World War II veteran reflects on the friends he lost this Remembrance Day

He’s many things to many different people, a war hero, a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force and a veteran of World War II, but to me he’s family.

Fraser Muir is one of the few surviving veterans we have of the Second World War, a statistic not lost on the spry senior.

At 91, he is also the last surviving member of his flight crew and my grandfather’s first cousin.

Muir was a mid-upper gunner for a Lancaster bomber that flew 35 missions overseas.

His targets included Dresden and repeated attacks on the Dortmund Canal.

“I had three other friends that I trained with and we went over and hoped to get on the same squadron,” he reminisced.

“When it came time to post us … low and behold, the three chaps that I went over with, they were sent to the 6 group which was the Canadian group. I was sent to the 5 group, I asked to be sent to the Canadian group and I was told no.”

Little did he know at the time, those three friends of his would never make it home; they would be shot down before the year was out.

They would end up in the same cemetery.

“As you get older, you cry easier (at Remembrance Day), it doesn’t change,” he said. “It’s just as poignant; tomorrow will just be the same as any other.”

“I cannot believe the numbers, it just baffles me when I get over there and see the cemeteries and think what would possibly some of these men and women of course, had done had they had the opportunity to live? It would have been a different world; I often think maybe there’s someone there that could have discovered the cure of cancer. It’s just so sad!”

Muir says many of his closest friends who never returned, some of them extremely smart.

“Al LeBlanc was from Westville. I grew up with him and all I remember about him was that he was an unbelievable diver and I could remember down to Abercrombie where we used to go to swim and diving, he was just like a seeing a seal in the water. And I often think, my God, he could have been an incredible athlete.”

“I was so blessed that it amazes me I have lived that I have lived.”

He says on November 11th, he often thinks of the crew that he used to fly, train and fight with.

“There were 253 guys of all different trades and the big question was are you crewed up yet, I arrived there and I had red hair at the time and this other gunner walks up to me and says ‘hey Red’, are you crewed up yet and I said ‘no”, so he said “well see that tall Canadian guy over there, he’s looking for a Canadian before somebody beats ya.”

Muir says everything was a contest: you competed with other crews and his captain was never happy with second place.

“You had about a 30 per cent chance to get through a tour of operations and there was another break-down, there was something like 13 per cent of the 30 per cent that got through the tour, 13 per cent or so got through without anything happening.”

He says they would get through carte-blanche and beat the odds, completing those 35 trips cleanly.

“We were never off-course at all; the stragglers were the people off-course who had a far better chance of being shot-down than those who stayed in the flow.”

His message to young Canadians, given some of the violence he’s seen on TV, in the movies and video games is simple.

“War is not a game, there’s no honour, there’s no pleasure I tell you,” he said. “I just can’t believe that everything has to be war; everything has to be killing.”

Muir would go on to have a civilian career and raise five children in Rosemere, Québec.

To hear Ian’s full conversation with him, click here.