Winnipeg WW II pilot sacrificed self so crew could parachute to safety from doomed bomber
'We may never know where he is but I'll always hold out hope,' grandson says
Robert Harris leans out the cockpit canopy of an Avro Lancaster bomber, his left arm resting casually on the sliding window's guide, a slight smile testing the corner of his Clark Gable moustache.
He would be shot down over Germany in the same type of plane only weeks before the end of the Second World War, his body never to be found.
"That closure is never quite there — not knowing," said Winnipegger Betty Hannem, Harris's only child, now 80.
She never met her dad, who only learned after he had been deployed that he was going to be a father. The news came via letter from his wife, Margaret, back home in the small town of Binscarth, Man.
Hannem was born July 31, 1944, the exact day Harris marked his 31st birthday. His final one.
She was eight months old when he died.
On the evening of March 7, 1945, Harris was piloting a Lancaster carrying his crew of six — part of heavy bomber squadron No. 550 of the Royal Air Force — on a raid on Dessau, Germany, southwest of the capital of Berlin.
"It was pretty much the end of the war and the allies were putting on the pressure, trying to finish it off," Hannem said. "But there was still a lot of really good little fighter pilots out there."
One of those pilots sighted and fired on Harris's Lancaster, which was badly damaged. Worried about the explosions from the arsenal of bombs still aboard, the crew headed for the doors and parachuted. All but Harris, that is.
"Flying Officer Harris maintained control of the aircraft long enough for all his crew to bail out; he went down with the aircraft," a citation states on the Canadian Warplane Heritage Museum website.
Two other crew members died while three were captured and imprisoned in war camps. They were liberated at the end of April.
"Piece by piece, each crew member who was on that airplane was eventually accounted for through personal effects, through survivor stories, through prisoners," said Richard Randell, Hannem's son and Harris's grandson.
"The other two who died, their remains were removed but no remains of Robert whatsoever [were found] in the wreckage, in the accounting, in the stories."
Air force telegrams arrived, first saying Harris was missing in action and then announcing he was presumed dead in the wreckage just outside Colbitz. Additional letters from the Department of National Defence offered sympathies but no resolution.
Margaret never remarried. She died in 2011 at the age of 92, still hoping for an ending to the mystery.
"I never knew my grandmother to not ever be in love with her husband, who she lost so long ago," Randell said.
In the months following the war's end, Margaret would listen to radio broadcasts about soldiers being found, some suffering from amnesia or being treated in hospitals for wounds suffered in prison camp torture.
"I think my mom, for many, many years, just assumed that he would come back some day," Hannem said.
With her husband gone and little financial support from government at that time, Margaret moved to Winnipeg, took a course at a business college, and landed a job there as a teacher.
It was more survival mode than acceptance, Hannem said of her mom.
"She taught there for five years and she enjoyed it, but she was working long hours and weekends, even on Saturdays," Hannem said. "She eventually had a nervous breakdown. I think that's when she accepted the fact that [Harris] probably is dead. It was very difficult for her."
Hannem's grandparents had also moved to the city and helped raise her while her mom recovered and found work again.
Margaret never spoke at great lengths about her husband, it was too painful, Hannem said, "but she coped very well and she made a good life for herself and for me."
"I kind of learned about my father in various little bits and pieces. I remember learning how to spell the word 'deceased' very young in my life because in those days you had to write who your [parents are] at school."
Only after Margaret died did Hannem find a box of 167 letters written by Harris while he was overseas. It's the closest she's ever felt to a man she never knew.
"I read those letters and see him asking how she was and how I was. He wanted to know about me," Hannem said.
"To feel so close to him and know so little about him, not know his voice, but to feel so much, that he cared so much for me as a tiny little baby that he never met. It's wonderful to have that. He's always been there."
The full story of the Dessau raid and Harris's heroics are in The Harris Crew, a book by Allyson Newburg, which includes personal accounts from Douglas Hicks, a gunner with the crew and its youngest member at 19.
"Other than that, we don't know much. I have all kinds of letters that my mother got from the Department of National Defence, explaining as much as they could about what happened," Hannem said.
They do know this: In his short life, Harris did what he loved.
Growing up, his suburban Winnipeg home was under a migration path and close to marshy areas where he would sit for hours watching birds.
It was also near Stevenson Airfield (now Winnipeg Richardson International Airport), where he watched some of the earliest planes in the city.
He eventually landed a job with Ducks Unlimited prior to the war, working with and writing about birds. He then took flight in the war.
"He finally got his wings," Randell said.
Like Margaret before them, Hannem and Randell now go about their lives with a hope pulsing faintly in the back of their minds, like a heartbeat, that news will come one day and bring closure.
"I think it will. I'm 80 now, so I might not see it. But I hope maybe someday somebody in Germany, in that little town, will dig something up that might be identified as a dog-tag, or even remains of some sort that could be identified," Hannem said.
There was a series of raids the night Dessau was attacked, with a total of 21 bombers — 19 Lancasters, a Halifax and a B-24 — going down in Germany, resulting in the deaths or unknown whereabouts of 122 Allied airmen, according to Newburg's book.
Of those, seven were from the Winnipeg area.
Harris was posthumously awarded the Operational Wings of the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1947, in recognition of gallant service in action against the enemy.
"He's one of the heroes of thousands of Canadians … and I think Robert's story is a love story for him and Margaret and Betty, and for Winnipeg, too," Randell said.
"We may never know where he is but I'll always hold out hope. I would love it to happen within the next few years because my mother deserves to know."
This past summer, he and Hannem visited the Mynarski Memorial Lancaster, Canada's only Lancaster bomber still in flying condition, when it stopped in Winnipeg as part of a cross-country tour.
"I saw my mom go directly around the left wing, looking and searching out the cockpit. I saw her and I felt her emotion too," Randell said.
"It's Robert's final resting place because he doesn't have a final resting place. He will live on in the lore of the Lancaster bomber."
Hannem admitted she was lost in the moment.
"I felt how brave those young men were to be in that, to put themselves in a big, huge machine like that, carrying those huge, big bombs. And they were not comfortable. They were cramped and cold even," she said.
"To see that, to visualize him sitting in that cockpit, it tugged at me."
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