Remembering the ‘Dam Buster’ raid and the two Hamilton boys who didn’t make it back
Even after all these years of collecting facts and artifacts, travelling overseas and spending countless nights staring into a computer, Paul Morley is still caught up in the story of his Dam Buster' Uncle Frank.
The 73-year-old retired teacher first heard the basic details from his tearful mother more than six decades ago. Her brother, Frank Garbas, took part in one of the most famous Royal Air Force bombing raids of the Second World War.
The attack in the heavily industrial Ruhr Valley of Germany on May 16-17, 1943, was successful. Two major dams were breached causing catastrophic flooding. But Uncle Frank and 52 other airmen paid the supreme sacrifice.
Remarkably, there was a second airman from Hamilton on board bomber number AJ-B that night, 79 years ago this week. And sadly, he also died, like the rest of the seven-member crew.
Garbas, 21, was the son of Polish immigrants and lived at 577 Burlington St. E. He went to Cathedral High School before moving on to Hamilton Technical Institute.
Albert Garshowitz, 22, was part of a large Orthodox Jewish family that lived at 338 James St. N. He attended Central Collegiate High School.
They knew each other before the war from playing football at Eastwood Park, on opposing teams.
Somehow, they went from being competitors on the field to comrades in the sky. Through their squadron in England, they reacquainted and became friends. Apparently, Garshowitz recommended Garbas as someone to fill a spot on the AJ-B crew as part of the RAF Bomber Command, 617 Squadron.
They, like the other 18 Lancaster crews, had an extremely dangerous and difficult mission. Flying at only 20 metres in altitude, they had to toss barrel-shaped bombs 600 metres toward one of three dam targets. The explosive devices were designed to skip three times on the water before submerging in front of the dam to blow up like a depth charge.
The AJ-B crew was headed for the Mohne Dam, about 45 kilometres east of Dortmund, but they never made it.
The pilot and navigator went off course and struck a hydro tower, sending the plane crashing into the ground in a fiery explosion.
I recently met up with Paul to talk about the raid and to see some of the artifacts he has collected about his uncle and the raid.
Incredibly, Paul has 13 file boxes of memorabilia relating to Frank and other items he has gathered mostly from Dam Buster reunion events.
My grandmother kept this picture beside her bed," he says of a framed photo of Frank in uniform standing in the yard of the family house on Burlington Street, just before he went overseas.
He has the telegraph message about Frank's death that was sent to his family. There are scarves, a Royal Canadian Air Force air gunner crest and the tiny wings" pin that was given to him after he was certified to serve on a bomber crew. Frank gave it to a girlfriend just before he went overseas, and years later it was given back to the Garbas family.
It was really a miracle that it ended up back in the family," Paul says.
Paul even has a small piece of the plane's wreckage. It was picked up from the crash scene near Dorsten, about 100 kilometres west of the Mohne Dam and given to Paul as a gift.
Paul still lives in the house on the East Mountain that he grew up in. He bought it from his parents, and with his wife, raised a family of three children there. He points to the family room, and says, One night when I was 10 or 11 years old, my mother called me down to watch a movie."
It was The Dam Busters" starring Richard Todd and Michael Redgrave.
He's told the story many times. And probably the best version can be found in an article he wrote for the Bomber Command Museum in Nanton, Alberta. What I most remember were the tears of sadness and loss that my mother could not hold back ... I had never met my uncle, but ... I felt him through the tears of my mother," he said.
A bond was forged that would later take me to far off places in search of the truth about Uncle Frank ... I made a promise to her. I vowed that if she never made it to the Reichswald Forest Cemetery in Kleve, Germany, I would. I further promised that I would lay flowers on his grave in her name. This promise lay dormant for many years of high school, university, marriage, child raising and my career teaching high school history."
His mother never made it to the grave. But, Paul made the journey in 2000 during a Dam Busters tour. He returned again a few years ago.
One of the people he got to know on that trip was Hartley Garshowitz, 65, of Thornhill, a nephew of Albert Garshowitz.
I've learned a lot about Albert over the years," Hartley said in a telephone interview. I got immersed in my uncle's story in the early-to-mid '90s and went from there," he said. My father had his letters that he sent home from Europe, and I have most of them now. I have his medals that I have had mounted. And I have his logbook."
He says what strikes him the most is how different his life has been from the one led by his uncle.
Here are these big planes being flown by people in their early 20s. Look at the responsibility they had and the odds of returning which in many cases were not very good. I think of what I was doing at that age. I was in university. I can't even compare the responsibilities. It is a sobering thought."
Dam Busters by the numbers
- 19 Lancasters involved
- 8 planes crashed
- 133 airmen took part
- 53 airmen killed
- 3 crew members taken prisoner
- 2 dams - the Mohne and Eder Dam - breeched
- 1 dam - the Sorpe Dam - received minor damage
- 1,200 to 1,600 civilians killed on the ground
- It took the Germans five months, working around the clock, to repair the dams that originally took five years to build.
- Squadron leader George Johnny" Johnson, 100, of Britain, is the last surviving member of the raid.