I met up with VeRA on a recent sunny Manitoba summer evening, when there were just the two of us, along with hundreds of Manitobans of all ages gathered around a static display of the only Avro Lancaster bomber still flying in North America.
Our relationship dates back to the summer of 1988, when I heard (and saw) that this airplane had been restored to flyable condition at Mount Hope Airport, and living in rural Ancaster, it seemed like this airplane was always flying overhead on practice flights.
I well remember when VeRA was joined on its first official flight by two other vintage aircraft, a Hawker Hurricane and a Supermarine Spitfire.
Nick Adam / Free Press
An Avro Lancaster at the Royal Western Canadian Aviation Museum in Winnipeg on Tuesday, July 16th.
Unfortunately, five years later, a fire broke out at the airport, destroying the Hurricane, Spitfire and several other aircraft along with the hangars and maintenance records. Only the heroic actions of the local volunteer fire brigade saved the VeRA. I remember a tow truck removing a fuel tanker that had stalled near the scene of the fire, and the aircraft crew putting wheels on it and towing the VeRA to safety.
But there’s more to the story. VeRA is officially the Andrew Mynarski VC Memorial Lancaster. I first learned about Mynarski’s heroism when I was a young boy in Calgary, because his cousin Walter was a friend of my parents. After moving to Winnipeg in 1967, I was the first to discover the Royal Canadian Legion branch that bears his name on Main Street.
Later, while teaching at the base’s 17th Wing, I saw his Victoria Cross on display in a NORAD bunker that one of my graduate students had given us special access to one quiet night for a seminar.
So, having also visited VeRA at the new Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum in Mount Hope, we had to welcome her back to Mynarski’s hometown of Winnipeg.
But it was a night, and a week, of mixed emotions, and the organizers must have been thrilled by the turnout. It was astonishing how many people, many with small children and grandchildren, queued for hours to see the interior of the plane.
But as my summer course on militarism drew to a close, I was perplexed: how many of those in attendance knew why those planes were built, or why 55,573 men died at Bomber Command and thousands more died on the ground? Since military history is so rarely taught in schools and universities, I doubt that many of the attendees actually knew much.
From an early age, I was as passionate about history as any kid running around VeRA, often reciting Andrew Mynarski stories without being asked, and poring over all sorts of books about WWII and aviation in general.
Unfortunately, I have never visited the battlefields and cemeteries across the ocean due to lack of opportunity and means, but I live with the thoughts and words of those who fought and sometimes died, and I try to convey at least some of their wartime experiences to today’s students.
Canadian military historian Tim Cook calls World War II a “war of necessity,” one that we (as Canadians) needed to fight fascist tyranny and the ideology that underpinned it, which could have easily traveled across the ocean to threaten us otherwise.
But the same explanation does not apply to the Great War of 1914-1918. That war and its conclusion created the conditions for what the popular press as early as 1919 called “the next war.”
Far from being a “war to end war,” World War I made the next war a “necessity” rather than an option.
So in the aftermath of Hurricane Beryl, which was caused and exacerbated by rising ocean temperatures, my mixed emotions were heightened last week by the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump and the foolish publicity at the Republican National Convention.
The stories I heard sounded very similar to the fascism that the Lancaster crews fought against.
The uncritical combination of militarism and nationalism, the excessive layering of pseudo-Christian religiosity in the symbols and language used in rally speeches, and the blind hatred of the “other” (whoever that may be at the moment) — all this is breeding ground for fascism disguised as a mass movement.
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Politicians who claim to be “for the people” rarely actually are, because their words (not their actions) are presented as evidence to justify themselves. We should judge them by what they do or have done, not what they say in the moment to whip up a crowd.
VeRA’s visit reminds us of the cost of accepting the flippant words of aspiring leaders who propose simple bumper stickers as shallow policies, especially in a world filled with complexity and imminent danger.
Otherwise, I fear, we will not heed the lessons of history and will once again pay a bitter price with the children who ran around the wheels of VeRA.
We must stop preparing for war against humanity and the planet before war is necessary again.
Peter Denton is an adjunct lecturer at the Royal Military Academy and writes from his home in rural Manitoba.
