How was life at ITS Toronto and CTS Trenton?

Back in 2010 when I got Eugene Gagnon’s record of service I had a hard time figuring out some entries. 

Some were easy like No.7 B&G Paulson where he was stationed as a staff pilot. But ITS and CTS or KTS was a mystery to me. Little by little information was brought to light like information given to me by Allan Todd whose bomber was, unknown to him, protected by Eugene Gagnon flying his Mosquito in December 1944.

I could not understand how he could have gone from No. 1 Manning depot to No.2 SFTS Uplands.

Now I know thanks to Allan Todd’s recollections about his training days…

Tarmac duty!

What about ITS Toronto and CTS or KTS Trenton?

This information from two airmen who were there.

 

When I got to the [physical training instructors] course in [RCAF Station] Trenton [Ontario], everybody was a top athlete: boxers, hockey players, gymnasts, football players. We had all types of people, professionaly athletes, all taking the course, about 60 people in my course; divided in two flights. Flight A and B in Trenton. It was a ten week course.

On the course, we had, our three main instructors were three sergeants; and they were very strict because, when I think of it now, I know that they were training us to be instructors. So they were very, very strict from the time we got out of bed, and cleaning ourselves and cleaning our barracks, and being on time and our beds had to be made, and the barracks had to be spotless. Everything was spotless because in the future, we were checking other people.

Oh, during my time when I was stationed at [No. 1] ITS [Initial Training School] in [RCAF Station Downsview] Toronto, we had a track and field meet for the trainees; and it was a very hot summer day. And during the, I was on staff, was doing whatever was necessary, recording the winners and the losers, etc., lining up the starting positions. The headquarters hadn’t taken a point. The trainees were taking it all; trainee flight A, trainee flight B, trainee flight C, they were capturing all the points. And, of course, the trainees were all future aircrew, young, anywhere from 17, 18, 19, 20 and some older people who were remustering from the army to the air force, or from air force jobs to aircrew. So they were all right on the bit, all these trainees, because they all wanted to be pilots.

And it was getting close to the end of the meet and the headquarters hadn’t taken any points yet. So I decided I was going to run in the mile. All afternoon, I was sucking on Coca-Colas. I even had an ice cream cone; and when I ran the mile, I really ran, I ran my guts out, let’s put it that way. I finished about sixth, never got a point, but my friend, Annis Stukus, who was writing for the [Toronto Daily] Star at the time and whom I had played football with earlier, he looked after me and I was on a stretcher; and my guts were turning inside out. I don’t know if I brought up [threw up] or not, I think I did bring up a little bit. So I said to him, boy, I think I’m going to die; and then I said, worse than that, maybe I won’t die, I’ll still suffer (laughs). But, anyway, it took 15, 20 minutes to half hour and I got back to myself.

During my time, I ran the baseball team and played on the team at the same time. I ran the basketball team for the station; and I played on the basketball team at the same time. I helped run the hockey team, but I wasn’t that great a hockey player, but I did skate a little bit with the team, our station team. We belonged to a league where it was the RCAF [Royal Canadian Air Force], the Dental Corps, the Army Corps and the Navy. We had 44 teams were in the league, and every team had pretty good athletes, very good athletes.

In Trenton, I was taking the physical training instructors course. And I think I told you before that everything we did had to be perfect. They drilled us and trained us to be perfect in everything we did. Now, it was our turn to lower the ensign, the flag, every night the flag was lowered with a little parade, let’s put it that way. So at Trenton was the CTS, Composite Training School, so they were training physical training instructors, disciplinarians, firefighters. They had maybe five or six different types of courses going at the same time. So it was our turn, [the] physical training instructors, to lower the ensign and the orders were followed at 8:00 pm, when we were going to lower the flag, to follow the form parade in front of the barracks and it started raining. It was pouring; and the sergeant yelled for the marker, that’s the first man who came out, then everybody fell in alongside of him. And it was pouring rain.

So everybody was sort of juggling around. You weren’t comfortable; you didn’t stand still and he started yelling at us. The sergeant really gave us hell and had us really sharpen up a little bit. So while we were marching, there was a puddle in front of you, you sidestepped it. So the sergeant got angry; and he said, “there’s no sidestepping and there’s no stepping over or stepping under, you take the regular paces and you put your foot down wherever it falls!” So he had us marching back and forth, and halting. Every time he halted, we halted. Now, we got stubborn against the sergeant. So when he halted us, we slapped our feet harder and harder into the mud, and into the puddles; and now things, where every time he yelled halt, there was a big splash. He didn’t like it, so he halted us more often. So it was a fight of who’s going to win, the instructor or the trainees. Well, of course, the instructor always wins.

Source: http://www.thememoryproject.com/stories/2114:albert-barris/

This one…
Ed Tew’s practice as a barrister and solicitor, however, turned out to be a brief two years. Whether or not it prospered is not known for certain but whatever its state he decided in the spring of 1941 to heed the country’s call and enlist for active service, choosing the popular arm known as the RCAF. One possible motive for his enlistment, as later intimated in a Hamilton Spectator obituary , was a desire to help avenge the death of a Navy friend. Like so many aspiring McMaster airmen, Ed enlisted at 1 Manning Depot (MD) in Toronto, which was housed in the sprawling Coliseum on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE). There, like hundreds of others, he was introduced over a five-week period to the arts of “airmanship”, which proved to have little to do with flight but everything to do with musketry, parade ground exercises, route marches, inoculations, vaccinations, psychological tests, and a round of lectures from seasoned instructors and other air force personnel. It all amounted, as he quickly learned, to his initiation into the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP), the Anglo-Canadian scheme to prepare air crew for combat service.

In early July Ed bade goodbye to the regimen at 1 MD when he was transferred to 5 Service Flying Training School in Brantford where he did no flying but rather the ritualistic guard duty that all recruits discharged while waiting for openings in their next training stage. In Ed’s case this happened after another five-week stint on a BCAPT (sic) station. On 9 August he arrived at his new post in Belleville, 5 Initial Training School (ITS). He was already aware that this stage of his instruction would determine his air trade, be it pilot, navigator, or wireless operator/air gunner. Ed had set his heart on being put in charge of an aircraft’s controls so he was in for a rude disappointment. After a rigorous series of interviews and tests, including a psychological examination (conducted by what one disgruntled recruit called “witch doctors”), he was selected not for flying, but rather for navigational instruction. It was no consolation to him that the latter trade ranked just behind pilot in the aircrew hierarchy. In any case, he at least emerged from 5 ITS a newly minted Leading Aircraftsman (LAC).

The friendly relations struck up between trainees and Belleville’s citizens, ill prepared Ed for the harsh reception he and his comrades suffered at his next posting, Ancienne Lorette, the home of 8 Air Observer School (AOS). Ed arrived there on 27 September and was doubtless told, among other things, that the local citizens, like many of their isolationist French Canadian compatriots, took a jaundiced view of Canada’s participation in yet another “British and foreign war”. They had soon made their bitter feelings known to the Anglo-Canadian air force trainees in their midst. Often spat upon and jeered, they were instructed not to venture unaccompanied or at night into nearby Quebec City, an injunction that doubtless cramped the style of those bolder recruits who keenly wanted, the risks notwithstanding, to savour the city’s nocturnal pleasures. Some trainees from other Commonwealth countries might be forgiven if they thought the war had started even before they set sail for Britain. Besides its unpleasant relations with the community the station was also plagued by “terrible food” and the hazardous stunt flying of staff pilots. In the absence of wartime letters Ed’s reactions to all this can only be imagined.

He spent some two months in training at Ancienne Lorette, mainly on the twin-engined Avro Anson. On 12 November he received a welcome two-week leave and the opportunity to enjoy the pleasures of home cooking, after which he was ordered to report to KTS Trenton (Composite Training School). Ordinarily this station was the demoralizing destination for all those unfortunates who “washed out” of their programs. Whatever his circumstances, Ed’s stay at Trenton, though relieved by occasional leaves, extended over a lengthy five-month period. Certainly, if his service record is any guide, illness and hospitalization did not account for it. On the face of it, therefore, not only had his navigational instruction been terminated but no substitute program had readily been found for him.

Then curiously, on 26 April 1942, Ed was, in a manner of speaking, released from the confines of KTS Trenton and ordered to proceed to 1 AOS Malton, where in spite of an apparent course failure he was obviously permitted to continue his navigational training. Recently, however, this scenario was challenged by an informant well qualified to do so, Brigadier General Jack Watts (ret.), a decorated wartime navigator who made a distinguished career for himself in the RCAF. To his knowledge no failed student was ever re-instated in a course as Ed Tew appears to have been. In other words, his training had perhaps not been terminated at all but only interrupted by the Trenton hiatus, during which he may well have been detached for more pressing duties. The same helpful Jack Watts suggested one such plausible arrangement. A lawyer in civilian life, Ed “might have become part of a court martial involving one of his course members, perhaps as his defence counsel”. Yet under “Temporary Duty”” on his service record there is no entry remotely suggesting this possibility nor did a search for court martial records for the period in question yield any results.

The apparent mystery surrounding this stage of Ed’s training career cleared up when another document materialized out of his official RCAF file. It shows that he did not go to KTS Trenton because he had “washed out” or because he had been assigned to a court martial. Rather it was there that he would have the opportunity to put his legal, skills to use on his own behalf, in effect, to argue a case. It would appear that after his posting to 5 AOS – a crushing disappointment – he objected and when this went unheeded he decided to apply formally for re-mustering from navigator student to pilot trainee.

Ed must have presented a solid case because a so-called Re-Selection Board was convened at Trenton to consider it. Among the accomplishments it took into account was Ed’s high standing of 89% attained at 5 ITS. On 29 January 1942 the impressed board duly found for Ed and “strongly recommended” the sought after re-mustering. So did Trenton’s commanding officer, who declared that “LAC Tew is an excellent type of airman with an exceedingly good educational background. His desire to fly as a Pilot is his one ambition and in this, he has been thwarted from all sides”.

In spite of the Board’s recommendation, however, Ed would continue to be thwarted. Possibly fearing precedent-setting and procedural problems, the Air Force’s higher authorities ultimately ruled against Ed’s “one ambition” and ordered him to resume his navigational training. In the absence of letters and other personal documentation, one can only imagine Ed’s continued disappointment and frustration. But this “fine type of airman” soldiered on and proceeded, as noted, to 1 AOS Malton.

Putting his recent setback behind him, Ed appears to have had little difficulty fitting back into the observer course, again undertaken on the by now familiar Anson. After his completion of the course with a commendable grade of 79%, he would have ordinarily proceeded, as an emergent navigator, to a bombing and gunnery school but in this case the requirement was unaccountably waived, a situation that “surprised” Jack Watts. (Perhaps Ed had objected to this training phase as well and this time the tactic worked.) Nonetheless on 28 August Ed was judged fully qualified to graduate. He was made Temporary Sergeant, as was the practice, and then on the strength of his course standings appointed Pilot Officer and awarded his Observer (O) wing. At the same time he was assigned to the RCAF’s so-called Special Reserve, created to accommodate the swelling number of new aircrew graduates.

A mere two days after the wings graduation ceremony on the Malton station, Ed was dispatched to 1 Y Depot in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the marshalling point for all those airmen earmarked for an overseas departure. But in Ed’s case, not before he enjoyed a two-week leave to visit family and friends in Hamilton. He returned to Halifax on 26 September and a week and a half later his time in Canada ended when he boarded a ship bound in a convoy for Britain. He experienced an apparently uneventful Atlantic crossing and arrived safely on 18 October. As others often did, he probably wired his relieved parents the bittersweet tidings.

After completing his disembarkation and collecting his belongings, he was given his travel instructions. He shortly boarded a train bound for the much frequented Personnel Reception Centre in Bournemouth on the Channel shore. There he was initiated, as a member of the RAF Trainees Pool, into the ways of that senior service as conveyed through lectures and movies. Inoculations, medical inspections, and vision tests were also the order of the day for these fresh arrivals from the New World.

Then, on 27 October, armed with newly issued battle dress and flying kit, Ed was sent off to his first posting, 22 Operational Training Unit (O T U) at Wellesbourne Mountford, located a few miles from storied Stratford -upon-Avon in Warwickshire. The station was by now staffed overwhelmingly by Ed’s compatriots and hence placed under Canadian command. Among other things, 22 O T U’s location also gave Ed and his comrades a first-class opportunity to brush up on their high school and college Shakespeare. Ed was not the first McMaster airman to enjoy these advantages. He had been preceded at Wellesbourne by Barney Rawson [HR], another Hamiltonian.

 

Source: http://alumni.os.mcmaster.ca/s/1439/index.aspx?sid=1439&gid=1&pgid=691