Flying Officer Francis A. Boyce
We mostly talked about one topic on this program, a relative of Radio's Pickles of the North who died during the D-Day invasion in June 1944. We've included a link to an official report from the RAF about his aircraft going down. There's not much to update on this Web page, but I'll get to that pretty soon, I hope. Check back for the update.
You can now listen to this program on the official WBAI Archive.
The next regular WBAI LSB meeting will be held on Wednesday June 12, 2024, at 7:00 PM. That meeting will be held on ZOOM, even though ZOOM compromises privacy and security.
At the May 8, 2024, LSB meeting, try as they might, the people who frequently endeavor to prevent the LSB from functioning, so that they can claim that if they're reelected to it and if their fellow faction operatives are elected to it they can fix everything, were not able to prevent the populating of one committee and the starting of an election to populate another. And then we had a motion to form a new task force based on task forces that don't exist. Basically some people on the WBAI LSB want to do what they please. Well, what they brought up was not even a legal motion. It totally lacked detail for the task force they said they wanted to create. Their attempt to create a shadow LSB got shot down.
Some years ago the WBAI LSB voted to hold its regular meetings on the second Wednesday of every month, subject to change by the LSB, so we have the following schedule:
These meetings are set to begin at 7:00 PM.
WBAI has a program schedule up on its Web site. The site has gotten many of the individual program pages together to provide links and such, so check it out.
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Here is WBAI's current Internet stream. We can no longer tell if the stream is working without testing every possible stream. Good luck.
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WBAI is archiving the programs! WBAI has permanently switched to yet another new archive Web page! This one is more baffling than the previous one. For some time I was unable to post archive blurbs, then I could, and then I couldn't again. Now I can again and there are a whole bunch of archive blurbs up there now.
This is a link to the latest version of the official WBAI archive. The archiving software appears to have been at least partially fixed. To get to the archive of this program you can use the usual method: you'll have to click on the drop-down menu, which says Display,
and find Back of the Book on that menu. We're pretty early in the list, so it shouldn't be too difficult. Once you find the program name click GO
and you'll see only this Back of the Book program. Management has fixed some problems that we'd been having with the archives.
For programs before March 23, 2019, we're all out of luck. The changes that took place once WBAI Management took control of the WBAI archives seems to have wiped out all access to anything before that date in March. You'll have to click on the same drop-down menu as above, which says Display,
and find Specify Date
, it's the second choice from the top. You are then given a little pop-up calendar and you can choose the date of the program there. Then click GO
and you'll see a list of programs that aired on that date. For those previous programs you can get the audio, but nothing else, since I can't post anything to those pages anymore. Yeah, it looks like they'll have some alternating program's name prominently there, but if you have the right date it'll be our program. Good luck.
Since the General Manager has banned Sidney Smith from WBAI he's not alternating with us on the air. As of November 2020, Back of the Book airs weekly.
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Our friend, fellow WBAI producer and Saddle Pal Uncle Sidney Smith has been banned from WBAI by General Manager Berthold Reimers. The General Manager will not say why. He won't even tell Sidney why he's banned! This is grossly unfair to Sidney and constitutes abuse of Staff. Why did Berthold ban Sidney?
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Pickles here. On this program we noted the 80th anniversary of D-Day, when Allied troops stormed the beaches of France by land, sea and air. My Mom's second cousin, Francis A. Boyce, was one of those who stormed by air — he was part of a crew flying in gliders full of soldiers and equipment to continue the land battle against the German troops. R. Paul explained how the plane Frankie flew in was a bomber acting as a glider tug.
Frankie joined up as did two of his older brothers in 1940; they went into the Canadian Armed Forces while Frankie joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, first as a clerk, then he trained to be a pilot and eventually became an Officer and Navigator. Frankie wasn't quite 21 when he enlisted. He was the youngest of his four brothers in the family.
My Mom was a kid when her cousins enlisted. She really liked her cousins, especially Frankie.
According to his military papers, he was smart and worked hard and made it through flying
school to become a Flying Officer, despite only having three years of high school and one year of
commercial school, where he learned stenography and other clerical skills. His parents had a
farm but he didn't want to be a farmer. He didn't really think of what he would do after the war,
or as he put it, if he came back. He thought about going out West, maybe because he was first
stationed at an RCAF base in Saskatoon Saskatchewan. Mom never mentioned him as having a
sweetheart. He flew as part of a six man crew as Navigator on D-Day, part of Operation
Mallard.
After an evening run dropping the glider they towed over French soil, they were shot
down and the plane exploded and crashed into the English Channel. The crew was listed as
Missing until June 8, when a Sea Air rescue team found Frankie's body. He was listed as
Drowned and buried that day at sea. A week later one of his crew mate's body was found in the
channel. Two crew mates were found years later having been buried in separate cemeteries in
France; two other crew mates were never recovered. They really did die fighting fascism, which
is an enormous thing.
Frankie loved playing tennis and hockey. My Mom still feels his loss today, 80 years later.
Here's an RAF report on the fate of Flying Officer Boyce's plane and crew.
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The CDC keeps saying that there's been no change in the number of deaths from COVID-19 from week to week. Maybe they're right or maybe they're just no loner interested in tracking COVID-19 anymore.
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There are a lot of issues that are considered hazardous to talk about on the air at WBAI, even though the gag rule was lifted in 2002. However, there is the Internet! There are mailing lists which you can subscribe to and Web based message boards devoted to WBAI and Pacifica issues. Many controversial WBAI/Pacifica issues are discussed on these lists.
One open list that no longer exists was the WBAI-specific Goodlight
Web based message board. It was sometimes referred to on Back of the Book as the bleepin' blue board,
owing to the blue background that was used on its Web pages. This one had many people posting anonymously and there was also an ancillary WBAI people
board that was just totally out of hand.
In June 2012, I ended up having to salvage the bleepin' blue board, and so I was the moderator on it for its last seven years, until it got too expensive.
Sometimes we used to have live interaction with people posting on the Goodlight Board
during the program.
Our very own Uncle Sidney Smith, whose program Saturday Morning With the Radio On used to alternate with us, has a blog these days. You can reach his blog here.
There used to be a number of mailing lists related to Pacifica and WBAI. Unfortunately, they were all located on Yahoo! Groups. When Yahoo! Groups was totally shut down in December 2020, all of those mailing lists ceased to exist. One year earlier their file sections and archives of E-mails, had been excised leaving only the ability to send E-mails back and forth among the members. Now it's all gone. Older Back of the Book program Web pages tell a little more about those lists.
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