Until recently, evans, there were many of them around. At Canadair a while back, throw a stone and you hit a DSO or a DFC.
In the Justice Department I met a chap, one XX Davidson (died not long ago), who was an air gunner in Lancasters. He started as a sergeant. Just before one trip there was a squeal of tires outside the briefing hut, and in came a senior RAF officer with a Luftwaffe pilot in tow. Why he told them this I do not know, but the Luftwaffe chap told them of a new fighter tactic.
A section would attack together. One would approach from starboard and drop a flare. This would attract all the attention, all the guns would swing to starboard, and his mate would slide in out of the darkness to port, and write off another Lanc.
Off they went. Over Germany, sure enough, a flare was dropped suddenly on one side from an attacking fighter, and Davidson instantly swung his guns to the other side. As advertised, there was sneaky beaky getting set. Davidson blasted him out of the sky.
As the raid continued, Davidson saw the exhaust of a fighter flying straight and level just above them. He called the captain and said to cut back gently on power so as not to create backfires, and to let the speed decay. When he said "Break!", they should break to port. The captain did so, the fighter pulled ahead, Davidson reamed it out from below, and called "Break". End of FW 190.
He was a sergeant when he set out and a pilot officer when he returned, commissioned in the field. By the end of his tour he was a flight lieutenant, squadron gunnery officer.
He put in for flying training and was returned to Canada. One day the CO called him in, said he had had a fighting war, the RCAF had so many pilots they were driving jeeps, and would he like to go home? Well Yes, he would.
He enrolled in Law at Dalhousie.
One day in Halifax he was walking down the street in civvies and a group of young soldiers mocked him for a yellow-belly draft dodger. He produced his 1250, gave them Hell, and told them he'd have them posted to Outer Misery, Siberia.
At the time of that incident in Halifax he was 19 years old.