Pilot’s Log

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“Nothing but sea seen” - F/L E.J. Mullins, August 5, 1942



My dad was twenty-one when he made that jaunty entry in the first of many Air-Sea-Rescue missions flown with 280 Squadron out of Detling, near Maidstone, Kent, England. The entries grew more terse. “Nothing”, “Empty”, “Nil”.

I have no idea how he felt at the time, about all these “nil” rescues, because he never talked about them. When I read his entries in his meticulously recorded pilot’s log, I feel hopeless.

Every year, on the day before the Remembrance Day holiday, I take Dad’s log book, his photos, and his medals into school. My students cluster around. They think it’s all pretty cool.

A friend of mine posted on facebook the other day, a photo of his grandfather taken at Pearl Harbour just before the Japanese attack. Some of us are here by the skin of our teeth, or our fathers’ teeth.

My ideas of my father’s service time were fuzzy, when I was growing up. I knew he was stationed in Britain, then in Ceylon. I knew he had a silk aviator’s scarf that was a gift from an English girl whose family he had helped. He had a butterfly collection from Ceylon. Mom, in reference to the butterflies, talked about “his boy” who collected them, and there was disdain in her voice, but when I asked about the boy, neither Mom nor Dad would answer.

A few years ago I searched for my dad online, and I found him. I had forgotten about his pilot’s log, but I had had the good sense to keep it, at least, and I dug it out of one of very few boxes I have left that represent my parents. There were dates of missions online. They matched Dad’s log. The record keeping is impressive.

My favourite part of Dad’s log book is the transit flight in June 1943 from England to join 160 Squadron (R.A.F.) in Ceylon. He accomplished it in eight legs, a total of forty-nine hours and forty-five minutes. That’s hard to imagine, at today’s speeds. He flew a Liberator (Americans would call it the B24) from England to Gibralter, then to Libya, then Cairo, then to Habbaniya, Iraq, then Karachi, India, then Madras, then to Colombo, Ceylon.

Three days after he arrived in Colombo, Dad reports a fighter affiliation in which his aircraft lost a wing tip. The following week, he was flying reconnaisance over Nicobar, an island in the Bay of Bengal that had been occupied by the Japanese since March, 1942. These guys did not get much reprieve.

Robert Quirk maintains the website at http://rquirk.com/ where I found my dad’s name. I emailed Robert, and sent him some photos which he then posted there. He in turn sent me some photos of Liberator “J” FL 926. Dad flew that plane six days before it “failed to return”. By the skin of my teeth, am I here.

My dad’s photos: http://rquirk.com/160files/mullins/mulphoto.html

E.J. Mullins is 2nd from right, back row.
It's worth clicking and enlarging, to admire their knees, if nothing else.

The History Channel is great tonight, but it’s all about Normandy. There are no books about the troops in Ceylon, nor movies. Sometimes I feel like the only one in the world who even knows about that part of the war, save for Robert Quirk and the few survivors of 160 Squadron. The old boys meet once a year, still, and one small dream of mine is to be able to attend. I guess I’d better do it soon.

Anyhow. I’ve written about this before, but each year it comes to the forefront of my mind. “Lest we forget” becomes more imperative as we lose the people that fought the “great” war. I remember thinking, when I was a teenager, that it was about time for another major war; there had been twenty years between the world wars, and now it was twenty years on. (There was the Viet Nam war, which figured hugely in our culture, but Canadians were not involved.) We are the first generation in several to know life without war. Our children—they have no clue how lucky we are.

I have a love-hate relationship with Remembrance Day. It makes me remember, and it makes me remember.



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