(Richard Gosler / Unsplash)
February 2020, Mexico. One month before a pandemic and social isolation would ravage the entire world, I was walking with some friends through the historic center of Queretaro, located approximately three hours from Mexico City. After getting lost among cobbled streets, monuments, and churches, our attention was drawn to the stall of a man selling aviation art. Intrigued, we approached his booth, which featured finely detailed pencil drawings of World War II airplanes.
The man was a retired mechanic and a former member of the Mexican Air Force, who made a living by selling aviation art. while sharing stories about himself and the history behind the aircraft he depicted in his art. One of these paintings, which my friend later purchased, was an allegory of a Spitfire in a dogfight after downing two Nazi fighters and severely damaging a third. This heroic feat, portrayed in the strokes of the booth owner, was carried out by Luis Perez Gomez, a Mexican pilot who enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942.
Born in 1922 in Guadalajara, Luis Perez Gomez had dreamed of becoming a pilot since his childhood. It wasn’t until he turned 19 that he moved to Mexico City and later emigrated to Canada, despite his mother’s strong opposition, with no money and no knowledge of English. However, with the subsequent support of a Mexican diplomat, he was admitted to the RCAF school in 1942, where he learned to fly and speak English. He also had a romantic relationship with Dorothy Pratt, though they never married.
In 1943, Luis Perez graduated and then embarked on the war in Europe, serving as a member of the RCAF’s Squadron 443. He took part in various aerial battles, earning three medals for his bravery. According to flight logs, Luis survived two out of three shoot-downs on the front lines.
The first occurred when he was intercepted by enemy fire while flying over the English Channel, and he survived by parachuting to safety.
The second time, he crashed in territory occupied by the Germans in France but was rescued by members of the French Resistance.
The third and final incident occurred on June 16, 1944, when his Squadron 443, aboard their Spitfire planes, provided support to the Allied troops who had landed in Normandy just 10 days earlier. German artillery shot down his plane, causing it to crash in a pea field
With the assistance of the local population near the crash site, Perez Gomez’s body was quickly buried, and his RCAF insignias and any identifying documents were removed to prevent them from falling into the hands of the German army
The only reference Perez Gomez had provided to his superiors was the address of his Canadian girlfriend, Dorothy Pratt:
“In 1944, I received a telegram from the government saying that Luis was missing and probably dead,” Dorothy Pratt recalls.
At the end of the war, she tried to locate any of his family members without success.
Then in 2001, 57 years after Luis Perez’s death, Dorothy Pratt was discovered in the archives of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The archives said that in June 1944, “unknown” RCAF pilots had been buried in the small cemetery in Sassy, France. ” Pratt managed to speak with some locals who remembered an aviator with a Hispanic last name, based on his documents.
On June 16, 2004, in Sassy, a tribute was paid to Luis Pérez Gómez, alongside Dorothy Pratt, her husband (a Canadian Navy officer), and representatives of the Mexican embassy in France.
During the ceremony, the mayor of Sassy stated:
“It is important to honour this man who came from so far away to fight for us. He could have stayed home, but he came to help us. We do not forget him, and we want our children to know and remember him.”
*Information retrieved from:
RIVA PALACIOS, Vicente (1940). Mexico Through the Centuries: A General and Comprehensive History of the Social, Political, Religious, Military, Artistic, Scientific, and Literary Development of Mexico from the Most Remote Antiquity to the Present Time; a Work Unique in its Genre. (G. S. López edition). Mexico.
Canadian Virtual War Memorial. (2022). Luis Pérez Gómez. https://www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/memorials/canadian-virtual-war-memorial/detail/2633647