It was Christmas Eve, December 24, 1944. Flight Sergeant Jean Cauchy was the pilot of a Halifax bomber making a bombing run on Dusseldorf Airfield in Germany.
Hit by flak, the Halifax lost one of its engines. To make matters worse, there was still a bomb in the bomb bay that hadn't released during the attack. Despite wanting to get to their home base for Christmas, and the Christmas concert in which he and many of his crew were scheduled to sing, he diverted the crippled, dangerously loaded aircraft to a new location, all while still being targeted by flak.
Remembrance Day 2019
Jean Cauchy, born in Lévis, Québec in 1924, joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942. He was 18, and had just learned that his brother Louis, serving with the Royal Air Force (RAF) as an air gunner, had been shot down during a bombing mission over Fortress Europe.
He received his pilot wings after a year and a half of training and, in January 1944, was transferred to Royal Air Force Station Tholthorpe in Yorkshire, England, to fly with the 425 Squadron—the “Alouettes”. He flew six missions on the Halifax Mark III Bomber during the Second World War before also being shot down on January 5, 1945. He and his crew were captured by German forces and spent the remainder of the war at Stalag Luft I as prisoners of war until the camp was liberated by the Allies in May 1945.
After the war, Flight Sergeant (retired) Cauchy returned to Canada and released from the military. He maintained close…
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