Another lesson in the national character?

This is a story that jogged my memory back to when I spent a semester in my senior high school years studying Canadian and German aviation history in the First World War.  That would have been back in late 1999, and I remember then lamenting how Captain Roy Brown had been largely forgotten in official memory, despite his very prominent place in aviation history. 



Above is probably one of the most memorable photographs of the man.  Brown, who was born in Carleton Place, Ontario, in December 1893, but wound up living just outside of Stouffville up to his death, was long credited with being the fighter pilot who, in his Sopwith Camel, shot down and killed Manfred von Richthofen – otherwise known as the Red Baron.  Brown was an ace in his own right (13 official victories), and had the noble record of not losing a single pilot under his command because of his strict training requirements.  His career in the First World War was often interrupted by injury and illness – at one point, because of peptic ulcers, he lived on a diet of milk and brandy, which likely was also used to cope with the frayed nerves that came with being a fighter pilot.  Sopwiths killed more airmen on the ground than they ever did while in the air, and he had a fair share of run-ins with the unruly planes. 

In the fall of 1917, he won the prestigious Distinguished Service Cross for his courage in battle.  With a jammed gun, he flew to rescue a lone British fighter who was being circled by four German Albatrosses.  In the confusion that ensued, both Brown and the serviceman managed to escape and survive. 

Brown was not one to brag about his accomplishments, and after 1918, he did not do the celebrity circus of public speaking and sabre-rattling, maintaining instead a quiet modesty over the feat with which he had been controversially credited (two Australian ground-gunners had also been credited with killing Richthofen).  After the First World War, Brown bought a farmhouse outside of Stouffville, and ran as a Liberal candidate in the 1943 Ontario election, though lost to the Progressive Conservative contender.  His day job was as an accountant, and he did that up to his death in March 1944 of a heart attack.  He was buried in Aurora Cemetery; some time in the 1960s – or so say Internet records and searches – his remains were transferred to a location somewhere in Toronto, but specific details are not known.  One writer, Dan McCaffery, who also happens to be the author of a definitive study of Billy Bishop, reports that Brown sometimes received death threats from some who remained enraged that he had killed the Red Baron.    

All of this is known about Brown, but official recognition and homage has not been accorded to him until now.  Then again, perhaps with the notable exception of Billy Bishop, much the same can be said of Canada’s other airmen.  Carleton Place, his hometown, will soon unveil a mural of Brown where recognition might at last begin, fully ninety-four years after the end of the First World War, and sixty-eight after Brown’s death.  A museum devoted to Brown is also slated to open soon.  Visitors to the Bishop museum in Owen Sound sometimes mistakenly think that Bishop is the one that downed Richthofen.  They did indeed encounter each other in the skies over the Western Front, sometime in 1916, but that was all. 

So says a Carleton Place Town Councillor: “The Canadian focus has always been on Billy Bishop and he was a fantastic pilot, no doubt, but he couldn’t be all places at all times.  Brown’s story itself is very interesting.  He never lost a pilot under his command and he was always very modest…He didn’t want to talk about the Baron.  There has been controversy over what happened ever since.” 

Brown and other aces like him form not only an important and essential aspect of Canada’s military and historic heritage.  Canadian airmen dominated the RFC and later RAF, even though it sometimes happened that these men were listed as “British” in order to circumvent the gap between the records of Canadian and British fighters.  They are also hallmarks of Canadian identity and something of a national narrative; a continuity through history that present and future Canadians should learn from and grasp the human story behind war. 

 

After all, one need only look at British efforts in raising awareness of such human connections, such as the life, times and exploits of SOE operatives, or the role of the Home Guard during World War II.  Brown’s life is a microcosm of life, death, victory and defeat during and after one of the most horrific human catastrophes in history, and it has that uniquely Canadian slant to it.  It helps that Brown is part of the ongoing mystery of how Richthofen died.  The controversy is far from over, and at this point will probably never be solved.    

 
Unfortunately, for too long, the Canadian slant has also meant a certain forgetting after the war, which is only now beginning to be reclaimed thanks to the work of a small, faithful few aviation historians and historically-minded decision-makers.  For many years, this neglect was blamed on the narrative of Canadian identity that was being willfully fostered; that Canadians were – and always will remain – a nation of peacekeepers.  Now, in the wake of Canada’s efforts at stabilizing post-Taliban Afghanistan and in coming to grips with a post-9/11 landscape of national security and stability, in which peacekeeping has sadly often become synonymous with appeasement and indecision, perhaps that paradigm is beginning to shift.