Of Luck and War: From Squeegee Kid to Bomber Pilot in World War II

David Bennett is the national director of the Department of Workplace Health, Safety and Environment at the Canadian Labour Congress in Ottawa.

veterans commit themselves to print. Such memoirs are always
interesting, though they vary in style and quality. Morrison, for
instance, is given to irrelevant comments, asides, and digressions. But
he more than makes up for this by capturing the sheer sense of adventure
at every phase of his long training, from October 1942 until he saw
action in the closing months of the War, in March 1945. Regrettably,
there is little about his conversion to flying Lancaster bombers in
England from his lighter bomber training in Canada.

Morrison has a sense that he took part in missions that made history,
such as the huge daylight raid that destroyed Essen on March 11. He was
also in the air when the Germans launched a rare night fighter raid over
England on the night of March 3–4. True to the authenticity of the
memoir, Morrison seems even now unaware of the true Allied losses in the
raid (20 bombers against three German fighters).

Morrison had some lucky escapes, but he is candid enough to admit that
he and his crew slept on at least one returning flight, waking to a
Yorkshire dawn and a ragged stream of northbound bombers all around
them.

For many working-class veterans, World War II was one occasion when
they were given huge responsibilities commensurate with their abilities
and where they attained well-deserved respect. For many veterans,
returning to civilian life was a painful turmoil in which they were
reduced to a pair of hands and a broad back—no one had any use for
their brains. Not so with Morrison. He settled into a career in outdoor
advertising with no recorded dilemmas of adjustment. Looking at a
picture of him, you would never dream that he did great things.