In the history of warfare, the stories of generals and political leaders fill up encyclopedias and library shelves full of books. However, it is the experiences of ordinary people acting courageously and unselfishly that make up the real human accounts of conflict.
Gordon “Stace” Stacey, general manager of Guelph Hydro, had an extraordinary war story which he shared with the now-defunct Guelph Mercury in August of 1977. It was published in a three-part series written by reporter John D’Alton. This is an abridged version.
On the night of April 27, 1944, Stacey was the navigator on a Royal Canadian Air Force Halifax bomber. It was one of a squadron of 20 that took off from a base in England for a raid on Aachen, Germany. This was 22-year-old Stacey’s third mission. His plane never reached Germany.
German night fighters attacked the squadron, and Stacey’s plane was hit. Stacey was one of just three of the seven-man crew who were able to bail out before the bomb-laden plane exploded. The three survivors parachuted to the ground but became separated. Stacey later learned the other two men were captured by German soldiers.
In pain from a sprained knee and fractured collar bone, Stacey buried his parachute in a manure pile. He limped across country, avoiding roads and German patrols, travelling by night and hiding by day. He finally took the chance of approaching a farm. To his relief, the family took him in. They gave him food and wine, and a place to rest.
The family spoke only Flemish, but Stacey soon understood that he was in Belgium, and that German patrols were looking for survivors from a crashed bomber. At great risk to themselves, the people hid Stacey for eight days while they contacted the Belgian resistance. A woman whose code name was Fifi came to the house. She spoke English. Her Belgian father and British mother had been sent to a concentration camp for helping downed RAF pilots escape occupied territory. Fifi not only continued her parents’ work, but carried out acts of sabotage.
Fifi grilled Stacey with questions. When she was satisfied he wasn’t a Gestapo agent posing as a Canadian airman, she agreed to help him, on the condition he follow her instructions to the letter. Stacey exchanged his uniform for an old grey flannel suit and a black beret. He was to pose as a being deaf and non-verbal person named Francois Bierna. He knew if he were caught wearing civilian clothes, he’d be tortured and then shot as a spy.
On a Sunday, when Belgian roads were full of cyclists, Stacey, Fifi and four other Resistance members – including a 16-year-old girl – set off on bicycles for Liege. As they crossed a bridge over the Meuse River, a German sentry stopped Stacey. He indicated that he wanted a light for a cigarette.
Stacey took a book of matches from his pocket and struck one. Then, to his alarm, he realized the matchbook cover was British. If the sentry saw it, Stacey and his companions were done for. Fortunately, the soldier didn’t notice and they went on their way.
Stacey hid in the attic of Fifi’s parents’ house in Liege for four months, along with a British airman and two Americans. The house was of no interest to the Gestapo because it had already been raided.
Nonetheless, as a precaution the men stayed awake late at night because the Gestapo’s preferred time for sudden raids was between midnight and dawn.
The men listened to BBC radio broadcasts and heard of the D-Day invasion. From the attic window they could see German soldiers drilling on the grounds of a school that had been occupied by a military unit. They also saw Allied bombers pass overhead and heard the explosions that shattered Liege’s industrial area.
Heavy Allied bombing disrupted Fifi’s plans to get the men out of Liege by train and smuggle them over the Pyrenees Mountains into Spain. They were still in the house when American soldiers entered Liege on Sept. 8, 1944. The airmen joined the civilians who poured into the streets to greet the liberators. Two weeks later, Stacey was in England.
Stacey later visited the Belgian family that had sheltered him. They gave him his airman’s uniform, freshly cleaned. After the war, Stacey became a member of the Canadian branch of the Royal Air Force Escaping Society.
In 1967 he and Fifi, now a grandmother, had a reunion when that organization brought her to Canada as an honoured guest for the centennial celebrations. It was a moving postscript to a compelling story about ordinary people who, without protest or complaint, did what they had to do in trying times.
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