Remembering Gordon Patterson: From POW to the University of Saskatchewan

But few – if any – on campus at the University of Saskatchewan (USask) where he later studied and worked for more than two decades, knew of Gordon Patterson’s (BE’49) service and sacrifice during the Second World War.

“Dad was a shy man and he hated anyone making a fuss over him and he didn’t want people to call him a hero,” said son David Patterson of Regina, who was born on a military base where his father was posted after the war, and went on to follow in his footsteps into the military and served close to three decades in the Canadian Armed Forces. “He just wanted to be known as just a man who did his job.”

“Growing up, he never ever talked about (the war) with us kids,” said Patterson’s eldest daughter Diane Tate (nee Patterson) of Saskatoon, one of the five children in the family. “It was after he got sick, he wrote his memoir and that was when we learned a lot … Dad was very closed about the war, because it wasn’t happy memories. It was just something that was personal and private and he said very little about it. You have those heroes that everyone knows, and then there are the quiet ones behind the scenes and that was how my dad was.”

Their father’s story began in 1919 when he was born in Woodrow, a tiny town in Saskatchewan with a population now numbering in the 20s. At the age of 16, Patterson left home and headed west during the tough times of the Dirty ’30s, hitchhiking his way to Vancouver where he was hired as a crewman and boarded a Trans steamer merchant ship, sailing around the world before eventually settling in England. In 1938, he joined the Royal Air Force at the age of 19, and was soon posted in France with his squadron at the outbreak of the Second World War in September of 1939.

Nine months into the war, Germany’s Blitzkrieg attack quickly overran Allied troops in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg with the Nazis approaching the French border. In a desperate attempt to hold off the German attack, the British bombed bridges on the River Meuse and Albert Canal in Holland in a series of costly air assaults, including the dangerous daylight raid on May 12 involving Patterson’s squadron of five aging Fairey Battle light bombers.

“It was considered a suicide mission, but dad’s squadron volunteered to a man,” his son David said. “Of the five aircraft that went on the mission – there were three men in each aircraft: a pilot, an observer and a wireless air gunner – only one plane returned, and that was my father’s, but only with the pilot, and he made a forced (crash) landing after ordering the other two, including my father, to bail out because the plane was so badly shot up. The other four aircraft were all shot down while making their bombing runs.”

“I have personally met many of my father’s squadron mates who knew all of the men who went on that raid,” he added. “Of the 15 men who went, only one returned, two became POWs, two survived to fight another day, and the rest were killed. From my understanding, only one man on the raid survived the war: my father.”

Facing withering anti-aircraft fire from the ground, the squadron of five Allied bombers was also swarmed by German Messerschmitt 109 fighters, with Patterson proving particularly adept at targeting the Me109s with the bomber’s rear machine gun.

“My father shot down three of them, while taking a bullet in the arm and a bullet in the leg,” his son said. “So he was shot up pretty bad and the plane was shot up pretty bad and the pilot was wounded as well, and he ordered everybody to bail out.”

Patterson later recounted his wounds in an interview with writer Les Allison in his book Canadians in the Royal Air Force:

“I had been hit on my earpiece, in the right forearm and left leg,” Patterson told the author. “When I bailed out, I hit the tail and very badly smashed up my right forearm. I have no actual recollection of this as I was knocked out and had a concussion. I landed in the courtyard of the Hospital des Anglais in Liege, Belgium, and of course was immediately taken in to hospital. I had broken the arch bone of my left foot on landing. The Germans entered the city that evening and I became a POW. I was in hospital several months, being moved to the military hospital about four weeks later.”

Surviving the suicide mission was just the start of five gruelling years spent in 17 different POW camps for Patterson (officially POW No. 36841) as the Germans regularly moved airmen around from one camp to another to disrupt escape efforts. The imprisoned Allied airmen – including Brits, Canadians and Americans – diligently dug deep tunnels under the barbed wire fences in the POW camps in dangerous attempts to escape, with Patterson taking part in the painfully slow tunnelling process.

“Later in life, I remember he talked about tunnelling to try to escape and it was his shift and the cave collapsed on him, but they managed to pull him out in time before he was suffocated,” said his daughter Diane.

Patterson played a part in the preparations for the most famous – and ultimately tragic – events of the Second World War on March 25, 1944 when 76 Allied POWs escaped from a tunnel under Stalag Luft III prison camp 100 miles southeast of the German capital of Berlin. Depicted in the 1963 blockbuster movie The Great Escape, 73 of the 76 airmen were re-captured within a couple of weeks and 50 were executed on the direct orders of Adolf Hitler as a warning to other prisoners, in a horrific war crime violation of the Geneva Convention.

“Dad helped to dig many of the tunnels for that escape,” recalled his youngest daughter, former USask student and Huskie athlete Tina Neudorf (nee Patterson) of Regina. “He was not part of the actual escape though because he was transferred to a different prison camp before that happened. However, he knew many of the men who were killed in that escape.”

Struggling to survive and scrounging for food while slowly recovering from his wounds, Patterson was also pushed to exhaustion in a work camp in Poland, and later was forced to endure a gruelling one-month forced march in winter of 1945 from Poland to Germany as the Russians advanced and the Nazis retreated, with their prisoners in tow.

“It was his buddy who helped carry him because dad had his foot broken, problems with his knee, and had surgery to piece the bones back together in his arm,” said his daughter Diane. “If you didn’t keep up with the march and you dropped, you were shot and left there, so it was pretty brutal. But this is the way the fellas looked after each other and survived.”

Hungry and hobbled, Patterson and the other surviving Allied prisoners were finally liberated on May 2, 1945, when British airborne soldiers reached the camp, and a week later Patterson was back in England on VE Day (Victory in Europe Day) on May 8. Just three weeks later on May 26, 1945, Patterson married his war bride, Margaret Patricia Stiles, with whom he had corresponded with throughout his five long years as a prisoner, via letters exchanged through the Red Cross.

“They got engaged via mail, while he was a prisoner,” said his daughter Diane. “In the beginning, my dad was listed as missing and presumed dead until the Red Cross found him and let family in England know and wrote to his cousin Gladys. He was allowed to correspond and managed to write to my mother and they were married after the war … The one thing I do remember my mom and dad saying was that my dad weighed 90 pounds and my mom weighed 135 when they got married.”

The newlyweds soon headed overseas to Canada, arriving on August 12, 1945. Patterson was finally officially decorated with Canada’s first Distinguished Flying Medal by Governor General Viscount Alexander at a special investiture ceremony at the Saskatoon airport parade grounds that fall and was also honoured by his home town of Woodrow in May of 1946.

Patterson used his veterans’ benefits to enrol in university, completing his degree in engineering physics at USask in 1949 before rejoining the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) at the rank of flying officer and serving his country for another 17 years.

“My father had the distinction of serving in every rank from a basic airman to a squadron leader, from a recruit to a major,” his son David said.

His father’s continuing career with the RCAF included postings at military bases across the country and included working on the groundbreaking Avro Arrow project – Canada’s first supersonic fighter jet – in the late 1950s as well as serving as commanding officer of the Telecommunication and Radar Training School to being the supervising officer of the Canadian area of the joint Canadian-American North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD). Patterson’s final posting brought him back home, overseeing the operation of eight radar stations and command of the radar squadron of the RCAF Station Dana radar base 60 kilometres east of Saskatoon, before retiring from the military in the fall of 1966 and returning to USask to work with the university’s physics department for 20 years.

Back on campus, Patterson became an invaluable resource as the assistant to the Dean of Physics, Dr. Leon Katz (PhD), doing everything from overseeing construction of a large 36,000 square foot addition to the Physics Building, to rebuilding the historic sundial and refurbishing the telescope at the USask Observatory, where he would later lead astronomy sessions as he established the Saskatoon Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada in 1969.

“My father pretty much did anything Dr. Katz needed him to do, including making liquid helium,” said his daughter Tina, who was attending USask at the time and remembers her mother also working at the university in health sciences for a few years. “I remember at times if a professor wanted to demonstrate a law of physics and did not have a gadget to do that, my father would invent something. He was basically a jack of all trades … I used to ride back and forth with him every day to university and was very proud of the work he did, not only in serving in the military during the war and before he retired, but also for the work he went on to do at the U of S, as well as the work he did for the local Royal Astronomical Society in Saskatoon.”

During his 20-year career at USask, Patterson’s passion for astronomy became a focal point of his work on and off campus, guiding students in using the telescope at the university’s observatory as well as teaching amateur astronomy classes in the basement of his home in Saskatoon, where he had created a dark room for astronomical photography and also built an observatory in the backyard. Patterson also constructed an observatory outside the city with the help of family and members of the local astronomical society.

Patterson would go on to serve as both secretary and president of the Saskatoon Centre, led the production of a star atlas, wrote a guidebook titled the Handbook for Astrophotography for Amateur Astronomers in 1974, hosted a weekly astronomy radio show on astronomy in the ‘80s, and served as an astronomy lecturer in Saskatoon and as a guest at other centres around the country.

For his dedication and legacy of work, he was presented with a Life Membership from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) in 1979 and was also awarded the RASC Service Medal for his central role in promoting astronomy in 1982 when the society’s annual general assembly was held in Saskatoon. Patterson remained a leader in the field of astronomy and a key member of the physics department at USask until 1986 when he retired due to ailing health, in particular lung problems dating back to his time as a POW in Germany.

“Dad was one of the ones who didn’t get out unscathed, because his lungs were damaged from all of the bouts of pneumonia and everything and that led to a lot of health problems for him later in life,” said his daughter Diane.

It was only after Patterson retired that most of the members of the family finally learned the full story of his experience in the Second World War, service that inspired his son David to enter the armed forces himself in 1969, much to the chagrin of his mother and his father, who knew all too well what awaited their son. After David returned home from a difficult tour of duty overseas in the 1970s, Patterson finally began opening up about his experiences to his son.

“My father was most reticent about talking about what he went through in the war,” his son said. “It wasn’t until after I came back from my own first oversees tour of duty that my father started talking and, basically, he saw the look in my eye and knew that I would understand. So, we knew of it, but we didn’t have a lot of details, mainly because dad didn’t want to talk.”

With his health failing, Patterson put pen to paper, transcribing his diary of the five years he spent as a POW and documenting his war experiences in his unpublished autobiography, From Brass Bullet to Gold Wings, from which his family finally learned the full story of his time overseas.

“He had chronic injuries that affected him for the rest of his life, and that’s the price he paid as a soldier,” said his son David, noting that both of his parents donated their bodies to medical science after passing away. “I was a soldier and I have been in combat and I’ve seen what happens and I made the choice willingly and my father made the choice willingly. And that’s what a soldier does. Dad was proud of his service, but as he said, ‘I did what I had to do and they gave me a medal for doing my job.’”

Gordon Nelson Patterson passed away in Saskatoon at the age of 75 on Oct. 30, 1994.

For nearly a century, the University of Saskatchewan (USask) has hosted a Remembrance Day ceremony at the university’s Memorial Gates, paying tribute to the dedication and service of those in our campus community who have served and continue to serve our country.

All are welcome to attend this year’s program and wreath-laying ceremony at the Memorial Gates on Nov. 11, 2024, at 1:30 pm as we continue this honoured campus tradition. We also invite you to take some time to reflect on the messages and stories about the many USask community members, both past and present, who have served their country and to visit the many memorials that exist on campus to honour them.

Article originally published at https://news.usask.ca