A Courageous Decision

This story is a product of 22,000 hours of a veteran pilot's military operations during World War II, Korea, NATO, Vietnam, and peacetime. Col. Harry Canham displayed moral as well as physical courage throughout those many miles. For Harry Canham, no greater honor could come than the opportunity to be an aviator flying the skies to the bitter end in order to restore all that is good and decent and righteous for his country.

Young Harry Canham was working by day and going to night school in 1941. Harry and his friends, after graduating from high school, had to work and hoped to achieve a higher education working in factories or on farms. During the day, Harry worked surface mining or, as some called it, strip mining, where first, a long strip of overlying soil and rock (the overburden) is removed to mine the coal. Large machines are used in this type of mining. An operator of heavy equipment had to have a special permit. Harry operated a dragline moving the ore body to be excavated that lay relatively near the surface. He also drove a twenty-five-ton coal truck. Harry said driving the coal truck was anything but fun. The only time you stopped the truck was where you were loading down in the pit. When you'd go across the hopper, you'd slow down and dump out the bottom and make a U-turn and go back to the pit, put your foot on the carburetor, and go. The country was just starting to recover from the Great Depression. Harry knew a college education would be a great plus for his future plans.

Harry was born on 3 September 1920, in the northern part of Illinois, in the small town of Wataga, with a population of five hundred people. It was in Wataga where Harry grew up and went to school. His class graduated seventeen in 1938.

Harry was the son of Albert and Opal Canham. He had one sister named Ruth and one brother, Morris H., "Jim." His brother was attending the University of Illinois, studying mechanical engineering, when war broke out. On 20 September 1943, Morris volunteered for the Army Air Corps and went to gunnery school. He served in the European theater as a tail gunner in B-26s and A-26s. He also served as an aerial gunnery instructor 2554. Morris's wish was also to be a pilot, but his health stopped those wishes. He was five years older than Harry.

Harry's father worked for the railroad as an agent and telegraph operator (Morse code) in a little town outside of Wataga, Illinois, which was a big hub for CMQ. He'd put the trains on the right track to go into Chicago. There was a lot of freight traffic during the war. People returned to the rails due to the new streamliner concept, and the government needed the trains to move a large number of troops. Without the railroad