MAPLE CREEK, Sask. — In December 1942, just days before Christmas and days after his 19th birthday, Robert Tracy Cross left the family farm and headed five miles into Yorkton.
There, he signed up for the war effort.
“I figured maybe they needed a little more help,” said the Second World War veteran who goes by Tracy and now lives at Cypress Lodge, near his daughter in Maple Creek.
Most of his service came after the war as Europe began its recovery, but his military training is still ingrained as he approaches his 100th birthday Dec. 5.
His bed is always made, his room tidy. This past fall he was still raking leaves on the property, one arm on his cane and the other wielding the rake. He routinely fills 200 bags, say staff, and had filled 100 before the early snow.
Cross was the first resident of the personal care home when it opened in 2017 and took it upon himself to make sure doors were locked and lights were out at night.
He embodies the local Citizen of the Year nomination he received soon after moving there following the death of his wife, Eve.
“I wasn’t all together a fan of that,” he said of the nomination from his fellow care home residents.
“There are lots of people who did way more than I did.”
However, he still greets each new resident as they arrive and maintains humility and gratitude for what he has. He reads extensively to keep up to date with the world.
Back in 1943, Cross did basic training in Lachine, Que., Moose Jaw and St. Thomas, Ont., with a leave for harvest in between the latter two. Now an aircraft mechanic, he ended up posted back where he started in his hometown in early 1944.
“We had an air base there. It was pretty good. It was like working a regular job but you lived in the barracks,” he said.
Yorkton was home to the No. 11 Service Flying Training School, equipped with Avro Ansons, Cessna Cranes and North American Harvards, according to records.
But later that year he was sent to Halifax and on Oct. 15 he boarded a ship for overseas.
He found out he wasn’t a good sailor.
“Going over we hit a huge wave and after there was a storm,” Cross recalled.
“We were within two degrees of capsizing.”
Many on board got hurt after they clung to table legs inside the ship. The tables were fastened to the floor but broke free under the strength of the waves. Cross, on the deck above, slid back and forth.
Storms weren’t the only risk.
“We had to zigzag because they were scared of submarines,” he said.
Six days later they arrived in England, where they stayed in a holding depot waiting for instructions. To pass the time they helped locals pick apples and potatoes. The war had slowed considerably by this time and they did not come under fire.
“The only fire I came under was friendly fire,” Cross said with a laugh.
One day in northern England he was told to go over a hill and make sure it was all clear on the other side.
He wasn’t told to come back, though, and soon the hand grenades were landing around him.
“I hit the ground till it was all over,” he said.
Another time a fellow soldier in the next room was playing with his revolver when it went off and the bullet came through the wall.
“It missed me by four inches,” said Cross.
“All in a day’s work.”
He dryly describes those days as “fun times” and said he was quite satisfied with the military life.
As a leading aircraftman in A Group, he served in No. 6 Bomber Command, working on Auster aircraft, the 666 Air Observation Post (AOP) squadron, and No. 443 Spitfire squadron in England, Holland and Germany.
The AOP squadron was a mix of army and air force personnel and members wore a uniform that reflected that: army battle dress with the blue shirt and blue wedge cap of the air force.
The 666 was in Friston, Suffolk, in early 1945. Cross said one of the requirements after fixing a plane was that someone from the ground crew had to go up on the first flight.
“That was to make damn sure we fixed it right,” he said.
“I only went up once.”
That’s when he found out he wasn’t a good flyer, either.
Cross admired the airmen in the single engine Auster spotter planes, who flew without any armament on board.
“They flew just high enough to see where the shells were landing,” he said.
Cross went with 443 squadron to Utersen, Germany, in 1945, although he said there wasn’t much to do there by then. Germany surrendered in May 1945 and the atomic bombs were dropped in Japan in August.
“I would think we were slated to go to Japan,” he said.
During his time overseas Cross slept outside on the grass or under a vehicle and even between two pipelines when housing wasn’t available.
In one posting, when he transferred to the 666, there weren’t any buildings at all. They often slept two in a pup tent and repaired planes with minimal equipment.
Cross returned home and was discharged in Winnipeg in 1946.
He worked for a time in his brother’s Yorkton garage, then in a sawmill in Peachland, B.C., where he met and married his wife, before returning to Yorkton due to his mother’s illness.
His uncle had an International Harvester dealership and Cross worked as a partsman until his retirement at 65. He and Eve raised children Larry and Barb, and maintained a huge market garden and greenhouse just west of Yorkton for years.
He joined the legion in 1960 and is a life member.
Cross did return to Europe for a holiday. He has only good things to say about the people he met during his service. For example, the Dutch invited soldiers for supper or to play baseball.
“It was good times, it was rough times,” he says now.
He said he has seen a lot of change during his nearly 100 years. One of the biggest is in farming.
He recalls the farm where he grew up about 10 kilometres northeast of Yorkton where the family grew wheat, oats and barley and milked eight to 10 cows.
“When I left, the first combine had just moved into Yorkton, a six-foot pull-type,” he said.
“It’s hard to believe one million bucks for a single machine now.”
