Subjects listed alphabetically to get your attention. I contribute the following without comment, from today's LONDON (Ontario) FREE PRESS:
May 1, 2002
Analysing flak in
Billy Bishop dogfight
By MARK RICHARDSON -- For the London Free Press
There is nothing like a little research to get in the way of a good prejudice.
Early last week I was about to set my journalistic sights on the cranky critic of one of this country's greatest heroes, Billy Bishop, when something seemed to upset my vision. It may have even been the facts.
William Avery Bishop, VC, is a Canadian icon. His record of 72 enemy aircraft shot down placed him among the top 10 aces of the First World War and was the highest total of any Commonwealth fighter pilot.
His boyhood home in Owen Sound is a national historic site and there is a peak in the Rockies named after him. The headquarters of the Air Force in Winnipeg is named for him, too, as are Legion halls, schools, air cadet squadrons and a museum. His medals are in the Canadian War Museum.
However, The Making of Billy Bishop, a new book by military historian Brereton (Ben) Greenhous, may tarnish them.
Although the book does not come out till June, Greenhous is already taking flak: Canadian Alliance MP Peter Goldring and former defence minister Barney Danson, for example, have criticized the Canada Council's funding of his research. Bishop's son, Arthur, claimed in an interview the Greenhous book says nothing new and is "all bull****."
Even John Gray, author of the irreverent award-winning play, Billy Bishop Goes to War, accused Greenhous of being a publicity-seeking bone-picker.
Why the fuss? Because Greenhous claims Bishop was a liar and a fraud. According to Greenhous, young Billy padded his list of 72 victories and invented the dawn raid on a German airfield in June, 1917, that won him the Victoria Cross, the Commonwealth's highest decoration for valour.
Until last week, I was prepared to join the chorus of Greenhous detractors. While a library science student at the University of Western Ontario, I did a co-op term at the Department of National Defence's Directorate of History, where Greenhous helped write official histories of Canada's military before retiring in 1996.
Greenhous, I know, likes to push buttons. He burst my Churchill balloon by saying when it came to racism, the former British prime minister occupied the same moral plateau as Hitler. Later, he shot down my comment about democracy being good because it allows compromise by saying, "it forces us to compromise."
At a staff lunch he even offered lightly that, with AIDS, God got it right for once because usually it is the innocent who suffer. Turning to me he said, "I'm not shocking you, am I?"
He wasn't, but he had certainly established himself as a pain, so when news of his book broke, I was more than ready to take aim. Unfortunately for me, however, I discovered Greenhous knows how to write.
With the book unavailable, I turned to his 1989 article in the Canadian Historical Review for ammunition. The Sad Case of Billy Bishop, VC tends to be cited by Bishop admirers as evidence of Greenhous's ill will, so for the first time I read some of his work.
To my surprise, the article was even-handed. It trashes the National Film Board's The Kid Who Couldn't Miss for being a "sloppy, sleazy piece of (history)," for example, but acknowledges it was an "an artistic triumph."
It generously describes one defender of Bishop as a devoted worker for veterans' causes, even though the defender's book was a "curious compendium." Greenhous even says journalist Dan McCaffery's 1988 book on Bishop "gets closer to reality than any previous work."
So what happened to the irritating Greenhous effect?
In his article, Greenhous points out something his critics -- including me -- tend to forget. Quoting McCaffrey's question, "Was Billy Bishop a hero or a liar?" Greenhous adds, "Surely it is not an either/or question, since a man can be both."
We will never know for sure whether Billy Bishop lied about his dawn raid of June 1917, but I learned one thing this week.
A man can be both good and bad.