Promise to Lea

It was just a macadam runway.  It was a gray foreground with a big clear blue sky and it stretched into the distant fields of Nottinghamshire. It wasn't in the best of shape but still serviceable for Skydive Langar and its parachuting enthusiasts. 

This wasn't just any airfield. It was Langar and eighty years ago, it serviced RAF Squadron 207 on its missions to bomb Germany and Nazi occupied territories. 

So on November 25th, 2022, I stood on that runway.  It was exactly eighty years to the hour and place where R5695EM-C took to the sky, never to return.  The eight crew members were lost without a trace and their graves unknown.  

I was keeping a promise to Lea.

In 2010, more than 12 years ago, I was given a mission by Lea Langlais who was residing in a Latham nursing home (in upstate New York) and who I was distantly related to.  Lea didn't want to speak to me about the topic I was seeking to hear about - growing up in Cohoes, New York speaking Quebecois French at home.  Instead, Lea spoke to me about her Uncle Eugene and how her family never learned what happened to him when he was on his last mission to bomb Haselunne, Germany.  She told me I needed to find out what happened to him and the crew.  She showed me photos.  She didn't have much time left.  I was working a full time job in a Bronx medical practice with little extra time for research. Yet... Lea was adamant.

Lea in 2010 - She would be 100 years old in September 2023

Unfortunately, Lea is no longer among us.  I cannot tell Lea, how, after visiting her, I blogged about Eugene Chouiniere and the crew, how I posted her photos of the crew, how a retired USMC pilot related to the pilot contacted me after reading my blog in 2012.  I cannot tell her how, during the height of the CoVID lockdown,  an independent historian in England emailed me after finding my blog to tell me they had information that might lead to the whereabouts of the aircraft. I cannot explain to Lea how it all led to a chain of events and to a memorial at Langar Air Field.

'Sorry, Lea.  I wished all the pieces of the puzzle came together before you passed in 2012'.

Lea's headstone in St. Joseph's French Canadian Cemetery,
Waterford, NY

Had Lea lived,  I could tell her what I now know.  I would tell her Eugene Edward Chouiniere, rests with his comrades on the bottom of the North Sea off Bergen ann Zee, Netherlands. I could tell Lea that Eugene was the mid upper air gunner and the aircraft and crew was incapacitated by the Luftwaffe in an air fight near the coastline. All eight crew members were never recovered.  Even today, they rest in their watery metal tomb in the North Sea.

I could tell Lea how her uncle is remembered at the Air Force Memorial at Runnymede and at the Air Bomber Command Center in Lincoln.

Entrance to the Air Force Memorial, Runnymede

At the entrance to the memorial

At the center of the Air Force Memorial

E E Chouiniere is the 17th name from top

And at the International Bomber Command Centre...

The Memorial Sculpture

Lincoln Cathedral - a landmark for the aviators

CHOUINIERE E E

And I could tell Lea more...

The week was an immersion on the aviation history of Air Bomber Command and WW2. We visited Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Centre, in Lincolnshire to understand the Lancaster aircraft and the duties of the crew.  The Lancaster looked like an armored tank with wings but unfortunately it was not as impregnable. Each air gunner was cold and vulnerable. This airworthy Lancaster in the photo below was undergoing winter service.

Eugene, as the Lancaster's mid air gunner was positioned in the top bubble,  suspended in a canvas swing..

mid upper bubble

In addition to Lea's Uncle Eugene there were the seven other crew members:

William Vandervoort, Vancouver BC Canada, was the bomb aimer

Alfred Parkyn, Palisades NJ USA, was the pilot

James Gallimore, Manchester England, was the flight engineer

James Louis Guichard, Dearborn Michigan USA, was the navigator

James McGregor Allan, Toronto Canada, was the wireless operator

Jack Slater,  Hyde England, the tail gunner

Windsor Webb, Peterborough England, mid lower air gunner,

Bomb aimer's bubble in the nose
The pilot's area above and behind

And the tail gunner

Later in the week, we viewed the preserved Lancaster in the Imperial War Museum, Duxford.

With more to follow soon.