http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/11/08/why-the-hell-would-i-kill-this-kid-one-canadian-veteran-remembers-the-horrors-of-war/
It is the strangest thing, Frank Johnson tells me, a memory he can’t shake because he can’t make sense of it, can’t understand why what happened to him on that long ago day in wartime Germany happened the way it did.
Here he was, you see, old Frankie Johnson — Johnny to his fighter pilot pals — shot to bits after being shot down over Germany on March 30, 1945. His back was busted, there was shrapnel in his right shin, a bullet in his left hip and he was bleeding from his forehead and covered in mud and blood and aircraft oil.
He was a “goddamn mess,” he says, and he didn’t really care whether he lived or died since he felt like he was already dying anyway. But a German farmer’s wife, some middle-aged lady, she cared whether he lived or died and she took a shot-up enemy fighter pilot who was dumped on her doorstep by two German soldiers and cleaned his wounds.
Washed his entire body like she was washing her own “goddamn son,” Mr. Johnson says, like it didn’t matter one slice that old Johnny boy had spent the war taking out “German targets” and killing God knows how many Germans along the way with his Hawker Typhoon fighter plane.
“What gets to me, what really gets to me,” Mr. Johnson thunders, in a voice made for radio even though he sold insurance for most of his post-war life, “is when people go on about the German people and how awful they were. Yes, there were the real Nazis and the Gestapo, and they were nasty pieces of work, but the ordinary Germans in the countryside were just like you and me — and I don’t think they really knew what the hell the war was about.
“I was freezing the night I got shot down, see, and the German soldier guarding me hands me a bottle of Schnapps — and brother, I wasn’t cold after that. Ernst was his name. He wrapped me in his great coat. He gave me his own bedroll. The next morning they take me to a farmhouse.
“And this woman, she pulls back an eiderdown bed cover and there are these beautiful white linen sheets, on a beautiful bed, and the [soldiers] just threw me on it. I was bloody. I had muddy boots on. And this lady, she took my boots off, undressed me and she kept talking to me, and she gets a big bowl of hot water and cleans all this mess off. She bandages my hip and then, if you can believe it, she washed my face, my arms, my chest — everywhere — and left me lying there on that beautiful bed.
“Now, why would she do that? I was the enemy. And to this day, sitting here talking to you, I still can’t get over it. Then she goes downstairs and comes up with a big bowl of stew and every time I have chunky soup for lunch I picture that nice German lady. I picture her clear as day. Jesus. She was a wonderful person.”
The madness of it stirs him, keeps his mind buzzing at night, leaves him thinking about all the “targets” he took out and what they might have done with their lives had they had one since, boy oh boy, Johnny the fighter pilot has had a great life. He married a beautiful English girl, Sheila, brought her back to Canada where they made a go of it here, in Mississauga, Ont., turning their white bungalow on a quiet, tree-lined street into a haven for their dogs, playing golf and tennis and taking ski trips to Aspen. They never had any kids of their own, a result of Mr. Johnson’s war wounds, but they had godchildren. They had a ball.
Now most of Mr. Johnson’s flying comrades are dead — only six made it to their last reunion in 2012 — and his Sheila has dementia and is living in a nearby nursing home.
“It is the most terrible thing you could ever imagine,” her husband says.
Mr. Johnson had his driver’s licence suspended not too long ago, because of a faulty heart valve. He still flies, though, thanks to a generous friend with a plane who hands him the controls.
“Can you believe it?” he says. “I could fly a plane at 18 and now they tell me I can’t drive a car at 91? I always tell my doctor I am going to live to 105. I’m his only patient over 65 that isn’t on medication.”
Mr. Johnson shakes his head in disbelief, gives his 13-year-old Husky, Yukon — although he calls him “Tom” — a good scratch behind the ears. We are sitting in the living room of the white bungalow. There are crossword puzzles piled beside the war veteran, and a dictionary within reach on the floor.
Mr. Johnson was liberated from a German POW camp six weeks after the nice German lady cleaned him up. He tried to find her after the war, to say thanks, but never did, and so he just went on living.
Looking back now all he sees are the dead.
“I am only really proud of one thing I did during the war,” he says.
He was flying patrol when his air traffic controller said there was a German plane above their airstrip.
“I was up about 4,000 feet and I look down and I see this guy,” Mr. Johnson says.
“Anybody who was an experienced fighter pilot would never be flying over an enemy airstrip and would never be flying in a straight line. But this guy was. He was obviously a rookie. Maybe it was his first flight in that goddamn aircraft and maybe he had gotten lost, and so I pulled out from behind him and came alongside and I looked over at him.
“He was just a boy. A kid. And I thought to myself, why the hell would I kill this kid? The war is almost over. He doesn’t know what the hell he is doing. So I [waved at him] and flew off. Back at the base they were all, ‘Did you get him? Did you get him? I said I let him go.
“It is the only thing that I did in that whole goddamn war that I am really pleased about. We had to kill, see? I remember destroying a ferry where I must have killed 50 or 60 people. And it is human life, and you could say, ‘Well, what the hell, it is war.’ But it just shows you how stupid war is when a guy like me looks back at things and feels the way I do.”
The older he gets the worse the feelings become, Mr. Johnson says, because you appreciate what life means. You understand how sweet and precious it is. The old fighter pilot has never been involved in any Remembrance Day ceremonies, and this Remembrance Day will be no different.
He wears a poppy, proudly, but he won’t put on his medals or stand as erect as his old, busted-up back allows saluting fallen comrades at a cenotaph, remembering what has been lost because too much was lost — his innocence — and the lives of too many young men, not so different from old Johnny himself, caught up in a killing mess they didn’t create but were ordered to mop up.
If Nov. 11 is a nice day, if the sun is out and the rain holds off, Frankie Johnson will go golfing. You might be able to find him afterwards, having a good stiff drink and a nice hot bowl of chunky soup.
One Canadian veteran remembers the horrors of war
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