Arthur Rosen

Arthur Rosen was born on May 25, 1921 in Toronto. His father Joseph was born in Poland in either 1890 or 1896 and emigrated to the United States. There he met Rose Belasco, an American who was born in 1899. They married in Philadelphia and moved to Canada after World War I. In 1923 the Rosens were living at 220 Kenilworth Avenue and by 1925 they were at 108 Elmer Avenue. Three more children were born – Martin in 1924, Sydney in 1929 and Isabel in 1932. Joseph had been a merchant but by the 1930s he was a salesman for the Toronto Home Supply Company. They belonged to the Beth Jacob Congregation, now the Beach Hebrew Institute on Kenilworth.

Arthur attended Norway from 1926 to 1935, graduating to go to Eastern Commerce where he studied Merchandising until 1939. For the next one and a half years he worked as a salesman for Canada Comforter Company, a furniture manufacturer at 736 Dundas Street East. He enjoyed hockey, baseball and bowling.

On November 9 , 1941 Arthur enlisted in the RCAF, wanting to be a clerk. His employer promised to rehire him after the war, but Arthur didn't plan to return to the job. He did his basic training in Toronto and Trenton and in January 1942 was stationed in Gander, Newfoundland, an extremely large base and refuelling airport for overseas flights. After spending most of 1942 as a clerk in Newfoundland, in November he transferred to Shelburne, Nova Scotia. This was an RCAF base which was an operational training unit, where pilots learned to fly.

Arthur travelled home on leave for a week in early January 1943 to visit his family. He had been promoted to Corporal the previous month.

By April Arthur was stationed in Halifax and ultimately at Debert, Nova Scotia, which was a base used to house units about to be deployed to Britain. In June, Arthur wanted a change from being a clerk and applied for air crew. By July he was training in Belleville, Ontario and was then sent to bombing/gunnery school in Fingal, Ontario, near St. Thomas, where he arrived by November. In March 1944 Arthur transferred to London, Ontario to the air observers' school where learned navigation.

On June 2, Arthur left Halifax and arrived in Britain on the 10th. He was immediately assigned to No. 3 Personnel Reception Centre in Bournemouth, England for further training as a bomb aimer and on September 26, he was sent to No. 82 Operational Training Unit at RAF Ossington, 25 kilometres southwest of Sheffield, England. It was there that Arthur would be trained on Wellington bombers for night bombing missions. Arthur was reported to be popular with the other men and keen about his job.

Vickers Welliington Bomber. United Kingdom Government photo.

Two months later on November 9, Arthur and his four crew members were on a cross country training flight over England in Wellington X LP 840. They'd taken off before 1100 hrs from Ossington and were detailed to dump explosives off the coast of North Wales near Prestatyn. At 1640 hrs, for an unexplained reason, the Wellington crashed a mile from Rednal airbase in Shropshire, about 140 kilometres west of Ossington. An eye witness report claimed that the Wellington was diving vertically out of cloud and might have “iced up.” All of the crew died in the crash. Along with 23 year old Arthur was Pilot Raymond Willison, 22, of Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, the navigator Thomas Young, 26, an alumnus of the University of British Columbia, Sergeant Joseph Giroux, 20, from Demers Centre, Quebec and gunner Sergeant Donald Goodwin, 19, from Arnprior, Ontario.

The entire crew was buried in Chester (Blacon) Cemetery, 30 kilometres south of Liverpool.

Arthur's grave, Chester (Blacon) Cemetery. Photo: Stan Murphy, from www.findagrave.com

Arthur's parents lived at 108 Elmer Avenue until the late 1940s. Rose died in 1964 and Joseph passed away in 1981.

(Arthur's brother Martin's name is mistakenly on the Norway Honour Roll in place of Arthur's – Martin went to Malvern and became a doctor. He had six children, one he named after Arthur, and he died in 2009.)