A large number of young men from Squamish, who enlisted for military service during the Second World War, ended up serving in the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF).
In the “Honour Roll” of the local Diamond Head Branch 277 of the Royal Canadian Legion, a majority of those servicemen who did not return from the war were with the RCAF – 12 out of 21 names.
Seven were from Squamish and five were from the Britannia Mines community. The seven RCAF servicemen from Squamish who did not return were aged between 21 and 25 years.
Serving in the air force was a choice involving extraordinary risk. Three of our Honour Roll members were to lose their lives in flight training accidents in England:
Pilot Officer JOHN ASKEY “JACK” QUICK’s Whitney bomber aircraft, with four other crewmen on board, crashed in Warwickshire August 6, 1941, after one of its engines caught fire, with the loss of all five airmen;
Flight Lieutenant KENNETH ALLAN “MIKE” BUCKLEY was killed when his Typhoon fighter plane crashed during a training exercise in Hampshire, March 1, 1944;
Flight Sergeant GORDON CHARLES “SONNY” MOIR and another crewman were killed on July 16, 1945, when their Mosquito fighter plane crashed in a forced landing after running out of fuel in a training operation.
There were plenty of diverse risks and challenges for pilots and crews due to some of the older types of aircraft still in use and new types being introduced.
Leading Aircraftman JOSEPH MARTIN SEYMOUR was killed in a Yorkshire air force base truck accident on September 15, 1944.
During 1940-44 operations of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan’s Dunnville, Ontario flying school station, there were thirty fatal accidents in which 47 persons died – including Leading Aircraftman H.C.E. “MICK” STEWART, who had been a PGE Railway employee at Squamish.
Flying Officer FRANK THORBURN MANNERS and Pilot Officer GEORGE BERNARD MARTIN lost their lives in bombing raid operations to Germany.
F/O Frank Manners’s last mission was a September 1943 bombing raid to Hanover, Germany, involving 678 aircraft – 312 Lancasters, 231 Halifaxes, 111 Stirlings, 24 Wellingtons and 5 B-17s. 38 Bomber Command aircraft were lost, almost 6 per cent of the force – including Manners’s Halifax II #JB968 with seven crew members.
RCAF casualty reports in Canadian newspapers regularly included a “Missing” category, and frequent mentions of airmen being taken as prisoners of war. Families and friends of lost airmen could wait for months for a confirmation of their fate. This was the case for the Squamish family of F/O Frank Manners in 1943-44, and also for P/O George Martin’s family a year later.
RCAF Squadron 428’s Halifax aircraft #JB968 was shot down September 27th by a German Luftwaffe fighter after being initially disabled by anti-aircraft artillery. The fate of Frank Manners and his six fellow crew members was not confirmed until March 1944, when information was received through the International Red Cross from German sources.
On July 26, 1944, RCAF Squadron 432’s Halifax #NP688 and its crew of seven, including P/O George Martin of Squamish, crashed at Breteniere, Dijon, France, during a night raid trip to Stuttgart, Germany.
Information came in April 1945 that Halifax #NP688, while returning from Stuttgart and already in difficulty, had been hit and set on fire prior to crashing and that a survivor had been taken prisoner by the Germans.
The Martin family did not receive a Certificate of Presumption of Death regarding George Martin until September 4, 1945, by which time the full circumstances of the crash were learned from captured German documents.
Squamish was a small community during the war years. With Brackendale the valley had approximately 800 residents (the Woodfibre town site had a slightly larger population, while Britannia was nearly twice as large.).
The young air force men mentioned here who would not come home were from well-known Squamish families or were part of workplaces and community endeavours here from which they would be missed.
We can imagine the concerned, sympathetic thoughts of people walking, maybe daily or every other day, on Cleveland Avenue past the J.D. Manners grocery store and the Quick family home a few doors down the street.
The Squamish Public Library archives preserve several 1920s-30s school class photos of this generation who would come to experience the war as young adults – with many signing up to serve the cause here or overseas.
Lloyd Ingraham, who passed away recently, when looking at one of these photographs at a memorial tree-planting event a couple of years ago, remarked about one of his classmates who would not return from overseas: “Sonny Moir – he was such a fine trumpet player!”
Frank Manners, in addition to becoming a decorated soldier, was also well-remembered for his musical talents, as a pianist, and by his military training camp comrades as an orchestra leader.
Local forester John F. Jacobsen, Empire Mills superintendent and initiator of the 1939-42 Squamish Community Forest and J.A. Quick Memorial Forest tree-planting projects in the Cheekye Fan, has written in his memoirs:
“I wish to record that my most enthusiastic helpers were John Askey Quick, Joe Seymour and Mike Buckley, who … went to war, and became casualties.”
Several of the Squamish persons named in the Legion’s Honour Roll have family still residing in our region. There are memorials, some preserved artifacts and recorded memories to prompt us to remember these servicemen who did not return, and there continue to be still more reasons why we should do so.
Eric Andersen is a councillor with the District of Squamish.
All photos courtesy Eric Andersen.
