A Name Carved In Stone ~ My Great Uncle & the 427 Squadron Memorial
The story of an RCAF Air Gunner, his final mission, and the long journey of remembrance
By Trevor Howard
Part 1 — A Cold October Day in Cobden
It was a blustery cold October day in Cobden, Ontario.
The wind had picked up, and the temperature was dropping fast by the time we finished.
In the afternoon of October 10, 2017, the setting crew from Campbell Monument stepped back as the final pieces of the 427 Squadron Memorial were set into place. The granite stood solid against the darkening grey sky, its polished surfaces catching what little light broke through the clouds.
At the top, a bronze lion faced outwards across the park. The symbol and mascot of 427 Squadron, the ‘Lion Squadron’.
We had gathered early that morning and spent a long day assembling the memorial on site at the Cobden Veterans Memorial Park, setting each piece and making sure everything lined up and was just right.
But for me, this was never just another installation. One of the names carved into that granite belonged to my great uncle: R.119924 Warrant Officer II William “Bill” Kashmar.
More than seventy years after his final mission, his name had found a permanent place in stone here in Canada.
Part 2 — The Medals That Started It All
Years earlier, around 2010, my grandmother gave me something that quietly changed the direction of my life.
After a regular family dinner, she handed me a small package with the short message, “I’ve carried these my entire life, and now I am passing them on to you to care for.” In that package was a small collection of World War Two medals and photographs that had belonged to her uncle Bill, items she had cared for since receiving them so many years before.
My grandmother, Joan Eva Shoomski, had kept these items safe for her entire life, up until that point. Bill had been her favourite uncle, and although she had only been a small child when he was killed during the war, his memory stayed with her.
When Bill was killed in 1943, his personal belongings were eventually sent home, and because both of his parents had already passed away, he had filled out his Last Will & Testament, leaving all of his earthly belongings to his niece and nephew.
At the time she passed these on to me, I was in my early thirties, and had a growing interest in history, particularly Canada’s involvement in the Great War and the Second World War, especially the role of the Royal Canadian Air Force since we are so close to CFB Trenton and my one grandfather also served in the RCAF.
To me, receiving those medals and photos was more than just inheriting family artifacts. It felt like accepting a responsibility, and a duty to find out who this family member was.
At the time, I was already volunteering some time in the winters at the National Air Force Museum of Canada in Trenton, where I worked alongside other volunteers in the restoration area who did serve, and who had so many great stories to share. Spending time there around those people, and the amazing centrepiece of the museum, the Halifax bomber, it fostered a deeper interest in Bomber Command and the many thousands of Canadians who served in it.
Those medals pushed me further and I began researching everything I could find about Bill; his training, his squadron, and his final mission… but that was just the surface.
What started as curiosity gradually became something more, a determination to understand who Bill had been, and what had happened on the night he never returned.
Part 3 — A Young Man from Winnipeg
William “Bill” Kashmar was born on June 22, 1919, in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the youngest of three children.
His sisters, Maria “Mary” and Kateryna “Kay,” were both older than him, and together they grew up in a family shaped by immigration and hardship.
Their parents had come to Canada from Eastern Europe (Poland/Ukraine), settling in Winnipeg to build a new life. Like for many immigrant families of that time, life was not easy, both parents worked hard but both passed away while the children were still young.
Despite that, Bill grew up surrounded by his sisters, his family.
One of the photographs that survives from Bill’s childhood shows him sitting in a small wooden airplane, hands gripping the controls, and looking at the photographer with a great smile. Traveling photographers would move through neighbourhoods with these wooden prop planes mounted onto carts, giving children the chance to have their photo taken as if they were pilots.
Looking back now, it is hard not to see something more in that innocent image.
Part 4 — Training for War
On July 30, 1941, Bill enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in Winnipeg.
Like thousands of young Canadians, he entered the training system of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan.
His training began at No. 2 Initial Training School in Regina, where he spent the later months of 1941 learning the fundamentals required of aircrew.
He later attended No. 2 Bombing and Gunnery School in Mossbank, Saskatchewan. From May 24 to June 23, 1942, Bill trained as an Air Gunner, learning the operation of different turrets, weapons, and how to defend a bomber aircraft against enemy fighters.
On June 22, 1942, on his twenty-third birthday, he was awarded his Air Gunner’s Badge.
Shortly afterward, he was sent to Y Depot in Moncton, New Brunswick, where Canadian aircrew gathered before being sent overseas.
On July 20, 1942, he embarked for England and ten days later, he arrived in Bournemouth to continue his training and prepare for operational service.
Here are a number of images from Bill's time training in Canada before his embarkation to Europe (click on image to enlarge and scroll through):
Part 5 — Letters from Overseas
Bill arrived in England on July 30, 1942 and spent several more months in training before being sent to an operational squadron.
While stationed in Britain, during more months of training and before being sent to a squadron, Bill wrote letters home to his sister Kay.
Only a few of those letters still exist, but they offer something official records cannot: his personality in his own words.
In one letter, dated September 14, 1942, he wrote about not yet receiving replies from home, wondering if he had been forgotten. He asked for cigarettes, something many airmen relied on as a small comfort during long periods of waiting and uncertainty. Bill also mentioned meeting a girl in Scotland, someone he had begun writing to regularly.
The letters are simple, and at times almost routine conversation.
Reading them now, and knowing what would come later, they carry a different weight.
In one letter, he wrote to Kay, “Tell Frank (Kay’s husband) that I would give anything to be back in Canada.” Here are a couple of these letters (click to enlarge):
Part 6 — Into Operational Squadrons
After completing his training, Bill was posted to No. 420 Squadron on January 17, 1943, where he flew a number of missions on Vickers Wellington bombers with what was becoming a solid crew. From the records that I have reviewed, 11 operational missions were flown with No. 420 Squadron, each piloted by P/O C. H. T. Tubman and accompanied by F/O George Theodore Matynia as the navigator.
A short time later, in April, Bill was transferred to No. 427 Squadron, along with Tubman, Matynia and likely several others. Also part of No. 6 (RCAF) Group within RAF Bomber Command, the squadron was transitioning from its Vickers Wellington bombers to the newer Handley Page Halifax Mk. V.
An important chapter in No. 427 Squadron's history occurred on May 24, 1943, when the squadron was formally adopted by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) Studios. The entire squadron, including Bill, would have assembled outside their hangar for the ceremony, where MGM's Managing Director in Great Britain, Mr. Eckman, presented their commanding officer, Wing Commander Burnside, with a commemorative bronze lion of eighteenth-century design. With this symbolic gift, 427 Squadron became known as the “Lion Squadron,” a nod to MGM's famous roaring lion emblem.
The occasion also brought a touch of Hollywood glamour to the airfield, as seventeen names of MGM film stars were drawn to be assigned to squadron aircraft. Sergeant Johnson was the lucky recipient of Lana Turner's name, which he promptly chalked onto his bomber amid cheers from his fellow airmen. The ceremony was captured by newsreel cameras and photographers, and concluded with a celebration in the Sergeants' Mess for the entire squadron and its guests.
By the time Bill joined the squadron, crews were already deep into operational flying and he continued to fly with several of the same crew members from 420 Squadron who also transferred to 427 Squadron in the ‘Heavy Conversion’ from Wellington to Halifax bombers, including Tubman and Matynia.
Between the end of May and the end of June, Bill and his crew took part in four more operations over occupied Europe. Targets from missions in both squadrons concentrated efforts on Germany's industrial production, transportation networks, naval installations, and the cities supporting the war economy.
Their operations took them over occupied France and deep into Germany, targeting submarine bases and naval installations, docks and railway marshalling yards, steelworks, armament factories, chemical plants and other industries vital to the German war effort. Many of these missions were directed against the heavily defended industrial cities of the Ruhr Valley, as Bomber Command intensified its bombing campaign during the spring of 1943.
These were not random targets. Each mission was part of a larger effort to weaken Germany’s ability to continue the war.
Each mission added to their experience, and also to the risk.
Part 7 — The Final Mission
On the evening of June 25, 1943, Bomber Command launched a major raid against the German industrial city of Gelsenkirchen in the Ruhr Valley.
Heavy bombers from multiple Bomber Command squadrons lifted off into the night, forming a stream of 473 aircraft that were dispatched to cross the North Sea and press deep into occupied Europe.
Among those aircraft detailed for this mission were nine Halifax bombers from 427 Squadron, including Bill’s aircraft, Halifax Mk V DK190 (ZL-F), which took off at 23:28 hours.
Seven men climbed aboard that aircraft. They had trained for this, and all crew members had already flown many operations before. While each mission had a defined target, this mission’s goal was to strike at the industrial centres that sustained the German war effort at Gelsenkirchen.
Bomber missions each carried their own sets of risks: navigation in darkness, weather, anti-aircraft fire, and waiting somewhere beyond the coast of England, German night fighters.
The bombing run was completed over Gelsenkirchen, and in the very early morning hours of June 26, 1943, the stream of bombers that had made it this far began their dangerous journey home.
Part 8 — Night Fighters
Night bombing missions over occupied Europe were one of the most dangerous forms of warfare during the Second World War. Aside from the flak guns on the ground, German night fighters waited in the darkness, guided toward bomber streams by radar stations on the ground.
For bomber crews, the first warning often came from the gunners; a sudden call over the intercom: “FIGHTER!”
This Halifax bomber had two air gunner positions, one in the tail, and the mid-upper turret, positioned above the fuselage. Air gunners constantly scanned the sky for approaching aircraft, but in the darkness, there was little to see, and even less time to react.
Bill was the mid-upper gunner on this mission, and it was his job to see the enemy first. In many cases, that short warning was the only chance the crew had, and sometimes, those warnings came too late.
Part 9 — The Crash Near Gorssel
Shortly after 2:00 a.m. on June 26, 1943, as the bomber stream made its return across the border of Germany into the Netherlands, it was at this point that Halifax DK190 was intercepted.
This night fighter, a Messerschmitt Bf 110 G-4 of Unit 9./NJG 1 (Nachtjagdgeschwader 1), flown by Hauptmann Wilhelm Dormann, closed in under cover of darkness. These night fighters would often approach from below at an upward angle, making them difficult to spot, and often at close range before they were spotted.
Guided by radar, the night fighter attacked the Halifax bomber as the aircraft flew west toward the North Sea. German records place the engagement at approximately 02:01 hours, in a sector corresponding to the area east of Gorssel.
Witnesses on the ground would later describe the aircraft as already burning as it came down, and the bomber crashed near the ‘oprijlaan’, the driveway, of a country house known as ’t Amelte.
Three days later, on June 29, 1943, an official report of the crash was made by the Burgemeester (the Mayor of Gorssel).
In that report he recorded that six crew members had been recovered and that the bodies had been buried. It came to be that a seventh crew member would be found several days later.
In the report, one of the men found was listed only as “Lefty” and noted of tattoos that included the initials “B.K.”
In the confusion of war, identification was not always immediate; names were often recorded incorrectly, and many were simply unknown at the time as it was not possible to identify them since any identity discs would be immediately removed by occupying German forces.
But the people of Gorssel did what they could.
They buried them; six men on June 29, and later the seventh on July 14, 1943.
Years later, postwar investigation would confirm their identities, but right from the beginning, they were not left behind.
Part 10 — Full Circle
Years before the Cobden memorial was installed, and maybe before the 427 Squadron Memorial was even conceived, in May of 2013, I had travelled to England with my wife, her brother, and her parents for a family event.
On May 13th, we visited the Bomber Command Memorial in London, which had only recently been unveiled about a year earlier, on June 28, 2012.
Before the trip, I knew that I would be visiting this memorial and I created a laminated card with Bill’s photograph and some information that I knew at that time on it.
Standing in front of the memorial’s central bronze sculpture, I held the card while my wife took my photo.
Then I left it there.
Well... for reasons I couldn’t really explain, I had printed several copies of that card before the trip, and I had kept one in my camera bag for safekeeping.
Years later, on the day we installed the 427 Squadron Memorial in Cobden, I brought that extra card with me, and when the monument was complete, I walked over to the panel where Bill’s name had been carved, held the card beside his name and took another photograph.
I then placed it gently at the base of the monument, as the first to visit this new memorial, to thank my Great Uncle Bill for his service.
It was a small thing, but it felt like something here had come back, full circle. Like the distance between those two far away places, London, England and Cobden, Ontario, had somehow closed. And that after all those years, Bill’s story had found its way home.
Part 11 — Why Memorials Matter
As we know, a monument cannot bring someone home, but it can make sure they are never forgotten.
I continue to research Bill’s life and his service, and every few years I find a new lead somewhere that helps add to his story. But ‘in the now’, the permanence of a memorial gives a name a place to stand in the world, and it gives families somewhere to return to.
It is permanent memorials, like the 427 Squadron Memorial, that give us a reason to pause, even if only for a moment, and to remember.
While time will pass and our memories may fade, the stone will not.
And sometimes, as you can see, this is how a story comes full circle.
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This post was written as a tribute to my Great Uncle William 'Bill' Kashmar, to his crew, and to all the men and women who have served our great country, and continue to serve. Thank you for your service.
Crew of Halifax Mk V DK190 (ZL-F)
No. 427 Squadron, RCAF
25/26 June 1943
J.13072 / R.110939 Flying Officer George Theodore Matynia – Navigator (RCAF)
R.98109 Warrant Officer II Francis Joseph Higgins DFM – Flight Engineer (RCAF)
R.102677 Warrant Officer II Archibald Kay ‘Scott’ Young – Bomb Aimer (RCAF)
1345736 Sergeant Fergus John Hunter – Flight Engineer (RAF)
J.18454 Pilot Officer Harold Garfield Froude – Air Gunner (Tail Gunner) (RCAF)
R.103778 Warrant Officer II Robert Randolph Stickney – Wireless Operator/Air Gunner (Navigator) (RCAF)
R.119924 Warrant Officer II William ‘Bill’ Kashmar – Air Gunner (Mid-Upper Gunner) (RCAF)
Photographs of Gorssel General Cemetery in the Netherlands, where the seven crew members are laid to rest, along with photographs of the individual airmen where available:
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