Dressed in a suit and tie, with a line of medals hanging from the pocket of his Burma Star Association jacket, Bryce Chase sits on the sofa in his cozy one-room apartment at Calgary’s Colonel Belcher retirement home.
He starts out with a modest disclaimer.
“I didn’t do anything that was outstanding, I just went where they told me and I was lucky,” Chase said.
At 101-years-old, Chase is one of a dwindling number of living veterans in the city who served in the second world war as a member of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
And while he has a little bit of trouble remembering the day-to-day things in life, he can recall his stories of service from more than 80 years ago with an impressive amount of detail.
Like the time he was flying over a mountain range in Myanmar, then known as Burma, which was under Japanese occupation.
“I remember one night coming out of Burma, I had to go to 13,000 feet to get over the Chin Hills,” said Chase.
“I was just where I wanted to [be] where I was high enough and all of a sudden an updraft [came]. The next thing I knew, with the throttle closed I was at 17,000 feet.”
Chase’s story of military service began in 1941, at 18 years old. The son of a wounded World War 1 veteran, Chase left his home in the hamlet of Meota, SK and followed in his father’s footsteps.
Because of the injuries his father sustained as a foot soldier, Chase said he decided to pursue flying.
“My dad was in the infantry during the war and I wasn’t impressed,” Chase said.
“Being a pilot was much more attractive to me.”
Some close calls
Chase was sent to England where he trained in a Vickers Wellington, a British long-range medium bomber.
At the rank of Sgt., with his pilot wings in hand, Chase was then sent to India to serve in the army’s Burma Campaign.
Chase was assigned to an air crew that transported supplies and personnel from the American airbase in Calcutta to Burma, and vice versa.
Because of that, he said he avoided “the sharp end of the action,” but does remember a close call on his flight from England to India.
“The rear gunner said there’s aircraft coming up behind us and I thought, oh boy, that’s a German fighter,” he said.
“I stuffed the nose down and mercifully there was some cloud and we got down, sat on top of the cloud and he buzzed off.”
Another time while he was stationed in India, Chase said he was left with burns to his face and hands after a training session.
“The other fellow was at the controls and undershot the [runway] despite the fact that I said ‘we’re too low, we’re too low.'”
“Bang! We hit the ground and the airplane caught fire. But I was back flying within a couple of weeks or so.”
While many of the men he trained with were killed during the war effort, Chase said he’s grateful that he never lost a crew under his command.
He was routinely promoted throughout his time in service, and was discharged in 1945 as a squadron leader.
Among the decorations he received was the Burma Star, which is awarded to British and Commonwealth forces who served in that campaign.
Christina Chase-Warrier calls her grandfather a hero, a title Chase scoffs at.
“He, as you will have learned, is very very humble and modest and has been imparting those values to his family and everyone around him and his absolute attitude of gratitude is just incredible,” she said.
Annually attending Remembrance Day ceremonies in person, his son, Harry, said Chase receives an amount of attention fit for a celebrity.
Harry said he is always there at his father’s side for those events, and that it never gets tiresome.
“I’m extremely proud of father and I joke, you know, when I see a senior person potentially in their 90s I say ‘oh you’re a youngin’ because my dad’s about to be 102,'” he said.
It’s a birthday he will celebrate, fittingly, on D-Day, June 6th.