[Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP)]

George Blackburn, journalist, war hero, musician, author, dead at 90
Published: Thursday, November 16, 2006 | 12:23 PM ET
Canadian Press: JOHN WARD
OTTAWA (CP) - George Blackburn, who was a journalist, a composer, a songwriter, a public servant, a war hero and an acclaimed author, has died at the age of 90.

He was a gregarious, fun-loving, piano-playing story-teller with a twinkling eye and a gift for a telling phrase. He wrote award-winning songs, a play that was performed in a purpose-built theatre at Upper Canada Village, and produced and wrote TV and radio documentaries.

His three-volume memoir of his harrowing, Second World War career as a forward artillery observer, won praise when it was published in the 1990s. He was showered with prizes and awards, including the Order of Canada.

The books, The Guns of Normandy, The Guns of Victory and Where the Hell are the Guns?, recounted his war experiences, running from the last, idyllic pre-war summer of 1939 when he was working as a journalist in Pembroke, Ont., through the hellish time on the front lines calling down artillery fire on enemy positions.

They were written in an unusual first-person style, which gave them a chilling "you are there" realism and they offered a unique account of the role that the gunners played in the bitter, brutal campaign from Normandy through the Netherlands.

Blackburn was one of the longest-serving forward observers in the Canadian army. It was a dangerous job and most of his fellow observers were killed or wounded as they plied their hazardous trade within sight of the enemy.

The observers job was to direct fire from gun batteries positioned well behind them onto enemy targets, correcting the aim of the gunners as they fired. Because they controlled the deadly artillery they were high priority targets for the Germans, who knew if they killed the observer, they blinded the gunners.

Blackburn won the Military Cross for his work protecting a Canadian bridgehead across a Dutch canal.

His memoirs stirred a chord in readers.

"Anyone who reads this book will put it down in wonderment, whispering softly to himself, 'So that's what it was like'," wrote Cliff Chadderton of the War Amps.

Quill and Quire, in a review of The Guns of Normandy, said the book "brings us as close as we will ever come to the tension, savagery, and turmoil of the fighting in Normandy half a century ago.

"The immediacy of Blackburn's narrative, his empathy with the fighting men, and his professional insight put The Guns of Normandy in a class of its own as a military memoir."

The Calgary Herald described it as "one of the best books to come out of the Second World War."

Blackburn was born in 1916 in a farmhouse near Wales, Ont., a small village which was eventually submerged beneath the waters of the St. Lawrence Seaway. That inspired him, years later, to write a musical about the seaway, called A Day to Remember.

He was Pembroke correspondent for the Ottawa Journal newspaper when the war broke out in September 1939. He joined the army almost immediately.

After returning home, he became director of information for the federal Labour Department.

He wrote a ubiquitous jingle called Why Wait for Spring? Do It Now that was pervasive on the air waves in the 1960s as the theme of a highly successful winter works program.

In recent years, Blackburn was active in veterans' causes, taking part in memorial trips to the Netherlands.

This fall, he travelled to Shilo, Man., for the last of his annual visits to young artillery officers in training. He often spoke of the need for young people to remember the sacrifices made by the soldiers of yesterday.

He was married to Grace Fortington for 60 years and was hit hard by her death four years ago. They had three children, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.