The Valour and the Horror

"Bomber Command might have been invented by some mad sociologist as an example to exhibit as clearly as possible the evil aspects of science and technology," says Dyson. "The Lancaster, in itself a magnificent flying machine, was made into a death trap for the boys who flew it. A huge organization was dedicated to the purpose of burning cities and killing people. A bureaucratic accounting system failed utterly to distinguish between ends and means, measuring the success of squadrons by the number of sorties flown, no matter why, and by the tonnage of bombs dropped, no matter where."

Of the 125,000 air crew who served in Bomber Command, more than half, 73,741 were wounded or killed. Fifty five thousand died. One in every five was a Canadian. Relative to its population, Canada suffered the greatest loss of the Allied air forces: 9,919 pilots, navigators, flight engineers, bomb' aimers and gunners..the Brylcreem Boys, the Boys in Blue.. most of them in their teens and early twenties.

One of those who died was Roger Fournier, the young French Canadian miner who signed up with Jim Moffat in Timmins, Ontario. Moffat and Fournier met up again, late in 1943, in Yorkshire, assigned to the same squadron.

"I was on duty that night," recalls Moffat.

"I said, 'Hi Roger, when did you get on the squadron?'

"He said, 'We arrived today.'

"So I said, 'I'll see you at four o'clock in the morning when you get back.'

"He never came back. They went across the coast, were shot down, and they were all killed. Their first trip.

"I wrote to his girlfriend. I didn't know what to say to the mother...

"See, they were the first French Canadian family that l was close with. The mother was jolly. And the grandfather played the fiddle and would do this tap-dance. We'd have a keg of beer and go on till midnight.

"When I got back, I went to see her. And she said, 'You came back, why couldn't Roger? Why did you survive and he died?' I agreed with her. I was no better, in fact I was a heck of a lot worse than some of the guys that didn't come back.

"She didn't necessarily hold it against me. But Roger was their only son. She just wanted me to explain it."