Ross | More Than A Name

Donald Alexander Ross

(Not listed on Norway's Roll of Honour, but is commemorated on Bowmore's and Riverdale's.)

Don Ross' grandfather, Alexander Christie Ross was born in Aberdeen, Scotland and married Mary McCulloch in 1875. They had a daughter before immigrating to the United States in the early 1880s and moved to Toronto by the latter part of that decade. In total, they had eight children, including Bruce Dow Ross, who was born in Toronto in 1889. The family eventually settled at 103 Woodbine Avenue, overlooking old Woodbine (later Greenwood) racetrack. In the mid-1920s Woodbine was renumbered and the house became 121 Woodbine, no longer standing.

In January 1915 Bruce married Elise Mary Virgo (b. 1891) who lived on Heward Avenue and they soon became the first owners of 93 Kingsmount Park Road. Their first child, Don, arrived on December 12, 1915, followed by Willmott, known as Bill, two years later. Another boy, Gordon and two sisters soon followed, Dorothy Jean and Margaret. There was another girl, Elinor, born in 1925 who died at 3 months old and the youngest, Shirley, was born in the early 1930s. Bruce was employed by the United Drug Company as the factory office manager, but he worked his way up to vice president by the late 1930s.

Don started school at Norway in 1921. The school was over capacity until Bowmore opened the next year and students from Roden and Norway who lived between Woodbine and Coxwell transferred to Bowmore. Don was one of them and attended Bowmore until Grade 8, in 1928. He went to high school at Riverdale, graduating in 1934 and while there, was a member of the school's cadet corps.

A few days after Christmas 1932, Don's brother Bill passed away at the age of 15 from heart trouble. Don felt his loss terribly, as did the entire family.

Hunting was a lifelong hobby of Don's and he would shoot small game with a .22 rifle. He also liked to fish. He played many sports, including golf, hockey and rugby, but he was a great baseball player on several amateur Toronto teams in the late 1930s, winning his league's batting award for the highest average of .461 in 1935. His league would play games on diamonds all over Toronto from the east end to Christie Pits in the west.

Don started working at a time-keeping and cost finding company in 1935, but when the company moved to Bowmanville two years later, he became a salesman with a company affiliated with Imperial Oil. His parents moved to North Toronto in the late 1930s and ultimately to Leaside by the mid-1940s. Don continued to live with them.

On June 20, 1940, Don enlisted in the RCAF. He had tried to join in October 1939 and wanted to be a pilot, but at the time the RCAF was only taking licensed pilots and university graduates. When he enlisted the next summer, Don had stated that he “switched his preference from Pilot to Observer to get in sooner.” He was sent almost immediately to Regina for his basic training and then transferred to Brandon, Manitoba. He was determined to be colour blind, which eliminated any chance of being aircrew. He returned to Toronto in the fall to take a military police course and when it was completed in November, he became a military policeman at an airbase in British Columbia.

Determined to fly, Don started courses in Regina and after another test, his colour blindness was found to be safe enough that he could still function as part of an aircrew. He continued his training at Sea Island, British Columbia and in Calgary, graduating 9th in his class. His instructor recommended that he be sent to a flight instructors' course and Don started it at Trenton in late October 1941, after receiving his wings and a commission as a pilot officer. He returned to Toronto for his Christmas leave.

Don had a sweetheart, Kay Robertson. She was an east-end girl three years younger than Don. Her father was a tailor with a shop on Gerrard near Broadview and the family lived on Tiverton Avenue, near Gerrard and Logan. Kay was working as a stenographer at Rolph-Clark-Stone, a lithography company on Carlaw. They kept in touch and with Don being in Trenton, they would have visited each other when he had a weekend off and during a leave he had in April.

The Toronto Star, July 1942.

The course at Trenton was over by the end of May and Don was being posted to the training school in Saskatoon. He asked Kay to marry him and arrangements were made. Kay travelled to Saskatoon in July and they married on the 15th. She remained with Don, living near the base. His next leave was two weeks in October and they were finally able to have a honeymoon.

Avro Anson. Department of National Defence archive photo.

In May 1943, Don was sent to RCAF Pearce, near Fort Macleod, Alberta to teach flying instructors in a course similar to the one Don had taken at Trenton. Kay and Don lived in Fort Macleod where they remained until Don was given a promotion to Flight Lieutenant and that he was being sent to Britain as an operational pilot. In January 1944, Don had two weeks' embarkation leave. Kay was expecting a baby, due that summer. They returned to Toronto and Kay moved back into her parents' house. Don shipped to Britain on February 15. After arriving, he was in Bournemouth while a decision was made about where he was to be posted. In April he was finally sent to No. 20 Advanced Flying Unit in Kidlington, England, near Oxford, where Don received training on bomber planes. In Canada, he'd only been on smaller planes like Avro Ansons. At the end of June, Don began training on Wellington night bombers at RAF Honeybourne, near Worcester. It was here in July that he learned about the birth of his daughter, Beverley.

During the summers in Canada and in England, Don continued playing baseball on various squadron teams. It would pass the time on days when the weather was too cloudy to fly and helped to keep up morale. In England, he owned a bicycle and would use it to ride around the airfield and to visit the villages near the base.

Lancaster bomber of the 424 Squadron. From www.bombercommandmuseum.com.

After completing the Wellington training, Don was sent to a Canadian heavy conversion unit to learn to fly Lancaster bombers, which had become the main night bomber of the Allies and on November 12, 1944 he joined the RCAF's 424 Squadron, located in Skipton-on-Swale in Yorkshire. It was known as the “Tiger” squadron and was adopted by the city of Hamilton, Ontario. The squadron itself was converting from Halifax bombers to Lancasters and was finally operational with the new aircraft in January 1945. It was obvious that Germany was losing the war and Allied bombers were sent on day and night missions to bomb German cities. Rarely did they encounter much resistance in the air from the Luftwaffe.

424 Squadron's base at Skipton-on-Swale. The airmen slept in the Nissen huts. From www.626-squadron.co.uk.

Don flew several missions with the 424 Squadron and probably was part of the bombing of Dresden between 13 and 15 February 1945. On March 5, 1945, Don took part in the bombing of Chemnitz in eastern Germany. The city had been bombed by the American air force on March 2 and 3. On the 5th, 760 RAF and RCAF bombers took off for the target.

Don's crew was a mix of Canadians and Brits and Americans. Francis Seaby was the wireless operator. He was a 27 year old from Saskatchewan. John Atchison, 23, of Manitoba manned the machine gun in the upper turret. The navigator was Howard Weaver, also 23, from Churchill, Ontario. Alfred Cash was the bomb aimer, situated in the lower nose of the Lancaster. He was 31 and had been born in England, but his family moved to Connecticut when he was a child and he joined the RCAF in 1942. The tail gunner was C.J. Antonek and the flight engineer was A.K. Rayner of the RAF.

The squadron Lancasters took off in the late afternoon with long range fighter escorts. Just short of Chemnitz, Don's Lancaster collided with one of the fighter planes. Don ordered the crew to jump. Two parachutes were seen to deploy, one carrying tail gunner Antonek. He was taken prisoner and shown the crash site, five miles north of Chemnitz, to help to identify the remains of his crew mates. It was a gruesome sight. Antonek was able to identify only two of them – Atchison and Seaby. The rest of the crew have no known graves.

There is a book by Peter Hessel, The Mystery of Frankenberg's Canadian Airman, (Toronto: James Lorimer & Company, 2005), telling the story of a nameless Canadian airman on that day who was taken prisoner in Frankenberg, not far from Chemnitz and also not far from the crash site of Don's plane. The airman was being led through the streets by police when civilians started to beat him, in anger for the destruction the bombers had caused. They killed him and he was buried as an unknown Canadian airman. There is speculation that this was Don Ross. Twenty-two Lancasters were lost that night, along with the fighter pilot who crashed into Don's plane. It seems unlikely that the beaten airman was Don, since most of the crew, if not all, were presumed to be in the wreckage. One would hope that a pilot wouldn't abandon his plane until all the crew were safely out.

Memorial plaque at St. John's Presbyterian Church, Broadview Avenue. From The Canadian Virtual War Memorial.

Don is commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial in England, on the Bomber Command Memorial Wall in Nanton, Alberta and on a plaque at St. John's Presbyterian Church on Broadview Avenue. Among his personal effects were several presents for the daughter he never met.

Don's father Bruce passed away in 1951 and Elsie died in 1957. Don's wife, Kay, who never remarried, passed away in November 2003, aged 85.