38 St. Andrew Street
Flight Lieutenant Aubrey Wellington Winch
Aubrey Wellington Winch was born in 1916, and lived at 38 St. Andrew Street.
He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force as a Flight Lieutenant and earned the Distinguished Flying Cross for act or acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty performed whilst flying in active operations against the enemy.
He was a member of “a well-trained crew that was flying a Halifax bomber of No. 419 (Royal Canadian Air Force) Squadron. Flying their first mission on the night of March 22, 1944, they had been dispatched on a mine-laying mission to Kiel, Germany, a task they completed in spite of one engine catching fire. While returning home at 10,000 feet on three engines, a second motor burst into flames. Although the blaze was extinguished, the Halifax gradually lost altitude. An SOS was transmitted a few minutes before midnight, and 10 minutes later the bomber was gently ditched. All seven crewmen got into their dinghy and were rescued three and a half hours later by a trawler guided to the scene by flares dropped from search aircraft. The Halifax floated nearby until it was sunk by the trawler’s gunfire. Three of the crew, Pilot Officer George Peck of Westmount, Que., Flying Officer Aubrey Winch of Guelph, Ont., and FO Archie Paton of Vancouver were subsequently decorated.” (Quoted from the Legion Magazine June 25, 2011.)
Note that Aubrey Winch lived in Guelph after the war, when he married Gwendolyn Jane Acton in Guelph. Aubrey died in Toronto at the age of 73. He is buried in Mt. Pleasant Cemetery in Toronto.
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