MONDAY, Sept. 9, 2013: - a long posting here … my tribute to today’s civilians doing their best to preserve the legacy and heritage passed on to us by the civilians of Ferry Command in WW II …. the 1939-1945 civilians I write about are the subject of my latest manuscript … “Earth Angles Rising”. Randomly-selected civilians of today are named toward the bottom of this rather long posting - among them are Donna McVicar Kazo and her brother, Gordon … Carl Christie … Bill VanDerKloot … and Louis Lang. Donna is highly active from her Florida home in posting what she can about her Dad, Captain Don McVicar, one of the 1,500 civilian aircrew in the RAF Ferry Command … I highly recommend her Facebook pages dedicated to the memory of, and writings of, her Dad … he has his own page and so does two of his books … The first is about Don McVicar … https://facebook/pages/Captain-Don-McVicar-OBE/210816915607652 The second is one of his books - Ferry Command Pilot … https://facebook/pages/Ferry-Command-Pilot/215707365119602 As to my own manuscript, it is rapidly undergoing a major change. It began many years ago as a “one-person tribute” - mine. Now it has swelled in numbers over the last year or so into a “many-person tribute”. In the last few years, it has become a tribute by nearly 100 modern-day civilians who have helped me carry out my research to learn as much as possible about some 3,500 un-armed and non-uniformed civilians in World War II - 1939 to 1945. These civilians and what they did - which was to rapidly deliver nearly 10,000 bombers from the USA into different theatres of war, when and where those bombers were needed - are the basic subject of my new book. It is compendium of interviews, anecdotes, narratives and stories which deal with the early creative months, when a Canadian national railway took on the job of organizing these civilians into what would become more popularly known as the “Royal Air Force Ferry Command”. The RAF ‘s Ferry Command is one of the many names which surfaced - at American President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s request - when the military wrested it from civilian hands and turned it into a military command. These special WW II civilians were ALL highly-skilled, cream-of-the-crop men and women who - much like “earth angels rising” - started coming to Canada from 23 allied nations between 1939 and 1940. In so doing they “rescued” the combined air forces of Canada, Great Britain and the United States of America, representing a combined population of roughly 190,000,000 souls. That they would come to Canada to do this - the smallest in population count in 1940 - at some 11,000,000 souls (rounded out figures) is amazing when one considers that the USA had a population of about 132,000,000 and Great Britain stood at 47,200,000. What made Canada so special that these civilians would come here to fight a war, which would have to wait until 1941 to be declared a World War? Actually, they did NOT fight on the front lines the way soldiers and sailors did … they fought against frightening odds, daily expanding the envelope of unknown frontiers by flying bombers across the North Atlantic Ocean, in the winter of 1940-1941. This was something which the specialists of the day said was suicidal and a NO-NO in no uncertain terms. Now to today’s modern-day civilians … some of them deserve a tribute as well, numbering only a couple of handfuls. Who are they? And why do they deserve similar to tribute? “They” are the civilian relatives of those 1940 civilians - their sons, daughters and other relatives, their friends, colleagues and associates today who struggle to preserve the memories of their parents and friends who served humanity so well between 1939 and 1940. Civilians today deserving tribute include such folks as Donna McVicar Kazo of Florida, and her brother, Gordon, of Montréal, Québec, Canada - children of Don McVicar, one of the many civilian pilots of Ferry Command - a pioneer aviator in many respects and a pioneer in the field of self-publishing who went on after the war to write a series of adventurous and dramatic books about his experiences as a civilian Ferry Command pilot. She and Gordon are preserving their father’s memorabilia through re-issuing of a number of his books, electronically at first, and perhaps into hard print copies later. They also include William (Bill) VanDerKloot, Atlanta, Georgia, son of one of the more famous civilian Ferry Command pilots, Bill VanDerKloot. His father went on to become one of the very few pilots assigned to fly Prime Minister Winston Churchill to different high-level conferences during the war, and who in his right has become a noted dramatic film and movie producer. He too is preserving what he could of his Dad’s legacy, which can be dramatically seen in his 2008 television documentary, “Flying the Secret Sky: The Story of the RAF Ferry Command” which aired on PBS stations throughout the USA. Here is his company’s and the film’s web site vanderkloot/sky2.html Two other modern-day civilians, not necessarily related to any civilian member of Ferry Command, deserve no less a tribute … they are Carl A. Christie (with Fred. J Hatch) who wrote the 458-page 1995 book, “Ocean Bridge: The History of RAF Ferry Command” (University of Toronto Press). This book alone can easily be considered “the bible” and where I am concerned, is perhaps the most fascinating, enjoyable, easy-to-read and accurate source of information about the ENTIRE story behind Ferry Command. Carl is currently completing a new manuscript for University of Toronto Press - a history of the Royal Canadian Air Force … and … … a web site containing some postings by Carl: forces-war-records.co.uk/Unit-Info/1736 Last but not least in this brief listing is Louis Lang, another Montréaler, who joined Ferry Command as an aircrew member, working as a civilian radio operator, and who today, in late 80s, still struggles to obtain recognition for the families of his colleagues in the original Ferry Command. Louis is one of the very few original Ferry Command members still with us in the space age. Lou is credited with having raised the interest of nearly 1,000,000 Canadians in having Ottawa grant benefits to Ferry Command civilians … his efforts have paid off for some … by 1980, the Canadian government finally granted full recognition of Ferry Command’s civilian aircrews. Louis also has a Facebook page … https://facebook/louis.lang.50?fref=ts Lou also points out that while Ferry Command has a truly fine safety record when it came to delivering aircraft - … it came at a steep price. How steep? Of the 1,500 or so civilian air crew, nearly 500 died. This represents a stunning 30% mortality rate, almost as high as could be expected by a front-line fighter or bomber aircrew member - or a sailor or a soldier. These modern-day civilians deserve as much credit as did their parents, friends, colleagues and associates Enough for today … thanks to all for looking … and I hope that you enjoyed reading this … I promise to try and keep my postings as brief as possible, but sometimes I have no choice … they just take up space. I am honoured to be among the modern-day civilians struggling to preserve memories and the heritage these civilians passed on to us.
Posted on: Mon, 09 Sep 2013 10:12:28 +0000
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