Keeping their memory alive

“God, how they must have suffered when they knew their death was near, When they saw the evil face of death, with its cruel, laughing sneer”

Airman Stanley Fitzer (on the 1944 plane crash over Prince Edward County in which two World War II pilots died)

On March 21, 1944, Pilot Officers Wilfred “Gordon” Craig, 19, and Alexander “Mick” Robert Ross, 22, climbed into a Fairchild Cornell in Trenton for a routine training flight over Prince Edward County.

Minutes later, both airmen would die in a fiery crash after a wing of the aircraft detached in flight following spar failure. The plane plummeted to the ground, landing in a farm field on what is today known as Wilson Road, about five miles south of the aerodrome at Mountain View.

Airman Stanley Fitzer was immediately sent to guard the crash site and was so moved by the tragedy that he would later write a poem about it.Pilot Officer Gordon Craig was the son of Fred and Ellen Craig of Merlin, Ontario, near Chatham. A truck driver for a gravel company, he had enlisted in Windsor in 1942 in hopes of becoming a fighter pilot, but was kept in Canada because of his exceptional skills as a flight instructor.

Gathering Our Heroes, a website recording World War I and World War II enlistments from Chatham-Kent, states, “He must have had a good deal of natural ability, motivation and intelligence to obtain his pilot’s wings by the age of 19.”Craig was posted to CFB Trenton and assigned to the newer Cornell trainer. He had been there for approximately a month before the fatal crash. His body was returned for burial in Pardoville Union Cemetery in Merlin.

Pilot Officer Ross was a member of the Australian Air Force who was taking part in the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. He had been born in New South Wales, the son of Alexander and Maud Ross. He was training at No. 1 Flying Instructor School, Trenton. Ross’s body was taken back to Australia for interment.

The tragic death of the two young pilots gradually faded into the County’s wartime history until the Wilson farm near where they died was bought by Michael Korn in 1994. Upon learning of the crash in a field near his farmhouse, he resolved to discover the stories of the two airmen. For a decade, he patiently researched the incident. His determined efforts eventually led him to Craig’s family in Morrisburg and also to contact with Ross’s brother. Later, he met with Ross’s niece when she visited relatives in Canada. Moved by the stories of the tragedy that claimed the lives of the two pilots, Korn erected a roadside monument to them at his farm home in 2012. It bears the crests of the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Royal Australian Air Force and carries the inscription “Lest We Forget.” Subsequently, he would erect a second memorial to Pvt. Clifford Wilson, who grew up on this farm.

Korn has recently sold his property on Wilson Road and moved to Nova Scotia. Initially, he had hoped to relocate both monuments to the Veterans’ Section in Picton’s Glenwood Cemetery, but this plan did not reach fruition. Arrangements are now in progress to have the memorials relocated to neighbour Mike Mulder’s property, where the memory of the two airmen and the air crash that claimed their lives will continue to be preserved.