The Evil That Heroic Men Do

by Rick Jay

My grandfather has been dead for twenty years, and nobody misses him.

Actually, that is only generally true; my grandmother misses him. My grandmother, of course, is battier than a softball team’s equipment bag. None of my grandfather’s children (my father and my aunts and uncles) misses him.

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My grandfather joined the Royal Canadian Air Force early in World War II. He was a natural pilot, as it turned out, and was soon rated highly on almost every plane in the inventory.

As was often the case with highly skilled pilots that joined early, my grandfather became a training instructor. Hundreds of student pilots, from all Allied nations, trained in his plane and learned from him. He taught most of them in a Harvard, a big ugly single-engine plane that does not look much more aerodynamic than the school of the same name. It was easy to fly, though, so it was the preferred trainer for kids who would go on to fly Spitfires and Mustangs, planes that were more glamorous and far more dangerous. My grandfather wasn’t much older than they were, of course, a 23-year-old man training 18-year-old boys, but at that age five years may as well be twenty. Most of his students went overseas. Some of them did not come back, but that was what happened then, and it was accepted.

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My grandfather was an alcoholic - a bad, violent one. He was a nice, kind, funny man when he was clean; for most of his life, he wasn’t sober, and when he was, he was often hung over. He had seven children, six who lived, and every one of them would instinctively cower when his shadow fell over them, expecting a swat to the head.

He never hit my grandmother, not that anyone could recall. They were inseparable. They were the focus of each other’s lives; the children were a secondary concern. When my grandfather would beat his children, my grandmother would look the other way, or just assume they had done something to deserve it.

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My grandfather wanted to go overseas, to contribute directly to the war. Of course, he was contributing in a rather important role, but it’s hard to see it that way when you’re safe at home and watching the war on newsreels. He pleaded for a transfer to Europe, and men were dying, so it was only a matter of time. In June 1944, he was transferred to England, to Fighter Command. The invasion of Europe was beginning; Germany was collapsing.

He was assigned to a squadron that flew Hawker Tempests. The Tempest was a huge, incredibly fast fighter, an extended version of the Typhoon. It looked like a Spitfire on steroids, massive cannons jutting out of its wings, bombs and rockets strapped to it. By this time there were few German planes left in Western Europe; what was left of the dying Luftwaffe was fighting a hopeless battle over the skies of Germany to fend off an endless stream of Allied bombers.

*

Once, my grandfather got drunk, started beating the kids, and then grabbed an axe and decided he was going to kill the whole family. I guess this was in 1958 or so, since my father said he was 14 at the time. Most of the kids, save my father and my aunt Mary Lou, managed to flee the house and escape to the neighbors. My aunt Mary Lou hid in the basement, and my grandfather went down there to find her and chop her up.

My father was the eldest, and he took care of his siblings. He went down to the basement to try to distract my grandfather. While he talked to him and drew his attention, he signaled to Mary Lou to get out, which she did. Then they all fled to the neighbors. My grandfather traded his axe for a shotgun and shot the neighbors’ house up until the RCMP arrived - the military police were there first, and spent the evening cowering in the bushes, afraid to confront an officer with a shotgun.

My aunt never thanked my father for that. She became bitter and full of hate, alienated from the family. She hates men, or is afraid of them, or, in all likelihood, both. Today she lives in London with two adopted girls, and I understand she has difficulty controlling them because she won’t let them go on dates with boys.

After the axe-and-shotgun incident, my grandfather was arrested, but of course the Air Force did nothing - fairly typical of the armed forces. He later told my father he knew it had been he who had called the police and that he would kill him for it. My father, 14 years old, told him to go right ahead and try and see what he got.

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During the war my grandfather was assigned to shoot down V-1 buzz bombs, the cruise missiles Germany rained on England. This was harder than you would think, since the V-1s were faster than the Allied fighters.

To bring the V-1s down, Tempest pilots adopted a novel plan of knocking them down with their wings. Dangerous as this might sound, it was quite a bit safer than firing live ammunition at a big flying bomb. Assuming an altitude a few thousand feet above the V-1s, they would then dive towards them so they could briefly match their speed. Pulling alongside the bombs, they would gently - very gently - push one of the buzz bomb’s wings up or down. The V-1 would flip over and fall into the sea, unable to right itself.

My grandfather also hunted trains. They would maraud over Western Europe, shooting at everything that moved, but they were especially intent on denying the Germans the use of the rail lines. No trains meant the German front-line troops would get no supplies and replacements, which they were desperate for. The Tempests would blast away at the train engines, knocking them off the tracks and derailing the train. Then they would go back for a second run and shoot the crews running away from them.

“Why did you shoot the engineers, Papa?” I asked him once.

“Well,” he said, “The Germans could put a train back on the tracks in three days. But it takes a long time to train an engineer.”

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My father moved out of the house and away from his family as quickly as he could. They lived in Windsor by then; he got a job in Kingston. He married my mother and built his life there. While working in the nylon factory, he got a university degree, started his own business, and is really the only one of his siblings to ever make anything of himself or have a stable family. My aunts and uncles are nice people, except Mary Lou, but the litany of alcoholism, divorce, bizarre and inexplicable vendettas against one another, teenaged daughters with children of their own, bankruptcies and lost jobs would supply every tabloid TV show with material for two seasons. Judge Judy would love my family in Windsor.

My grandfather mellowed out a little; it might have been age. It might also have had something to do with the time he got drunk when my parents were visiting and got angry and violent, sometimes just before I was born. My father pulled him aside and told him he would have to kill him if it happened again. It didn’t.

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In November 1944, my grandfather’s plane was shot down over Holland. They were attacking a train with an antiaircraft gun, and his plane was hit and started burning and making groaning noises. Too low to bail out, he picked a nice soft field and plowed it in. Miraculously, he lived, and wasn’t ever seriously hurt.

As the German troops approached, he decided to make a run for it. He dashed away into the woods and wandered, lost. Finally he was found by a Dutch family, who took him in. A young man in the family, Paul, was a member of the Resistance, and so my grandfather joined them. Instead of asking to be ferried back to England, he decided to stay and help the Dutch fight.

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My extended family in Windsor is so screwed up now that the word “Windsor” is a running joke between my parents and my sister and me.

They have no money, no jobs, and no prospects. My other aunt is a gambling addict who claims to have chronic fatigue syndrome and so will not work; they have blown almost a quarter of a million dollars she won in a lawsuit over a car accident that allegedly hurt her back. At least $50,000 of it was blown on two trips to Europe. None of it was blown on investments, bonds, or retirement funds, apparently. They had to mortgage their house a few years ago.

The second oldest son now lives with my grandmother, working on maybe his twelfth job. He’s been into five or six pyramid schemes now; Amway was the first, plus one about satellite dishes or something, plus one about herbal remedies, plus one about TV Internet that broke up when the State of Florida arrested all the people in charge of it and sent them to prison for twenty years. His wife divorced him years ago; his daughter turned out okay.

The next oldest blew all his money on a scheme whereby he sold everything, bought a boat in the Caribbean, and sailed around for three years, living on the boat with my aunt and cousin, trying to make money by giving tours. Every month he sent my father requests for loans so he could fix something on the boat. He came back and apparently made some money in real estate by violating every ethical guideline the real-estate industry has. Now he’s broke, and nobody knows where the money went. He appears to have stolen a lot of money from the other Windsor family to invest in some other Internet scheme, and he moved to BC to get away from their tough questions, like “where is my money?”

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For the Dutch in early ’45, the situation was dire. There was no food. They ate scraps and grass and berries and weeds and whatever else could be dredged up. Thousands of Dutch died of malnutrition. There was a remarkable lack of pet dogs and cats my grandfather didn’t have the heart to ask about. They used whatever weapons and subterfuge could be used to accomplish their missions, and of course the Germans would not bother taking a resistance fighter prisoner. My grandfather, dressed as a civilian, no longer had any right to claim POW status.

One, in the basement of a safe house, they had taken two Germans prisoner; the Germans were deserters, teenaged conscripts, who didn’t want to fight anymore. Paul asked my grandfather if he could see his Colt .45, a huge sidearm he’d gotten from an American pilot in a trade. He then took the .45 and shot the German kids in the head.

When my grandfather asked why he’d done that, he simply said, “They were just Germans.”

*

It is something of a miracle, really, that my father is a good man. He was terribly abused, lived in an awful home. He never finished high school and was married at 22. If ever there were someone who, by all odds, should have grown to be bitter and abusive, it was he. But he didn’t, and to be honest, I’m not exactly sure why. Was it that he was the oldest, and so had ingrained in him the value of taking care of one’s family? Dumb luck? Who knows?

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Finally, one day, my grandfather was captured. They were performing a mission at a country house when a squad of Germans came along and surprised them.

My grandfather was outside on lookout; Paul was inside. My grandfather held the Germans off while Paul escaped. As Paul and the others ran out the side of the house and away, his overcoat billowed up like a big cape; later he found bullet holes in it where the machine gun fire had just missed him on either side. My grandfather held them off long enough for everyone to escape, and surrendered, giving himself up to save the others.

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My Dad told me once that he was almost 25 before he stopped cringing when someone walked up behind him.

*

My grandfather was sentenced to death as a spy.

Paul fled the town towards the Allied lines, which by now were close by, and encountered an American patrol. He told them an Allied flier was captured as was to be executed. The next morning, just before the execution, the American columns were advancing on the town. A U.S. army officer came in under a white flag with an offer nobody could refuse; release the pilot and we’ll let you live. Don’t release him and we’ll be a little slow taking prisoners, if you catch our drift, so whaddyasay?

The Germans decided on Option 1, and my grandfather was let go and allowed to walk to the Allied lines.

When he had gone overseas he’d weighed 185 pounds. On that day he weighed 125. When he got back to England he had no uniforms that would fit.

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When I was a kid I thought my grandfather was pretty cool. He was a war hero; he had scrapbooks and artifacts from the war. When I was little I just ate World War Two stuff up; my other grandfather flew bombers, so I had more stories to hear than I could remember. My grandfather took me once to see a guy who was famous for making WWII airplane models and I thought it was the coolest thing I had ever seen. I didn’t know any of this other stuff, or why we only visited them once a year.

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Several years after my grandfather died my grandmother made the trip to Holland to find Paul and tell him his friend had died. They’d never kept in touch after the war, because… well, how many kept in touch with their brothers in arms? Not many, I’d guess. They had their lives to lead, families to raise, jobs to keep. The war became a memory. Perhaps people wanted to sever their connections with it. It would be a very easy thing to leave behind. Except for the parts of it you could not leave behind.

She found Paul, and our families became friends. Later my cousin met Paul’s granddaughter, and they fell in love.

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When my grandfather died, my Dad was not the slightest bit sad. But he did make sure my grandfather’s coffin was draped in the Royal Canadian Air Force flag.