91-year-old warplane electrician walks down memory lane
Marion Marten helped build Mosquito Bombers during WW II
As Marion Marten walks around the ticket gate onto the display floor at the Alberta Aviation Museum in Edmonton, it's like she's stepping into a time machine back to 1943.
In front of her, large and imposing, is a Mosquito bomber, the type of aircraft Marten helped build during World War II.
"I never thought the day would come when I would see this again," she says in clear wonder, trying to find the words to describe how she's feeling.
"How many times have I crawled into one of these things?"
It's been 76 years since Marten first heard the booming sound of a mosquito bomber aircraft, but she remembers it like it was yesterday.
"My goodness the roar of the motor was unbelievable," she said, recounting the story of a demonstration at the de Havilland plant she worked at during World War II.
"I remember the pilot coming in toward where all of the people were and he dived down toward us. Everybody was ready to fall because they thought they were going to be hit. It was magnificent."
"It was exciting to see your part of making that plane."
From poor teen to wartime electrician
Marten, whose maiden name is Turpin, joined the war effort in 1943 when she was just 16.
Her family lived in relative poverty in Toronto after the Great Depression years. The war had been raging for four years by the time she finished grade school and there was a dual expectation that the teenager would earn a wage to help the family and contribute to the war effort.
"I tell my grandchildren and they can't believe it in this day and age, but I had a hole in my shoe and every morning a piece of cardboard would go into my shoe so I wasn't walking on the ground," said Marten. "Once the war came everybody was getting different jobs in different places."
Marten first took a job making pressure castings for bombs. The wage was meagre, only 25-cents an hour. Coupled with the endless work-days, Marten was miserable.
She eventually worked up the courage to ask for a raise, and in the end that conversation led to an opportunity she never imagined.
"My boss said 'I got you a raise, Marion. Half a cent an hour,' And I said 'well then you can take my notice.' And that's when I decided to go to de Havilland," Marten said.
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In the Second World War, de Havilland Canada was the major Canadian player in warplanes. Established in 1928, it operated out of a plant with an airstrip near downtown Toronto when World War II erupted.
"I went to de Havilland and I couldn't believe we started at 75 cents an hour. That was very good money in those days," said Marten.
Flight of the Mosquito
She immediately started training to be an electrician, which she said is lucky because she's always been a handy person.
"I wasn't an electrician to wire a house or anything, but… an electrician on the mosquito bomber," she said.
After a month learning the ins and outs of her craft, Marten was entrusted to do all of the wiring on the planes as they came down the assembly line.
"Part of the wires were installed prefabricated when they were doing the wings and different parts, but they left all the wires free. I had to join them up," she said.
"Today you join them up, twist them and put a cap on them. But back then you had to solder every joint. So it was the soldering iron, the solder and the screwdriver to hold the joints together while you were soldering."
Perfection on the production line was the expectation and Marten held a high standard for her work.
"You must do a good job because you know the pilots are depending on you that the job is well done," she said. "We knew from the beginning that it was important [work]."
Although Marten worked in the relative safety of Canada during the war, she had her own near death experiences while contributing to the war effort.
Her petite frame meant she could get into small places to do wiring, including up in the wheel wells.
You must do a good job because the pilot is depending on you.- Marion Marten
"I was up there working and somebody went into the cockpit and started fooling around with the gears," said Marten.
"The wheel makes a funny noise just before it was to go up and I knew the noise. Well the noise happened and I fell real fast and just got out of there. I would have been completely squashed.
"I ran to the cockpit to see who the villain was, but whoever did it had gone."
A similar incident happened again a few months later but this time she was standing reaching up into the undercarriage of an aircraft.
"The doors are made of wood but the edges are metal. Well I fell down to the ground and the doors closed. I would have been cut in half, but thank god I made it. I was young, and when you're young you can move fast," she said.
Despite the near misses, Marten's time working on the Mosquito bombers was a highlight in her life.
"I'd go back tomorrow," she said. "It was just a lovely place to work."
"There were only three women in that great big bay. It was a joy to go to work, it was a joy to meet new friends… I enjoyed it."
A family war effort
Marten's mother, father and brother all worked at the de Havilland plant, while another brother was away fighting in the war.
Her father died while at work at the age of 57 so her mother stepped up to help make ends meet.
The cafeteria at the factory was decent, Marten says, so family dinners would happen at work, although it was rare for the family to cross paths on the job.
"The plant was a very big place," she said. "My mother stayed in her part, and I stayed in mine. We had different shifts, different drivers picking us up. Very seldom we'd see each other."
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When the war ended, Marten, like many others earning a war effort wage, had mixed feelings.
On one hand, their loved ones overseas could come home if they didn't perish but on the other hand, war-time jobs dried up and they had to find new ways to make ends meet.
Marten eventually got married to a service police officer who served overseas.
Eventually the pair settled in Vancouver where they raised two children, including their son Jim Marten.
He grew up hearing stories about his mom's time wiring Mosquito bombers, and it filled him with pride.
"I was pretty proud of my mom as a young kid knowing my mom was an electrician. How many women do you hear of that are electricians back in my day when I was eight or nine years old," he said.
All these years later, Marion Marten is proud of her work too.
"My time wasn't wasted," she said. "You felt you were doing something to help the war effort, and everybody was trying to do just that. They wanted the war to be over and it lasted far too long, but it was my part."
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