Wings to War memorial unveiled in Carberry over weekend

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This article was published 13/09/2021 (1745 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Wings to War memorial was officially unveiled in Carberry on Saturday at the Carberry Plains Museum.

Three engraved granite benches, surrounded by a row of flags from the different countries the Commonwealth pilots came from who trained at the school, sat in front of about 100 people Saturday.

The memorial commemorates the town’s former Second World War pilot training school, the Carberry #33 Service Flying Training School, the people who died while training at the school, the ones who served overseas and the ones who never came home.

Twenty-four people died training during the war in Carberry, according to the Manitoba Historical Society’s website.

On hand were local dignitaries and special guests to mark the event.

As New Zealanders had a presence at the school for training during the war, the High Commissioner of New Zealand to Canada, Martin Harvey, sent a letter to the town. Mayor of Carberry, Stuard Olmstead, read the letter.

“This commemoration is about them; it is about the 5,906 servicemen who trained together here in Carberry, and it is about the ties which have bound us together for so long. May this monument stand as an enduring symbol of the shared sacrifice and bonds of cooperation between our nations, in the past and in the years ahead.”

Capt. Peter MacEachen Blood, representative of the Queen’s Council, and Royal Artillery officer on exchange with First Royal Canadian Horse Artillery (1 RCHA) for the British Forces at CFB Shilo, also presented a letter on behalf of the British government in Canada.

The letter was from Jonathan Turner, the British Consul General, and was in recognition of the thousands of airmen and airwomen who were trained at the Royal Air Force #33 Service Flying Training School base in Carberry.

Children of the servicemen who worked and trained at the school during the war, also sat in the audience.

The daughters of two airmen from the school, Beverley Weibe and Lori Brooking, officially cut the blue ribbon as part of the unveiling of the memorial.

But, it was when 102-year-old Ralph Wild stood up to talk that you could hear a pin drop.

With one hand on the podium and the other on his cane, Wild spoke about the events that led him to the Carberry flight school.

Wild was born Oct. 27, 1918. He joined the RAF in 1938 and was involved in the Battle of Britain.

Eventually, he was sent to Canada with the RAF and travelled across the country by train.

Landing in Carberry was a bit of a shock as he recalled the “jolting halt” of the train and looked out the window only to see snow for the first time.

That was Dec. 3, 1940.

“We had to march from Carberry (train station) to the base. I’ll never forget that walk,” he told the crowd.

After spending time in the war back home in England, Wild recalled the six-inch mattress he slept on in the school in Carberry and the hot and cold water. “Life was heaven,” he said, chuckling.

But it was the generosity of strangers that made Wild tear up as he remembered the family who billetted him in Winnipeg while he was on leave during his time in Carberry.

“I have never met people more neighbourly and generous than Canadians,” he said.

Eventually, Wild married a Canadian nurse and they had three children.

He credits his long life and good health to exercise, eating right, not smoking or drinking and wearing his Sunday best. At 102, Wild still cuts an impressive figure.

The Carberry #33 Service Flying Training School is now the site of the McCain potato-processing plant.

The school trained 5,902 pilots for the allied war effort from December 1940 to November 1945.

During the Second World War, the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan operated 151 schools across Canada and trained 131,553 aircrew (72,835 were Canadian).

Those trained aircrew included pilots, wireless operators, air gunners and navigators and other less prominent roles for the Air Forces of Great Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Carberry was SFTS #33. The site construction cost $850,000. Training aircraft were typically the Avro Anson or Harvard planes.

On Saturday, two antique planes, a Cornell and Tiger Moth, from the Commonwealth Air Training Plan Museum in Brandon, were flown overhead by volunteers from the museum as part of the day’s celebrations.

» kkielley@brandonsun.com