Second World War veteran Gord Larsen signed up for the Air Force on a whim and it may have saved his life.
“A friend and I, we just thought – we were 19 so we went and joined the Air Force. His name was Sid. He lived just over the way here,” says Larsen from the living room of his home he built near Grand Boulevard in 1949 after returning from the war.
“Strangely enough, about a month and half after we joined, I got a letter from the government conscripting me into the army. So, I was able to write my Air Force number down and say, ‘You’re too late.’”
Larsen, who lost friends in the war, knows it may have been a different story for him had he not given in to youthful spontaneity.
“Thank goodness,” he says.
Standing in a special nook in his split-level home, Larsen looks up at the model airplanes on the wall, replicas of the ones he flew while serving as a Bomber Command pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in England.
“That’s the Halifax. That’s the Lancaster. That’s the Wellington, the first line bomber at the beginning of the war, then it went into training,” says Larsen.
He proudly explains the significance of the badges of honour on his jacket.
There’s a defence medal and a victory medal hanging below his lapel.
“The bottom bar meant you went overseas,” he says.
The memories come flooding back for Larsen and the unimaginable stories start spilling out, as he transports the listener to England in 1942.
“When you were flying in England, you can almost say England was an airfield,” he recalls. “There were just thousands of planes all the time flying all around and it was just … it was chaos.”
There were too many close calls and near-misses to count.
“One of the fellows I was flying with, he was out one evening flying and another plane just came along and flew right into him. You know, that was the way it was.”
Any fear Larsen was feeling he buried deep inside. There was no time to let anxiety get in the way of the mission.
“You went out and got in the plane and took off and it was just a thing. You didn’t say, ‘Oh gosh here I go,’ all shaky – it was never any of that. The only shaking you did was hoping the motor would start," said Larsen with a chuckle.
And at times there was some levity to lighten the mood.
At 10,000 feet, Larsen had to go to the bathroom, he recalled during a Nov. 11 interview with CTV slice-of-life reporter Mike McCardell last year.
“We didn’t have a tin or anything on the plane,” he explained.
So Larsen got one of the air crew members who couldn’t fly to take the controls.
With the pilot by proxy gripping the wheel, Larsen went down into the belly of the bomber and opened the hatch.
“And I had to make sure I opened it right because I didn’t have a parachute with me,” he told McCardell.
Everything worked out fine in the end. When Larsen got back up to the controls, the plane was still flying straight and the knuckles on the air bomber were white.
Then there’s the tale of a fellow fighter who didn’t make it home unscathed.
“He was a ground crew in the Air Force. Nice guy. Ernie McDowell was his name,” said Larsen.
If the name sounds familiar, it’s because Ernie’s dad, who was North Vancouver’s druggist at the turn of the 20th century, owned the building at the corner of Second and Lonsdale. Today it’s a new condo project called Wallace & McDowell to pay homage to that period of North Vancouver’s history.
During the war, the younger McDowell was tasked with cleaning out the rear turret on the bombers. It was the most vulnerable part of the aircraft.
If one of the crew got shot that’s where he would be. The job of cleaning up meant seeing the remains of his fellow airmen.
“And he (McDowell) just finally broke down,” recalls Larsen. “He had to come home in the hospital ship ... they say he had a nervous breakdown. Well, that’s what you called it in those days, nowadays it’s PTSD.”
Larsen made his way home at the end of the war and came back to North Vancouver to marry his high school sweetheart. He pulls out his 1941 yearbook from North Vancouver High School and shows a picture of “Peggy.”
“Her name is not Peggy, never was,” said Larsen, softly. “It’s just a name she got from her dad. And it stayed with her. It was Evelyn, her name.”
Peggy and Gord raised their two kids, a son and daughter, in what was a rustic area of North Vancouver back then.
A little cottage on the street was inhabited by a good friend of acclaimed artist Emily Carr, who would often come by for a visit.
Another one of the Larsen’s neighbours was the actor E.V. Young, who co-founded Theatre Under the Stars in Stanley Park.
After the war, Larsen enjoyed a long career as a Canada Customs officer at the airport and in downtown Vancouver where he would board ships for inspection.
He and Peggy had two grandkids, and then two great-grandkids.
Every November the couple travelled to Maui where they would relax and socialize with a special group of friends every winter.
Gord and Peggy were married for 65 years.
Two weeks after their anniversary she died from a stroke.
"Oh, just her. She was a great person," says Larsen recalling fond memories of his wife, who was a longtime assistant to Lions Gate Hospital's administrator.
One of the few remaining Second World War vets, Larsen, 93, is still sharp as a tack.
He attributes his longevity to a well-deserved daily double scotch and slice of chocolate cake.
Gord and Sid were separated after they signed up for the air force. Sid never qualified.
"Where he is now, I don't know. If he's still living."
Larsen, who's not one for the limelight, will be lying low on Remembrance Day.
"I'll watch the service on TV here at home by myself," he says.
