Born in Winnipeg Manitoba, Edward Bridgman trained at No. 2 Bombing and Gunnery School (Mossbank, Saskatchewan) and 7 Air Observers (Navigator) School at Portage La Prairie, Manitoba. On only his third operation with 115 Squadron RAF as a bomb-aimer, F/O Bridgman's aircraft was shot down and crashed in the target area (Berlin) during the night of 2/3 January 1944. His pilot, F/S R.J. Hayes, was critically injured and died three weeks later but the other six on board the Lancaster Mk II successfully escaped by parachute and became Prisoners of War.

Following the war, F/O Bridgman became a member of the 'Caterpillar Club' and received the special pin the members were awarded by the Irvin Parachute Company in recognition of their lives having been saved by baling out of an aircraft while wearing an Irvin Parachute.

The Caterpillar Club is an informal association of people who have successfully used a parachute to bail out of a disabled aircraft. After authentication by the parachute maker, applicants receive a membership certificate and a distinctive lapel pin. The club was founded by Leslie Irvin of the Irvin Airchute Company of Canada in 1922 who decided to give a gold pin depicting a silk worm with ruby-red eyes to every person whose life was saved by one of his parachutes. The name "Caterpillar Club" was derived from the silk threads that made the original parachutes thus recognising the debt owed to the silkworm.

In 2019, F/O Bridgman's Caterpillar Club Pin was donated to the Bomber Command Museum of Canada by his family.