Second World War vet, 96, takes flight
You are never too old for a new experience, and for one 96year-old of Medicine Hat it was time to remember her service in the Second World War with a ride in a B25 bomber aircraft on Monday.
May Sherwin (nee Oakes) served two years in Europe with the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, spending six months in Holland and 18 months in England.
Sherwin, a farm girl of 21, enlisted in Regina. She would have liked to enlist earlier and feels a little miffed they reduced the age after she had joined. An initial stint as a driver and then an assistant mechanic was not a good fit for her. The army then sent her to Edmonton for a clerical course. Sherwin laughs about the typing she was taught and says she was never any good at that either. Her administrative duties and working the telephone are where her talents lay. Initially, before she was sent to Europe in 1944, she prepared pay books for new recruits.
Sherwin talks excitedly about going to Europe with the army and calls her time there a “highlight” of her life.
There is one memory that remains very clear for her. The site and sound she remembers with enthusiasm still today of a helicopter landing near her office window in Farnborough, England. It would have been one of the first helicopters developed from the British Experiment Station in Farnborough, she believes.
Sherwin’s administrative tasks included helping to arrange for two soldiers to return to Canada. Their joy and what she’d been able to accomplish in getting them home as soon as possible still make her eyes twinkle with excitement today.
The B-25 bomber ride on Monday was an experience that brought a little nausea with it but Sherwin was still smiling when the aircraft touched down.