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Bill & George Byers

Shortly after 10 a.m. on Wednesday, 3 November 1943, a cipher clerk at RAF Leeming in Yorkshire received a signal from Bomber Command Headquarters that there would be an operation that night. There was nothing unusual about this – they often came in about this time, after the morning meeting at High Wycombe. A WAAF immediately put a call through to Wing Commander Jack Pattison, CO of 429 ‘Bison’ Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force. ‘There’s a “war” on tonight, sir,’ she told him. A few minutes later, he was in the operations room himself.

Pattison was handed the fully decoded message in silence. Another maximum effort was being called for; it was ever thus. The target: Düsseldorf, an industrial city that had been designated a ‘Primary Industrial Area’ in the Air Ministry’s directive to Bomber Command early the previous year. Even so, and despite being in the heart of the Ruhr industrial area, the city had been attacked only four times, and not since June. But that night, Bomber Command wanted six hundred aircraft to take part, a large raid indeed. A glance at the board showed that fifteen of their sixteen Halifaxes were fit to fly. Almost maximum strength – and that included the CO and his crew flying as well.

Flight Sergeant Bill Byers wandered over to the Flight Room at around 10.30 a.m., and there learnt that he would be going out that night. A notice on the board merely warned them that they were under battle orders, but nothing more – no clue to the destination or size of the raid was given. He immediately went to see the meteorological officer to try and find out what the weather was due to be like over Europe, then called his crew together. Once assembled, they took a truck – or a blood wagon, as they were known – over to their aircraft, ‘Z’ for Zebra, so they could run up the engine and go through the pre-flight tests. It was a grey, damp, cold day – the kind of day that never really grew light – and drizzling slightly. Mist shrouded the airfield. The Halifaxes around the perimeter loomed like spectres. Most of the other crews had followed suit, and despite the chill stillness of the day, RAF Leeming was now a hive of activity. As well as the jeeps and trucks rumbling by, trolleys of bombs, fuel bowsers and ammunition carts were all hurrying to the dispersal areas.

Not far away, Bill’s twin brother George was going through the same process with his crew. The brothers had only been with the squadron a month but were already considered quite a unique pair at Leeming – after all, there’d not been identical twins at the station before. Moreover, not only did they look exactly the same, they were also practically inseparable, apart only when with their respective crews and in the air. They even shared a house together. On their arrival they’d been allocated a married quarters house in Leeming. Dick Meredith, Bill’s wireless operator, shared the house with Bill and George. The twins took a room upstairs, while Dick and several other crew members took rooms downstairs. ‘They were so much alike, you could barely tell them apart,’ recalled Dick when I spoke to him some time later. ‘And so close. They never said, “Where’s my shirt or socks?” but “Where’s our shirt?”’

Shortly after the pre-flight tests, it was time for lunch – a simple but nutritious hot meal, followed by chocolate or biscuits. Bill would always take a bar of chocolate and a tin of apple juice with him on the mission, but it was important to make sure the crews were well fed before they took off. The food was a perk of the job – and there needed to be some – for while most in Britain struggled with the stringent rationing, there were fewer shortages for the bomber boys. Bill and George ate their meal with Dick Meredith and some of their other crew members in the sergeants’ mess. Strangely, although the twins were the captains of their aircraft, they were not officers, even though two members of their respective crews were, and messed separately; the social divide between officers and non-commissioned officers might have been put to one side in some theatres of the war, but not so in Britain. Not everyone felt like eating a heavy meal – nerves and apprehension gave people a nauseous sensation in their stomachs. The key was to try not to think about it too much, and to keep the conversation going. Distraction was everything.

Between the end of lunch and the final briefing there was not much time – the chance for a quick game of cards, or to write a letter, but not much more. In the Flight Rooms, they would put on silk underwear, thick pullovers and flying boots, then head to the Briefing Room. There, all the crews came together, not just from 429 Squadron, but 427 ‘Lion’ Squadron as well, also based at Leeming: pilots, navigators, flight engineers, air bombers, wireless operators and the air gunners, piling in and scraping back chairs as they sat down. Since that first message earlier in the day, more information had reached Leeming about the route, the bomb loads required, timings, and, crucially, frequent weather updates. In the Briefing Room, there were rows of desks on which pilots and crews could make notes, while on the end wall was a large map, covered over with a cloth until the Station Commander came in and announced the destination. This could be an anxious moment: the further away, and the deeper into Germany the raid, the more dangerous it was. Then the Navigation Officer spoke, explaining the forming-up procedure and the route to Düsseldorf, marked on the map with lines of white tape. The Met Officer was next. Despite the low cloud over northern England, the target area was, he assured them, expected to be clear. Bill listened carefully, jotting down a few notes on a scrap of paper. This was only his second mission as skipper and he felt his stomach tighten.

The briefing over, the crews collected the rest of their kit – flight suits and Irvins, flak jackets, Mae West lifejackets, as well as chocolate and apple juice, then clambered once more into the blood wagons and set off for their aircraft. It was nearly four o’clock by the time they reached their Halifaxes, and the light was already beginning to fade. Once aboard their aircraft they waited for nearly half an hour. In the cockpit, some twenty-two feet off the ground, Bill went through final checks. It was cold in there, without the heat from the engines to warm it up. It smelled of metal, dust and oil. And it was quiet; there was no more joking, no laughter. The mood amongst all the crew was now serious, their thoughts directed to the job in hand. Christian names and nicknames were replaced with their proper titles: Navigator, Mid Upper Gunner, Skipper – with communication through the aircraft’s intercom. The minutes seemed to have slowed. As Bill was discovering, this half-hour before they took off was the worst part of the whole trip. He felt scared – of course he did. Anyone who said they weren’t was a liar as far as he was concerned.

At last the signal came and Bill started the four Rolls-Royce engines, licks of flame flicking from the exhaust outlet brightly against the darkening sky. The great aircraft shook and they moved into line, taxiing onto the perimeter track running around the left side of the airfield. Further away, 427 Squadron were lining up on the right. The first Halifax from 429 thundered down the runway at 4.25 p.m., then off went a plane from 427, the two squadrons feeding in turns from their respective sides of the main runway. Bill inched his aircraft forward. George was two ahead. At a quarter-to-five, he watched his brother reach the top of the runway, pause, then accelerate and lumber into the air. Three minutes later, it was his turn. As he taxied round, he saw the usual groups of groundcrew and WAAFs along the edge of the airfield. As Bill pushed open the throttle and felt the Halifax clatter and surge forward he could see them waving and holding their thumbs up in a sign that meant good luck. With both hands, he gently pulled back the control column and felt the Halifax lift from the ground, the perimeter hedge disappearing beneath them. Trees, roads, villages rushed by and then they were in cloud and climbing high into a dark and uncertain sky.

The first time I met Bill Byers was on a warm but blustery day in May 2002 at Croft Racing Circuit in North Yorkshire, England. He was there with a number of veterans and their families for the unveiling of a plaque dedicated to the men of the Royal Canadian Air Force who had flown from there during the war. I noticed Bill because he stood out so obviously from the other veterans. Wearing a baseball jacket and cap, he moved about easily and when he talked it was with a quiet but animated Canadian accent that sounded many years younger than his eighty-two years. Wandering over, I introduced myself and we soon got chatting. He’d only been at Croft a short while during the war. It was not long after his arrival in Britain in the summer of 1943. He and his identical twin brother George had been sent there to convert from twin- to four-engine bombers. After that they’d both joined 429 ‘Bison’ Squadron, RCAF, based down the road at Leeming, flying Halifaxes. He told me about the weather that winter. ‘Boy, it was cold,’ he said. When it wasn’t snowing it was raining. Because they always flew their bombing missions at night, the lack of sunshine started to really get him down. At one point, he realized he’d not seen a hint of sunlight in over two weeks, so with no ops that evening, told his crew they were going for a practice flight and took them high above the clouds. ‘I just needed to see some sunlight,’ he told me. ‘We flew up and down the country, and felt much better after that.’

We were still talking when someone started pointing to a dot in the sky beyond the trees at the end of the circuit. Then we heard the faint thrum of engines and in what seemed like no time at all, the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s Lancaster was humming past. After one flypast we began to talk again, but then the Lancaster slowly banked and turned in for another sweep over our heads. Everyone gazed skywards, mesmerized, as it then circled again and came back for a third pass. Once it had disappeared over the horizon, I turned back to Bill who introduced me to his wife, Lil. They’d met during the war. She had been a young girl from nearby Northallerton, and when Bill finished his combat tour they’d got married and after the war she’d journeyed with him back to his native Vancouver.

‘We’ve made the trip back to England about twenty times since the war,’ Bill grinned. ‘I love it here. And you see, my mother was English too. She met my dad during the First World War, so I’ve always felt attached to the place.’

We met again some eighteen months later at their home in Redwood City, a few miles south of San Francisco in California. It was a couple of weeks before Christmas, but in Carmel Drive it was warm and, for the most part, sunny. They’d moved there over forty years ago – his job with the Post Office had been ‘boring as anything’, and his cousin, Hal, had always wanted him to come on down to California. So finally that’s what they did, with Bill buying into Hal’s masonry business in November 1959. It turned out to be a good move. ‘We did reasonably well,’ Bill told me, ‘and we’re secure financially. We’ve been able to do what we wanted to.’

He suddenly leant forward, his fingers together. There was still a lot of energy there; he never seemed to sit still for long. ‘But you want to hear about the war,’ he said. ‘What do you want to know?’

Let’s go back to the beginning, I suggested. I was interested to know about his background, about what shaped him, and what led him to fly bombers from an icy airfield in northern England.

There were no other brothers or sisters, just Bill and George. ‘My mother’s first husband was killed during the First World War,’ said Bill. ‘Then she met my dad and followed him back to Canada. Then my brother and I were born.’ His dad was in lumber mills, for most of the time working around Vancouver, although when the twins were six, they moved to Burbank in southern California for a few years before returning to Canada. Their childhood was, he admitted, pretty happy. He and his brother did most things together and although they had occasional spats, were very close most of the time. ‘Our thoughts were often identical,’ said Bill. ‘Whether it was some kind of telepathy I don’t know, but if we thought about some problem, we’d be sitting there looking at each other and both get the same idea at the same time. That would happen loads of times.’ Neither was particularly keen on class work and they took far greater interest in woodwork and the more practical subjects. ‘I hated Shakespeare until I got to England,’ said Bill. ‘Now I think he’s the greatest.’ They left school and both went straight into a course in aeronautics, part of the Dominion Provincial Youth Training Scheme. They’d been there about six months when war broke out. The RCAF was soon recruiting hard and both Bill and George were accepted, although as groundcrew rather than pilots. Their training took them to bases all around the country, but they were at Saskatchewan when they turned twenty-one. ‘It wasn’t a big deal at all,’ said Bill. ‘In wartime they don’t give you a day off for your birthday.’

Shortly after, George heard that he was to be posted to another air base in Manitoba. When Bill discovered this, he wanted to be posted with him. Luckily for them there was a new warrant officer at Saskatoon who knew there was a section in the King’s Rules that said brothers could stay together if they so desired. ‘From then on,’ said Bill, ‘we pretty much stayed together all the way through.’

Around that time, it was decided that groundcrew should sometimes fly in the aircraft they were working on – this was seen as a means of ensuring their work was up to scratch. Bill enjoyed this aspect of the job and could soon tell when the pilots were making mistakes. He began thinking it would be more fun to be flying and so suggested to George that they re-muster as aircrew. To get in, they had to pass an IQ test, but they’d done several of these back at school and knew the form. Both of them finished their exam in half the time allowed and both passed, and so they were sent to Ground School at Edmonton in Alberta. Their subsequent medicals revealed them to have perfect 20:20 eyesight, and so having scraped through their algebra and geometry tests, they were sent to High River, Alberta, to begin training as pilots.

Initially, they flew Tiger Moths, open cockpit biplanes, before progressing to twin-engined Cessnas. As long as there wasn’t too much snow about – and for the most part they were training during the summer months – Canada was an ideal place to learn, with its vast open expanse of country. In December they both passed their wings examination and were told they’d been earmarked to become instructors. The brothers had both been hoping they would be going to England and so were disappointed. ‘We were gung-ho,’ Bill admitted. They were saved, however, by a couple of Australians who’d been training with them, and who had fallen in love with Canadian girls and were desperate to stay in Canada. ‘I don’t know whether it was the girls or they just didn’t want to go into combat,’ said Bill, ‘but we told them that if they could arrange it, we were happy to switch. They did, and so we went overseas.’

That was in January 1943, but before they left for war, they were given a couple of weeks’ leave and were able to spend one last Christmas with their family. Their mother was worried about them going, but Bill was not especially apprehensive. ‘We had no idea what war was about,’ he said. They crossed the Atlantic on board the former liner, Queen Elizabeth, zigzagging all the way to avoid the Wolf Packs. By the time they reached Scotland, however, Bill was starting to feel pretty ill. Before he knew it, he was in hospital in Glasgow with acute appendicitis. Worse, he’d been separated from his brother again, who had been sent with the others to a holding camp in Bournemouth while they waited to be posted elsewhere. Bill got out of hospital as quickly as he could – a few days after his operation he told the civilian doctor that he was discharging himself. ‘You can’t,’ the doctor told him, but Bill insisted, so the doctor sent him to the RAF for a medical. ‘What’s all the bother about?’ asked the Medical Officer.

‘I want to get to my brother,’ Bill told him.

‘Where is he?’

‘In Bournemouth.’

‘I don’t blame you,’ the MO told him. ‘I’m going down there myself in three weeks,’ and with that, he let Bill go. He wasn’t really up to it though. Having had his stomach muscles cut to reach his appendix, Bill was suffering from the undue stress this was placing on his back. ‘It was at least a month before I was really fit to fly,’ he confessed. But he did find his brother – eventually. Unbeknown to him, George had moved into a private boarding-house. Nonetheless, Bill worked out that most of the airmen had to walk past the park on their way to the mess, so he went there and sat on a bench and waited. Eventually he saw two WAAFs walking with a familiar-looking Canadian pilot – about five-foot-eight, and with his dark brown hair combed back into a neat quiff.

‘Hi George,’ said Bill as they walked up.

‘Bill, you’re here!’ exclaimed George.

Bill recalled the WAAFs’ surprised faces. ‘They looked at him and then they looked back at me,’ he told me. ‘It was funny – they were thunderstruck.’

Bill liked Bournemouth. They were just kicking their heels but they played a little golf and went to shows and he soon began to build his strength back. The life of leisure soon came to an end, however. Since their arrival they’d hoped they would be sent to fly fighters, but it was not to be. Both Bill and George were to be trained as bomber pilots. It was at RAF Pershore that they were allocated their crews. Bill Morison, Bill’s navigator, remembers how hard it was to tell the brothers apart. ‘They really were identical,’ he said, when I spoke to him on the phone. ‘It caused quite a bit of confusion to start with.’ After a further three months flying Oxfords and Wellingtons, they were then sent to Croft, for conversion onto Halifaxes. This was quite a jump. Four engines were a lot more to handle than two. Furthermore, the aircraft was that much bigger. ‘The Halifax was a pretty fair-sized airplane,’ pointed out Bill, ‘and you had to get used to the different attitudes. On take-off, for example, there was slight swing, and you needed more speed to get airborne. There were all kinds of different settings. And when you landed, because the Halifax was so much taller, you hit the ground sooner.’