Bless You, Brother Irvin: The Caterpillar Club Story.

Sidney Allinson is a Victoria-based communications consultant, Canadian
news correspondent for Britain’s The Army Quarterly and Defence, and
author of The Bantams: The Untold Story of World War I.

This book’s title refers to the Irvin Aerospace Company, whose parachutes saved the lives of thousands of Allied airmen during the Second World War. Author John Neal was the bomb-aimer of a Royal Canadian Air Force Halifax aircraft on a night raid when it was shot down over France in 1944. His book includes modest mention of how he escaped death, along with written personal accounts of other flyers who bailed out, pulled their parachute rip cord, and floated safely to earth. Neal compiled the stories of 40 typical members of Allied aircrew who served with Royal Air Force Bomber Command or the United States Army Air Force in WWII and jumped for their lives in mid-air.

Such a survival qualified them to join the Caterpillar Club, founded in 1923 by the Irvin parachute making company, entitling members to wear the little gold caterpillar lapel badge that symbolizes their lives were saved by “hitting the silk.” These veterans’ modest, understated style of reminiscence cannot hide their raw courage in face of sometimes appalling odds. Revenue from sales of Neal’s book is being donated to a fund for raising the wreck of a Halifax bomber from the sea off the coast of Scotland.