As R63607, Sergeant Harris, R.W., Wireless Air Gunner, trained at #1 Wireless School, R.C.A.F. in Montreal, I was first posted to Debert from R.C.A.F. Station Rockcliffe, Ontario, on 26 February, 1941, with two Canadians and 16 Australian aircrew.

My buddies from Wireless School, WAG 20 & 26, were already overseas. I had been left behind at Rockcliffe with German measles, in company with the Honourable Michael Strutt, whose main claim to fame was, later, being killed in the crash of the then Duke of Kent's Sunderland flying boat.

R.C.A.F. Debert was under construction. The drill hall, barracks and mess hall had already been built and large earth- movers were busily dumping a hill into a bog to build the airfield. At this time all personnel ate in a common mess hall, merely at different sets of tables for officers, NCOs and airmen. Within a few weeks the different ranks had their own, separate messes.

There was mud everywhere and yawning gulfs where sewers and drains were being installed. Buses ran to Truro, 35 cents return, and we spent hours walking up and down the streets- at least there was little mud. The only public toilets open to us were at the railway station, under guard by railway police. Most of the others in town had been broken by the South Saskatchewan Regiment soon after their arrival at the Debert army camp.

Meals at the Palliser Restaurant on Prince St. were 50 cents, but I once sat for three hours waiting to be served. It was the manager's policy to have only one waitress on duty until 5pm.

There were one or two overloaded Chinese laundries in town, so we made do as best we could. The army bought washing machines for its barrack blocks.

Drafts for overseas were called from time to time as R.C.A.F., R.A.F., R.A.A.F. and R.N.Z.A.F. personnel accumulated. I missed one draft that was torpedoed - only about 25 survived out of 500 men.

On April 5, 1941 I managed to get out on an overseas draft by standing beside the Station Warrant Officer and persuading him to insert my name in place of a Sgt. Trowbridge, who was AWOL. There was deep snow in the woods and ice packed on the town streets. We went on board the "Georgie" at Halifax and, after three days, departed for the British Isles.

My second posting to Debert was as C39224, Pilot Officer Harris, R.W., Flying Controller. This would be air traffic controller today.

I arrived at #31 O.T.U., R.A.F. just before Christmas, 1943, a wife and six month old son in tow. We stayed for a night or two at the Palliser Hotel on Prince St., Truro, before moving to a room in the home of a Mrs. Brison. There was no hallway upstairs, one bedroom opening on another. We had the first one, the second being occupied by an R.A.F. airmen and his Canadian wife.

The women shared the wood burning cookstove in the kitchen, seemingly without incident. There was a wood burning , pipeless furnace feeding a large register in the front hallway downstairs, but very little heat reached our bedroom. One night the baby's bottle froze on the dresser, so after that we kept it under the pillow.

The R.A.F. O.T.U. was in the process of moving back to the United Kingdom, and the Lockheed Hudsons were being replaced by DeHavilland Mosquitos. During the change overs to the R.C.A.F., Flying Officer George Dawling and I maintained 24 hour watches. We were allowed to sleep in a room in the tower, after night flying had finished. Shifts of airmen, Flying Control Assistants remained awake and on watch to alert the controller in case of an emergency or unexpected aircraft. The controller shifts were: 8am- 1pm, 8pm- 8am, 1pm- 8pm, rather a heavy load for two people. This went on for about three weeks until R.C.A.F. personnel began to arrive to relieve us.

We used H.F. radios mounted on folding tables, but we also had a van by the end of the runway- in use, equipped with a field telephone to the tower, Aldis Lamp and Verey Pistol. Most of the actual control was from the van, as some aircraft had no radio and those using the TR9 radio often had difficulty communicating with the tower.

Our new R.C.A.F. Senior Flying Control Officer was Squadron Leader John McCall, of Montreal replacing S/L Sara, R.A.F.
S/L McCall had a proper radio console built, in which we had VHF, four channel radios, better telephone equipment, crash alarm and a master switch to black out the camp in case of air raids.

The crash truck and crew were garaged at the base of the tower, the second floor housed the meteoroligical (MET) office. On the third floor were beds for the Duty FCO and the Senior Duty Officer, as well as the office of the SFCO. The top floor was surrounded by plate glass windows and an out door gallery. Radio antennal, an anemometer and a revolving beacon were on the roof.

The C.O. of the R.A.F. unit was Group Captain Howard, who seemed fairly easy going and unperturbable, but who insisted on keeping company with a lady of some notoriety in Truro, Ruby Smith. She had been banned from most of the military messes in the area, but when the Group Captain brought her along she could hardly be kept out. Rank certainly had its privileges (R.H.I.P.).

The next C.O. was an R.C.A.F. Group Captain Corbett, who had a distinguished operational record and who had, so it was said, been sent to 'clean up the Station." This he set out to do with vigour, handing out reproofs, reprimands and "logged with an error of judgement." He himself collected a "logging" posthumously when he crashed a Bolingbroke at Bagatville, P.Q., taking five airmen with him.

The next C.O. was Group Captain Bell, from Training Command, who made some attempt to apply "the book," but the ex- operational types soon guided him in the way he should go, and he was well liked.

The pilot and navigator trainees on Mosquitos alternated between ground school and flying for the four weeks of their O.T.U. course. The safety record was quite good, I remember only two crews lost- one at Plaster Rock, N.B. and one in the Cobequid Mountains. The latter caused a major uproar, as the pilot was the son of AVM L.S. Breadner, World War I pilot and Chief of Air Staff. A most thorough investigation could come up with only one verdict- pilot error.

The North Camp at R.C.A.F. Debert housed, in part, a military prison. Our SFCO, S/L McCall described it to us after being part of an inspection party. Very few who spent compulsory time in that prison ever risked a return visit.

I changed my housing arrangements when Mrs. Brison closed up her house and went to live with her son, Bill. First, I rented a terrible two bedroom cabin in Debert, hardly fit for human habitation, owned by a butcher who sold meat to the messes on the base. A planned move to a nicer place, owned by Homer Barnhill, who had a little general store and had been a World War I pilot, fell through, so I settled for two rooms in a house owned by Harold Rector, an airman from the Motor Transport Section on the base.

My next move, in the summer of 1944, was to an apartment in a large Victorian house on Queen St., Truro, owned by Miss May Bent, a diminutive old miser, who never left the building except on rent day to deposit her money in the bank and buy a few scraps of meat for her little dog, Jitters.

We had two bedrooms, bath, kitchen, living/ dining room all furnished, heated and lighted for $50 per month. The rent seems low today but at the time was still just over a third of my monthly income. I used to mow the lawn and do up the vegetable garden just for exercise on my days off, but that did nothing for my social standing in Miss Bent's eyes. In 1945, when I left to go to Acadia University, she remarked to another tenant, "In my day, ordinary people didn't go to university."

V.E. Day was celebrated in the military camps with free beer, dinners and sports. I happened to be off shift when the news came through, so I was in Truro, where there was a small parade and ceremony. The weather was perfect and it was only late in the afternoon that we heard of the riots in Halifax.

The Mosquito O.T.U. began to wind down as the Alouette and Snowy Owl, two Lancaster squadrons flew in from the U.K. to train for operations against Japan. V.J. Day in August put an end to that and the Lancasters were flown to Pennfield Ridge, N.B. for storage.

Very soon after, men by the hundreds began to fall in, facing the train for transport to release centres. Squadron Leader McCall asked for a controller to remain at Debert to keep the tower open, as Debert was to be a permanent forces station. I stepped forward promptly, as I liked the job and had good living quarters in Truro.

Alas, politics and patronage, the watchwords of our then Prime Minister Mackenzie King, put a stop to that. The M.P. for Colchester was Frank Stanfield, Tory, while the M.P. for Annapolis- Kings was the Honourable J.L. Ilsley, Minister of Finance.

Debert, with all its natural advantages of clear approaches, cheap land for expansion, proximity to the army camp, location beside the Trans- Continental Railway and soon- to- be Trans- Canada Highway, not to mention its favourable weather record, was closed in a very few days.

On October 6, 1945, I went to the release centre at Moncton, N.B., returning to Truro October 7. On October 8, 1945, I went out to Debert to see what was going on and found that most of the windows had been boarded up, about 50 personnel of all ranks dining in the Airmen's Mess, and the Control Tower gutted- radios and speakers had been ripped out of the console, furniture gone (contents of drawers simply dumped on the floor), even the motor gone out of the furnace.

No account of R.C.A.F. Debert during World War II would be complete without mentioning the cultural life of the base when it was fully operational. There were station dances to which bus loads of girls from Truro would come, even when the 1500 lb weight restriction was on the roads in spring. There were movies in the recreation hall and games in the basketball and squash courts. Of course there were always ball games in season. Crafts were practiced in facilities provided, there was a camera club and a music appreciation circle, among others.

During my time in the Tower at R.C.A.F. Debert, flight plans for any non- operational flight outside the local zone, became compulsory. Pilots were often slow to cooperate with the controller and have number, rank and name of each person on board, detailed route, E.T.A. and radio frequencies in use readily available. I had some anxious moments when a pilot failed to file an arrival message at Dorval and it was found that the radio frequencies listed on the flight plan bore no similarity with those in actual use. I was supposed to have checked every item and was very relived when the aircraft was found in a Dorval hangar.

The tower controllers worked closely with the "MET" and, I remember especially two forecasters- Harry How, who later became Attorney General of Nova Scotia and Reid Dexter who, after he retired, was often heard on C.B.C.'s "Information Morning."

Among the tower controllers was a World War I pilot, Flying Officer Bill Williams. He had enlisted as a staff pilot, flying trainee wireless operators around at Guelph, Ont. In civilian life he had often been a ferry pilot.

Bill Williams was a man with very steady nerves and a calm manner, who could be very witty at times. At the end of World War I, he was training crews on Handley- Page, four- engined biplanes designed to bomb Berlin. The war ended before they could be used.

One evening in 1919, Bill and another young Canadian pilot were attending a dinner in London, U.K., when they were approached by a gentleman who was prepared to sponsor an attempt at flying from Newfoundland to the U.K. They accepted the offer and took ship to Newfoundland, complete with a large tent for a hangar, spare parts, fuel and oil and two mechanics, but no airplane. They found that Alcook and Brown had already arrived at St. John's. The next ship brought A&B's plane but not Bill's, so he never got the chance to try for the 10 000 pound prize offered by the Daily Mail.

One O.C. of the Mosquito O.T.U. was Wing Commander "Moose Fumerton," not the "Moose" of Bomber Command fame. Our "Moose" was a Mosquito night fighter pilot. There was also a young American pilot in the R.C.A.F. at Debert, who rejoined in the name of Azra Gillette. Of course, he was always called "Razor."

These two once took a .303 service rifle up in a Mosquito in an attempt to shoot out the good tire on the undercarraige of another Mosquito, whose pilot had blown one on a very heavy touch down. The idea was that it could land safely on two flat tires.

Mission accomplished, they returned to base to direct the attempted landing, but the aircraft's undercarriage leg had been so damaged by the heavy touch down that it collapsed anyway, fortunately with no crew injury in the resulting ground- loop.

Often, when a mosquito ground- looped, it caught fire and the wooden construction burned so completely that only the propellers, melted engine block, millions of screws and a few wires remained.

I must also mention the HUB buses that ran between Truro and the military bases from early morning until late at night. They had been retired from the Toronto Transit Commission and the T.T.C. footplates were still visible on the doorsteps. They were, at peak times, packed to the doors, literally, and it was just the mercy of God that a terrible disaster did not happen when a wheel fell off, which was frequent. As far as I know, the only casualty was a man killed when a driver raced a train to the Debert crossing and lost the rear section of his bus.

Not many personnel at Debert had cars, so most of us had to use buses or taxis. Taxi fare was $2.50 one way between Debert and Truro. But we were mostly young and the young always have fun.

Robert Wilsson Harris
RR 1
Pleasantville, N.S.
B0R 1G0