| POWER is Hugh Main's passion. POWER as in Projects Organized With Energetic Retirees, a group of former TransAlta employees who dedicate their time and considerable energy to the community.
Main was happy to meet with me when contacted about the group's Remembrance Day activities. I'd interviewed him in the past about POWER's excellent historical walking tours of the city's downtown and had been lucky enough to get him talking about his time as a member of the Royal Air Force (RAF) in World War II.
Over pints of Guinness at a downtown pub, I knew he'd tell me a thing or two about POWER's Lest We Forget Program, and I hoped he'd go on-the-record with a snippet of his war experience.
Main, who's been a Calgarian since 1958, unfolds a poster version of a Remembrance Day display for the TransAlta (formerly Calgary Power) building's lobby. It features uniformed photos of the company's many war vets. "From management, engineers, district and division linemen – everybody," Main says in a light New Zealand accent. "So we end up with these 45 photographs which I think speaks volumes of Alberta and Calgary Power specifically. It's something to be very proud of.
"Gordon Maberly, who was in the Merchant Navy, for instance, he was torpedoed three times in the North Atlantic. He vowed he'd never go in a boat without a permanent life jacket around his neck," he laughs.
On November 6 each year, POWER volunteers go on a poppy drive through TransAlta HQ. The healthy contributions go to Number One Canadian Legion. On the 11th, they visit the Colonel Belcher Hospital to assist its Care Centre veterans in visiting the hospital chapel for Remembrance Day ceremonies. Main enjoys the yearly visits for their low-key intimacy.
Knowing that vets sometimes wonder aloud if the rest of us know and appreciate what they've done, I ask Main, does he often get the chance to talk about his own experiences in the war?
"Nobody'd believe what you were saying," he laughs. "Just say they (the RAF) were a great group of guys and they did what they had to. I was a flight sergeant navigator on Lancasters. If you survived, you completed a tour of 32 operations," he says, producing his own letter confirming his completion.
He continues, "You could never understand and I could never tell you. It was an honour to fly with your crew. You were a very close seven of you. Some were killed in the process. We lost a radio operator who was killed by flack. I lost my ankle.
"But that's not important! You don't talk about that. You remember many things but you don't remember the sordid part – and Lord knows there was a sordid part."
Main's favourite wartime memories are of the songs and camaraderie the young servicemen shared. "An air crew is a fraternity. Everything was done in sing-song in those days. This is what won the war."
He recalls, with some glee, taunting an American air crew in a favourite English pub. "The U.S. guys would sing 'off we go into the wild blue yonder.’" He and his New Zealander and Australian comrades would break into their own song: "They're flying Flying Fortresses to 30,000 feet, but they've only got a tiny tiny bomb. We're flying Avro Lancasters to zero zero feet and we've got a dirty big 10-ton bomb!"
He pauses, "Then, you see, there'd be a big fight.
"When you went into an air crew mess, it was the happiest place on God's earth and one of the classic songs we had.... And when I told them how bloody awful it was, they wouldn't believe me, they wouldn't believe me. The bombs the flack… that was it. It was so bloody awful. Can you imagine 1,000 Lancasters in 20 minutes going over Hamburg? The highest you'd get was 15,000 feet. We couldn't go any higher with the bomb load. The Lancaster would be rolling from explosions below and at 15,000 feet you're a point blank shot for an 88 millimetre (artillery). They simply laid a path of flack and you couldn't go up or down because there was another Lancaster 200 feet above you."
For the most accurate cinematic glimpse of air crew life, Main suggests 12 O'clock High starring Gregory Peck. Then he emphatically insists that I focus this column on the 400-member POWER group and its activities. POWER volunteer programs do everything from painting senior's homes, to helping clean and maintain the Tim Horton Children's Ranch, to highway cleanup. Historical Walking Tours are held regularly June through September or by special arrangement by calling 282-5714. |
