Description
Mr. Carter-Edwards talks about some of the different duties he had while on a mission; dropping tinsel in hopes of jamming the enemy’s radar, monitoring the radio for communications from base and jamming German radio communications.
Ed Carter-Edwards
Edward (Ed) Carter-Edwards was born on April 2, 1923, in Montréal, Quebec, and was raised in Hamilton, Ontario. He enlisted in August 1942, and then joined 427 (Lion) Squadron, 6 Royal Canadian Air Force Group, in Leeming, England. He was a wireless operator air gunner and completed 21 successful missions in a Halifax bomber. On his 22nd mission, Mr. Carter-Edwards was shot down near Paris. He was betrayed to the Gestapo by a collaborator, threatened with execution and forced into the Fresnes prison, near Paris. He spent five weeks in the prison in 1944 followed by a five-day trip in a French cattle car to the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp. He was there for three and a half months as one of 26 Canadians - 168 allied airmen in all. He was forced to participate in two death marches shortly before the end of the war. Once released from service and safely back home, Mr. Carter-Edwards returned to Hamilton and worked at the appliance manufacturer Westinghouse. He was married in 1946, and he and his wife raised three children.
Transcript
We went down to the briefing room. We were all ready to go on our first trip and when we went down to the briefing room, of course the target was covered and as soon as they opened up the curtains and all the red lines were pointing to our most feared target which was Berlin, Aw!! Our hearts sank because we heard so much about Berlin and we thought, wow, our baptism of fire is going to be Berlin. Anyway, we did that trip but the fact on that trip I would open up my little window beside me, pull the blind up to look out and, yah. I was scared because you would see a line of tracer going out from somewhere, then you would see an explosion, you would know, wow, somebody got hit or all of a sudden out of the clear blue, out of the clear dark sky, an explosion from a ground anti aircraft so very quickly you realized that people were dying, planes were getting hit, people were dying, were suffering on this trip and so I kind of closed my curtain because yah, I was scared and so but I had a job to do. I had to listen to the radio. I had to make sure that I did not miss any communication from base because sometimes they would have a diversionary target. If the cloud formation was too heavy over the target or conditions were not right, they would have a diversionary target so instead of going to initial target, you would go to the secondary target but if you missed that signal, then your crew is going to the initial target and you were dead ducks.