My father in law WITH RCAF IN THE MIDDLE EAST: Warrant Officer K.M. “Maxie” Forsythe of Rockwood, Ontario, a navigator, was a member of a Wellington crew that ditched in the Indian Ocean. When their large dinghy was accidentally punctured, a small type dinghy was inflated and the crew members were all night in a sea that ran to waves 30 feet high. Of the eight men who clung to the dinghy, only four survived the night. Throughout it all, Warrant Officer Forsythe had much to do with saving the lives of the men who were finally rescued. Their Wellington was on a routine flight over the Indian Ocean when an oil leak developed in one engine. They were about 100 miles from the nearest land when they were forced down in the heavy seas. One of the men found the strain too great and allowed himself to float away from the little dinghy to drown. “Maxie swam out and dragged him back several times,” one survivor said, “but finally there just wasn’t a thing you could do about it.” Then another man cracked under the strain and tried to take off his Mae West but “Maxie” and the others fought and argued with him and kept putting it back on. Finally the second man did slip away and was drowned. Two more men died the next morning. “That left four of us,” Forsythe commented. “We would take turns sitting in the dinghy; one would sit and the other three hang on.” They had signalled their position to base before their crash and had been sighted once but they had several bad moments the following morning when an aircraft failed to spot them in a rough sea. “We just about gave up”, Warrant Officer Forsythe commented, “when a ship passed us a couple of times without seeing us.” Finally, they were sighted and the rescue boat came toward them. But, just prior to their being sighted, they noticed that several sharks were starting to gather round. Despite this, Warrant Officer Forsythe swam away from the dinghy to haul back one of the men who was floating away, even with the immediate help at hand. Forsythe spent a month in hospital recuperating from severe sunburn and from numerous cuts and scratches which, although unnoticed at the time, had become septic. “It was a remarkable feat of courage and endurance,” one observer remarked. “Forsythe had a lot to do with saving the lives of those who did come through. Apparently he more or less took responsibility in the water; certainly he put up a marvellous show.” Forsythe, a tall and strongly-built young man with brown eyes and a slow and pleasant manner of speech, has since finished his operational tour in the Indian Ocean area and been posted elsewhere. Before the war he worked underground in a mine in the Sudbury district.
Posted on: Mon, 11 Nov 2013 00:24:02 +0000
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