Dr. C.M. Johnston's Project

Edmund M. Tew

In World War II Edmomd (Ed) Tew, like fellow McMaster airmen Jack Yost [HR] and Harry Zavadowsky [HR], was among the many RCAF fatalities – nearly 40% -- that were “not attributable to enemy action”, the phrase that all too routinely appeared in official casualty reports. In early 1943 the Vickers Wellington bomber/trainer Ed was navigating crashed and burned in Gloucestershire, England. His war was cruelly ended before it could even properly begin.
Initially named Edmond Nicholas, he had been born in Toronto on 21 May 1914. He had thus appeared on the scene a scant few months before the Great War erupted in Europe, the forerunner of the global conflict that would decide his fate. Following the death of his Belgian-born father, Frederick Nicholas, his mother, the former Laura Fitzsimmons, had married Mark McLeod Tew, and her son took his stepfather's names. Mark Tew was the offspring of Anglo-Irish immigrant, Richard Tew, and his Canadian-born wife, the former Annie McLeod. In keeping with the custom of the times, their son later entered their nationalities as “English” – not in his mother's case, “Canadian” -- on his McMaster University admissions application. Not surprisingly perhaps, under “Religious denomination” he also entered the family's membership in the Anglican Church.

Ed received his early schooling in Toronto and continued it in Hamilton when his family moved there in 1929. His father, following in his own father's professional footsteps, had taken employment as a trustee or financial manager, in his case with the jewelry firm of Henry Birks and Son. It had recently purchased and occupied a distinctive edifice built in the Brownstone Romanesque style at the southeast corner of king and James Streets in downtown Hamilton. Known henceforth as the Birks Building and featuring a mounted and distinctive outdoor clock, it provided Mark Tew with an office and living quarters for his family. (Thankfully the clock and its jousting knights survived the eventual demolition of the building and were re-located elsewhere in the downtown area.)

For a brief time Ed's parents had the means to educate him at a newly launched private boys' institution, Hillfield School. He did well academically, was named a head boy, and took part in the full round of extracurricular, particularly athletic, activities, that featured prominently at the school. He also took up horseback riding and became something of an expert at the sport, an achievement that later helped to ingratiate him with an English family when he served overseas during the war. After only one year at Hillfield, however, Ed was transferred in those Depression times to a much less expensive public co-educational school, Westdale Collegiate Institute (WCI). All the same, for the rest of his short life, he remained in the words of Hillfield's yearbook, The Boar, an “enthusiastic supporter” of the school's Old Boys' Association.

At WCI Ed again had little difficulty meeting the academic challenge and presumably found time to indulge those athletic pursuits he had started at Hillfield, tennis volleyball, and raquet ball. Since the recently opened collegiate did not begin publishing its yearbook, Le Raconteur, until 1932, the year he left the institution, there is no record of his school activities or athletic accomplishments. What is known is that throughout his stay at WCI he worked part-time in his stepfather's office in the Birks Building.

So that he might gain further “enlightenment” – Ed's phrase – after he matriculated in 1932, the family saw to it that he pursued higher education at the conveniently situated McMaster University. A former Toronto institution founded under Baptist auspices, it had put down new roots in Hamilton's Westdale district just two years before. Thus at virtually every stage of his education Ed was, so to speak, in on the ground floor of every institution he attended. On the whole he did them all proud. Indeed at one point he was judged a scholarship candidate at McMaster though there is no indication that he was awarded one. In any case, having resolved, with parental support, on a legal career, at McMaster he registered initially in the three-year Political Economy Option. Again to help pay his way, he worked part-time in his stepfather's office.

In his second year, however, Ed switched to the more varied History and Political Economy Option, which soon became the recognized pre-law program at Osgoode Hall Law School in Toronto. Again he came through handsomely, achieving firsts in his major subjects and seconds in the others. The impressed fellow student who composed his Marmor “Obit” may be pardoned if he described Ed's academic accomplishments as “brilliant”. He also recorded his classmate's principal extracurricular activities, notably his favourites, tennis and raquet ball along with volleyball and intramural rugby. His proficiency as a tennis player usually guaranteed him a front line position in intercollegiate competition.

Off the courts, Ed took part in the activities of the Political Economy Club, a popular campus organization that invited informed speakers to address the membership on such themes as the Depression's crippling effect on the country's well-being. As befitting a prospective lawyer, he also figured prominently in intramural debating. Nor was the social dimension of university life neglected. Ed gained the reputation of being a “colourful student with many ‘ties” though the Marmor prudently supplied no details. He capped his McMaster career by graduating BA in 1935, the first Hillfield “old boy” to win his degree.

As planned, he then enrolled at Osgoode Hall Law School and was subsequently articled with William Schreiber, a leading Hamilton barrister. After satisfactorily completing his legal studies, he was on 15 June 1939 called to the bar, an accomplishment duly noted by the vigilant McMaster Alumni News. The fledgling lawyer shortly opened an office on the second floor of what was then known as the Kent Building at the southwest corner of King and Hughson Streets in the heart of downtown Hamilton, and less than a five-minute walk to the Wentworth County Court House on Prince's Square. The further end of the block was dominated by the Birks Building, where he had lived as a youngster. His ties to the city's core were thus very strong. All the same he preferred to live with his parents in nearby Dundas, where his stepfather had purchased property he quaintly named “Glen Riverby” on what was called the Old Ancaster Road. The name may have commemorated the Irish birthplace of Richard Tew, Mark's father.

Ed Tew's practice as a barrister and solicitor, however, turned out to be a brief two years. Whether or not it prospered is not known for certain but whatever its state he decided in the spring of 1941 to heed the country's call and enlist for active service, choosing the popular arm known as the RCAF. One possible motive for his enlistment, as later intimated in a Hamilton Spectator obituary , was a desire to help avenge the death of a Navy friend. Like so many aspiring McMaster airmen, Ed enlisted at 1 Manning Depot (MD) in Toronto, which was housed in the sprawling Coliseum on the grounds of the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE). There, like hundreds of others, he was introduced over a five-week period to the arts of “airmanship”, which proved to have little to do with flight but everything to do with musketry, parade ground exercises, route marches, inoculations, vaccinations, psychological tests, and a round of lectures from seasoned instructors and other air force personnel. It all amounted, as he quickly learned, to his initiation into the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan (BCATP), the Anglo-Canadian scheme to prepare air crew for combat service.

In early July Ed bade goodbye to the regimen at 1 MD when he was transferred to 5 Service Flying Training School in Brantford where he did no flying but rather the ritualistic guard duty that all recruits discharged while waiting for openings in their next training stage. In Ed's case this happened after another five-week stint on a BCAPT station. On 9 August he arrived at his new post in Belleville, 5 Initial Training School (ITS). He was already aware that this stage of his instruction would determine his air trade, be it pilot, navigator, or wireless operator/air gunner. Ed had set his heart on being put in charge of an aircraft's controls so he was in for a rude disappointment. After a rigorous series of interviews and tests, including a psychological examination (conducted by what one disgruntled recruit called “witch doctors”), he was selected not for flying, but rather for navigational instruction. It was no consolation to him that the latter trade ranked just behind pilot in the aircrew hierarchy. In any case, he at least emerged from 5 ITS a newly minted Leading Aircraftsman (LAC).

The friendly relations struck up between trainees and Belleville's citizens, ill prepared Ed for the harsh reception he and his comrades suffered at his next posting, Ancienne Lorette, the home of 8 Air Observer School (AOS). Ed arrived there on 27 September and was doubtless told, among other things, that the local citizens, like many of their isolationist French Canadian compatriots, took a jaundiced view of Canada's participation in yet another “British and foreign war”. They had soon made their bitter feelings known to the Anglo-Canadian air force trainees in their midst. Often spat upon and jeered, they were instructed not to venture unaccompanied or at night into nearby Quebec City, an injunction that doubtless cramped the style of those bolder recruits who keenly wanted, the risks notwithstanding, to savour the city's nocturnal pleasures. Some trainees from other Commonwealth countries might be forgiven if they thought the war had started even before they set sail for Britain. Besides its unpleasant relations with the community the station was also plagued by “terrible food” and the hazardous stunt flying of staff pilots. In the absence of wartime letters Ed's reactions to all this can only be imagined.

He spent some two months in training at Ancienne Lorette, mainly on the twin-engined Avro Anson. On 12 November he received a welcome two-week leave and the opportunity to enjoy the pleasures of home cooking, after which he was ordered to report to KTS Trenton (Composite Training School). Ordinarily this station was the demoralizing destination for all those unfortunates who “washed out” of their programs. Whatever his circumstances, Ed's stay at Trenton, though relieved by occasional leaves, extended over a lengthy five-month period. Certainly, if his service record is any guide, illness and hospitalization did not account for it. On the face of it, therefore, not only had his navigational instruction been terminated but no substitute program had readily been found for him.

Then curiously, on 26 April 1942, Ed was, in a manner of speaking, released from the confines of KTS Trenton and ordered to proceed to 1 AOS Malton, where in spite of an apparent course failure he was obviously permitted to continue his navigational training. Recently, however, this scenario was challenged by an informant well qualified to do so, Brigadier General Jack Watts (ret.), a decorated wartime navigator who made a distinguished career for himself in the RCAF. To his knowledge no failed student was ever re-instated in a course as Ed Tew appears to have been. In other words, his training had perhaps not been terminated at all but only interrupted by the Trenton hiatus, during which he may well have been detached for more pressing duties. The same helpful Jack Watts suggested one such plausible arrangement. A lawyer in civilian life, Ed “might have become part of a court martial involving one of his course members, perhaps as his defence counsel”. Yet under “Temporary Duty”” on his service record there is no entry remotely suggesting this possibility nor did a search for court martial records for the period in question yield any results.

The apparent mystery surrounding this stage of Ed's training career cleared up when another document materialized out of his official RCAF file. It shows that he did not go to KTS Trenton because he had “washed out” or because he had been assigned to a court martial. Rather it was there that he would have the opportunity to put his legal, skills to use on his own behalf, in effect, to argue a case. It would appear that after his posting to 5 AOS – a crushing disappointment – he objected and when this went unheeded he decided to apply formally for re-mustering from navigator student to pilot trainee.

Ed must have presented a solid case because a so-called Re-Selection Board was convened at Trenton to consider it. Among the accomplishments it took into account was Ed's high standing of 89% attained at 5 ITS. On 29 January 1942 the impressed board duly found for Ed and “strongly recommended” the sought after re-mustering. So did Trenton's commanding officer, who declared that “LAC Tew is an excellent type of airman with an exceedingly good educational background. His desire to fly as a Pilot is his one ambition and in this, he has been thwarted from all sides”.

In spite of the Board's recommendation, however, Ed would continue to be thwarted. Possibly fearing precedent-setting and procedural problems, the Air Force's higher authorities ultimately ruled against Ed's “one ambition” and ordered him to resume his navigational training. In the absence of letters and other personal documentation, one can only imagine Ed's continued disappointment and frustration. But this “fine type of airman” soldiered on and proceeded, as noted, to 1 AOS Malton.

Putting his recent setback behind him, Ed appears to have had little difficulty fitting back into the observer course, again undertaken on the by now familiar Anson. After his completion of the course with a commendable grade of 79%, he would have ordinarily proceeded, as an emergent navigator, to a bombing and gunnery school but in this case the requirement was unaccountably waived, a situation that “surprised” Jack Watts. (Perhaps Ed had objected to this training phase as well and this time the tactic worked.) Nonetheless on 28 August Ed was judged fully qualified to graduate. He was made Temporary Sergeant, as was the practice, and then on the strength of his course standings appointed Pilot Officer and awarded his Observer (O) wing. At the same time he was assigned to the RCAF's so-called Special Reserve, created to accommodate the swelling number of new aircrew graduates.

A mere two days after the wings graduation ceremony on the Malton station, Ed was dispatched to 1 Y Depot in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the marshalling point for all those airmen earmarked for an overseas departure. But in Ed's case, not before he enjoyed a two-week leave to visit family and friends in Hamilton. He returned to Halifax on 26 September and a week and a half later his time in Canada ended when he boarded a ship bound in a convoy for Britain. He experienced an apparently uneventful Atlantic crossing and arrived safely on 18 October. As others often did, he probably wired his relieved parents the bittersweet tidings.

After completing his disembarkation and collecting his belongings, he was given his travel instructions. He shortly boarded a train bound for the much frequented Personnel Reception Centre in Bournemouth on the Channel shore. There he was initiated, as a member of the RAF Trainees Pool, into the ways of that senior service as conveyed through lectures and movies. Inoculations, medical inspections, and vision tests were also the order of the day for these fresh arrivals from the New World.

Then, on 27 October, armed with newly issued battle dress and flying kit, Ed was sent off to his first posting, 22 Operational Training Unit (O T U) at Wellesbourne Mountford, located a few miles from storied Stratford -upon-Avon in Warwickshire. The station was by now staffed overwhelmingly by Ed's compatriots and hence placed under Canadian command. Among other things, 22 O T U's location also gave Ed and his comrades a first-class opportunity to brush up on their high school and college Shakespeare. Ed was not the first McMaster airman to enjoy these advantages. He had been preceded at Wellesbourne by Barney Rawson [HR], another Hamiltonian.

Ed enjoyed other welcome diversions. On what appears to be his last leave he visited an English family that had taken a liking to him on earlier ones. That the head of the family, a Major Courtney Williams, kept a stable of horses made the visits all the more appealing to the equestrian airman from Canada. On this particular occasion, however, Williams was having trouble coping with a rambunctious horse that had thrown his daughter, Anthea. He was on the point of putting the animal down when a concerned Ed intervened. The major told the rest of the story in a letter later written to Ed's mother (as quoted in The Boar ):

… as he said that he knew a bit about horses, I told him that he had better see if he could do anything with this brute. The result was staggering for within five minutes he had that horse doing just what he wanted. Never have I seen better horsemanship or such perfect jumping. It was a pure joy to watch and it will remain my abiding memory of Ed. I have attended our big international horse-show at Olympia, London, for years and have seen all the world's jumpers competing for the King's Cup – but never have I seen a better exhibition than on the occasion mentioned above. After that Anthea, who lives and dreams horses, just worshipped Ed and we hoped to have fixed up some hunting together before the season ended.

As Barney Rawson had done before him, Ed served non-operationally on the station's staple weapon and trainer, the Wellington bomber. The whereabouts of his flying logs are unknown so one can only speculate on the training procedures he was put through. In all likelihood, however, if he followed in Barney's vapour trails, so to speak, he would have gone on mock bombing runs, cross-country flights, and night flying exercises, all non-operational.

What is known for certain is that on one such nocturnal flight on 29 January 1943 the Wellington (HF 650) he was navigating suffered a lethal accident, crashing and burning near Edgehill, Gloucestershire, with the loss of its all-Canadian crew. (Unaccountably statements vary as to the time of the accident, recording either 9:37 or just before midnight.)

Apparently Ed, in spite of severe burns and multiple injuries, must have briefly shown some signs of life because he was rushed to a nearby hospital. The effort was unavailing, however: he was pronounced “dead on admission”. The official investigation report, issued a little over a week later, concluded, among other things, that the accident was caused by human error, not mechanical failure. It also had this to say about Ed's last agonizing moments on earth:

… The aircraft completed the cross country flight satisfactorily and on return to base called up Flying Control … No warning of anything wrong was given by the pilot who simply asked if he was being received loud and clear. This aircraft was seen in the circuit by ACP. It must therefore be assumed that the pilot did an extra wide circuit, lost the flare path and on looking intently for it allowed the aircraft to go into a tight turn, and on seeing the airspeed rising and in his inexperience pulled the stick back causing the aircraft to stall at 1000 ft. All crew were killed.

The other ill-fated crew members, with whom Ed had doubtless formed a close bond – as was the way with most air crew – included Sergeants J.L. McConnell, C.L. Hall, W.E. Douglas, and W.A. Boundy.

Bach home, the Hamilton Spectator ran a story that would vary widely from the official account. In a pardonably patriotic flight of fancy it had Ed Tew die dramatically in a Mosquito bomber raid on Berlin, one that supposedly drove Nazi leader Herman Goering into the refuge of a cellar. According to published Bomber Command war diaries this daring raid was in fact carried out but on 30 January 1943, that is, the day after Ed's tragic if less dramatic death in England. This first ever daylight attack on Berlin succeeded in disrupting a Nazi rally and forcing the postponement of Goering' s scheduled speech, though no reference is made to his cellar retreat.

Meanwhile the McMaster Alumni News, which kept close track of the University's men and women in uniform, made no mention of the Berlin raid but simply reported Ed's loss and then reviewed his academic and athletic accomplishments at McMaster, noting particularly his “outstanding” performance as a tennis player. Appropriately his grieving stepfather donated a cup to honour top-flight campus competition in the sport.

Edmond McLeod Tew is buried with his crew mates in New Cemetery, Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, England.

C.M. Johnston

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The following provided valuable information, documentation, or leads: Roberta Bailey, Elise Brunet, George de Zwaan, Grant Howell, Lorna Johnston, Susan Lewthwaite, Gloria MacKenzie, Kenneth Morgan, Norman Shrive, Nancy Sperling, Jack Tew, Lloyd Tew, Margaret (Kirkland) Tew, Penelope Tew, Richard Tew, Sheila Turcon, and Jack Watts. In this case as in others, the late Norman Shrive generously offered key suggestions and technical expertise. Margaret Tew, Jack Tew (who has prepared a Tew genealogy), and Roberta Bailey (see DHS below) supplied family and biographical information. Elise Brunet and Susan Lewthwaite of the Law Society of Upper Canada Archives contributed biographical and professional data (see OBBRP below). Gloria MacKenzie of the National Archives of Canada produced the Tew file document (see below) that solved the “mystery” referred to in the text.

SOURCES: National Archives of Canada: Service record of Pilot Officer Edmond McLeod Tew, which comes complete with such documents as Royal Air Force: Officer or Airman, Report on Accidental or Self-Inflicted Injuries or Immediate Death Therefrom, 7 Feb. 1943, and Report on Flying Accident or Forced Landing Not Attributable to Enemy Action, 8 Feb. 1943; P/O E.M. Tew File: letter from Wing Commander H.J. Burden to Flight Lieutenant Pidgeon, 9 Feb. 1942; communications from Jack Watts, 13 Sept. 2004; Spencer Dunmore, Wings for Victory: The Remarkable Story of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan in Canada (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1994), 170, 185, 222, 352, 354, 360; Jean Martin, “The Great Canadian Air Battle: The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan and RCAF Fatalities during the Second World War”, Canadian Military Journal (Spring 2002), 67; Les Allison and Harry Hayward, They Shall Grow Not Old: A Book of Remembrance (Brandon MB: Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum Inc., 2 nd printing, 1996), 753; Martin Middlebrook and Chris Everitt, The Bomber Command War Diaries: An Operational Reference Book, 1939-1945 (London: Penguin ed., 1990), 349.

Internet: www.airforce.forces.ca/hist/ww_2_e.asp (Special Reserve); www.wellesbourne.fsnet.co.uk/history.htm.

Hillfield School Library: The Boar (yearbook), June 1935, No. 3, 10, December 1943, No. 11, 6, 51; Westdale Collegiate Institute Library: Le Raconteur.

Canadian Baptist Archives / McMaster Divinity College: McMaster University Student File 5229, Edmond M. Tew, Biographical File, Edmond M. Tew; McMaster University Library / W. Ready Archives, Special Collections: Marmor, 1932-3, ii, 103, 1934, 52, 117, 1935, 46; McMaster Alumni News, 12 Oct. 1939, Oct. 1942, 2 0 Feb. 1943 ; Law Society of Upper Canada (LSUC) / Ontario Bar Biographical Research Project (OBBRP): Tew, Edmond McLeod, LSUC / Corporate Records & Archives: graduation photograph,, E.M. Tew (detail from P472, Graduating Class, Osgoode Hall Law School, 1939).

Dundas Historical Society (DHS): Notes of T. Roy Woodhouse (Tew family information); Hamilton Public Library: Vernon's City of Hamilton Directory for theYear1940 (Hamilton: Vernon, 1940) 1107 (microfilm, Part II); Hamilton Spectator, 6 Feb. 1943.