Charles Gordon Goodwin "Pat" Davis

Life Story

Charles Gordon Goodwin Davis, known as Pat, was born at Birch Hills, Saskatchewan, on 10 June 1922, a younger son of Charles Elijah Davis and Emily Robina Elizabeth Campbell. His obituary says he received his elementary and high-school education in Birch Hills, where he was remembered as active in sport, especially hockey.¹

After high school, Pat worked on the farm and then in mining work at Malartic, Quebec. His May 1945 ex-prisoner-of-war questionnaire described his civilian trade as gold miner and gave Malartic as his private address. On 5 January 1941 he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force at North Bay, Ontario, and entered air-crew training. His own later statement traces his training through Lachine, Rockcliffe, Belleville, Windsor Mills, Moncton, Summerside, Halifax, and overseas postings in Britain before he moved into Beaufighter service and the Middle East air war.^{2, 5}

Pat’s wartime account says he joined 252 Squadron about 15 June 1944. On 1 August 1944, while flying a Mark X Beaufighter on an operation off the west coast of Greece, his aircraft was hit during an attack on armed merchant vessels. He was wounded in the head and left shoulder, recovered consciousness before the aircraft hit the water, ditched successfully, and was captured after he and his navigator reached Cephalonia. The 1945 questionnaire independently records capture at Cephalonia, states that he was wounded when captured, and says he did not receive adequate medical treatment. A Saskatoon newspaper notice later reported him as a prisoner of war.^{2, 3, 5}

The preserved pension-application statement gives Pat’s own account of captivity: confinement on Cephalonia, transfer through Patras and Athens, interrogation, wounds that were slow to receive treatment, movement through Budapest and Oberursel, Stalag Luft 7, the forced winter evacuation as Soviet forces advanced, boxcar transport, Luckenwalde, liberation, and eventual return west. A May 1945 newspaper notice reported that Pat had reached England safely.^{2, 4} A fuller narrative of this wartime account is available in Pat Davis: War Service, Captivity, and Return.

After the war, Pat married Doreen Healy of Montreal and attended McGill University, where he studied civil engineering. His obituary says he later worked in construction, including as a construction manager with Mannix Construction in Calgary, until illness forced his retirement and the family returned to Birch Hills. He and Doreen had six children, whose names are preserved in the obituary but are not repeated here as public profile metadata.¹

Pat died at the local hospital on Thursday, 30 October 1969, age forty-seven. Funeral services were held at Birch Hills United Church on Monday, 3 November 1969, with members of the Royal Canadian Legion present, and burial followed in the Davis family plot at Birch Hills Cemetery.¹

Research Notes

The long war-service narrative is treated here as Pat Davis’s own first-person statement preserved through Arnold Campbell Davis’s family papers. It was prepared or recorded for a pension application connected to Pat’s terminal illness and submitted after Pat’s death. It is strong close-family evidence for Pat’s remembered service and captivity, but exact military dates, postings, wounds, medical conclusions, and pension determinations should be checked against official service and pension files where available.

The obituary names six children, while a shorter family summary says Pat and Doreen had five. Because the obituary lists two sons and four daughters, this profile uses six children for the public count and omits child names from metadata for privacy.