In memory
of John Morden, outstanding
veteran, pilot, husband and father who died in this Year of the Veteran, before he
could see this story in print.
The young men came from as far away as Australia and New Zealand,
eager to fight the Second Great War from the air. They landed in Pennfield Ridge,
a flat stretch of highway in the midst of blueberry fields, 60 kilometres southwest
of Saint John.
Here they would spend months training and learning to work together
as air crews. They would mix with the people of the small communities surrounding
Pennfield.
Some would fall in love, marry and make their home here; some would
take new wives back to their country; some would die and be buried here.
They were very young, in their late teens and early twenties.
With the increasing need for aircrew, age limits were adjusted to include those
from 17 to 33. In 1943, more than 60 per cent were under 20 years of age.
Early in the war, on Dec. 17, 1939,Canada, Britain, Australia
and New Zealand signed an agreement, known in Canada as the British Commonwealth
Air Training Plan, detailing how the various countries would train pilots and
aircrew for the Royal Air Force.
The escalation of war made the need to train pilots and aircrew
even more urgent.
Canada was the ideal location, away from the war in Europe and
close to the resources available in the United States.
Pennfield Ridge was one of 151 training schools located across
Canada, and one of three in New Brunswick. Today there is little to remind us of
what was there. The tarmac is there but alders, grass and blueberry bushes have
grown up around it. All you can see as you drive by is a strange chunk of concrete
rising above the bushes and three identical houses on the opposite side of the road.
Sixty years later, who remembers? There are few left to tell the
stories. I remember every time I pass the site. There are the three houses that I
have learned were for Department of Transport personnel associated with the base.
There is the huge concrete "thing", where the gunners practiced.
Thousands of people drive by every day and have no idea of the
significance of this location.
Little is written about the Pennfield base. One author refers
to it as the least successful of the training units. Cited as reasons were problems
with the Ventura planes they flew and persistent fog that closed the base for days or weeks.
In November 1940, a half million-dollar contract was awarded to
build the No. 2 Air Navigation School at Pennfield Ridge.
To the many small communities in the area, still struggling out
of the depression, this had an economic impact they could never have imagined. When
the base opened in the summer of 1941, it was expected that advance training for
air observers and navigators would be the focus. After the fall of France this
changed and, in 1942, the British decided to move four of their Operational Training
Units to the safety of Canada. Number 34 Operational Training Unit was moved from
Greenoch, Scotland to Pennfield Ridge.
Here, men were put together as four-man crews and trained for
operations over Europe and the Middle East.
The RCAF and the RAF shared responsibility for running the base
and training school. The British arrived with their families and searched out
accommodations in small communities nearby. As local Maynard McKay remembers it,
"Every cottage and room for miles up and down the coast became home for these
people.
Families of three were sometimes crowded into the spare room of
a local home. Pennfield Ridge went from a community of 188 people in 1939 to
approximately 5, 000 by 1942." With a chuckle, McKay also remembers,
"The British brought their lorries with them. The steering wheel was on the
wrong side and they were not used to driving on the ice we had. They were sliding
all over the place and into the ditch. They had to switch over to our type of
vehicles." An impressionable schoolboy of 7, McKay remembers standing near
the highway with the planes swooping down, a hundred feet over his head. He recalls
men at target practice, on nearby Seeley's Cove Road, letting him shoot a machine
gun mounted on a post.
Today, McKay is an airplane aficionado with extensive collections
of models, books, and videos of every kind of plane. Just say the name of a plane and
he can recite the key specifications.
The base was a complete community with a hospital, theatre, dance
hall, sports facilities and accommodations for thousands of trainees. It straddled
Highway 1, with most buildings on the north side.
Private businesses expanded to meet their needs. Cottages were
built to accommodate those operating the school. Three restaurants were located on
the south side of the road.
The base put on parties for the school children. Local theatres,
dance halls and social clubs also entertained the staff and trainees and some met
the woman they would marry.
One incident was not so pleasant. A young RAF sergeant was accused
of murdering a woman from Blacks Harbour, whom he met at a dance. He was tried and
found guilty. He was the last person to be hung in Charlotte County and it is said
that his ghost still haunts the St. Andrews Courthouse.
Most of those who married and stayed here are no longer around.
Two charming men in their eighties shared their stories with me: batman Roy Swanston
and pilot officer John Morden.
The British employed batmen to serve their officers. The batmen
pressed uniforms, polished shoes, sewed on badges, made beds and carried out a host
of duties required to keep the officers in the manner to which they were accustomed.
One of the batmen was Swanston, a 20-year-old from Lincoln, England. After an 11-day
convoy across the Atlantic, he and his buddies landed in New York. He found his way
by train to Canada and Pennfield Ridge, where he served several officers.
At the movie theatre in St. George, Swanston met a young woman from
Pennfield.
Just before the close of the base, and after months of waiting for
approval from the British Air Force, they were married.
Three months later he was sent back to England and was transferred
to the British Army, as a member of the Army of Occupation in Belgium and Germany. It
was three years before he saw his wife again.
In 1942, Morden, a Canadian pilot serving with the RAF, was flying
bombing raids out of Egypt, over Libya, Crete and Suez.
On his return from one trip, all pilots who had completed 30 bombing
missions were reassigned. By way of North Africa, Brazil, the U.S. and Montreal, he arrived
at Pennfield Ridge to train pilots and crews.
Men arrived from training facilities around the country and formed into
crews consisting of pilot, navigator, wireless operator and gunner. As Morden put it,
"This was not done scientifically. They were lined up, told to meet each other and
decide who they wanted to fly with." The crews spent 12 weeks training together then
shipped off to Britain.
Morden is quick to volunteer that the best thing that happened to him
in Pennfield was meeting his wife, with whom he spent 60 years. After the war, he continued
to fly. Did he like flying? "It beats working," he responded with a chuckle.
The crews practiced their flying and navigating skills by doing
"cross- country" flights over New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. Bombing
practice was conducted on an island in nearby Lake Utopia and over the Bay of Fundy.
A "crash boat", for rescuing downed flyers from the Bay, was manned by air
force personnel and docked at Blacks Harbour.
There were crashes in the bay, on the base, and in the hills of
Charlotte County and Nova Scotia. Records at the British Commonwealth museum, in
Brandon, Man., indicate 35 men died while assigned to Pennfield. Some were never
found but their names are inscribed on the Ottawa War Memorial. Some were returned
home.
Ten airmen are buried in the Rural Cemetery in St. George. The
St. George Legion has installed flags and honours the memory of these 10 men.
The British Commonwealth Air Training Plan united thousands from
Commonwealth Countries, as well as Free French, Polish, Italian, Norwegian, Belgian
and Dutch. The number of trainees who passed through Pennfield is not known. Veterans
Affairs Canada lists 131,553 Air Crew graduates of the British Commonwealth Air
Training Plan program in Canada.
Nearly 50,000 of them were pilots. The ground organization
responsible for this program consisted of more than 104,000 men and women.
At the end of the war, the Pennfield buildings were dismantled
and sold. John Hawkins remembers his summer job, taking down the buildings and
removing nails so the wood could be reused. This was rather ironic as Hawkins had
seen his family home moved down the highway to make way for the building of the
base.
The tarmac and the hangars remained for several more years. RCAF
Heavy Transport flew from there. Trans Canada Airlines, a precursor to Air Canada, used
the airport until they moved to Saint John in the 1950s. After the hangars were gone,
the tarmac was used for car racing and now has come to an ignominious end as a place for
drying seaweed.
VE Day, May 8, 1945 was possible because of the commitment of these
young men and others, like them, who passed through our training schools. Winston Churchill
is said to have referred to the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan as Canada's greatest
contribution to the Allied victory and a letter from U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt
described Canada's role as the "aerodrome of democracy." At Pennfield, there is
no memorial or sign indicating that people lived and died there. There is nothing to suggest
the importance of those blueberry fields, relative to the winning of the Second World War.
The morning after my visit to the site was clear and crisp. As I packed up
my car in the darkness there was a sliver of a moon in the cloudless sky - a perfect morning.
Minutes later I was driving across Pennfield Ridge. There was none of the fog
that often blankets the area. I thought of those young men, who bravely faced fog, snow and wind
as they prepared for their fight for democracy. I said to them, "You would love it today.
It's a perfect day for flying".
SOURCE: New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal (Saint John, NB) - September 17, 2005.
Return to Pennfield Ridge Air Station Newspaper Stories Page
Return to Pennfield Ridge Air Station Page
Return to Pennfield Home Page