Crash of two CF 100's

Two CF 100’s crash on the Base

I was in the PX [that’d be the food store], buying my favourite fries and gravy when all of a sudden there was an impact on the earth and the ground shook under my feet. The lights dimmed and flickered. The only noise, after the ominous thud, was the sound of change raining down on the counters as if someone had hit the jackpot.  Everyone froze for a second or two, expecting someone to explain to them what was going on.  

People took to the streets in panic. I followed the crowds towards the smoke in the sky. That’s where the hospital was.  A fire? An explosion? There? That would be too horrible. What was it?

I found a safe place to witness this horrific scene as it unfolded before me. I sat on the steps of the church across the street from the hospital and watched the fire blaze. 

We were later to learn the tragic news that two CF 100’s had collided in mid air. The pilots ejected and survived, and the planes crashed into the ground.  One landed in a farmer’s field, making sacrifice of a Holstein and the other, on the hospital, which was burning before my eyes.

I will also always remember the stories of heroism of Dr. Chisholm who held up the burning walls of the maternity ward so the mothers could escape.  While he survived, he suffered disfiguring burns.

I took the bus back to the PMQ’s and told Mom what had happened.  Since we didn’t have any telephones, the wives of the pilots had to worry and wait for news if their husbands were alive or not. There was a phone at the office  which was useful if the office were open. I didn’t know if these fretful wives used the phone that day.

The Kid's Club

The Kid’s Club in France

Kids are weird. A bunch of them decided to form a club. If you wanted to be part of it you had to be initiated by holding your foot in a red ant hill and let the ants crawl up your leg.  No thank you. I had a few select friends who liked bunnies and hopscotch.  I didn’t like the kid’s club.

My Parents

My Parents

My parents were still teenagers at heart, drinking, partying and smoking.  Anytime there was a party at the Base, they’d be there.  They kicked up their heels at house parties to the tunes of Bill Haley and Little Richard.  They knew how to have a good time. We were just along for the ride.

What effect did they have on me as an adult? Well, once I got over the resentment I had for them, especially towards my father, I figured I fell into the realm of ‘The test of fire makes strong steel’. In the adversity, I built character. My father became insignificant.  He had proven himself to me and I had no use for him.  The fact that he left the country when I was18 to retire in Spain for 35 years did not endear me to him. I was always felt I missed out on that special father-daughter relationship, but it just wasn’t in the cards for me. I feel he stole some joy out of me. 

At difficult periods in my life, the darkness I felt as a child would haunt me. Life’s challenges would be exercises to resist going there emotionally.  It was always there, like part of my blue print. Most times I would succeed in averting it, other times, not so successful.

My mother had the ability to carry on regardless of what others may think and to act in her own best interest. These traits were almost opposite to my make up.  But I studied her and wished I could be more like her because she was always happy, wasn’t a complainer and always made the best of any situation.

Karen and Susan

Susan and Karen

It was during this time in France, that my little sister, Susan, came into the picture. She was adorable with her blue-blue eyes and curly locks.  Everyone loved Susan.  She was always happy and so cute and besides, everyone saw her day after day tied up in the front of the apartment building, playing with toys and sometimes bugs.  My mother would lean over the balcony and check her out.  We joke that she lowered cookies on a string but I can’t be sure that is true. I think its true.

My parents would take her to the pubs in St. Avold and feed her beer.  The French aren’t as tied up as we are when it comes to drinking. Besides, she was so cute propped up on the bar table. 

Susan did have one disaster.  Not to do with drinking but with cigarettes.  She was  about one and a half years old playing in her play pen just within reach of an ash tray.  No she wasn’t smoking!  Just imagine a toddler pulling out her morning cigarette! “Think I’ll have a Gitain”.  No. The French weren’t that liberated and either were my parents.

After she ate a couple of butts, she passed out and turned blue.  A friend of my mom’s rushed the two of them to the hospital at the Base. After they pumped her stomach, she came around.  

I adored her. She was my real life doll. All she can remember about me is that I tricked her one time into eating burnt popcorn. Such is life.  You do the best you can and when you mess up once, that’s all others remember.

Karen was in my life but mainly to beat me up. She was always mad I arrived in the family.  Sometimes she would hit my arm so hard I couldn’t move it. I’d say, “Mom, Karen hit me and I can’t move my arm.” From what I can remember, that was the end of the conversation. Karen was strong and well built and I was a little wisp of a thing.

Dreams and flying

Dreams and Flying and Space Trips.

It seemed easy to me when I was going to sleep at night, to soar into the heavens.  I’d drop off a planet and fall into space. Sometimes I would want to float in the air and I would look at myself from a different corner of the room. 

I used to think of my mother’s voice and I would hear her as if she were in the room with me. I had all these abilities when I was young. I recollect thinking at one time, that others weren't doing the same things, so I stopped. 

The Farm

The Farm

Our PMQ building was on the edge of the PMQ development, situated on top of a very high hill that sloped to a valley like a green carpet.  In the valley was  a little town called ‘St. Avold’. 

Many things were observed on that greenery. Sheep grazed, kids swatted golf balls and cars wound around on the road circling the hill.  One day when we were looking out the window of our apartment, we watched an old lady walk down the hill through the little apple orchard to the side. She was all dressed in black but when she stopped to relieve herself, she revealed shocking pink bloomers.  What a kodak moment that was!  

At the bottom of the hill there was a beautiful old French country farm house with three charming young daughters. I felt so privileged to know these girls and to be able to play with them on their farm.  They only spoke French and I had no French at all. I was going to an English school the military had set up in the PMQ’s. It took me the whole time I lived in France to be able to understand them. This was the beginning of my passion for French.

They had chickens on the farm that would run freely in the yard.  Much to my horror, the chickens even ran around after their heads were cut off.  It was nothing for my friends to witness this as this was just the normal beginning of preparing dinner. 

They also had rabbits in the barn in cages.  I had had a pet rabbit that got too big for me and I asked if I could leave it with their rabbits and they could take care of it for me.  It was dark in the barn and all the rabbits looked the same. As the months became years, I became less and less sure which rabbit was mine and suspected it had made it to the pot as rabbit stew. But I couldn’t be certain.

The worst thing I ever did, I did on that farm.  I stole an egg from one of the chickens in the chicken house. I carefully carried the egg up the hill, coddling it in my hands.  When I got to our third floor apartment, I carefully laid it in the oven and turned the oven on.  I was sure I would have a baby chick!  Hours later, nothing happened.  It was so hot when I took it out of the oven, I thought I’d killed it when I opened it to find a hard boiled egg. 

I never really got over stealing from my friends nor the added injury of perhaps killing the baby chick.  I feel guilty about this to this day. This experience marred an otherwise wonderful gaggle of memories of my French friends and their charming farm.

Mac

Mac

The story of my life in France would not be complete without mentioning Mac Prescott. I fell ‘in love’ with him the day I saw the back of his head on the big green kaki bus going to the base.  He was my life line.  I followed him to his base ball games.  I watched him in the boys play ground every day at school.  I sat beside him on the bus.  I thought of him all the time. 

I was only 7 so I didn’t know what to do with all this luuvvv  nor did I know how to talk to him.  When I left France I was eleven, but my ardor for him lasted for years. The last letter I received from him, he too had returned to Canada and the family bought a bull dog.  He named it after me.

I never thought I could marry any one else at least until I saw him again. But how would that be possible?  We lost touch and life brought us further apart as time went on.

Years later when I was packing up my locker at Carleton University to bid my final goodbyes, something extraordinary happened.  As I walked down the empty hallways I passed a student coming in the other direction.  I remember yet the sound of my heels clicking on the cement floor and echoing off the walls.  This student  was carrying an armful of maps so I couldn’t really see his face and I passed him by.  Then I froze in my tracks, turned around and said, “Mac Prescott?” 

It was he!  I was incredulous.  How could that be?  How could I possibly have known it were Mac? I hadn’t seen him since he was eleven. We exchanged niceties, how are you? What did you study? Where are you going? Then we parted.  I wanted so much to tell him what a crush I’d had on him in France, but I didn't know if he felt the same way or not. I saw him two more times that week serendipitously, once at a discotheque and at another time at a restaurant. We didn’t speak; we just waved and acknowledged each other.

Years later, around 2004, there was a 2Wing reunion in Ottawa for the air force ‘brats’.  He wasn’t there, so when I got home, I put an alert out for him on the 2 Wing Brat site.  A year later, I got the email I’d been waiting for.  

We wrote profusely of our experience and about our feelings for each other when we were kids in France.  We kept in touch every year just to catch up and say hi.  This is the first year I didn’t hear from him and he doesn’t answer my emails. (2014)