BROTHERS IN ARMS —The Power and Magic of the Group Photo

Aug 24

Written By David OMalley with Dr. John Bennett

John Bennett stands second from left in back row

Through one aviator's photographs we glimpse the shared memories of hundreds of men caught in the roulette of war.

Laid across John Bennett’s dining room table, like memories strewn across the decades, are dozens of yellowed photographs, some notes written for some purpose now long forgotten and an aeronautical chart with a pilot’s penciled course drawn across it before I was born. I am 57 years old. John is 87.

It is the photographs however, that draw me closer to the table, that reach out to me across the years since they were taken. From the surface of John’s dining table, the faces of the young men that meant so much to him so long ago, smile and shine forth like the specks of starlight from distant suns long ago extinguished by time, yet whose light still streams down to us. Amidst the numerous snapshots and formal photographs, I notice something – that John was never alone during these dark days of European cataclysm.

According to the photographs arrayed before me, John was always a member of a course, a class, a flight, a squadron or even a team. There are no pictures of the man as a single person - at least none that he has included in the group of photos laid out on the table. I am immediately reminded of what the retired physician had said to me on my first visit to his Ottawa home – “ I am uncomfortable talking about myself, but I don’t mind talking about my squadrons.” It is clear to me, looking at these images that he has cared for all these years, that those days are a powerful time in his memory, not because they are concurrent with gigantic moments in history, but because he shared them with groups of men like himself – groups that cared for him, that gave him cause to push through the constant fear and stress, that gave him solace in their presence, their kibitzing, and their shared hardships. At my first visit, after drawing out of him a few stories, I had offered that I didn’t think I had the courage to face a war like that. He scoffed at that saying “Of course you would have. We were all young and invincible at the beginning. We were able to do these things mostly because we didn’t want to be seen to falter by our friends and in the end we fought for each other, determined not to let each other down. Everyone is the same.”

On this darkening evening in mid September, I stand alongside John and stare down at hundreds of faces of men in groups and I am moved by something. It takes me a while to understand what that is. I see a formal photograph of more than fifty young men – all part of his Initial Training course at Stratford-on-Avon and wonder how many made it through flight training, how many had been lost on ops, how many in careless accidents and in the end how many lived to be, like Flight Lieutenant John Bennett, alive tonight. Their faces are as scrubbed and shining as their boots – the world is about to come apart around them and they will need the strength of groups in the days ahead. John beams out beneath his cap in the back row - unaware of the future that lays before him.

Another photograph catches my eye – a group of 26 relaxed looking men and one dog, both seated and standing, in front of a Harvard. “Was this when you were doing your flying training?” I ask. John explains that it was much later when he had left regular flying status with the RAF and was studying at St. Mary's Hospital, University of London. Most major universities had RAF auxiliary squadrons where former military pilots could maintain flying status and younger students could learn to fly. It was a photo taken on a summer camp - at Hawkinge or perhaps Shoreham. Then it hit me like grit thrown up by a Spitfire’s prop wash. I was looking at the bookends of his flying career - two photos, two groups, separated by more than a decade of upheaval, but both with the same aura of hope and beginning.

I see that if I line up all the group photos, they represent a sort of chronological scale where the ticking of time is the clicking of photographers' shutters in some sweeping metaphorical clock of upheaval, war fighting and redemption. So here they are, the images John shared with me this night, in close to the order they were taken. John Bennett is not some unique character from that time whose story is worth more than others, his is just the story these photos tell. In dusty albums, dark closets and war chests from Victoria to St John's, there are similar pictures and different stories waiting to be told. We must find them and capture them before the man in the second or third row or sitting on the wing is no longer here to help us get it right.