ed Barsby was just two years out of high school when, on Sept. 1, 1939, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein shelled a tiny Polish military outpost on the Westerplatte peninsula to effectively begin the Second World War.

Just 19 years old at the time, Barsby, now 89, had been content to kick around with his friend Ted Hamilton doing odd jobs around Nanaimo.

After a lacrosse practice one night at the Civic Arena, Barsby and Hamilton decided to go for a beer. That led to one of the biggest decisions of each man’s life.

“Canada was at war,” said Barsby. “We decided to join the air force. We thought that sleeping in clean sheets was a heck of a lot better than sleeping in the mud. Besides that, we’d probably get killed in the army.”

Canada officially joined the war on Sept. 10, mostly providing raw materials and essential supplies to European allies.

Barsby was eventually called on for service on New Year’s Eve, 1940 – Hamilton got called up a month later and joined him in training in Manitoba – and on Sept. 11, 1941, Barsby earned his wings and commission and got married.

“It was a big day,” he said.

Other big days lay ahead.

Not content with being a flight instructor, Barsby decided to participate actively in the war effort with Hamilton.

“It sounds stupid,” he said. “We could have stayed in Canada, but there was king and country and all that and I’m glad that I went. We went to fight a war and we had no idea. It was a different world and I’m glad I came out alive.”

Hamilton wasn’t so lucky. He was killed in April, 1942 during his 30th and last scheduled bombing run.

Barsby was posted to Pathfinder group, piloting a massive seven-crew Halifax Mark 3 bomber that marked German targets with incendiary bombs while being strafed with continuous flak from German anti-aircraft guns and enemy fighter planes.

His mission was to light up targets for a second wave of bombers that would unload massive amounts of explosives on German manufacturing and military sites.

“You knew you were going to get hit by flak or fighters,” he said. “It was just a matter of how bad.”

Barsby and his crew survived all 30 raids, and the men were part way through a second tour of duty when the war ceased in 1945. They later performed food drops in Holland and flew Allied POWs back to England.

Chances are Barsby piloted his Halifax over Oldham, England, where Jim White was guarding German prisoners of war as a member of the Home Guard.

Just 12 years old when the war started, White was forced to go to a junior technical school instead of high school to replace the skilled men who were called off to battle.

As an army cadet he learned boxing and judo, skills that would later help him during the war and post-war when he travelled the world in signals intelligence with England’s MI-6 retrieving Enigma typewriters.

In the early 1930s, his family moved from Saskatchewan to England in search of work.

“When the war started nobody knew what would happen. In 1938 my dad got called into the army,” recalled White, now 82. “I remember sleeping in the subway tunnels and hearing the bombing overhead. The Luftwaffe took two of my family’s homes. We went home one morning after a raid and it was gone.”

On one particular horrific night in 1941, White’s father and his company were sleeping under the seats of a stadium with bombs, shells and vehicles when a battered German bomber came in for a crash landing. It landed in the stadium, igniting a hellish inferno.

“It blew the place to smithereens,” said White. “A lot of people died. My dad suffered a broken back and spent the rest of the war in a hospital.”

He later died on Oct. 11, 1948 while White was based in Cypress. White’s grandfather was killed at Paschendale in the First World war.

As a 17-year-old, White guarded German U-boat prisoners of war on Saturday nights, many of whom sailed to enemy shores and raised the white flag in surrender.

“They always told me I didn’t have to lock the gates,” said White. “They said they weren’t crazy, they had no desire to go home because they would just be sent back to fight. We took pretty good care of them. After the war I went to visit some of them.”

Both Barsby and White go quiet for a moment when reminded the start of World War 2 was 70 years ago in September.

“It doesn’t feel that long ago for me,” said White.

Barsby, now housebound in a wheelchair, stares off to another time when thinking about his response.

“I wrote my wife every day, every single day. It was easier that way. I wasn’t very happy at times, but it was a great experience if you lived through it.”

More than 1 million Canadians served in the Second World War. Almost 45,000 never returned home.

reporter2@nanaimobulletin.com