Nickels and Nightingales

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

This plainly packaged but endearing account of a Canadian air
observer’s years with the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command begins
dramatically, with the author’s aircraft being shot down over the
Mediterranean during a raid on Tobruk in November 1942. Swimming to
shore under the muzzles of enemy gun positions, Watts, who suffered a
severe groin injury in the crash, then hid in the rocks along the coast
until located by friendly patrols several days later in a hastily
abandoned German bunker. After this gripping introduction, the narrative
fills in the story before and after the author’s heroic service with
the Western Desert Air Force.

One of many Canadians in the RAF who was never “Canadianized” by
this nation’s policy of consolidating the native-born into national
squadrons, Watts flew more than 100 operations over Europe and Africa
and spent many months flying the specially equipped Mosquitos of the
famous Pathfinder Force. He participated in several of the
thousand-bomber raids over Germany, two harrowing attacks on the Tirpitz
in its heavily defended Norwegian fjord, and many operations in support
of ground forces during the campaign in Northwest Europe. Though
tedious, especially near the end, in its painstaking enumeration of
individual operations, the book holds the reader’s interest with solid
writing, interesting technical details, and romantic liaisons. There are
mistakes and overstatements here—D-Day was not June 5, 1944, for
example, and it is very unlikely that on the day of the invasion a base
security officer would even have known, much less divulged, as Watts
claims, the full nature of the Allies’ pre-invasion deception
measures—but the story remains compelling.

Perhaps the most interesting anecdote concerns a leave the author spent
in Canada in the middle of the war and his hostile reaction to the bold
profiteering and “business-as-usual” attitude he encountered there,
which left him anxious to return to his squadron. Watts’s experience
points to two areas that remain poorly developed in Canadian World War
II historiography: the home front; and the mental attitudes of service
personnel toward civilian life, military service, and political
leadership.