LISTEN: Second World War veteran finally publishes his story
Posted Oct 29, 2016 7:00 am.
Last Updated Nov 10, 2016 8:37 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
As Remembrance Day approaches, 660 NEWS talked to a WWII vet with some incredible stories.
Seventy years later, and the memories are still as fresh as yesterday.
A Calgary-area Second World War veteran waited a very long time to share his story, but it didn’t take much to recall what he went through.
Jack Henry Hilton grew up in Ontario, where he enlisted in the air force while still a teenager.
He fell in love with flying and Alberta when he was sent out west to help train pilots, before being sent overseas himself, taking the controls of a Typhoon fighter — a less glamorous but just as effective weapon as the Spitfire and Hurricane.
After he got back from the war, Jack put his thoughts down in a journal, but his wife was worried about what reliving the horrors would do to him.
“It was a phobia with her,” he said. “She was afraid it was going to affect me. So, I wrote it all up and put it away in my file several years ago. I just brought it out and my daughter in Seattle said ‘Dad, you should make that into a book.”
So he did, calling it a labour of love. “I started thinking about the men that died and they need [to have their stories] be told, so I went ahead and did it.”
Jack said he still has flashbacks about being shot down over Dunkirk by the Germans but, unlike the soldiers of today, back then no one worried about post-traumatic stress and he was just assigned a new plane and sent up again.
You can find The Saga of a Canadian Typhoon Fighter Pilot at most book stores and online through Amazon and Indigo.
Listen to the full interview with 660’s Cindy White:
