Roy Carter: A Hero's Long Journey Home

Scugog Standard Newspaper - Port Perry, Ontario, Canada

By Rik Davie/The Scugog Standard

Roy Carter, a young man from Blackstock, Ontario, was no different from any other young man who answered the call by King and country in May of 1942.

Roy was raised with his brothers on what is now the Asselstine County Yamaha dealership off Regional Rd. 57 in the old Cartwright Township.

He attended Blackstock Continuation School, belonged to the local Boy Scouts and won awards for his scholastic skills that saw him accepted to Toronto Normal School. He taught school himself for a short time in Manchester and then, like thousands before him, heard the call to fight in the Second World War and joined the RCAF.

He trained in London, Ontario, and was awarded his Navigator’s Wing in August of 1943.

He was sent overseas and assigned to 431 Iroquois Squadron flying Halifax bombers on combat operations over German-occupied Europe.

In July of 1944, Roy’s little brother Fred trudged through the hot fields of the Carter farm to find his father with the telegram that every family in Canada feared might arrive.

Roy was lost. Missing in action after his Halifax was shot down on operations over Holland, even as the war was in its final months. The affable young man, with a best girl back home and plans to study medicine, had disappeared into the mist and fog that was occupied Europe.

While his parents and family waited with hope, Roy Carter began a journey that would make him a hero to a country he spent only days in - a journey through time and history - and he never saw Blackstock again.

Flash forward to 2008 and a letter to Scugog Council asking that a non-descript park in Blackstock be named after Flight Officer Roy Carter.

The naming of buildings and parks after people, living or dead, has always been contentious at best. Naming certain places after those who gave the ultimate sacrifice in defence of their country is no less so. The cenotaphs of Scugog list the names of all who gave their lives in the service of a country at war.

Why, some have asked, would one deserve special attention over another?

How is one sacrifice more worthy?

The answer, of course, is that no one sacrifice takes precedence over any other. None is more worthy ... only different in circumstance.

When a small group of citizens in Scugog became aware of Roy’s story it became clear to them that it deserved some measure of concrete recognition so that it might become known to all.

Roy Carter’s story is one of bravery and commitment to service over and above what is required by the soldier’s oath. A commitment to the freedom of others that cost a young Blackstock school teacher his life and made him immortal in the eyes of those he sought to free.

It went something like this....

Flight Officer Roy Carter was posted to 431 Iroquois Squadron (now the Squadron of The Snowbirds) in Croft Yorkshire, UK, on May 22, 1944.

After completing six Ops (sorties), including one on D-Day to St. Lo, he and his crew were shot down on 16/17 June, 1944, in Halifax NA514, coded ‘SE-B.’

All of the crew, except the pilot, F/O Blachford (who died in the crash), were able to bail out. Two died in the fall( F/O Lough and Sgt. Gould), two were captured almost immediately (Sgt. Hattey and Sgt. Kennedy). Sgt. Tom Masdin and Roy managed to evade the Germans. Tom was later caught and taken as a POW.

Apparently, they had trouble opening the escape hatch in the cockpit, but eventually Roy was able to jump out of the burning aircraft. He landed safely in a field near Boekel, North Holland, a fair distance from where the plane had actually crashed. He had a chance, since the Germans would only search the immediate area of the crash. Roy buried his chute (as recorded by Roy and left at a safe house in Erp) and contacted a local farmer, who gave him refuge. Thus began Roy’s quest for freedom. He would make use of many hiding places under the guidance of local resistance groups.

On Sunday, July 9, 1944, the Nazi S.D. (security police) obtained the whereabouts of the resistance assisting Roy and others and arrived at the door of the safe house in Tilburg. where Roy was hiding with two other escaped airmen.

According to reports after the war, the S.D. men were dressed in their black trenchcoats and carrying machine guns. The three airmen were having breakfast in preparation for their escape to Belgium and then to one of the 'freedom lines' that would return them to England to fight again.

Against all principles of the Geneva Convention concerning POWs, the Gestapo burst into the room and herded the three officers into the backyard, lined them up against a brick wall and shot them numerous times, despite the fact that they were unarmed.

Roy Carter, badly wounded, was able to get back into the house. He was killed in the doorway leading to the kitchen. (That doorway was pointed out to Roy’s mother in 1964 when she travelled, accompanied by her daughter Isabel and other Silver Cross Mothers, to Holland on a pilgrimage.)

The S.D. now ordered 60-year-old Jacoba Pulskens, owner of the home, to fetch a sheet to cover the still-warm bodies. In an act of defiance, Coba went upstairs and brought down a large, new Dutch flag, which she had been keeping for the day when the Netherlands would be liberated. Radios and Dutch flags where forbidden in occupied Holland. It should be noted that Coba lived on a busy street corner and all of this action was being witnessed by neighbours.

Coba herself was arrested. She spent seven months in solitary confinement before being carted off to the notorious Ravensbruck concentration camp where she died in the gas chamber in the spring of 1945 at age 61.

Coba is remembered as a heroine in Holland. According to survivors in the death camp, she voluntarily stepped forward to take the place of a young mother with children, in the hope of saving their lives. She apparently had said earlier, “If someone has to give his life, I hope to do it. I can better be missed than others.”

The bodies of the three airmen were first taken to a nearby hospital (where an alert doctor photographed them) and then removed to the concentration camp at Vught, near Herzogenbusch. There, they where cremated, presumably to remove any evidence of the crime that had taken place in Tilburg.

Because the remains of the three airmen were never found, they are listed officially as missing in action.

A plaque in memory of the three airmen and Jacoba Pulskens was erected at her house in Tilburg in 1947. It can still be seen there at 49 Diepenstraat.

On Oct. 27, 1994, a large granite monument was unveiled on Coba Pulskenslaan in Tilburg to honour the three airmen, heroes to the Dutch in their terrible years of occupancy by the hated Nazis. The dedication was part of the events marking the 50th anniversary of liberation.

Relatives of the three airmen - from Canada, Australia and England - attended the unveiling ceremony in Tilburg. Roy’s brothers Robert and Fred represented the Carter family.

Roy and his fellow evaders had the opportunity to turn themselves in at any time and become POWs. They chose not to do so and to the Dutch people, who where eventually liberated by Canadians in many towns and cities, these airmen were heroes who are still remembered today. School children from a nearby elementary school look after the granite monument and a service of remembrance is held every year.

On evidence of former Dutch resistance workers and Coba’s family - and the photos of the bodies taken by Dr. Borman of St. Elizabeth’s Hospital in Tilburg (the Dutch police had taken photographs also and had the identity disc belonging to F/O Carter J28855) - four of the 10 Nazi policemen were found guilty of murder and sentenced to death by hanging.
The Dutch flag that was used by Jacoba Pulskens to cover the bodies of the dead airmen was later brought to England. The flag was dedicated in the Airman’s Chapel in the Church of St. Michael, Coningsby, on May 8, 1983.

There are plaques on the wall with the names of the three airmen and Coba Pulskens, along with words of dedication.

The airmen are also commemorated on the Runnymede Memorial (Englefield Green, Egham, Surrey, England) in separate panels along with the thousands of veterans without known graves.

There is a small piece of green grass surrounded by trees and a tiny creek where, in the warm weather, children come to play and to simply be children. It lies in the middle of Blackstock near the local schools and just a stone’s throw from the farm where Flight Officer Roy Carter grew into the hero he became.

A small committee is now hopeful that the Township of Scugog will approve the naming of the park in Roy’s memory - not as an individual but for the heroic beliefs and acts that made him a hero of the people of Holland. With the support of Legion Branch 419, Roy Carter’s actions may yet be known.

School children in Tilburg tend to Roy’s memory each year and are taught about the sacrifice made by this young man. This young man, who put country before self, has no known grave and no place to rest. Perhaps that small green space in the middle of his hometown can be that place. Persons in Scugog Township can voive their support through e-mails to editorial-stanmdard@powergate.ca, which will be forwarded to Scugog Council.

Perhaps, together, we can bring Roy Carter home to Scugog.