Wishing an easy death

Remembering an 80-year-old tragedy

They lifted off just after 8 a.m. It was a bright spring morning on March 21, 1944. The skies were clear when Gordie Craig and Alex Ross guided their Fairchild Cornell upward and over Prince Edward County.

Wilfred Gordon Craig was born and raised in Merlin, Ontario, a village of 750 people south of Chatham, just five kilometres from the shores of Lake Erie. That evening, Gordie had made plans to see a movie with Mildred Ellerbeck, a friend from Merlin, who was stationed with him at RCAF Trenton.

Alexander Ross was born in Casino, Australia, a few hours south and inland from Brisbane. Everyone knew him as Mick so as not to be confused with his dad, who had the same name. Mick was the oldest of three boys to Sandy and Eliza Ross. Mick enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force at Murwillumbah in November 1941. He was just 20 years old.

Alex Ross and Gordie Craig lost their lives when their training aircraft crashed north of Wellington on March 21, 1944.

Four years later, Mick was in Canada, the other side of the world, as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. Both Craig and Ross had attained the rank of Pilot Officer. Ross was 23. Craig was 22. Both had ambitions to become flight training instructors.

On this morning 80 years ago the pair was out on a routine flight, practising instrument flying. Just north of Wellington, the pilots likely noticed the skin peeling from the leading edge of the right wing. Things unravelled quickly. The wing was disintegrating in mid-air and suddenly it broke off entirely from the plane. The Cornell pitched left and veered toward the farm fields north of the village. The pilots never regained control. The aircraft slammed into the earth on Ray Bird’s farm on what was then Gore Road, now Wilson Road.

Witnesses described a large fiery explosion. Debris was scattered over a wide distance. Both young men were killed on impact. Crash investigators would later determine that the Fairchild Cornell was subject to wing failure as a result of repeated hard landings.

Later that day a telegram arrived at the Craig household in Merlin. It read simply:

Deeply regret to inform you that your son R187958 Pilot Officer Wilfred Gordon Craig lost his life on 21st March 1944 as a result of an aircraft accident Stop Further information being mailed Stop Would you please wire me collect your wishes for place of burial.

The telegram was sent by A.D. Bell Irving, Group Captain, Commanding Officer RCAF Station, Trenton.

Enter Stanley J. Fitzer into the story. Fitzer was a serviceman at RCAF Trenton. He was assigned the task of guarding the crash site until an investigation team could be assembled. Fitzer was billeted for this assignment, a farmhouse owned by the Kennedy family near the wreckage. Left alone with his thoughts that evening, Fitzer composed a poem wishing peace and an easy death upon the fallen airmen whose remains he watched over.

Penned on RCAF letterhead, Fitzer wrote the following lines:

It was on the morning of the twenty-first in March of Forty-four That we heard we’d lost an aircraft we had flown so much before, But we didn’t know the number nor the crew that was aboard Still we hoped there was an easy death assured them by the Lord Easy? I had asked myself for the pilots that had died Could it ever have been easy in their life-destroying dive? God! How they must have suffered when they knew that death was near, When they saw the evil face of death with its cruel laughing sneer.

Fitzer paints a grim and unsettling picture of the thoughts of these young men. He conjures questions that haunt the reader eight decades later. When his assignment was complete, Fitzer gifted the poem to the homeowners, and it has hung respectfully on the wall ever since.

We know all this and vastly more detail because of the curiosity and diligent research by Michael Korn—who now lives in the Kennedy home on Wilson Road. Triggered by the letter and subsequently learning of the circumstances, Korn invested several years tracking down relatives of Craig and Ross, as well as scouring military records and archives. In 2012, he organized a memorial for the two airmen and unveiled a monument to honour their lives. Prayers were whispered. Anthems sung. Descendants gathered to honour the young men. To tell stories and to remember.

If you find yourself on Wilson Road, consider pausing and taking a moment to remember them.

Gordie Craig’s body was sealed and sent home to Merlin. He is buried in Pardoville Union Cemetery on the shores of Lake Erie. Mick Ross never made it home. He was buried in St. Georges’s Cemetery in Trenton.