Article from the Halifax Chronical Herald, 2 June 2012 about F.O. Robert Conroy, RCAF 429 Sqn.
In four weeks, Elizabeth McMichael will travel from Cornwallis Park to a park next to Buckingham Palace, to watch the Queen dedicate a memorial to the men of Bomber Command. The thousands of flight crew members whose lives were lost in the Second World War will be represented at the dedication by their descendants. But in that huge crowd, McMichael may in one way stand alone. She has looked into the eyes of the German pilot responsible for the death of a loved one.
Long after dark on the night of March 24, 1944, Capt. Heinz Roekker of the German Luftwaffe climbed into his Junkers Ju 88 twin-engine fighter and took off to do battle with the hundreds of Allied bombers streaming into the skies over Berlin. By the time he returned to base two hours later, he had shot down four planes, including a Halifax-class bomber piloted by 23-year-old Robert Fitzgerald Conroy of Middle Stewiacke.
When the people of the village near the field where Conroy’s plane crashed got there the next morning, they found him dead in his seat, wearing his Air Force uniform and a white sweater, with his head leaning forward as if he were asleep. He had stayed at the controls while the other six members of the crew, who survived and were taken to German PoW camps, bailed out. It was the second time Conroy had been shot down. A year earlier, the Wellington he flew went down in Holland. That time, Conroy was the only survivor, and over a period of three months, the Underground spirited him to Gibraltar, from where he made his way back to England.
Conroy was Elizabeth McMichael’s uncle. “He came home on leave when he was released from hospital in England,” McMichael, now 71, remembers. “It was quite a story. He came home on leave for a month, and at that time I was about 3. My mom was his older sister and he was visiting us at home. I remember him very clearly because he was just Hollywood handsome, and had a beautiful tenor singing voice. He used to carry me around and sing to me, and I remember that.”
Conroy, known as Gerald, was the second-youngest in a family of 13, and one of four brothers to serve in the war. He had worked in the woods, so at first the Army assigned him to the Forestry Corps. But he wanted to be in the Air Force and eventually was transferred and trained as a pilot. “They were very pleased with that, very proud of him,” McMichael says of Conroy’s family. “I think the thing that sticks in my mind is there was this picture, this handsome face on the wall, all my life. Each one of my aunts and uncles I went to visit, there was this same handsome picture. So he was kept alive to me that way, and once in a while there’d be some story about Gerald, often to do with his singing.”
Six decades after she last saw her uncle, McMichael was at the Remembrance Day ceremony in Halifax with Alex Morrison, who would soon become her husband. When the ceremony was over, she took off her poppy and put it on the cenotaph. “Alex said ‘Why did you do that?’ and I told him it was because of my uncle, who was killed during the Second World War,” she says. “I had never told Alex this story, so that led to me talking about it.” Morrison is a military historian and has several contacts in Germany. Through a retired general, the couple soon found themselves on the outskirts of a village near Leipzig, where Conroy, with more than 20 missions to his credit, had died. “The field where Gerald crashed, near midnight, is still a bare field,” Morrison says. “Eyewitnesses were able to tell us exactly where in the field the plane crashed. One of the engines fell off, and they showed that spot to us. “His rank was flying officer, he was in 429 Squadron and he was just about to turn 24.” As Morrison’s research divulged more information, the couple made two more trips to Germany, culminating, incredibly, in a meeting with Roekker. “We met him in Germany two years ago. He’s 90,” McMichael says. “I’d had a few years to process the information, after we made contact with him, so I was looking forward to meeting him. “When I actually saw him, I felt kind of sorry for him, because he was an old man, and he looked a little nervous. I thought about the courage it must have taken for him to come and meet us.
“The first thing he did was put his arm around my shoulder and say, ‘I didn’t mean to kill your uncle.’ It was a very emotional moment for each of us. I said to him, ‘But you didn’t kill my uncle, you were a young man doing your job, as he was, and you just happened to shoot down the plane he was in.’ It was really quite a beautiful moment.” Friends of Morrison from Germany helped with translation and helped Roekker feel more comfortable about the meeting. The group had lunch and spent a couple of hours together.
McMichael will think about Roekker when she watches the Queen dedicate the Bomber Command memorial, but mostly she’ll think about the handsome young man with the beautiful singing voice. “It’s really the first official thank you to, and recognition of, all these people who were in Bomber Command,” she says. “Having the Bomber Command recognized and honoured, that hasn’t really been done. And it’s time that it was, that we really say thank you to these young men who gave their lives.”
