BX June 23, 1939
Combatants in 1917, Correspondents in 1939
An interesting war story concerning a former Brantfordite, A.C. “Art” Burt, 136 Brant Avenue, and the late A.W. Burt, former Headmaster of the Brantford Collegiate Institute, is contained in the current issue of Canadian Aviation.
Mr. Burt, now a manual training instructor in Toronto, was a Captain in the Royal Air Force during the war and the story has to deal with an incident during a raid against Ostend in September 1917.
The story contained in Canadian Aviation is as follows:
Stories crop up from time to time indicating that natural friendliness of individuals is stronger than organized hate and suspicion. One of these instances dates back to the Great War and concerns two pilots, Ernst W. Steinitz and Captain A.C. Burt, German and British respectively. Just a month ago, 21 years after, a remarkable sequel unfolded.
The original story can be told in the words of Mr. Steinitz, now an exile from Nazi ‘pure-race’ persecution and resident in England.
During September 1917, I was a seaplane pilot at the Zeebrugge Station of the German Naval Air Service. On the 22nd I had noticed that a big raid of the British fleet was being made against Ostend and was ordered to take off in a two-seater to direct the fire of the Ostend batteries.
As we came in sight of the British fleet I saw the ships, two big monitors and a number of destroyers, swing around to escape the bombardment. The destroyers were making a smoke screen. Some minutes later three Sopwith Camels came in sight. One of them opened fire. My observer was killed and the floats were riddled. Then the fuel line was hit and the engine stopped.
I came down on the water. The Englishman fired another round so that I had to dive under the water for as long as he fired. Then he crashed down himself and his machine sank at once. In the meantime my machine was destroyed by the sea and overturned. I climbed onto the bottom of a float and waited.
From my place I could see that British airman swimming but he drifted out of my sight. Then along came a destroyer (H.M.S. Nugent) which took me aboard. My first words were to give them directions for finding the English pilot. They picked him up. I was introduced to Captain A.C. Burt, the man who had shot me down. They gave us dry clothes, whiskey and cigarettes, then we had breakfast together with the officers.
After the war Steinitz worked as a designing engineer for automobiles, and then was field engineer for research with an oil company. Eventually he formed his own company Motor Research Institute, carrying on important work for the War and Air Ministries.
Twenty years after being shot down in the service of his country the former wartime pilot was exiled by a pure-race purge and took up residence in the one-time enemy country, England.
Never having forgotten the incident of September 22, 1917 and the Britisher whose life he had saved, the exile searched Air Ministry records. He found the name of Captain A.C. Burt with the address, Brantford, Ont. He then wrote to Canadian Aviation and Captain Burt was traced to Toronto. Now the two wartime enemies are reunited by correspondence and the animosities of September 1917 are a distant memory.
BX April 11, 1977
Arthur Chadwick Burt
BURT – At the Brantford General Hospital, on Sunday, April 10, 1977, Arthur Chadwick Burt of Mount Pleasant Road; husband of Isabelle Buck; father of Mrs. Eric (Beverley) Anne Boe, London; grandfather of Renee and Conrad; brother of Mrs. George M. (Annette) Watt and Mrs. Garnet (Jean) White. Predeceased by a brother, Dr. Charles Burt. Friends will be received at the Beckett-Glaves Funeral Home, 88 Brant Avenue, on Tuesday afternoon. Service in the chapel on Wednesday at 2 p.m., with Reverend Howard Johnson officiating. Interment Farringdon Burial Ground.
