Article content continued

Sherry said his Uncle Jim had been slated to return to his Windsor home for the Christmas holidays but all such leave was cancelled after the Germans in mid-December launched what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, Hitler’s furious last-ditch winter counter-offensive against the Allies who had landed in Normandy six months earlier. German rail yards, used as marshalling areas for troop and weapon reinforcements being ferried to the front, became primary targets of Bomber Command.

News received in Ford City at the start of 1945 of the deaths of Sherry and the Bernyk brothers “must have rocked the neighbourhood,” said Gordon Sherry, whose own father, a younger brother of James, flew as a tail gunner on U-boat patrols over the Atlantic Ocean and St. Lawrence Seaway.

Photo by Image courtesy of Wim Slangen / Windsor Star

“They were different back then,” Gordon Sherry said of the young men of the time. Despite his youth, he said his Uncle Jim was quite accomplished, having served as organist and choir leader at Our Lady of the Rosary Church. A city lifeguard in the summer, he once swam to Belle Isle. He saved a boy’s life one winter when, skating with a group of friends on the frozen Detroit River, James didn’t hesitate to jump in when one of them fell through the ice, the other boys using hockey sticks to help fish the pair out.

Born in Windsor to parents who emigrated from Romania, Bernyk worked at a metal factory before signing up for war-time training with the RCAF.

Almost half of the 125,000 operational aircrew who served in Allied Bomber Command were killed during the Second World War, with 60 per cent of the total either killed, wounded in action or taken prisoner.

Slangen is hoping other family members connected to the crew of Lancaster ME647 might be able to attend the ceremony in May. The other three Canadian airmen on the doomed flight: Flight Sergeant John Cletus Daze of Arnprior, Ont.; Flight Sergeant Clarence Young of Cobalt/Cochrane District, Ont.; Flying Officer Donald Howard Bennett of Stony Mountain, Man.

Contact Wim Slangen at wimhm.slangen@planet.nl or Gordon Sherry at mogosh@att.net.

dschmidt@postmedia.com

twitter.com/schmidtcity

Photo by Image courtesy of Wim Slangen / Windsor Star

Photo by Image courtesy of Wim Slanger / Windsor Star

Photo by Image courtesy of Wim Slanger / Windsor Star

Photo by Image courtesy of Wim Slangen / Windsor Star