Curious about my ancestor’s wartime military voyages
Q Thank you for publishing (FT July 2022) John Reid’s article on the operation of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP) in Canada during WW2. My interest stems from the small part played in the BCATP by my late father Robert (‘Bob’) Collier who, it seems from the little that he told the family and a few documents and photographs discovered after he passed away in 2018, was stationed at North Battleford and Moose Jaw in Saskatchewan from December 1943 to November 1944.
Bob’s role was as part of a maintenance team with his RAF rank being AC2 (LAC – leading aircraftman) and his trade Fitter IIA. An inscription on a group photograph taken in Blackpool a few months before his departure to Canada tells us that he was a member of Squadron 725 but I can find no evidence that such a squadron existed.
Bob was a modest and quite shy man who only rarely shared information about his time in Canada with his family. From what we have been able to piece together however, it is clear that he enjoyed this period of his life finding the work, the camaraderie within the group and opportunities to experience new things to be much to his liking. Spending his war service in a non-combatant role while many of his contemporaries were suffering in the various theatres of war was a matter of some sensitivity for him and might explain his reticence.
For a young man who had previously never travelled far from his home in Raunds, Northamptonshire two transatlantic crossings by ship in wartime must have been daunting but exciting experiences. Bob told us that the outbound sea voyage to Canada was from Liverpool to Halifax, Nova Scotia aboard the Mauretania but I can find no reference to this ship having been used as a troop carrier crossing the North Atlantic during WW2. As photographs from Bob’s time in Canada show there were opportunities outside working hours to become involved in leisure activities and even to travel away from base to indulge in a spot of tourism.
I wish now that I and my siblings had pressed our father to learn more about his service in the BCATP but am sure that there are still things for us to discover if only we knew where to look, for instance information about our father’s journey to and from Canada and his time there.
David Collier
A Wartime military voyages are not included in the UK outbound passenger lists. The gateway to records of trans-atlantic troop transport is Collection Search at Library and Archives Canada (LAC) at https://recherchecollection-search.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/home/search/.
The Mauretania, capable of carrying more than 7,000 troops at a speed exceeding 20 knots, travelled independently of convoys. LAC records show two voyages most likely to fit with starting service in Canada in December 1943, dated 21 November and 11 December 1943. Surviving records for both are among the 5,588 images on microfilm C-5711, digitised online, but unindexed, at https://heritage.canadiana.ca/view/oocihm. lac_reel_c5711/1/. The file will have information on other groups on the voyage, the shipboard routine and possibly the onward train trip.
North Battleford was the base for the RAF’S 35 Service Flight Training School until 25 February 1944. The school at Moose Jaw, 32 SFTS, was also initially a transferred RAF base. He would have worked on twin-engined Oxford and single-engine Harvard aircraft. A Google books preview from the book Moose Jaw: People, Places, History available at https://books.google.com/. JR