Bright lights, loud explosions and burning planes falling out of the sky beside him are only a few of Ernie Archibald's memories from serving as a bomber during the Second World War.
“I'm not taking credit,” Archibald said quickly while reflecting about the upcoming Remembrance Day service in Canada. “I'm only one of thousands of boys that fought in the war.”
The 91-year-old Innisfail resident vividly remembers getting his wings in Winnipeg and going into battle for more than one year and described his memories with closed eyes.
“There were a lot of dangers,” he said about serving as a bomber with the Royal Air Force (RAF) for 30 missions across France, Italy, Germany and Eastern Europe.
“When we went over, they were short in different segments of their aircrews,” he added. “They just took Canadians to fly.”
Archibald flew on missions with the RAF in England with British, South African, Indian and Australian soldiers when he was only 22 years old.
“It was stressful, but we did evade it. As you can see, I'm still here,” the veteran explained with a slight smirk, while explaining he received a Bomber Command Bar to honour his service from the Canadian government roughly three weeks ago.
The Canadian Volunteer Service Medal aims to identify the successes of war veterans, and was unveiled by the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum for the first time in April.
The medal arrived just in time for Archibald to attach it to his legion uniform for Remembrance Day. He plans to wear the medal to commemorate Canadians who died during the war at the Nov. 11 service at the legion.
“I was discharged,” Archibald said about leaving the war. “They discharged a lot of us. I was supposed to take a crew over to India after six months of training, but once they dropped the A bomb on Japan, the war started to peter out. I didn't even crew up. Then, they started discharging because they didn't need us anymore.”
But the biggest memory from the war, he added, wasn't going into battle.
“I know of three or four guys that came back,” he said with a look of dread on his face. “I know of many that didn't come back. Good friends of mine are buried over there somewhere, so I like to remember my attachment to them and to all of the other boys that didn't make it back. There's a lot of us that didn't make it.”
