The son of Rev. A. C. and Mrs. Calder formerly the Rector of Holy Trinity Church, Chatham, ON. The father of Private F/O. F. Jack F. Calder and Lieut Philip.  Jack completed his education at the Chatham Collegiate Institute.

Jack was the sports editor at the Chatham Daily News and the editorial staff of the Canadian Press in Toronto, first as a sports writer, eventually he held several important positions on the staff.  before enlisting in the RCAF.  

In August of 1941 he by lined a story of a raid on the Nazi pocket Battleship ‘Gneisenau’ then at Brest. Newspapers across Canada and the United States used it on their front pages.  

In October of 1941 he was reported missing for a short time before it was discovered that he had parachuted safely from the aircraft over Eire (Ireland). He was interned in Eire for more than a year before returning to England. There was no explanation of how he got out of Eire. He would later stories for CP (Canadian Press) about his internment in Eire.

Flt. Lieut. Calder was well acquainted with being missing. He had recently been convalescing from serious injuries suffered in August 1943, when the plane of which he was a crew member flew into to top of a mountain in Northern England. He would later write stories about the work plastic surgeons were doing at the East Grinstead, Sussex, military hospital where Jack was undergoing extensive treatment.  As follows:

“The medical orderly swung the wheelchair down the drive and out towards the street. It was my first venture from ward three and as we moved the shadows of the hospital buildings. I realized that circumstances can make even a wheelchair ride exciting – though it would require a strong imagination indeed to relate it to flying.

We has only gone a few yards and I was absorbing the warm sunlight when the orderly stopped and pointed to the field on our right.

“That’s where the Canadian wing is going to be. He said.  

Then I heard for the first time of plans for a hospital unit which will bring to badly burned and injured Canadian airmen the finest treatment that the miracles of modern surgery can offer.

It is to be a wing to the Queen Victoria Hospital at East Grinstead – an institution supported by voluntary contributions – in which many men of the RCAF and RAF already have been spared the tragedy of having to go through the remainder of life terribly scarred or maimed.

A great majority of the servicemen who have come here many of them all the way from the front in the Middle E, have returned to active duty. None has gone away hopeless.

I have lifted a spade to help in a feeble way of grinning R.C.E. on the rapidly progressing construction job. I have helped the nurses hold down a bumptious Ontario rear gunner, who has been twice the sole survivor of bomber crashes, as he came from down under the anesthetic after an operation leading to the building of new tissue about the nose. I have seen a Canadian airman wheeled in badly burned after a crash-landing his four-engined aircraft, which he brought back from Germany on two engines and then I have heard his nurses whisper “He wants to know if he will be flying again in a month”. No one could help feeling the spirit that permeates the place.

The cinemas, dance-halls and sport facilities of the town and district are thrown open to all. Here Canadian boys can walk into Bill Gardiner’s restaurants and greeted by Bill’ as if they were walking into the main-street café back home in the “old days”.    

Canadian patients with whom I have talked, particularly those with facial burns are unanimous in their wish that they should be “fixed up a bit” before going home to friends and relatives.

Weekly visits of stage and screen entertainers from London are a part of the hospital program now; so is the manufacture of aircraft parts in the industrial therapy section, where men learn to use their hands again.

Each week members of the RCAF (WD) at their own expense and of the own free will, come from London with cigarettes, candy and comforts for the men. The new wing will be staffed by RCAF doctors and nursing sisters 

One of the most enthusiastic supporters of the new project, Dr. A. H. McIndoe the hospital’s chief surgeon, told me that in the completeness of its facilities, the Canadian unit would have no equal in the world.

The 50-bed unit may never be completely filled with Canadian patients although it is to be primarily for the RCAF cases requiring plastic surgery on jaw treatment. Beds left available will be turned over to other war casualties.

BY:- FLT. LT. JACK CALDER printed in the CDN 11/12/43. 

Flt. Lieut. Calder was well acquainted with being missing. The CDN 11/12/43(P) reported that Flt. Lieut. Calder had been seriously wounded in the face and one knee as a result of an air crash. He was treated at the Queen Victoria Hospital  at East Grinstead, Sussex.      

The CDN 29/12/44 reported that Pte. Calder had been wounded while serving in Italy.

The CDN 29/12/44 (P) reported that Jack was missing after overseas air operations. The CDN 9/06/43 reported parts of one of Jacks newspaper stories as follows:

As a result P.O. Calder and his crew were forced to parachute into an Irish bog and after a bit of bad luck on another foray. Attempts to evade capture failed and he has lived in an internment camp for more than a year. (Frequent parole has given Calder a chance to observe Irish life in and around Dublin with a keen eye. He has written five stories for the Canadian Press. In this the first, he describes life in the camp and explodes some rumors about it.)    

“BRITISH INTERNMENT CAMP”.

The Curragh, Eire, June 9.

“Thirty-four perplexed young men with hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of flying experience are almost living the life of Riley in the British Internment camp in Eire – almost but not quite.

The 34 of us are Allied airmen who through one reason or another have made forced  landings or bailed out over neutral Erie, or have come down in the sea within three miles of the coast. The personnel comprises Englishmen, Scotsmen, Canadians, Pole, a Welshman, a New Zealander, a Fighting Frenchman an American (FO. R. L. Wolfe)  and even a wireless operator from Northern Ireland. In total counting himself there are six Canadians.      

A good few of us have Irish blood and Brady’s father was born in Dublin.   

 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Sources

CDN(6)

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