Description
Joseph Anatole Côté tells the story of his arrival at a German military base in Belgian territory.
Joseph Anatole Côté
Mr. Côté was born in Quebec City on October 7, 1917. He studied forestry engineering at Université Laval. When war broke out, he enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force to become a pilot. He started his training in Trois-Rivières, then went to Trenton. He was then sent to England and began his career as an airfield controller but was soon assigned as a pilot on several missions, particularly the famous Market Garden operation and another mission over Germany which led to 80 days of exile…
Transcript
MY ASSIGNMENT IN BELGIUMWhen I arrived in Belgium, it was two days after Brussels was liberated, I think, and there was a big celebration there. . . we had all kinds of invitations to celebrations. Because we spoke French, it was even easier. There were some very nice people. At Melsbroek, where I was, it was an airfield the Germans had developed extensively and the hangars were camouflaged. In one place, it was marked “butcher,” and another “grocer,” all kinds of things. It was an airplane hangar but the front had all been modified to look like a place of business. And we found that when they left in a hurry, they left behind bombs, damaged aircraft and all that. We discovered that the bombs had whistles attached and, when the bomb was dropped, it made a terrible noise with those whistles and, I suppose, terrorized the victims. So we took the whistles off and attached them to our guns that extended past the wings, you know, and then when we descended, they whistled. But that didn’t last long, it wasn’t considered a . . . our superiors didn’t like it . . . They made us take them off . . .