Commonwealth airmen remembered

By Heather Killen

The Spectator

NovaNewsNow.com

A pipe and drum band will lead the assembly of honour guards, airmen, cadets and Legion colour parties to the fallen.

Gathered around the Commonwealth Airmen’s War Graves, a short ceremony marks the sacrifices of the men who came from away and died leaving their lives undone.

Each name is read aloud and a red rose placed on the grave, so that none buried here will be forgotten. Every June since 1942, Middleton volunteers remember the young men who were killed while training as RAF pilots at Greenwood.

“It’s heart-rendering,” said tribute organizer Mary Gillis. “There are similar ceremonies, but this one is singular. We began placing the roses about eight years ago.”

The members of the Honour Guard salute the fallen before taking a step back into formation. Flags to show the airman’s native country are also placed on the graves.

This year the ceremony will be held on June 8 at 7 p.m. in the churchyard at Old Trinity. While the tradition was initiated by the IODE, the Middleton branch of the Royal Canadian Legion took over the practice during the 1950s.

At the start of the Second World War in 1939, Greenwood was selected to serve as an RAF training site due to its fog-free climate.

About two-dozen British officers were brought over to train the airmen. Young recruits from England, Australia, and New Zealand came to Greenwood to be trained as pilots.

Gillis added that she has heard longtime Middleton residents talk about lying back on the grass and watching overhead as the planes performed a series of training exercises.

Flight Lieutenant Richard Miles was among the British officers who came to Nova Scotia to teach at the newly founded training base.

He was an experienced pilot who had flown in missions overseas. Diane LeGuard, present owner of the Falcourt Inn, said she remembers meeting Lt. Miles when she was a little girl, while he was renting rooms at Max and Liza Nafthal’s home in Nictaux.

LeGuard’s father, Thomas Hankinson Sr., was a close friend with Max Nafthal, and Diane remembers visiting the house and hearing about how Lt. Miles had flown over from England.

His beautiful spotted dog named Jock was said to be flying with him in the cockpit.

“But another version of the story is that the officers came by boat, and the planes arrived in crates,” said LeGuard.

Brian Nelson, curator of the Air Force Museum in Greenwood, said that many pilots and their planes came to Nova Scotia by boat.

However, after German U-boats had sunk many of the supply ships, the Allies decided it could be safer for some of the pilots to fly.

He added that it wasn’t unusual for officers to keep pets during the war.

“They didn’t dare make friends with each other,” he said. “The average lifespan for members of the aircrew was five to seven trips, or about a week.”

During the course of the training, a number of fatal accidents had begun to claim the lives of pilots and aircrew in Greenwood.

By the summer of 1942, members of the local IODE began to tend the graves of the RAF airmen.

“Some of them had crashed into the Bay of Fundy, others had flown too low and hit the North Mountain,” according to Mary Gillis.

LeGuard said Miles’ wife and baby daughter joined him during Christmas 1942, and that the family remained together in Nictaux until the following spring in 1943.

Lt. Miles was killed in March, after his plane crashed near Morden, on the North Mountain. Miles’ family arranged to have his body cremated and the ashes returned to England.

Many of his fellow airmen were buried in a section of the Old Trinity Anglican Church Cemetery. Nearly 70 years have passed, but every summer volunteers have gathered to decorate these graves, a token of gratitude intended to comfort loved ones far away and unable to personally tend the graves.

Last year, Diane LeGuard received a surprise visit from a gentleman who was visiting the area from England.

He said he was interested in seeing where his father had stayed during his final posting as a training RAF officer during the Second World War.

Hugh Miles had been born in England in August 1942. His mother refused to talk about the last Christmas she spent with his father in Nova Scotia.

LeGuard said she thought Miles looked a bit familiar when he walked in the door, but it wasn’t until she began talking about Jock that they were able to make the connection.

Mary Gilles said she hopes that the tradition of decorating the war graves will carry on to future generations.

“We’d like to see more young people in attendance,” she said. “They should know about the sacrifices made by these airmen, some only about 18, 19 years old -- and so far away from home.”