Coffin Nails

​Dad didn’t start smoking when he joined the RCAF in 1942 (in his intake interview he said he smoked about 6 a day at that time) but I think the habit became a hard-core addiction during his two years overseas. Bomber Command aircrew lived lives of constant stress if they were not on leave, with hours spent waiting to hear if they were flying that day, more hours in briefings if they were and then more sitting around brooding, killing the time while waiting for take-off time. Smoking gave them something to do and calmed the nerves – it may even have been a small but not insignificant part of building team spirit, as they bummed smokes off each other or shared a cig. Once on board their bombed-up aircraft smoking was forbidden – their aircraft was a flying bomb, filled with high explosives, aviation fuel fumes and oxygen lines.
Cigarettes were a given for every military man in that era, and it was rare to find a man who didn’t smoke. Brands from home like Sweet Caporal and British Consols were part of every Canadian airman’s rations, and were also freely available to buy on canteen or were sent in care packages from home. Canadian airmen much preferred these Canadian brands, as many swore that English cigarettes (brands like Victory, which was included in the emergency ration packs they were issued when flying) were made with 1/3 horse manure...
My Dad never gave up the habit, even after his first heart attack. He was well aware, I think, of what his loved ones thought of him smoking, and he made an attempt to hide his smoking habit, which fooled no one. After he passed we found little stashes of tobacco hidden in various spots in the house. Perhaps after surviving 59 combat operations in a campaign that cost Bomber Command 50% losses, he was fatalistic about the threat to his lifespan, and I won’t say I don’t understand....but I still regret he didn’t break free of the noxious weed before he died.
In my workplaces over the years I have butted (excuse the pun) heads with cigarettes many times. In prison, where I spent 25 wonderful (excuse the sarcasm) years, smoking was always an issue and one of the biggest causes of stress for new intakes – it wasn’t assaults in the shower that worried them, it was doing without smokes.
In the early 80’s I spent two years working in an underground copper mine in the Yukon and because it was a “hard rock” mine, not coal, smoking was common. I remember vividly a Newfie I worked with named Clarence, who was a chain smoker. He was a great guy to work with, like most of the Newfies, funny and hardworking – but nothing would stop him from smoking one cigarette after another. One month Clarence and I were assigned to be part of a three-man team pouring concrete reinforcing walls in newly-drilled tunnels. All day long we would break open bags of cement, dump them in a mixer and use a blow-pipe system to force the wet cement into the wooden forms. The cement dust from the opened bags filled the closed space of the tunnel in short order and for the whole shift the air was as thick as the worst London fog you can imagine. I wore a respirator for the whole shift, changing the filter every hour or so. Clarence chain smoked all day – in the shower at the end of the shift he would hawk up clods of cement syrup down the shower drain. I can’t imagine what that man’s lungs must have looked like at the end of our month on cement duty, between the dust and the ciggie smoke.
One of the more vivid stories I recall reading during my research into my Dad’s time in Bomber Command was by mid-upper gunner who had a close call with a tragedy involving cigarette addiction. One night on the way to Germany in his Lancaster, this young airman was rotating his turret, diligently scanning the pitch dark night for any sign of a German nightfighter. Suddenly a tiny movement caught his eye and he turned quickly, just in time to see the unmistakable silhouette of another Lancaster’s mid-upper turret a few hundred feet away. The reason for the sillouette? The airman could see that the other mid-upper gunner was lighting a cigarette, with the flame of his lighter illuminating the turret! Almost at the same moment the Lancaster erupted in a giant ball of flame and seven men died instantaneously in the explosion as the flame ignited either oxygen or fuel fumes, and then the bomb load. Our observer’s Lancaster was rocked by the explosion, but survived. It might be a humorous story if it weren’t so damn sad.