Joey Jacobson's War

by Peter J. Usher

  The visibility was so poor that we could see very little with the result that we very nearly got lost permanently. However our pilot was an ace and dived over the main streets of every town we came to so that we could read the name of the town and get a thrill to boot, which we did. A few of the other planes turned back but our pilot had confidence in us and let us keep going. It sure is great flying. (JJL 27 September 1940)

  He told Liliane, who had inquired how he had spent the holiest day of the Hebrew calendar:

  I was 6000' up working out courses like I never worked before2 – and I was doing plenty of praying – praying that I had not lost the pilot and the plane – so I guess we were all pretty religious. (JJL 22 October 1940)

  In October he wrote home that when flying with the chief pilot,

  he puts up the hood and flies blind. We do the entire navigation and when he pulls down the blinds we have been right over the destination on each occasion. … I struck up a little deal with the head pilot whereby he will let my flying partner and myself do the piloting as well as the navigating every time he takes us up. So if we are lucky enough to get him anymore, it won’t be long before we will be ace flyers – which suits me. (JJL 16 October 1940)

  Joe did not get lucky, because he was not assigned to fly with the chief pilot again. During his next months of training, he did occasionally get to handle the controls while airborne but was never taught to take off or land. Yet, as he wrote home, he was working so hard that he no longer had time for recreational reading, and probably he had less time to ruminate about not being selected for pilot training. He also, perhaps to console himself, wrote frequently of the observer’s crucial role in aircrew, and of the exacting nature of his tasks. And although Joe seems to have recognized by this time that he would not rank high enough in the class to be commissioned on graduation, he remained enthusiastic, as he told the Pony Club:

  Despite commissions etc., I still think the air force tops everything. We learn aerial photography, meteorology, astronomy, navigation, wireless operation, and dozens of other things. It is real training, loads of fun and best of all you are either alive or dead – no in between processes – However, you boys have made up your minds, but I just thought I would let you know – that it’s the R.C.A.F. for the daredevils and you beggars need such an outlet for your surplus energy. There are a lot of wild men around but I think we take as many chances as the best of them and can hold our own in the clinch – and you sure have to do that when flying. (JJL 27 October 1940)

  Joe’s time at Air Observer School was not all study and air exercises. He became president of the sports committee in his first week, and spent much of his recreation time playing basketball, touch football, Ping-Pong, and snooker. He was naturally gregarious and getting on with his classmates came easily. He also benefited from his family’s generosity. The regular flow of food and cigarette packages from Montreal enhanced his popularity among his classmates, and as he told his family, resulted in his bunk becoming a regular gathering place for his pals:

  the effect of these various gifts and their unequalled quality and quantity has had the same effect on the boys here as similar gifts had on my acquaintances elsewhere – they have created the impression and maintained the Jacobsons’ position as wealthy, influential citizens just bordering on the millionaire class. The boys in Preston swear by it, my camp friends … insist on it and my air force pals live by it. So whether you like it or not Pop, you are a millionaire from Montreal to Regina … (JJL 1 October 1940)

  His boisterous camaraderie got him into trouble a few days later, however, as he explained to the Pony Club:

  We have duty watch a week at a time here during which time we have to stay on the station. The NCO [non-commissioned officer] allowed us to beat it as long as we got back in time for roll call at 10:30. The practice was to go to town. I did likewise on my duty watch trip and took along fourteen others – new officer didn’t understand the practice here and called the roll call at the wrong time. The result that nobody was on hand – a big rumpus, search parties, etc. etc. and 7 days from the C.O. with a week’s duty watch coming up. (JJL 4 October 1940)

  This escapade involved some of Joe’s half-dozen or so closest friends in the class who stuck together on base and off, a group that he later referred to as the Hell Hooters. Most were in the bottom half of the class standings all the way through, and most were a year or two younger than Joe. They all managed to graduate, but almost none was commissioned before going overseas. Joe at least had probably learned his lesson from being confined to barracks, as there were no further entries on his General Conduct Sheet for the remainder of his career.3 Out West, Joe was well and truly away from the Pony Club and his Toronto friends. If the Hell Hooters lacked the intimacy and intellectual seriousness of the Pony Club, they shared purpose and circumstance and knew how to have a good time together.

  Joe and the boys passed their spare evenings in downtown Regina drinking, bowling, playing snooker, and going to movies. On a thirty-six- or forty-eight-hour pass they would sometimes rent hotel rooms, buy booze, and search for female company. With luck, semen flowed and lust was sated. Regina was a rowdy place in the fall of 1940, with several hundred airmen in various stages of the Air Training Program. In addition to No. 3 AOS, there was a flying school ready to open at the airport, and an Initial Training School in the city. In town, Joe sometimes ran into fellows with whom he had played hockey and football at McGill. One notable event was a pre-season exhibition National Hockey League game between the New York Rangers and the New York Americans in late October. Joe related seeing the top players in the Hotel Saskatchewan after the game. On base and off-duty, there were rowdy alcohol-fuelled parties. Joe wrote to Monty, Gerald, and Herb about all these goings on with competitive relish, although he always added that whatever he was doing with his new pals in Regina could not replace the fellowship of the Pony Club.

  Winter’s chill set in sooner and more intensely than easterners like Joe were used to, and the winter days were shorter. Students were out of bed at five-fifteen, two hours before dawn’s light appeared on the eastern horizon. Almost everything, including the students, worked less well in the cold, as Joe related to the Pony Club.

  The day is magnificent – fresh and springlike – after the bitter cold of the last few days – 20 below zero it is indeed a relief – talk about cold – this western cold beats anything I have ever experienced – and it is only November – it has been too cold to fly – the only time we went up it being around 25º F below zero and the windows cracked, the engines conked while we all leapt for our parachutes and the pilot made a miraculous landing – next week though the planes should be in shape to start again –

  … We have but three weeks to go here – big exams coming up next week – and then on to bombing and gunnery school – that is those of us who pass. Then a month at celestial navigation and on to coast patrol and over the ocean – maybe Egypt (I hope) maybe England – nobody knows.

  … We are in for a grueling battle, most of our gang won’t be around to celebrate the victory – but by persistent work, lots of guts and determination the end should prove worthwhile and we should at least be able to decide how we want to live. The greatest kick in my life is going to be when I drop that stick of bombs over Germany or nail a sub while on patrol. Anyway we are all having a nifty time, and ought to be pretty well trained to do our job.

  … We have stiff exams to pass, to go to war – kind of funny when you think of it that way. But when guys have to take extra classes at night to pass stiff exams in order to keep from being flunked out – then it stands to reason if they are better than the next guy in our own country, they are going to be a hell of a lot better than the guy in the enemy’s country, especially since their government doesn’t have to worry about how much their crews know or what preferences they have –

  So all in all we are pretty well treated, well trained and well satisfied – and I would rather fight for a well-trained, gritt
y team any day of the week, win, lose or draw. … (JJL 15 November 1940)

  Joe was quick to grasp the objectives, strategy, and tactics of the bombing campaign against Germany. He wrote home:

  I am fast being trained to carry out probably one of the most important tasks of the war – carry out the “master plan” for crippling Germany. That will probably be our big job – and to be able to carry it out efficiently requires the most highly trained, skilled and dependable men available. We have the men – we are capable of training them – so we will shortly give it to them real good. Our Reconnaissance Instructor – a young flight lieutenant from the R.C.A.F. who spent the first six months of the war on active service as a pilot, bombing, doing coastal patrol etc., told us that the Germans have but one skilled navigator in their mass raids over England. The remainder of the squadron don’t even have instruments – they just follow along. The British just knock off the lead man and the rest can only drop their bombs at random and try and get back home. That means that the military effects of their raids are slight as they are incapable of bombing military objectives. Besides that they are forced to fly at such heights that no matter how good they were they still could not hit many important objects – which all means that in the end the training and superior brain power will come out on top … (JJL 26 October 1940)

  What Joe’s reconnaissance instructor did not say, if indeed he was even aware of it, was that the deficiencies of German bombing methods he ascribed to the Luftwaffe were in fact the very ones already plaguing Bomber Command. It too was being forced to fly high and to spend as little time as possible over German targets, due to more effective anti-aircraft defences than Britain had. Three weeks later, the Luftwaffe would pinpoint the city of Coventry with deadly effect, the lead navigators using radio-directional aids that Bomber Command lacked, and targeting methods it had yet to develop. If Joe and his classmates thought the job awaiting them would be a walkover, they were wrong.

  As final exams approached, Joe wrote home:

  I am in the throes of a cramming period the likes of which I have never seen before – not even in the good old college days. … If we flunk in more than two subjects we get discharged. If we flunk in one subject we have to stay back a month, take the exams with the next class and lose our seniority which would be worse. (JJL 24 November 1940)

  The tough work of exams [is] finally over, and for the first time in almost three months the only worry we have is whether or not we passed without having to take supplementals. Today we are being examined in drill and next week will be spent pleasantly, flying night and day and running around at every opportunity.

  The orders for our departure are out and we are to leave next Saturday for the old reliable Mossbank – quite a bit further west and right into the very wilds as they have not yet got running water, the pipes having frozen, which should save us the trouble of washing more than once a week. A blessing says I. …

  Nevertheless it is going to be a lot of fun as we fly in bombing planes and only have to learn to bomb and shoot, probably doing quite a bit of dive-bombing to boot.4 Gather the planes are heated, something our planes here lack, which makes flying extremely uncomfortable here. …

  The fellows in our gang are as nice a bunch of gents as I have met up with anywhere and since we move together from station to station, live, study and run around with one another, it makes it real pleasant and lots of fun. But probably the main asset of the air force lies in the leadership. Since all officers on active service are flyers you can feel fairly sure that they are brave and capable, as it takes an extremely capable fellow to handle these ships. If you have confidence that your leaders are top notch then you can really do a job – … (JJL 29 November 1940)

  Flying weather was good during Joe’s last week at the school. Pupils were filling in flying time right up to the very end, although Joe’s total night flying amounted to only twenty minutes. Joe was graded average in his air training, and intelligent and industrious in ground training, coming twenty-ninth in a class of forty-four. He was judged unsuitable for a commission or as an instructor, but with the potential to be a good observer and NCO. He was greatly relieved to have passed.

  Percy had all along followed Joe’s progress:

  Received a nice letter from Joe … he has been up in the air and seems very keen about it … the lad is brave because I know that he knows fear. … (PJD 28 September 1940)

  Heard from Joe … he was confined to barracks for remaining out too late … learning discipline … there are quite a few accidents to fliers in training … we just hold our breath and do not think … we don’t worry because we daren’t … he is eager to get overseas and expects to be in the show by April. British and Canadian airmen are doing such miraculous things they make deeds of valour of the men famed in history child’s play in comparison … I am proud that Joe is of the fraternity …

  (PJD 8 October 1940)

  Joe telephoned long distance from Regina, twenty four hundred miles. The charge was only about three dollars. It was comforting to hear Joe’s voice. Things look bad for leave. The Telephone is the next best thing. Thank the Lord for it. (PJD 31 October 1940)

  Surprise. Joe’s picture with two other airmen in the Star … heading Montreal’s fighting airmen.5 In reality he is still training as an observer in Regina but he does have to fight the elements. (PJD 17 November 1940)

  Percy would return again to the matter of his son’s fears and his courage in overcoming them. He did not explain what or how he knew of Joe’s fears, but he placed great store in courage and bravery and was deeply gratified that Joe displayed those virtues. But as Percy had also observed before Joe left for the West, he still had the boy in him, as his prank that got him confined to barracks demonstrated.

  Joe in flying gear, with Anson trainer, Regina, 1940. (Janet Jacobson Kwass)

  Air observer pupils, No. 3 Air Observer School, Regina, 1940. Left to right: Joe, unidentified, Mac Keswick, and Les Jupp. (Janet Jacobson Kwass)

  Air observer pupils and Anson trainer, No. 3 Air Observer School, Regina, 1940. Left to right: Mac Keswick, Joe, Cliff Chappell, Les Jupp. The photo was taken by the RCAF for publicity purposes. An outtake of Joe appeared in the Montreal Star. (Canadian Jewish Archives)

  Six

  Mossbank

  On 9 December, Joe’s class departed for No. 2 Bombing and Gunnery School at Mossbank, Saskatchewan. There, at the “hellhole” he had mentioned in an earlier letter, they would learn the bombing part of their job, as well as aerial gunnery in defence of the aircraft. The airfield, among the most isolated on the Prairies, was situated on a flat, treeless plain near a large saline lake that in drought years completely dried up. The little town of Mossbank, several miles away, provided no such opportunities for carousing as had Regina. More work, less play this time around.

  Fortunately for Joe and his classmates, theirs was not the first group on the station, which had opened six weeks before. Construction had been completed, and the initial problems of too little indoor heat and too much outdoor mud had been largely rectified. But there were still shortages of bombsights, compasses, up-to-date flying kits, and helmets. The Fairey Battle airplanes they trained on – single-engine light bombers recently retired from active service – were often unserviceable and so flying was sometimes curtailed. Students used eleven-pound practice bombs, adequate for learning to hit a target from a moving aircraft, although miniscule compared to the five-hundred- and one-thousand-pound bombs then being dropped on German targets from much greater heights. The bombsights used in training were outdated, and as the training aircraft were without intercoms, bomb-aimers used their legs to signal the pilot to fly left, right, or steady.

  Joe described his new situation in letters home:

  Altho only forty miles west of Moose Jaw, we are three hours by rail due to the poor tracks and slow trains. Mossbank is a town about half the size of Val Morin – with a barber shop, grocery store, tavern and church. Our school is eight miles ou
t of town and about ten times as big. It is really amazing the job they have done out here in about four months’ time, building a tremendous place where six hundred are now living. Contrary to reports and rumours, this is as good [a] station probably better than any station I have been to yet. The food is good, we have a lovely gym, something we have been dying for since joining up, swell movies twice a week and comfortable quarters. And of course we have our same old gang trucking along together and we have our pal’s place in Moose Jaw to go to over the weekend. He has a lovely family and the four of us who chum around together have a great time.

  The rumours you have probably heard about Mossbank probably centred around the water problem. Up til now they had not been able to get the water supply going – even now we are not allowed to drink it. … aside from drinking water everything is fine – except for the rather secluded spot of course – we are more or less out of circulation.

  As for the work – the first two weeks are hectic – eight hours of solid lectures per day in preparation for our flights. Then we have to cram forty hours full of excitement and bombing into four weeks – I will write more concerning bombing when we hit the airways.

  From Mossbank we go to Rivers near Winnipeg for a month of night flying by the stars and moon etc. and then maybe we will get a chance to go home – but that is too far off to start worrying about now. The important thing is that a highly technical job has to be learned in a specified time to be of any use and since I happen to be too far from home to make use of weekend leaves – I am out of luck.

  (JJL 10 December 1940)

  … I am perfectly contented now because we got our hockey team started so I am back in old time shape again, and once more get a chance to travel around the country-side to more towns and meet new groups of people. Added to that our gym is almost ready for action and we start flying tomorrow, so nothing could be sweeter.