Abram Garshowitz

Abram Garshowitz, known to friends and family as Albert, was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, on 11 December 1920, the ninth of twelve children of Samuel and Sarah Garshowitz, who had emigrated from Russia early in the twentieth century. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in January 1941 and qualified as a wireless operator/air gunner in April 1942, before sailing to Britain, where he undertook Lancaster conversion training and was posted via No. 57 Squadron at Scampton to the newly formed No. 617 Squadron in the spring of 1943. For Operation Chastise, the attack on the Ruhr dams on the night of 16/17 May 1943, he flew as wireless operator in Lancaster ED864, coded AJ-B, in the crew of Flight Lieutenant William Astell, and is remembered for chalking a defiant inscription on the aircraft’s mine. Flying with the first wave bound for the Möhne Dam, AJ-B strayed off track and, near Marbeck in Germany, struck a high-tension pylon and crashed in a field, killing Astell and his entire crew. Garshowitz, a Warrant Officer Class II, died on 17 May 1943 at the age of 22; he was first buried in the City Cemetery at Borken and, after the war, was reinterred in Reichswald Forest War Cemetery, where he rests alongside his fellow Canadian and boyhood Hamilton friend Frank Garbas, who had served in the same crew.