A Trepid Aviator: Bombay to Bangkok

Dean F. Oliver is the assistant director of the Centre for International
and Security Studies at York University in Toronto.

This witty and fascinating memoir by a Canadian bomber pilot is a gentle
reminder that Canadian personnel served not only in Europe and North
America during World War II, but also on virtually every fighting front,
including the India–Burma theatre, the setting for this account.
Britain’s Royal Air Force, in fact, included large contingents of air
and ground crew from the Dominions and elsewhere, none more numerous or
influential than the Canadians. At the squadron level, if not above, the
RAF was a multinational institution in all but name.

Frazer’s account is unexceptional in most regards. The boredom and
inertia of base life are well captured, as are the brief respites
offered by leave, female companionship, and—rarest of all—timely
mail. He describes India and its inhabitants through the eyes of a
typical mid–20th-century soldier of the Empire. At times enormously
sympathetic to native concerns, he nevertheless accepts unreservedly the
complex but generally subordinating relationships between whites and
natives, which he encounters daily in both military and civilian
circles. He displays, occasionally, flashes of impatience or, less
frequently, disgust with British attitudes and the indigenous caste
system, but for the most part this Canadian airman is content to live
within the Imperial system, not to overturn it.

The passages on combat are well written and informative. Crews in India
had much to contend with, though most were thankful not to face
Hitler’s Fortress Europa on a regular basis. More interesting are the
sections on training, flying, and personnel handling that dominate most
of the book. The process by which Frazer and other pilots selected their
crews from the training pool, for example, is riveting—a mixture of
instinct, networking, charisma, and bravado, all woven loosely together
with an unwritten code of ethics that left much to chance. This is a
good book about what, for Canadians, remains a largely unknown war. It
deserves a wide readership.