Shortchanged

Lorne McFadden at home in Wellington.

War ended before wireless operator could get there

Lorne McFadden wanted to fly. He had done his share of marching and drills as a teenager in Sudbury, training every Friday with the Copper Cliff Highland Cadet Corps. He wasn’t looking to do more. When war broke out and Canadians signed up to fight overseas, Lorne was still too young. He knew that he would eventually serve his country. He simply ran out of time. Victory came too soon for this young cadet.

ENLIST
The Second World War was already four years along by the time McFadden was old enough to sign up. But when that day came he made a beeline to the Royal Canadian Air Force recruiting office in North Bay to enlist. He was immediately sent to Toronto for basic training—reporting to the Manning Pool at the Exhibition Grounds in Toronto. There he underwent an array of tests, both physical and mental, to determine his suitability to serve as an air crew member.

His train arrived late into Toronto and Mc- Fadden was assigned the unhappy job of night watchman—meeting the bugler at 9:30 p.m. and standing guard until the bugler returned at dawn.

“The only good thing about it,” recalls Mc Fadden, “I was always the first guy to have breakfast.”

After a couple months in Toronto, McFadden was assigned to the Service Flying Training School in Montreal. He studied and trained during the day and stayed in barracks at St. Hubert in the evening. He is, many years later, still bitter.

“It was four months that were a waste of time,” recalls McFadden.

It was getting late in the war and there were more recruits than places to put them. There was a backlog at every step of training and deployment.

From Montreal McFadden was shipped to Ottawa where he was assigned to Carp, a relief landing field for Uplands airport in Ottawa. When he first heard the word Carp, his spirits soared. He assumed he was being assigned a carpenter job at the base in Ottawa. Instead he found himself in a kitchen in a secondary base—far from anything—certainly a long way from his dream of flying a bomber.

He brought his complaint to his commanders who advised him that if he really wanted to fly, there was a need for wireless radio operators aboard air gunners. He would, however, have to remuster.

STARTING OVER
Faced with serving out the war peeling potatoes in Carp, McFadden jumped at the wireless training opportunity. This time he was sent to Calgary to train. He was soon in the air—flying. He trained aboard the Harvard and then the Halifax, a four-engine heavy bomber.

As a wireless operator he was responsible for radio communications and monitoring radar for attacking aircraft—a constant threat in a large bomber capable of delivering withering destruction upon enemy positions. After seven months in training Lorne’s crew was assigned two months training, on the gunnery course in final preparation for heading overseas.

He was preparing to head for Bermuda to await transit orders. He thought he would be in England in a few weeks. But by then it was 1945, the Allies were beginning to mop up after successfully winning the war in Europe. McFadden and many others were no longer needed. He was ordered to report to Toronto to be discharged.

He hadn’t left Canada his entire military career.

“I was deeply disappointed,” said McFadden. “We all were.”

He had entered Air Force as a raw recruit and washonourably discharged in the rank of sergeant— yet he never tested his skills in battle.

AFTER THE WAR
Eventually he would get over his disappointment. Some of the skills and technical know how learned in preparation for air combat transferred to a career in the expanding market of cable television in southern Ontario—a career that saw him oversee the buildout of networks in Brantford and Oshawa.

Today Lorne McFadden lives in Wellingtonon- the-Lake. He attends some Legion events but with his service cut short, he is reluctant to talk about his experience and not inclined to relive it. This, despite the fact that the war took many friends and relations—never to come home again.

Despite bittersweet memories of marching in grey Sudbury winters festooned in a tartan kilt and sporn, he remains close with several fellow members of the Copper Cliff Highlander Cadet Corps. It was this shared experience that holds meaning for him—not the “wasted years” of training for service never put to use.