Amazing Airmen. Ian Darling
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Cauley went on to spend another 800 hours in the air searching for German submarines, but he never saw another one. He also helped to escort convoys across the English Channel on June 6, 1944, D-Day, the day the Allies landed on the beaches of Normandy. From his position in the air, he could see that the Channel was filled with Allied ships.
After the war, Frank Cauley went into the wholesale food business. He also became a city councillor in the Ottawa suburb of Gloucester, and a trustee on the Carleton board of education.
Cauley, who will be eighty-nine in 2010, lives in Ottawa and enjoys talking to students about the Second World War. His wartime service was recently honoured by an Ottawa developer, who decided to name a street after him.
Interviewed at his home, he described how he felt during his ordeal with EK591: “Your survival is your number one feeling. The will to survive supersedes every other feeling that you might have. You fight. You fight for life.”
The Wrigley company keeps in touch with him, sending him gum when he speaks in public. Asked whether he still chews gum, Cauley replied, “All the time — I never know when I’ll have to patch a 747.”
Frank Cauley in 2007.
Sergeant Wilf Renner was ready to press the knob on the bomb-release cord of Halifax bomber JD463. Renner, a twenty-two-year-old bomb-aimer, knew he was just minutes away from Frankfurt, a city in central Germany.
Renner’s crew, which flew with the Royal Canadian Air Force’s 419 Squadron, left their base at Middleton St. George, in northern England, late on the evening of October 4, 1943. The crew’s target was Frankfurt’s railway yards.
The sky near Frankfurt was filled with Allied bombers. The pilots, however, could not see the other aircraft well. To avoid detection by German night fighters and anti-aircraft crews, the bombers did not have their lights on.
Wilf Renner in 1943.
Lying on a board in the nose of his bomber, Renner suddenly noticed another aircraft too close to JD463. “There’s a plane below,” he shouted over the intercom. Sergeant Arthur Fare, the pilot, immediately pulled JD463 up, avoiding a collision. Fare continued flying to Frankfurt at about 20,000 feet (6,000 metres).
A few minutes went by. The aircraft flew over the city. Renner pressed the knob. “Bombs away,” he said. The plane released incendiary, as well as regular, bombs. “Bomb doors closed.”
JD463 bounced up as soon as it dropped its heavy load. Fare maintained a steady course for a minute while a camera automatically took photos that would show where the bombs had landed.
He had started to turn the bomber around for the trip home when searchlights caught it. Ground fire hit an engine on the port side. Fare took the plane down as quickly as possible, to get away from the lights. The speed of the descent pinned Renner to the board on which he had been lying. “We’re losing control,” Fare said on the intercom. “Be prepared to bail out.”
Fare managed to stabilize the aircraft for a few minutes. It flew in a more normal manner, except much slower. The crew got ready to bail out — Renner put on his parachute.
A German night fighter approached JD463 and fired, hitting the bomber. Renner was blown out of the aircraft. He didn’t know how he got out of the bomber because he was unconscious, but he may have gone through an escape hatch that the crew had opened.
Renner regained consciousness while falling through the air. He pulled the ripcord to open his parachute seconds before he landed. He had descended into a wooded area of Belgium, near the village of Laneffe, about sixty-five kilometres south of Brussels.
Renner had several fractured ribs, as well as cuts to his hands, arms, and head. He had also lost his flying boots. They had come off his feet either when the night fighter hit JD463, or when he was coming down to Earth.
He heard dogs barking, so he knew he wasn’t deep in the woods. People who could help might not be far away. Renner wrapped himself in his parachute to try to stay warm during the cool night.
When dawn came he stood up and started walking. He found a path in the woods and decided to follow it. Before long, two woodsmen with saws on their shoulders walked toward him.
The men noticed Renner’s uniform. “Royal Air Force comrade,” one said, trying to let the young airman know he had landed in friendly territory. The two men were Walloons, French-speaking residents of Belgium.
“Doctor,” said one of the men, using a word in English that he knew. He wanted Renner to understand that they realized he needed a doctor to treat his wounds. The men also used the French word “pantoufles,” which means slippers. They realized Renner needed something on his feet before he could walk any significant distance.
One of the woodsmen was Camille Van Laethem. “Restez ici avec lui,” Van Laethem said to Renner, who had learned some French at St. Jerome’s High School in Kitchener, near his home in Preston, Ontario. “Je cherche un docteur.” Renner understood that he should stay with the other woodsman while Van Laethem went for a doctor.
The woodsman who remained offered Renner some of his lunch. Renner wasn’t hungry, but he did accept the warm milk the woodsman gave him.
Van Laethem returned a few hours later with Dr. Robert Fanuel. He also brought a pair of “pantoufles” and coveralls that Renner could wear over his uniform.
Dr. Fanuel examined Renner, applied some bandages and explained in French that he would come back in the evening with a person who spoke English. Renner’s knowledge of French was sufficient to enable him to understand the doctor’s plan.
The two woodsmen remained with him as they waited for the doctor to return. As the sun went down on a pleasant fall day, Dr. Fanuel reappeared with a Roman Catholic priest. Speaking in English the priest told Renner, who was also a Roman Catholic, that they wanted to take him to a home in the area. The doctor would treat him there.
Renner got into the doctor’s car and went to a two-storey house in the centre of Laneffe. It was the home of another priest, Father Léon Laboulle. Renner didn’t have to ask the priest for a rosary. His mother, Louise Renner, had given him a set of rosary beads that he carried on all his flights, including the flight that brought him to Belgium.
Renner felt blessed. He had escaped from the aircraft, had landed safely, and had met people who were trying to help him, even if he could not communicate well with them. He was, in fact, more blessed than he realized because the priest supported the Belgian Resistance that was fighting the Germans.
Father Laboulle was already looking after two Russians who had been German prisoners working at a coal mine at Charleroi, a city near Laneffe. They had escaped from the mine. The Russians had a room downstairs. Renner had a room upstairs.
Dr. Fanuel came to see Renner several times a week. He recovered well. Father Laboulle was intrigued to have a Canadian with him. He invited some of his friends to meet Renner because they had not previously met a Canadian.
Lying in bed one day after he had been at the priest’s home for about two weeks, Renner was startled when he looked up to see a man in a police uniform. He thought the Gestapo had found him. He was mistaken. The man was not a Gestapo agent but a colonel