LangleyAdvance
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Your community newspaper since 1931
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
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Second World War
We Buy
Letters of Remembrance
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Standing in front of the 1941 Hampden on display at the Canadian Museum of Flight, Tom Parsons held up a photo of his late dad Harry and fellow servicemen circa World War II.
Decorated airman Harry Parsons, who recently passed away, put his war memories on paper. by Troy Landreville
tlandreville@langleyadvance.com
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arry Parsons sat alone in his study in Newfoundland one day in 1990, when his eyes welled with tears. The recollection of Clarence, one of Harry’s best friends, dying in the Second World War, flooded back. Emotion washed over him like a tidal wave. “It all came out,” Harry’s son Tom related. “You weren’t allowed to cry during the war years. You learned to keep your feelings to yourself.” Harry didn’t know if Clarence had the salt to be a fine airman – after all, he never smoke, drank, swore, or told dirty jokes, kept his uniform well pressed and went to church. Before every trip Clarence knelt on the tarmac for a short prayer and after each “op” he would do the same thing. Though his fellow airmen referred to him as “pansy,” Clarence’s air gunning was second to none, and he and Harry soon become as close as brothers. Clarence died in a Air Base near Lincoln (Waddington), England, when the Hampden bomber he was in crashed. He had survived the initial crash, but died trying to save the pilot. The Hampden exploded shortly after crash landing, with Harry watching. Harry picks up the story in a 20-year-old letter he wrote to Clarence: “I watched your approach to the runway but something happened and forced your plane to overshoot. You disappeared beyond the
grove. Your plane did not rise into view and it was a long minute before a black plume mushroomed up. I knew it was all over. I returned the bikes, went to the mess and had a beer. The spectre of losing It was later that I found your life loomed over out that you had escaped Allied airmen. Each misthe crash but went back in sion, each time they set to get Stan and then she out, they had a five per blew. cent chance of dying. In the rain I stood as Harry spoke of seeing honour guard at your “dripping chandeliers of grave, and though the lights,” those being planes cold, damp clay slid silent- exploding and fiery metal ly down, I did not weep. dripping like chandeliers Airmen officers should not in the night sky before the cry, even when the padre planes and pilots plumsaid, “The orphanage will meted to the earth. be saddened by his death.” Harry was one of the I am sorry, lucky ones Clarence, I did who returned not know. I to civilian life. thought you A longhad brothers time Langley and sisters and resident in a mother and the post-war father like the years, Harry rest of us. Why lived a long, didn’t you tell full life before me? I returned passing away to your grave in September. in 1962. The He was 91. crosses were in ore Harry Parsons during orderly rows, than and though the the war years. He was 20 probably 22 years old in graves were years after this picture. well tended, the guns fell the cemetery silent for was empty and lonely. good, memories of the Sadness came over me, war years, good and bad, and though my eyes were resonated. moist, I could not weep in In the late ’60s, Tom front of my family. I don’t asked his dad why know why.” he never attended uring the Second Remembrance Day cereWorld War, Harry, monies. a Newfoundlander, Harry’s response was served in the British air terse, short, and to the force, as Newfoundland point. was a colony of the “He said to me, quite British Empire at the start sternly, ‘You remember of the war. the war one day a year. I Harry flew in a remember the war every Hampden Bomber, taking day.’” the role of rear gunner, “How can you talk bomb-aimer, and wireless about your best friend operator/navigator on difdying as you watch the ferent missions. plane that he is in crash?” He completed 29½ Tom told the Langley “ops,” or successful operAdvance, remembering his ations, during the war. father and his service for
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Wall collapses:
Adjacent businesses crushed as brickwork tumbles through roof. Story on page A3
Troy Landreville Langley Advance
the Allied forces during a war that spanned from 1939 to 1945 and gripped the world, financially and emotionally, in a stranglehold. ne of the first heavy bombers of the Second World War, the Hampden’s 1930 technology was eclipsed by larger and better defended aircraft like the Halifax, Wellington, and Lancaster. One of the two remaining Hampdens in the world, a 1941 model, is currently on display at the Canadian Museum of Flight at Langley Regional Airport, and Harry was one of the last airmen ever to fly in it. In a letter of memories he wrote for the local flight museum, Harry reflected on his operations in the Hampden. He wrote about a mission in which he spotted an important target, judging by the flak slowly rising almost to the aircraft’s height. “Suddenly there was a brilliant flash with a myriad of twinkles slowly falling. I was just going to mention the spectacular display, when Pinney said, ‘Poor sods.’ I knew then that what I had observed was an exploding bomber and the twinkles were in fact pieces of burning bombs, aircraft, and aircrew. It was then I realized that we were in a dangerous game. I must have experienced in other trips the same display several times, but I do not remember them. Perhaps one can be inured to horrors of war.” Another memory was of June 24, 1942, the day
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Hockey Night in Langley Langley Events Centre will host a Hockey Night in Canada.
Story on page A3
of his last flight on the Hampden. “We knew that several returning aircraft had ditched in the North Sea. We flew east for a while, south for a minute, and then flew west following a grid very carefully. We were vulnerable to fighters who could pick us off with ease, no one dared to look up from the white caps of the North Sea, it would be like breaking faith. We did not see a damn thing and after four plus hours we returned to base. I never had such a feeling of frustration that tore at my inner self. When we passed the debriefing desk we did not slow down. Pinney just slowly shook his head (that told the whole story) and we kept on walking to our quarters, sad and mute.” The Hampden was the first multi-engine plane to land at Heath Row Airport in London. (Heath Row later became Heathrow – it had been a secret air strip for Seafire pilots to learn their landings.) Harry was the first person to deplane on that day in January 1942. hen the war ended, Harry soldiered on in civilian life, working and raising a family. After the war Harry had a career in aviation medicine with the Canadian Air Force. He also taught science in high school and was a counsellor to high school students. “He continued to make a difference in the world, and always had a positive attitude despite enduring so many tragedies,” Tom said.
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