Dr. C.M. Johnston's Project

Robert J. Edgar

The Isle of Benbecula, the last home away from home for flight Sergeant Observer Robert (Bob) Edgar, lies between North and South Uist in the Outer Hebrides or Western Isles of Scotland. The principal feature of this so-called Mountain of the Fords (after the Gaelic) was its almost uniform flatness, relieved only by small village communities and a modest elevation of some 400 feet, which has given the otherwise oblate island its name. Because of its terrain Benbecula was seen early on as an ideal location for an airport, and such a facility was duly built on its western shore overlooking one of the many sandy beaches that encircle the island. Then after war came in 1939, a strategic military base and airfield soon materialized on the site. And it was to the airfield that Bob Edgar was dispatched in the early summer of 1942 while serving with No. 206 Squadron, a unit engaged in the vital task of anti-submarine patrolling.

At least some aspects of Benbecula, the beaches and small communities in particular, may have reminded Bob of the picturesque Bruce Peninsula in Ontario where he had spent much of his boyhood.. A native of Owen Sound, he was born on 1 August 1917 to Robert John Edgar, a bookseller, and Edith Stewart (McLaughlin) Edgar, both staunch members of the Presbyterian Church. Bob was a late arrival in the family, having been long preceded by two sisters, Marjorie and Edythe, who were in their teens when he was born. As a result he may not have enjoyed a close association with his siblings.

The first four years of Bob's schooling were spent in Owen Sound's public system but in 1927 the educational venue changed dramatically when his affluent uncle, a Hamilton physician who had no son of his own, provided funding for his further education at Ridley College, a private institution. This welcome intervention had followed the death of Bob's father and the mother's decision to move the family to Hamilton where her own relatives lived. Bob's new educational home was located in St. Catharines, which lay athwart the Welland Canal, the key waterway that traverses the Niagara Peninsula and gives access to the strategic Laurentian route to the sea. The city was within easy reach of his family in Hamilton.

Ridley College, though an Anglican institution, was in the circumstances acceptable enough to Bob's immediate family. Named for Bishop Nicholas Ridley, the celebrated Protestant martyr of Reformation times, it had opened in 1889 under the auspices of Anglican clergy and laity. Like most such founders, they were keen on instilling the proper spiritual and civic virtues in the rising generation of potential leaders. When Bob was enrolled there the institution was still in the throes of the large scale campus expansion that followed the Great War, marked by the laying out of expansive playing fields and the building of a new residence for boarders like himself. At Ridley a whole new life opened up for the ten-year old and before long he became in the later words of the school's archivist, a "regular Ridley boy". This was particularly the case when he reached his teens and could fully participate in the wide range of extracurricular activities that the school lavished on its charges.

As a "regular boy", Bob ventured into most of these activities, football, track, boxing, gymnastics, and skiing. On the face of it little was left out. But beyond the playing field, the gymnasium, the slopes, and the boxing ring, Bob reserved a special place for the Dramatic Society and above all the Choir. He was gifted with a strong singing voice as well as a good stage presence, assets which served him well in his choral and theatrical endeavours. He performed in a number of plays put on by the Dramatic Society, including the perennial high school favourite, "Leave it to Psmith", the Wodehousian comedic classic.

Bob also established a creditable reputation in the realm of muscular pursuits. Though far from heavily built - weighing some 135 pounds in a 5' 8" frame - he had no hesitation in going out for the contact sport of football. He may have been eager to demonstrate that his modest physical proportions, which enhanced his agility and speed, might actually contribute to his effectiveness as an outside or flying wing, the position that soon came his way. From all accounts he did not disappoint his coaches as he moved up through the college's hierarchy of football teams, in his case from the Third to the First, the front rank senior squad. His obituary in the college quarterly, Acta Ridleiana , paid him fulsome tribute, as obituaries are wont to do, describing him as "absolutely fearless" on the gridiron, a player who combined the "courage of the natural athlete with the sensitiveness [sic] of the musician".

In this case, however, such posthumous praise was more or less matched by the quarterly's earlier reports of his accomplishments in specific games. Thus in 1933 he had been lauded for his inventive play in a match against Upper Canada College, Ridley's archrival in Toronto. In another game he distinguished himself, in spite of his "lightness", as a "good tackler" and an "enthusiastic and energetic player at all times". That same enthusiasm and energy Bob obviously took into the boxing ring where he performed well in the lightweight class, so much so that he carried off the school championship two years running. He habitually won, according to Acta Ridlieana , by his hallmark tactic of opening with "a series of swift two-handed rushes". On one occasion he gained a technical knockout when he all but immobilized an opponent with a stiff blow to the stomach. In the ring at least Bob, though slight of build and disposed to music and drama to boot, was not to be tampered with. He was also a solid contender in a non-contact activity, track and field, specializing in the 440 yard event.

On the academic front, however, Bob's performance did not match his extracurricular achievement. Perhaps his heavy involvement as musician, thespian, and athlete had badly intruded on his studies. In any case, he was obliged to repeat a number of courses in both Middle and Upper School. Moreover when he left Ridley to join his family in Hamilton in the spring of 1936 he knew that he would have to make up elsewhere the other high school equivalency work he had missed at the College. To that end he shortly enrolled at Westdale Collegiate Institute (WCI) where his academic efforts appeared to pay off. Predictably he also joined the school's Dramatic Society and before long was performing in productions of such popular offerings as "The Mikado", in which he played the role of Nanki Poo.

One of the performances was attended by Bob's future wife, a Dundas girl name of Douglas Margaret Smith, who came away impressed with his talent and stage presence. So did the mother of one of his fellow thespians, a Mrs. Maxwell Morrow, who happened to be a prominent music teacher. She shortly took Bob under her wing and provided the lessons he had been seeking since leaving Ridley. After one of those lessons Douglas saw him again and a short time later they became better acquainted at one of the parties that the Morrows frequently staged for their family and friends, Bob now included. He asked Douglas for a date, she accepted and they subsequently took in a movie, thoroughly enjoying one another's company and resolving to meet on a regular basis. She remembered with pleasure that when he called at her home on Governor's Road he was invariably whistling the theme tune of "The Saint", a popular radio thriller.

By this time Bob was attending McMaster University, the former Toronto institution recently transplanted in Hamilton's tony Westdale district. The additional high school credits he had collected at the local collegiate obviously helped to smooth the way. On his admissions application Bob indicated his intention to become a "doctor", obviously in emulation of his benefactor uncle. But it was doubtless done out of a sense of obligation as well. Dr. Edgar was also footing the bill for his nephew's post-secondary education in the expectation that one day he would take over his practice.

It was plain, however that Bob's real desire still was to make a mark not in medicine but in the music world, which had already acclaimed him, judging him a gold medalist at music festivals in Hamilton and Toronto. He also appeared in Windsor with the Schubert Choir in a performance of the popular oratorio, Handel's "Messiah". Again he received high marks, this time from a newspaper critic. After applauding the "lovely quality" of his tenor solo performance, she went on to praise the "strength of voice and sensitiveness which would assure him a fine future". Bob's singing talents also came to the attention of Sir Ernest MacMillan of the prestigious Toronto Conservatory of Music. Described as one of the most influential musicians of the time, MacMillan reportedly told a pleased Mrs. Morrow that her charge had "great potential". Meanwhile, between appearances at festivals and recitals Bob served as the soloist in the well regarded choir of the Church of the Ascension, an Anglican house of worship he had joined after returning to Hamilton. Clearly his lengthy exposure to Ridley's religious ambience had led him away from the family's Presbyterianism, a turn of events that may have caused a rift in the relationship.

When he filled in his McMaster application form Bob entered not a Ridley reference, as might have been expected in the circumstances, but named instead the principal of Westdale Collegiate, the school he had attended for barely a year. Perhaps this newly minted Ridley "Old Boy" either had mixed feelings about the school or, more likely, qualms about how it might evaluate him. At any rate he was accepted at McMaster and registered in Course 17, the Science Option, a three year program, which promised to provide him with the necessary pre-medical training.

As he had at Ridley, however, Bob clearly indulged his paramount interest by joining the group that would best serve as the vehicle for his singing talents, in this case the McMaster Operatic Society. He obviously made a good impression. As the Silhouette , the student weekly, noted, this "frosh" was soon being invited to sing at major undergraduate functions, including the popular Soph-Frosh Banquet, which traditionally unfolded in the elegant setting of the Royal Connaught Hotel, Hamilton's leading hostelry. Off campus his talents came to the attention of local impresarios who ensured that his singing voice would also be heard on one of the local radio stations. Perhaps the time spent on this kind of activity, always more to his liking anyway, may account for his absence on the football field and the track, venues on which he had consistently shone at Ridley.

Academically, however, Bob suffered more setbacks at McMaster. In early February 1939, after failing several subjects in the mid-year examinations, he was advised by the Registrar, who had consulted his uncle on the matter, that he must withdraw from the University. In all probability the musically inclined Bob had found the science courses not only difficult but irrelevant. In any case, following the abrupt termination of his formal education, Bob, according to an entry in his air force service record, spent the next two and half years fine tuning his singing and furthering his musical training.

He actually did far more than that, however. He turned professional and through an agent he hired regularly landed singing engagements (in today's parlance "gigs") on CBC radio and at functions in Hamilton and Toronto.

All the same, Bob was obliged to supplement his professional income with the money he earned clerking oart-time at the local department stores where he had worked before going to McMaster. By this date he could no longer count upon his uncle's financial support. Totally displeased with his nephew's career choice and poor academic showing at McMaster, Dr. Edgar denied him further funding. Nor, for that matter, did Bob's immediate family prove all that supportive of his plans to make music his life's work, often considered in that day and age an impractical and dubious undertaking.

Meanwhile, he had far more compelling matters to ponder. First and foremost was the grim arrival of what soon came to be called World War II. In September 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, that country's guarantors, Britain and France, had declared war on their old foe and within a week Canada had followed suit. A little over a year later, at age 23, Bob put aside his budding musical career and enlisted in the RCAF, as so many of his friends were doing. By this time - mid November 1940 - his peacetime preoccupations may have seemed grossly trivial compared to the recent shocking disasters that had overtaken Allied arms overseas. The previous summer France and the Low Countries had been speedily knocked out of the war by the German Blitzkrieg and England had come within an ace of being invaded by a triumphant foe -- or so many believed at the time. In these somber circumstances perhaps his enlistment is easily explained.

After he joined up he was posted on 18 November 1940 to the RCAF's Manning Depot in Brandon, Manitoba. He was soon enough acquainted with the regimented life that recruits experienced in Brandon's spacious Western Fair Building, known popularly as the Horse Palace, which served as the depot's home. There Bob, in the company of hundreds of other neophyte airmen, was introduced to the workings of the recently inaugurated British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP). It had been conceived by Britain and Canada as a means of creating a pool of trained crews for service in the air war that had galvanized the conflict overseas, beginning with the much publicized Battle of Britain in the agonizing summer of 1940. At a manning depot like Brandon's, however, Bob soon discovered that every activity and procedure were firmly rooted to the ground as recruits, on the orders of a no-nonsense corporal or sergeant, were put their paces at marching and musketry drills. They were also routinely jabbed with inoculation and vaccination needles and subjected to periodic medical checkups and mandatory lectures from seasoned instructors.

Some three weeks after his arrival in Brandon Bob was dispatched eastward to the Auxiliary Manning Depot at Picton on the scenic Bay of Quinte, again following a trail soon to be taken by other McMaster trainees. Presumably he did more of the same kind of military drill at Picton, quite possibly mixed in with what was officially called tarmac duty. This prosaically involved doing various chores about the depot, which could include clearing up waste and pushing aircraft about, a far cry, Bob might have mused, from a more glamorous life in the air. The Picton regimen also lasted three weeks and encompassed his first wartime Christmas in the service.

Then on New Year's Day, 1941 he was sent even further east to Moncton, New Brunswick, the home of No. 8 Service Flying Training School. But again he did no flying. Instead he likely did the customary guard duty that all recruits were required to discharge, not only for its own sake but usually to allow time for the next instructional stage to be readied for a fresh batch of trainees. Even if he were not yet airborne Bob could have comforted himself with the thought that at least he was seeing a good deal of the country. All the same it was a long and possibly enervating stint at Moncton. This comparatively spoiled Ontario boy may have taken the city's conventional urban amenities for granted but not so a recently arrived English trainee. Long subjected to stringent rationing at home, he could only marvel at how easy it was in Moncton to access such wartime luxuries as a "steak and a banana split".

It was not until March had almost come to a close that Bob was finally assigned to the next important stage of his "airmanship", this at Toronto's No. 1 Initial Training School (ITS). At such a facility the men were tested for their varied skills, capabilities, and aptitudes and then sorted into prospective pilots, navigators or wireless air gunners. On 3 May 1941, Bob was selected for navigational training, in part perhaps on the strength of his reasonably good grades in high school mathematics. Indeed, as one account relates, ". anyone who displayed too much ability in mathematics was sure to be tagged as a potential navigator". Bob, who may well have been so tagged, finished his stint at 1 ITS and was then temporarily stationed at Toronto's Manning Depot until a place could be found for him at the next training level. That happened in a matter of days and on 13 May he must have been pleased when he learned of his posting to No. 4 Air Observer School (AOS) at London, Ontario. The preliminaries were over; the serious training was about to begin.

It began on the Avro Anson, the dependable and durable twin-engined trainer used at most navigation schools across the country. The London facility had been opened only six months earlier so there must still have been a sense of newness about the place. Nonetheless its operations were in full swing. The training "all started", to quote a fine history of the BCATP,

with the student learning the mysteries of navigation - the art of 'accurate approximation' - with lectures on maps and charts . accompanied by a welter of esoterica: [among others] meteorology. the variation of wind with height, stability and instability of the atmosphere . cloud formations. grid references . scale, altitude and longitude, true north, magnetic north, magnetic variations, great circled and rhumb lines, Mercator's projection, meridional parts, and navigation lights.

With this "welter of esoterica" Bob had to cope as best he could for the better part of three months. He had probably never studied so hard in all his life. Periodically he enjoyed weekend leaves that briefly took him away from this grind, enabling him to visit family members and above all Douglas, who was keen to know about his activities and accomplishments. Completing the London course on schedule, Bob moved on next to Fingal in southwestern Ontario and more training at No. 4 Bombing and Gunnery School. Part of the navigator's trade was to double as bomb aimer and, if necessity demanded, as air gunner as well if his aircraft were ever attacked by an enemy fighter.

While he was stationed at Fingal Bob and Douglas took what they realized was a potentially fateful step in wartime and decided to get married. Before doing so, Bob was required to seek the air force's official permission. Once he satisfied his superiors that he was free of debt and could support a wife -- their principal concerns -- he and Douglas made their plans. On 23 August 1941, while on a short leave, he joined her for the wedding ceremony at her place of worship, the Church of St. James in Dundas, like his an Anglican one. After a brief honeymoon it was back to Fingal for the groom and more bomb aimer instruction. But this time he did not have to travel alone. His bride accompanied him and together they rented modest quarters in the village of Shedden, a few miles from the training station.

When the Fingal stage of his instruction ended successfully in September, a gratified Bob was promoted sergeant and awarded his observer wing at a parade ceremony on the station attended by a proud Douglas, who had joined other well wishers for the occasion. But though he had qualified for air crew her husband's training in Canada was not yet over. Before proceeding overseas he was obliged to take a newly laid on course in advanced navigation at Pennfield Ridge, New Brunswick, the site of No. 2 Air Navigation School. Once again the couple packed up their belongings and decamped, this time for a part of the country that Douglas had never before visited. They moved into a boarding house in the small village of St. George, hard by the Pennfield Ridge station. Douglas later recalled a "neat old house with no plumbing", thus conjuring up visions of the unpleasantly primitive. Even so, the house was set in a "pretty village" where she and Bob "could watch the salmon jumping up the [nearby] river to spawn".

In early November, the training exercise at Pennfield Ridge completed, they made another move, this time to Debert, Nova Scotia, where Bob shortly received orders to proceed to the RCAF's Y Depot in nearby Halifax, ordinarily the last stop before airmen embarked for overseas. Douglas remembered one harrowing experience in Halifax. It turned out that through an administrative oversight, which certainly qualified as a genuine wartime SNAFU, Bob's service pay had failed to catch up with him. Consequently, with their funds all but exhausted after staying in a hotel their first night, they faced the prospect of short term homelessness, this on the eve of Bob's departure from the country. "We sat on a park bench in the rain", Douglas recalled, "wondering what could happen to us now". Instead of going to, say, the local Canadian Legion Branch, Bob, the faithful churchgoer, decided to seek help from the local clergy. The strategy produced results. A parishioner of the first clergyman he approached swiftly volunteered to accommodate them. "We landed up", a grateful Douglas wrote, "in a lovely home on the North Arm that night. It was a real miracle to me but Bob never lost faith that God would provide", a heartfelt sentiment that characterized the spiritual outlook of so many of that generation.

Apparently Bob's financial affairs were speedily straightened out and for the remainder of their week-long sojourn in Halifax they could afford Douglas' stay in a rooming house while he bedded down at the Y Depot. Bob may have shared his wife's response to this Canadian city literally at war. "I found [Halifax]", she acutely recalled, "a strange and exciting city in wartime. The harbour was busy and my landlady told me almost to the hour when the troop convoy would leave. Many people seemed to know what was happening. I did not find it re-assuring". Her disquiet is understandable but as the locals realized only too well, secrecy in these matters was of little avail since prowling U-boats would discover soon enough when a convoy left the comparative security of Halifax harbour.

On Bob's last day at the Y Depot Douglas joined him and together they walked the nearby street and she began to talk of hopes and plans and how the war and its aftermath would shape their world. It turned out, however, that this was a sore subject with Bob, who had been seized with a premonition that he would not survive the war. When they were about to part he urged Douglas not to bid him goodbye or look back as he retraced his steps to the depot. "I was sad and upset", Douglas feelingly recalled, "and when he turned to go I [instinctively] said goodbye - that has haunted me ever since".

The next day - another rainy November one - a dispirited Douglas, perhaps already aware that she was pregnant with Bob's child, boarded a train for home and soon passed the grey ship-filled harbour, a scene she "would never forget". Not long afterwards, on 12 th November, Bob's own convoy set sail for England. In spite of prowling U-boats it arrived safely, after a ten-day voyage, clearly not one undertaken in the Queen Elizabeth , the speedy liner turned troop ship that could make the crossing in half that time. On 23 rd November, shortly after he disembarked, Bob was dispatched to the peacetime resort city of Bournemouth and No. 3 Personnel Reception Centre, an orientation facility that was the first stopping point for all newly arrived Canadian airmen. There he received medical checkups as well as his flying kit and battle dress while awaiting word of his next posting in the United Kingdom.

It came on 16 th December, telling him to report to the RAF's No. 2 AOS for reinforced navigational instruction, the usual procedure for fresh intakes from overseas. After nearly two months at this station he was sent on 9 February 1942 to a School of General Reconnaissance, which trained crews in the fine points of maritime patrol work, so essential in the ongoing campaign against the U-boat threat. One of the courses involved the vital study of ship recognition so that trainees could more readily distinguish friend from foe. As it turned out, however, the lightly armed Lockheed Hudson bomber to which Bob was later assigned was found to be, in the words of the official RCAF history, "ill-suited to ant-shipping operations".

All the while Bob tried to keep up his correspondence with Douglas. Because his letters were invariably censored she initially had no idea where he was, apart from "somewhere in Britain". But shortly before his last operation he managed to get around the censors by sending her a coded message embedded in a parody of an old school poem they both knew. According to the family, it slyly revealed that he was in fact stationed in the Hebrides and engaged in convoy guard duty, particularly on the so-called Murmansk run to North Russia. This was the dangerous operation that sought to bring arms and supplies to the beleaguered Soviet Union, which the Germans had invaded in the summer of 1941.

Periodically, like so many wartime wives on the home front, Douglas enjoyed the "fun" of sending her grateful husband parcels of clothing, candies, and especially fruitcake, "his favourite". The best news, however, she sent by cable, that he was now the father of a daughter, Robin Elizabeth. Bob, who had been kept fully informed of the changing state of Douglas' pregnancy, immediately wired back his happy response and shortly followed it up with a card. Photographs and additional news duly arrived of the child that he was fated never to see.

By this time the new father, who had been promoted Flight Sergeant on 15 March 1942, had been posted to the RAF's No. 206 ("Octopus") Squadron, which now formed part pf Coastal Command and came equipped with the aforementioned Hudson bombers. Bob had joined the unit on 13 May while it was still based at Limavady in Northern Ireland. He soon saw at first hand the workings of the BCATP as he mingled with airmen from virtually every Commonwealth country, most of whom had been trained in Canada. And perhaps one can visualize Bob, the accomplished tenor soloist, entertaining his new comrades as they gathered around the piano in the sergeant's mess.

Some weeks after his arrival in Northern Ireland and quite likely with at least one operation under his belt, he and the 206, were transferred to the beach-girdled Isle of Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides. It would appear that the unit was immediately assigned, among other duties, to shepherding convoys on part of their hectic run to the northern Soviet port of Murmansk, the very information that Bob is said to have conveyed in his coded mail.

As dawn broke on 28 July 1942 Bob's Hudson took off to participate in what was described as an operational sweep. But when it failed to return after the estimated interval and a search of the area yielded no results, the aircraft's mixed Commonwealth crew was officially declared missing and later presumed dead. Bob had been a few days' short of his twenty-fifth birthday. He was posthumously awarded the RCAF's Operational Wings for "gallant service in action against the enemy". Among the effects returned to a grieving Douglas were the photographs she had recently sent him of their newborn.

Robert John Edgar, who has no known grave, is commemorated at the Runnymede War Memorial, Englefield Green, Egham, Surrey, England.

C.M. Johnston

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The following provided valuable help and encouragement: Howard Elliott, John Fawcett, Robin Elizabeth (Edgar) Hawthorne (see REH below), Douglas (Edgar) Hoult, Sarah Hutchinson, Paul Lewis, Kenneth Morgan, Norman Shrive, Eleanor Slobodin, and Sheila Turcon. Douglas Hoult provided a moving, insightful, and highly informative memoir of Robert Edgar, which illuminated this biography throughout. Paul Lewis, Ridley College's archivist, kindly made available relevant sections of the school's quarterly, Acta Ridleiana .

SOURCES: REH: album of photographs and newspaper clippings on Robert Edgar's air force activities and promotions; Ridley College Archives: Acta Ridleiana , Christmas 1933, 37, 19, 33, Christmas 1934, 28, 33, Easter 1935, 38, 1935, 31, 39, 40, Christmas 1935, 51, Easter 1936, 16, 1936, 32; McMaster University Library / W. Ready Archives, Special Collections: Silhouette, 27 Oct. 1938, 1; 3 Nov. 1944, 1, McMaster Alumni News, 10 May 1943, 1; Canadian Baptist Archives / McMaster Divinity College: McMaster University Student File 6399, Robert John Edgar, Biographical File, Robert John Edgar.

National Archives of Canada / Wartime Personnel Records: Service Record of Flight Sergeant Observer Robert John Edgar, with accompanying communications to his widow from the Chief of the Air Staff and the RCAF Casualties Officer; Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Commemorative Information on F/Sgt. Robert John Edgar; Spencer Dunmore, Wings for Victory: The Remarkable Story of the British Commonwealth Air training Plan in Canada (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994), 172, 174, 215, 352, 354, 355; Brereton Greenhous, Stephen J. Harris et al, The Official History of the Royal Canadian Air Force , III: The Crucible of War, 1939-1945 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994), [356]; Les Allison and Harry Hayward, They Shall Grow Not Old: A Book of Remembrance (Brandon, MA: Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum Inc., 1996, 2 nd printing), 207; Robert Collins, The Long and the Short and the Tall: An Ordinary Airman's War (Saskatoon: Western Producer Prairie Books, 1986), 1-2; Peter Ross, "On the Murmansk Run", Northern Light: Official Publication of the North Russia Club , no. 54 (1998), 16-18 (originally published in Legion Magazine ).

Internet:
www.raf.mod.uk/squadrons/h206.html,
www. scotland-inverness.co.uk/benbecula.htm ("Isle of Benbecula, Outer Hebrides"),
www.kinross-raf.co.uk/ops/206squadron,
www.rafcommands.currantbun.com/coastal/206.html ("No. 206 Squadron, RAF"),
www.ridley.on.ca ("History of Ridley College").

[ For related biographies, see Murray Arthur Bennetto, Stanley David Gaudin, Stephen George Goatley, Franklin Charles Zurbrigg ]