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London Free Press - Local News- One code word, two London strangers, and how they changed the war

Long ago, the two men shared a word that shaped the fate of the world.

Soldiers, they were.

Soldier, the word.

Flying Officer Larry Wilcocks headed across the English Channel in his Spitfire fighter plane at 4 a.m., June 5, 1944.

He and flight leader Lt. Doug Orr were under strict orders to maintain radio silence.


As they flew across the water, the heavy cloud ceiling dropped to 500 feet, then lower and lower.

Soon they were flying only 100 feet above water, mountain-high waves reaching up to pull them in.

"It was the roughest I ever saw the channel. It got to be a bit dicey."

The pair did a quick run down the coast of France from Le Havre to Cherbourg.

They broke radio silence once to send one code word to command.

"Soldier."

The night before, the HMS Emerald and an armada of ships sailed for Normandy to join the long-awaited assault on Hitler's forces on the European continent.

All night, the ship's captain had been poking his head through a porthole to ask Sub-Lieut. George Monckton about the messages.

Early the next morning, a top secret message came in by the wireless telegraph from naval command. The experienced Monckton took only a few minutes to decipher the short number message.

"Soldier."

Neither Wilcocks, when the message was sent, nor Monckton, when the message was received, knew what it meant.

Soldier was apparently the code confirming the delay of D-Day, a decision Allied Command made with considerable anxiety, because the tides allowed only a small window for the invasion that would lead to Nazi Germany's defeat.

Wilcocks and Monckton have lived in London for decades, but never met or knew about their connection until a few weeks ago.

Except for their paths crossing briefly during the Second World War, they led different lives before and after the great invasion.

Wilcocks grew up in the Bowmanville area. His father became a pilot in the First World War and though he was posted overseas, he saw no action.

"Naturally I did what dad did," Wilcocks recalls, smiling. "I used to tease him, I had to do all the fighting for him."

At 18, in 1941, Wilcocks joined the air force.

Overseas, he and his Spitfire escorted bombers and went on fighter patrols.

"We would go out looking for trouble. We didn't have to look far."

Monckton grew up on 14 hectares on Little Saanich Mountain, outside Victoria, B.C.

"My life revolved around forests, mountains, lakes streams, fauna and flora and books," he said.

An independent young landlubber who hated taking orders, he decided nonetheless to join the navy. The infantry held no appeal.

"I didn't like the idea of people shooting at me, individually," Monckton says.

By 1944, he was paymaster aboard the HMS Emerald, patrolling the Indian Ocean.

By the beginning of June 1944, even the greenest soldier in Britain knew something was up.

Posted at Tangmiere 127 Fighter Base, Wilcocks took note of the increased patrols and bombing raids on the coast of Normandy.

The Emerald was ordered back to Britain. Torpedo tubes were removed and anti-aircraft guns added. The crew practised bombing small island shores. "A mountain" of top secret documents came aboard, keeping Monckton busy decoding.

The Allied Command had hoped to invade June 5, but by the evening of June 4 considered delaying by a day. Command needed to confirm the morning of June 5 that the invasion should be held off.

In the early evening of June 4, Wilcocks sat down to a pint of beer at the officers' mess when his flight commander Orr walked by.

Don't drink too much, Orr warned him. You and I are heading up at 4 a.m. tomorrow for a "weather recco."

"I was very annoyed," Wilcocks recalled.

Instead of having a few beers, maybe a game of chess or bridge, he went to bed early to get up for a routine weather check.

The weather check turned out to be more interesting in retrospect, but it only delayed D-Day and the two men's role in it.

The Emerald joined the invasion armada pounding German shoreline defences.

"We kept shooting until we ran out of ammunition, about two weeks," Monckton said.

At dusk on the first day, a German bomber came in low and skipped two bombs across the water. One bounced off the deck close to a startled sailor. The other exploded but did little damage.

The bombs were meant for the bridge, where Monckton and other officers stood watch.

"If he had been a better shot, I would not be here telling this story today."

It was Wilcocks's job to keep the bombers from getting to the channel. From his vantage point in the sky, Wilcocks watched landing craft discharge soldiers, tanks and jeeps. The soldiers looked like thousands of fleas on a floor.

"Each time I saw one of those fleas stop part way across the beach, I knew that this was another soldier that somebody's mother or wife and children were never to see again."

Wilcocks stops to wipe his eyes.

Wilcocks kept flying after D-Day and served to the end of the war.

After D-Day, Monckton returned to Canada but remained in the navy for another 23 years. He retired from the navy in 1967 and got his stockbroker's licence. His first job brought him to London.

Wilcocks contracted tuberculosis during the war and came to London for treatment, eventually starting a real estate business.

The two men did what many veterans did -- married good women, worked hard, raised families. Sadly, in the past two years, each has lost his wife, Wilcocks's to death, Monckton's to dementia.

A few months ago, Wilcocks's daughter, Wendy Peters, was talking to Monckton at the law office where she works.

They began chatting about the war. Peters asked to read a journal Monckton wrote about the war. To her surprise, Monckton had received the same message her father had sent so many years ago.

"I could not believe it," Peters said. "Here we are years later and they had never even met."

Peters arranged for them to meet in May at Monckton's townhouse.

When Wilcocks arrived at Monckton's, he stuck out his hand.

"I haven't 'talked' to you in 64 years," Wilcocks joked.

"It's hard to believe we could end up in the same town," Monckton said.

The two men sat inside and compared stories about D-Day.

"Our job was to keep the bombers away," Wilcocks said.

"You did a good job except for one of them," Monckton said with a laugh.

They could laugh now.

Wilcocks talked of the boats below his aircraft.

"In the navy, we call them ships," Monckton teased.

Monckton talked of the propellers on airplanes.

"You say props," Wilcocks said.

They marvelled at the coincidence of the message they shared and at the scope and drama of D-Day.

"I will never forget the number of drowned U.S. soldiers floating past the ship," Monckton said.

"I saw a U.S. battleship turned over and 60 ant-sized men hanging on," Wilcocks said.

The stories go on.

"I find it sometimes more poignant now," Wilcocks said.

So the afternoon passes, with two old soldiers sharing their words of long ago.