For the rank-and-file soldier, the grunt, the bloody conduct of war is, aside from the killing, the abject waste and devastation, a noble endeavour, the personification of altruism, the ultimate act of selflessness.

History is replete with stories of battlefield daring and medal-earning exploits. Recognition for outstanding acts of courage, innovation and sacrifice serves as reward, inspiration and a source of national pride.

The celebrated would tell you they didn’t do what they did for honour, country, or some lofty ideal. They would likely say they did it for their fellow soldiers, their comrades-in-arms, their brothers. Medals and plaudits don’t factor in the equation when it’s do or die.

Rarely by their own choosing, the doers of these deeds are exalted as national heroes, their faces and accomplishments fodder for recruitment campaigns and bond drives, their stories the subject of poetry and prose, song and cinema.

The best of them count themselves lucky, meeting their praises with the humility of those who know better, who understand what it is to kill and to survive, who count their idols among those lying in the hallowed soil of faraway fields bearing names such as the Somme, Ypres, Hong Kong, Normandy, Groesbeek, Busan.

For some, medals are haunting reminders of ordeals they would rather forget.

They know well, too, that for every Victoria Cross or Medal of Honor, pour tout les Croix de guerres, Soviet orders of Victory and Glory, and German Knight’s Crosses of the Iron Cross, there have been countless others in countless wars whose actions in the face of a hostile enemy went unrecognized and unrewarded.

Factors such as race, rank, politics, quotas, location, service branch and inconsistent and arbitrary standards have all influenced decision-making.

Humans are flawed, and politicians, bureaucrats and military brass are certainly no exceptions. The distribution of what British Tommies dismissed as “gongs” and American G.I.s called “chest candy” has never been a pure and unadulterated process.

Historically, factors such as race, rank, politics, quotas, location, service branch and inconsistent and arbitrary standards have all influenced decision-making.

The most recently notorious case is that of Private Jess Larochelle, an Ontarian whose magnificent defence of a strongpoint in Afghanistan earned him Canada’s second-highest award for valour, the Star of Military Valour.

His story spawned a campaign to upgrade his award to a Victoria Cross, which was refused primarily on technical grounds. The Canadian VC has never been awarded since it replaced the British version in the 1990s.

Still suffering the effects of wounds he sustained during the Oct. 14, 2006, firefight, through which he was left alone to defend a forward position, Larochelle died in 2023.

The following are the stories of three other unsung Canadians whose actions in historical wars merited more recognition than they received.

After the Americans captured Fort George in Upper Canada, William Green passed critical info about their continuing advance to the British. He fought with the red coats during their subsequent victory at the Battle of Stoney Creek.[Library of Congress/Wikimedia]

William (Billy) Green

On May 27, 1813, American invaders crossed the border into Upper Canada and captured Fort George, less than two kilometres from what is now Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont. The War of 1812 was less than a year old and the outcome was anything but certain.

Led by British Brigadier-General John Vincent, the fort’s defenders withdrew and encamped about 70 kilometres away at Burlington Heights. Two U.S. brigades set off in pursuit, pitched a roadside camp at Stoney Creek, Ont., and began planning their attack. It was June 5 and Vincent’s troops were about 15 kilometres away.

That evening, U.S. soldiers detained a local farmer, Isaac Corman, for refusing to tell them where local Indigenous warriors were encamped. They brought him to the American lines near the beach on Lake Ontario. Corman, however, managed to convince some of the U.S. officers that he was a cousin of American Major-General William Henry Harrison, commander of U.S. forces in the northwest.

The gullible Yanks released Corman, who then requested the countersign, or password, so that he could get past the American sentries and go home. They gave it to him—Wil-Hen-Har, after the major-general—and sent him on his way.

Meanwhile, Corman’s wife had reported him captured and her brother, William Green, had already set out to find him.

Known as Billy Green the Scout, the 19-year-old farm boy was born and raised in Stoney Creek, the son of an Empire Loyalist who had left the United States around 1792.

When the brothers-in-law met on the road outside Stoney Creek, Corman told Green of the American plans and gave him the countersign. The Americans soon discovered Corman’s ruse, however, and promptly recaptured their escapee.

Green was already on his brother Levi’s horse “Tip” headed for Burlington Heights to warn the British of the impending attack.

Arriving at the British encampment, he was taken for a spy, detained and interrogated by Lieutenant-Colonel John Harvey, who soon deduced the kid was legit.

Acting on Green’s intel, the password he provided, and his intimate knowledge of the countryside, Harvey formulated a plan to launch a nighttime ambush on the American camp. He gave Green a sword and asked him to guide his troops through the fog-enshrouded forest.

[Library of Congress/Wikimedia]

They set out just before midnight, encountering their first American sentries at Davis’ tavern in Big Creek. The Americans fired their muskets and fled. The British force stumbled upon more sentries along the way. Green gave one the countersign and dispatched him with his sword.

Green stayed with the British troops as they mounted the attack, seized artillery pieces and captured senior American officers. The Americans who could, fled.

Green’s contribution was undoubtedly pivotal to the British victory. But his story has been both questioned and grossly enhanced. Despite much gilding of the lily, however, he never achieved the renown of his contemporary, Laura Secord. Indeed, embellishments of his role during the last 200-plus years have not served him well.

Green’s contribution was undoubtedly pivotal to the British victory. But his story has been both questioned and grossly enhanced.

The March 12, 1938, edition of the The Hamilton Spectator called him “the Paul Revere of Canada,” claiming he “sighted the American army massing below the mountain at Stoney Creek” and “felt it his duty to inform the English troops of their nearness.”

“This is a fabrication, as the British knew exactly where the Americans were, and knew they were being pursued by them,” Philip E.J. Green wrote in an exhaustive analysis and defence of Billy the Scout’s story published in the May 2013 edition of The War of 1812 Magazine.

Green the writer said such myths have fuelled theories that the whole story is a fanciful lie. After-action reports by British and American officers make no mention of either Green or Corman, bolstering the case to discredit the story.

But Laura Secord’s role in the British victory won by Indigenous forces at the Battle of Beaver Dams two weeks later was never acknowledged in official reports either.

Secord had overheard American officers at Queenston discussing plans to attack a smaller British force under the command of Lieutenant James FitzGibbon. She then walked some 30 kilometres on a circuitous route through rugged terrain to warn FitzGibbon, who subsequently dispatched Captain Dominique Ducharme, in command of First Nations warriors, to address the matter. They won a quick victory and Secord has chocolates named for her.

“The primary sources of evidence used to establish the story of Laura Secord are the personal accounts of Laura Secord herself,” wrote Green, whose relation to Billy the Scout, if any, is unclear.

FitzGibbon wrote a certificate 24 years later, in which he said Secord did “acquaint” him with the Americans’ intentions. Mohawk Chief John Norton wrote in his diary that “a loyal Inhabitant brought information that the Enemy intended to attack us that night with six hundred men,” but doesn’t name the inhabitant.

There are several accounts by British and American officers of the Battle of Stoney Creek—and the events preceding it. “As with Secord, none of them mention Billy Green,” the author wrote. “Nor is there a certificate describing his role in the action.

“There are no accounts written by Billy Green himself; he was an illiterate.”

And, notes Green the author, Billy had reasons to stay silent about his role at the time, not the least of which was to avoid unwanted attention from the Americans.

Years later, the local justice of the peace, Peter Van Wagner, mentioned Green in his diary shortly after the scout died. He related the remorse Dr. Thomas Picton Brown said his patient, Billy Green, expressed over killing an American sentry. The sentry had just fired his single-shot musket and was thus, in Green’s mind, unarmed.

“In a charge on a picquet [sentry] he run a man through who had an empty gun without a bayonet,” wrote Van Wagner. “This was related to me by Dr Brown as he attended Green in dangerous illness where he told the doctor he was very sorry for what he had done, for he knew the US soldier was defenceless for he had seen him discharge his piece.”

Green the author says the scout’s own telling of the events of that night jibes with the general accounts contained in official reports, bolstering the validity of his story. The military accounts weren’t published until decades later and, regardless, could not have been read by the illiterate Green.

The corporal’s sword that Green is believed to have wielded was passed down through four generations of his family and is now in the collection of the Stoney Creek Historical Society’s Reference Library and Archives.

Still, the myths have persisted, fed by the likes of this gem from a 1938 edition of The Mail and Empire newspaper: “And so Canada remained British…due to the cool-headed, yet audacious courage of Billy Green, the farm lad who was God’s instrument in saving Upper Canada.”      

Jeremiah Jones

Jeremiah Jones, a Black man from East Mountain, N.S., fought Germans in the trenches and racism on Parliament Hill before he finally received muted recognition for his courage decades after he helped Canada win the Battle of Vimy Ridge.

The six-foot-two private was already 58 years old by the time he reached the front in February 1917 as a member of The Royal Canadian Regiment. Two months later, he crossed the bloody battlefield at Vimy and took an enemy machine-gun nest.

Not only did he contribute to a notable victory of the First World War, but the humble giant (the average enlistee measured 5′ 6″) proved a Black man’s worth in a white man’s army.

Jeremiah Jones was awarded a Distinguished Conduct Medal for his actions during the battle. [DND/LAC/PA-001380]

A mortar shell explodes amid trenches on Vimy Ridge in May 1917. [DND/LAC/PA-001380]

“I threw a hand bomb right into the nest and killed about seven of them,” Jones recalled years later. “I was going to throw another bomb when they threw up their hands and called for mercy.”

Jones ordered the half-dozen survivors out of their hole, then marched them at bayonet-point back to the Allied lines, carrying their weapon. He had them deposit the machine gun at the feet of his commanding officer.

“Is this thing any good?” he asked.

His exploits that day earned him acclaim at home and abroad, but they remained the subject of debate from London to Ottawa for almost a century.

By Aug. 17, 1917, his hometown newspaper was celebrating Jones as “a patriot, brave, powerful and resourceful.” His commander recommended him for a Distinguished Conduct Medal, the second-highest valour award after the Victoria Cross at the time.

But “the lion of the hour” was Black, and to give a Black man a bravery medal in 1917 would have been a political bombshell at a time when the military’s top brass—and some senior politicians—opposed Black enlistment. “Coloureds,” they said, wouldn’t make good soldiers.

Blacks had been trying to enlist in the Canadian forces without success. In Saint John, N.B., 20 Black volunteers had no place to serve. “It is a downright shame and an insult to the race,” John Richards, a Black community leader, wrote to federal officials.

The response was unequivocal. An officer in Victoria said no white battalion would take Blacks. In Halifax, whites withdrew voluntary enlistments when rumours circulated that they might have to serve with Blacks.

“Neither my men nor myself, would care to sleep alongside them, or to eat with them, especially in warm weather,” wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Walter H. Allan of the 106th Overseas Battalion, which eventually enlisted Jones by order of the federal government.

The matter was debated in Parliament before the military chief of staff issued a memorandum on April 13, 1916, citing what he called the facts.

“The civilized negro is vain and imitative,” wrote Major-General Willoughby Gwatkin. “In Canada he is not being impelled to enlist by a high sense of duty; in the trenches he is not likely to make a good fighter.”

Jones was finally recognized on Feb. 22, 2010, when Ottawa posthumously awarded him the Canadian Forces Medallion for Distinguished Service.

Such attitudes were not limited to matters of military service. The long-held belief among some that racism was not widespread in the Great White North has been misplaced.

“The treatment received by ‘visible’ Canadians did not originate with the military,” James Walker, a leading scholar of Canadian race relations and Black history at the University of Waterloo, wrote in a 1989 paper.

“Recruitment policy and overseas employment were entirely consistent with domestic stereotypes and ‘race’ characteristics and with general social practice in Canada…. Racial perceptions were derived, not from personal experience, but from the example of Canada’s great mentors, Britain and the United States.”

All this, despite the fact another Black Nova Scotian, Royal Navy gunner William Hall, was awarded a Victoria Cross for his actions at the 1857 Siege of Lucknow during the Indian Rebellion, in which he and an officer continued firing their 24-pounder after the rest of the gun crew had been killed or wounded.

There was righteous indignation among Blacks and whites alike over the rejections of Black volunteers in the early days of WW I.

As early as November 1914, Arthur Alexander of North Buxton, Ont., told Militia and Defence Minister Sam Hughes that “the coloured people of Canada want to know why they are not allowed to enlist in the Canadian militia.

“I am informed that several who have applied for enlistment in the Canadian expeditionary forces have been refused for no other apparent reason than their colour.”

On Sept. 7, 1915, George Morton of Hamilton wrote Hughes “on a matter of vital importance to my people (the coloured), in reference to their enlistment as soldiers.”

Morton wanted to know if Ottawa had an official policy on enlistment of “coloured men of good character and physical fitness.”

“A number of coloured men in this city, who have offered for enlistment and service, have been turned down and refused, solely on the ground of colour or complexioned distinction,” he wrote.

“A number of leading white citizens here, whose attention I have drawn to this matter, most emphatically repudiate the idea as being beneath the dignity of the Government to make racial or colour distinction in an issue of this kind.

“They are firm in their opinion that no such prohibitive restrictions exist.”

Hughes issued a directive confirming and attempting to rectify Morton’s assertions shortly afterward. But it didn’t seem to matter. By Dec. 31, at least 200 Black Canadian volunteers had been rejected.

Allan’s 106th eventually took on 18 Blacks, but most, including Jones, were reassigned once overseas. Jones, who had lied about his advanced age to get in (he said he was 38), went to a reluctant Royal Canadian Regiment.

There, he more than proved his worth.

“Jeremiah Jones put the lie to perceptions of the day,” the late author, historian and eventual senator Calvin Ruck told The Canadian Press in 1995 amid a campaign by the Black Cultural Centre for Nova Scotia to recognize the soldier’s contributions.

“His actions served to change the view of the ability of Blacks under fire,” said Ruck. “He showed people Blacks could be as good soldiers as anybody else and the majority community didn’t have a monopoly on bravery or devotion to duty.

“Blacks were just as proud and as loyal to king and country.”

The centre’s campaign, however, stalled in Britain that same year.

“Regardless of the right and wrong of the perceived or real discrimination against Blacks in the Canadian Army, there can be no question of a retrospective award,” wrote Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Bird of the British Defence Ministry.

“State awards for both gallantry and meritorious service are announced within a year or so of the citations to which they refer. There were many servicemen like Jones who did not receive recognition for their gallant deeds.”

Jones’ lack of recognition is particularly galling given the number of VCs handed out for the taking of machine-gun positions during WW I, especially given the fact that the private did it solo, took prisoners, and brought back the gun.

But Ruck didn’t give up, and his efforts ultimately paid off—somewhat.

Jones was finally recognized on Feb. 22, 2010, when Ottawa posthumously awarded him the Canadian Forces Medallion for Distinguished Service, which wasn’t created until 1989 and was intended for individuals and groups who aren’t active members of the Canadian Forces.

It was no DCM, but it was a measure of recognition.

Jones returned to Truro, N.S., at war’s end, rejoined his wife Ethel and lived out his life as a woodsman, farmer and handyman. They had a large family. Jones died in 1950.

Flight Lieutenant James Andrew Watson

Flight Lieutenant James Watson

On the night of April 27-28, 1944, Lancaster R-ND 781/G of 622 Squadron, Royal Air Force, piloted by Flight Lieutenant James Andrew Watson of Hamilton, Ont., set out from England on a bombing mission to Friedrichshafen, Germany.

R-ND would never reach its target but, like Jess Larochelle 80 years later, Watson’s heroic actions that black night over occupied territory would inspire an unsuccessful campaign to award him a Victoria Cross—posthumously.

The seven-member crew—three RAF, four Royal Canadian Air Force—were at 6,000 metres (27,000 feet) as they approached the turning point, 30 minutes out, for their final run into the target. Suddenly, they were attacked from dead astern and below by three Junkers Ju 88 night fighters. It was about 1:30 a.m. and they were a little south of Strasbourg, France.

“The attack was a complete surprise, there was no moon, just complete darkness,” recalled Ron Hayes, the bomber’s mid-upper gunner. “The aircraft was equipped with H2S radar equipment which transmits pulses and the crew and Intelligence were not aware at the time that the Germans were able to home in on the signal.”

The crew could hear the thuds as the German rounds hit the rear of the aircraft and they saw flashes as the port elevator badly buckled. The rear gunner, RCAF Flight Sergeant Murdock MacKinnon—a Cape Breton native living in Somerville, Mass., when he signed up—later reported that his radio and turret were knocked out.

RAF Sergeant Roy Clive Eames, flight engineer, said the initial attack had also penetrated the plane’s nose and knocked out its aileron and rear controls.

Flight Lieutenant James Watson poses with his Lancaster crewmates. [Canadian Virtual War Museum]

With MacKinnon out of commission, Hayes directed the pilot’s evasive actions. But they were essentially flying blind. From his vantage point atop the Lanc, Hayes couldn’t see their attackers’ approaches and had to make his calls based on the disconcerting volume of tracers arcing past his canopy.

Watson began corkscrewing as the attacking aircraft came closing in again from 350 metres. Hayes described his pilot’s response to his evasive directions as magnificent, but still the bomber was hit in the starboard inner engine. Within 30 seconds, the wing and engine were burning. The fire extinguisher system had no effect.

Watson, at 21 among the eldest aboard and flying his 17th mission, side-slipped the big, lumbering plane to keep the flames at bay. But the manoeuvre amounted to a trade-off—the fire didn’t reach the crew, but they were losing altitude fast.

“During this time the captain asked the navigator to inform the crew of our position for the purpose of escape,” MacKinnon reported later. “The navigator told us we were approximately on the French border.

“It is quite clear, that Flt.-Lt. Watson sacrificed his life knowingly and willingly to ensure the safety of his crew.”

“There was at no time any suggestion of panic and this was largely due to the coolness and perfect calm of our captain.”

Throughout the combat, Watson repeatedly asked for news of the rear gunner, with whom he had flown all his missions, and assured the rest of the crew that he would look after him. “Whatever happens, he’ll be OK,” the pilot assured them.

At the words “he’ll be OK,’” Eames said in a statement filed July 25, 1946, he realized “with horror…that Flt.-Lt. Watson would not leave that aircraft while there was the slightest doubt that a member of the crew remained [inside] and as a last resort would attempt a crash landing to save that member of his crew.”

As the fuselage seam aft of the burning engine began melting, Watson directed the crew to collect their parachutes. Soon, the wing was almost totally engulfed, and a gaping hole was forming in the side of the plane.

“I’m sorry lads,” said Watson, “but you’ll have to hit the silk.”

“I then plugged into the intercom system and informed the pilot that…the rear gunner was still in his turret and I would let him know we were getting out,” said Hayes. “The captain’s last words to me were: ‘Yes, OK, but hurry, we’re at 4,500 feet; if he’s not hit he might make it. So long Ron, good luck.’”

Hayes, just 19 at the time, then opened the bulkhead door leading to the rear turret. MacKinnon turned his head and Hayes patted his parachute. The rear gunner turned away without acknowledging the news.

“The aircraft was now at about 4,000 feet when I bailed out,” Hayes said. “The pilot had the aircraft under perfect control, it was still losing height in a sinking fashion and the flames had enveloped the fuselage alongside the burning wing.”

In a report on the incident filed May 6, 1945, weeks after they were freed from German prison camps, MacKinnon said the Lancaster was badly damaged. Without intercom, he said he was “entirely ignorant of proceedings” until Hayes appeared.

“Starboard elevator in tail shot off,” reported MacKinnon. “Navigator [Flying Officer William Ransom of Hamilton] stated pilot was last seen holding stick hard to port.

“When I baled [sic] out the aircraft was a blazing mass in a dive so it seems impossible that pilot got out. I baled [sic] out when flames were passing rear turret.”

As Ransom took his turn at the escape hatch, the third to go, he took one last look at Watson, whom he said was having “difficulty maintaining the aircraft in level flight.”

“Leaving the aircraft and releasing my parachute, I was able to watch the burning aircraft almost until it crashed,” Ransom later wrote. “It remained level, latterly, and in a shallow dive for much longer than would have been necessary for F/L Watson to reach the escape hatch and bailout, a fact which leads me to believe that he remained at the controls in order to allow the rear gunner, whom we were all under the impression was injured, as much time as possible to clear his turret.”

MacKinnon, he later learned, got clear “just in time to have his fall checked by his parachute, before reaching the ground.”

Hayes, who had directed Watson through the attack, landed hard in an open field. He blamed the impact on his low-level escape, a disconcerting delay in the deployment of his ill-serviced parachute, and a lack of instruction in its use.

“The action with the German fighter aircraft, the difficulty in evacuating our aircraft and the bale-out [sic] and hard landing in the dark were very stressful experiences, and the right side of my body and lower back [were] aching,” he said.

Dizzy, Hayes rested for a few hours where he had landed, out in the open.

As daylight approached, he rose to search for a hiding place in a wood or a barn, but the pain was so bad he only managed to make it to a nearby ditch, where he was discovered by a local and taken to the village of Guémar.

He was interviewed by a young girl who could speak some English before he was taken to the village hall around 1 a.m. on April 28.

“Here I met a French Schoolmistress, Mme. Lousie Strohl, who gave me tea, biscuits and tobacco, then she told me that Flight Lt. Watson had been found dead at the controls of the aircraft. She went to some length in describing him, even saying he was a Canadian and that he had two stripes on his epaulettes.

“This lady was sympathetic and wanted to cheer me up and make me feel at home, even though she could not help me escape. The village hall had become crowded with the local inhabitants who might have helped me escape if it was not for their fears of the Gestapo.”

A pair of Luftwaffe intelligence officers took Hayes to Colmar, France, for interrogation.

“After the usual questions, I was asked if I could help them in identifying the belongings of a dead pilot,” he said. “The items were those of Flight Lieutenant Watson in an envelope, consisting of his identification bracelet and a ring.

“I knew that the ring had been given to Jimmy Watson by his father. The Germans said that they had taken the articles from a…pilot who was found dead in the pilot’s seat of a Lancaster. I said nothing to them for fear that it might be the beginning of a long interrogation and I also knew that the identity bracelet was sufficient.”

Hayes surmised that Watson had died trying to save the rear gunner, MacKinnon. At Colmar, he saw three of his crewmates, but they didn’t speak to each other in case the Germans were listening.

Eames and Hayes were taken to Stalag Luft VI, while officers Ransom and W.H. Russell were separated. On the way to the prisoner-of-war camp, Eames told Hayes he had seen MacKinnon.

“Seeing him gave me a severe shock as I had convinced myself that he had been killed,” reported Eames.

In fact, all six crew who had escaped the burning plane had miraculously survived and were liberated in the spring of 1945. Hayes, an Englishman, would immigrate to Canada in 1951, largely based on the impressions left by his Canadian crewmates.

In a letter written while still a PoW in January 1945, Ransom asked his father, a padre at the Canadian Army Trades School, to “please see Jimmie’s folks and give them my deepest sympathy. He died like a hero in the fullest meaning of the word.

“He reached the ultimate in courage and devotion to duty that a bomber skipper can reach in that he gave his life that his crew might live, and he was successful, as all of us are safe. I am looking forward to meeting the parents of the grandest guy I’ve ever known—when this war is over.”

Eames called Watson “the bravest and coolest fellow I have ever met,” adding “we all owe our lives to him.”

In 1946 and 1947, five members of the crew put forward recommendations for the Victoria Cross to be awarded to their skipper.

“I firmly believe it would be impossible for an aircraft, in as badly damaged condition as was ours, to remain in such an attitude of flight without any assistance from the controls,” reported Ransom, who had flown many missions with Watson.

“I am convinced that on this occasion he unhesitatingly made his decision and at the cost of his own life remained at his post to ensure that his crew would have every possible opportunity and every valuable second of time to abandon the aircraft and save their lives.”

“It is quite clear,” said MacKinnon, “that F/L Watson sacrificed his life knowingly and willingly to ensure the safety of his crew. His most courageous act, his great and noble sacrifice in the face of the enemy was beyond the highest ideals of his duty and merits the highest possible award for gallantry and for valour in the face of the enemy.”

Watson’s nomination for a Victoria Cross, however, went nowhere. He received only a Mention in Dispatches, one of an untold number of bomber pilots who died saving their crew and were never given their due.

Except two: a British Halifax pilot named Cyril Joe Barton, and a Canadian.

Squadron Leader Ian Willoughby     Bazalgette, a Lancaster pathfinder pilot from Calgary, was posthumously awarded a VC after pressing home his Aug. 4, 1944, run into a target near Senantes, France, in a mortally damaged aircraft.

With his bomb aimer gravely wounded, Bazalgette successfully marked the target for the rest of the attacking squadron, then kept his flaming bomber from crashing into a nearby village and ordered those of his crew who could to parachute to safety.

The 25-year-old pilot, who had earned a Distinguished Flying Cross in Italy a year earlier, subsequently managed a belly landing, but the plane then hit a ditch and exploded. Bazalgette and two wounded crewmates were killed.

“That the attack was successful was due to his magnificent effort,” said his VC citation, published 10 days after he died. “His heroic sacrifice marked the climax of a long career of operations against the enemy. He always chose the more dangerous and exacting roles.

“His courage and devotion to duty were beyond praise.”

James Watson got no such acclaim. He’s buried close to where he died—at Choloy War Cemetery at Meurthe-et-Moselle, France. His family attended a 2009 ceremony when a monument was dedicated to Watson near the crash site in Saint-Hippolyte, France.