Sunday, November 11, 2012 - North Shore News - A5
In war, loss was part of life
From page 3
Margot Martin was the assistant station adjutant and in a few months she would accept Wozniak’s proposal of marriage. Canadian Press, reporting on 416 Squadron, dryly noted: “P/O Roy Wozniak of Saskatoon is the first member of the squadron to go from solo to dual, having become engaged to Margot Martin, assistant station adjutant, on April 21. An engagement party was celebrated in the WAAF officers’ mess, thoroughly enjoyed by all the 416 officers except P/O Wozniak.” Shortly after the party, Wozniak and two other pilots were transferred to 403 Squadron on May 1 to take the place of other pilots who had been shot down. Asked what it was like forming friendships while facing the real possibility of being killed, Wozniak says, “In a way, you’re good friends and everything, but you don’t get too close — family-wise and so on.” Wozniak points to a photograph of himself sitting on the wing of his Spitfire with a small dog on his lap. An RCAF photographer whose job was to shoot “positive” propaganda photos posed it. Dogs as squadron mascots were popular. This particular little spaniel cross was called Lucy and belonged to fellow pilot Billy Lane. Shortly after the picture was taken, the squadron was briefed for a sweep over France “and just as we were getting out to our aircraft, here comes this soldier walking across the
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ROY Wozniak (top left) and the pilots of RCAF 403 “Wolf” Squadron at Kenley, England in 1942. field. It was Billy’s brother. They embraced and Billy said, ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours and we’ll really whoop it up. Look after my dog.’ “The soldier takes the dog and says, ‘Say goodbye to your master.’ “And Billy says, ‘No, no, not “goodbye,” “so long.”’ “Wouldn’t you know it, Billy was the only one who didn’t come back. The CO had to tell the brother. The soldier took the dog and walked back across the field, and I never heard anything more about the dog.” Despite his instinct to remain self-contained, Wozniak would become close friends with another Prairie boy in 403 Squadron, Ed Gardiner, the son of Jimmy Gardiner, former premier of Saskatchewan and Minister
of Agriculture in Mackenzie King’s cabinet. They roomed together and Wozniak enjoyed being kept up to date on Canadian politics by Gardiner’s letters from home. Gardiner would also survive 403’s ill-fated sortie over France on June 2, 1942, but was shot down during the infamous Dieppe Raid of Aug. 19 that same year. Flying two sorties that day to provide air cover for the boats of the landing force, 403 Squadron destroyed six German fighters and damaged three more. It was a better showing than many of the RAF Spitfire squadrons. According to the BBC documentary Dieppe, the RAF lost 106 aircraft that day while shooting down 48 Luftwaffe planes. Wozniak is convinced that if the Allied planes had not been pawns on a map for Ground
Control in England but in direct communication with the troops on the ground, the air support would have been far more effective and fewer Canadian soldiers would have been killed. He believes that was one of the lessons learned from Dieppe and used later by Allied forces in Sicily and at Normandy. Gardiner was one of three pilot officers lost that day by 403 Squadron. His body and that of his wingman, Norm Moncher, were found by the French, hidden away from the Germans and subsequently buried in Dieppe’s city cemetery. After the war, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission took over the cemetery in St. Aubin where the Germans had buried the
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