plenty of time to wonder why he ever left the family farm at Sweaburg, just down the road from Woodstock. Blame it on his neighbour, World War I flyer and stunt pilot Tom Williams, who got him hooked on aviation.

If he'd been smart, he'd have quit after he washed out of RCAF pilot training in 1942, when he couldn't handle the Link Trainer, an earthbound flight simulator. But oh, no. Anxious to do his bit, he had to volunteer for air-gunner duties.

"They seemed happy to get me. In two days, I was shipped to gunnery school in Quebec city."

Assigned overseas to the 300 RAF Squadron, a mixture of Brits, Canadians and Poles, Sam is on his 19th bombing trip when that German night fighter cancels his ticket.

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`What's that ball of fire on starboard wing? The engine! Now everything's coming apart.' ? Sam Dunseith is about to visit France, the hard way.

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Meanwhile, in another wooded area west of Sam's hideout, a different Resistance cell has moved Jo Forman into a secret camp sheltering more than 150 downed Allied fliers.

Earlier in the war, these men would be smuggled back to Britain via Spain and Gibraltar. But now that the Allies have invaded Normandy, they're sitting tight until friendly forces can reach them.

So there was Jo, anxiously awaiting liberation, when a truck pulls up to the camp. The advance guard of U.S. General George Patton's armoured divisions perhaps?

Nope. Just two more downed Canadian airmen being delivered by the Maquis. And ? surprise! ? one is Jo's long-lost crewmate, Sam Dunseith, with that terrible curtain still wrapped around his head.

One of the guys in camp, Bill Bender from Kitchener, informs Sam he "smells like a polecat" and organizes a clean-up. Carrying him to a nearby spring, they strip off his filthy clothes and stretch him out on the grass while they do the laundry.

"It felt so wonderful, lying there in the sun," Sam recalls, "until I was hit by this searing pain. When it became unbearable, they lifted me and found this huge welt on my back. I'd been blocking the exit hole to an underground wasps' nest. Must have been stung 100 times."

PORT LAMBTON, ONT: Has it really been 59 years, Sam? Hard to believe when we see that smooth, handsome face of yours.

Yes, that curtain-and-maggot routine was just what the doctor ordered. Because when you finally made it to a British military hospital a few days after the wasp-sting episode, physicians marvelled at how well your face had healed.

Turns out maggot therapy has been used on nasty burns since ancient times. Seems the larvae eat away the dead flesh and leave a secretion that promotes healing.

But some wounds never heal, do they? So when you bow your head at the Remembrance Day service at Glass Workers' Hall in Wallaceburg Tuesday, there may be tears.

Not just for your four crewmates who didn't survive, but also for your Maquis comrades-in-arms and other French patriots who risked death so that you might come home to build a business, marry and become a happy grandfather.

You'll never forget them, Sam. And, in many ways, you've stayed in touch. How many trips have you made back to France to visit those graves and share memories with your old comrades? At least a half-dozen, not to mention the ones who came here to see you.

Even with your 83rd birthday looming, the beat goes on, with calls from France tapping your memories and inviting you and Grace back for anniversary celebrations.

And let's not forget your old buddy Jo Forman, now a retired 88-year-old schoolteacher in Sault St. Marie.

Funny how you both noticed that little blurb in the Canadian Legion magazine last year about an old wristwatch that had been found in a Loire valley wheat field.

Seems a local youth named Chardon had picked it up near the remains of an RAF Lancaster during the war. Now M. Chardon's son wanted to return the timepiece to its original owner or his family.

Bingo! You both knew what it was, didn't you? The keepsake, inscribed with Jo's initials, that his sister Irene had given him when he graduated from navigation school. The watch he'd lost at the crash site.

Well, he's got it back now, and it's running just fine. Tick ... tick ... tick.

Time. Memories. Regrets.

Which makes us wonder, Sam: Do you ever wish you'd stayed home on the farm?

"Nah. I wouldn't have missed it. But ..."

What?

"I sure as h#ll wouldn't want to do it again."