British, Canadian and American pilots of World War I honored at Memorial Day service
For the last few years, 80-year-old Jim Haas has attended Memorial Day services at Greenwood Memorial Park.
Haas was there Monday morning, despite the flash flood watch in Tarrant County and the storms dumping heavy rains in North Texas.
Armed with umbrellas, Haas and his wife were among the first to enter Independence Chapel at Greenwood for the service, which was moved inside because of the storms.
Since 1988, The Friends of the Royal Flying Corps and Greenwood Memorial Park have conducted this Memorial Day remembrance service for the British, Canadian and American pilots killed during World War I while in training in the Fort Worth area.
Twelve airmen and the infant daughter of an instructor are buried at Greenwood Memorial Park in Fort Worth, which is where the ceremony was held.
“I don’t know who these people are,” Haas said. “But it’s important to remember history and that’s why we come.”
About 100 people gathered at Greenwood Memorial Park for the Memorial Day remembrance service.
It was one of few Memorial Day services in North Texas, including one at Bluebonnet Hills Memorial Park in Colleyville.
Flight school
In the fall of 1917, following the United States’ entrance into World War I, pilots came to 28 airfields in the United States to train American pilots for aerial warfare. Three fields were in Tarrant County: Taliaferro No. 1, which would later be known as Hicks Field; Taliaferro No. 2 in Everman, which became known as Barron Field; and Taliaferro No. 3 in Benbrook, which became known as Carruthers Field.
About 6,000 British, American and Canadian volunteer flight school cadets and instructors came to the Fort Worth area airfields.
Between November 1917 and April 1918, 39 lost their lives to accidents and other causes here. Of those, 11 Canadian and British cadets and one American are buried in Greenwood.
“They came from Canada. They came from the United Kingdom. And they came from all over the United States,” said Consul General Rachel McCormick, Consulate of Canada in Dallas on Monday before the Memorial Day audience. “They came to learn to fly and they learned so much more. We honor their legacy here.”
World War I history
At Greenwood, World War I Flyers Club members built a stone monument with smaller headstones placed around it, and led a Memorial Day service every year until 1978.
Eight years later, in 1986, Griffin Murphey, a local dentist, was walking through Greenwood after his father died, when he noticed the monument. Murphey, a lifelong aviation enthusiast, decided to restore the Memorial Day service, which is held every two years at Greenwood.
“This is a neat piece of history, and history repeats itself,” Murphey said in a 2015 interview with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “I found this story exceptionally interesting, and not a lot of people knew about it.”
On Monday morning, Father James Flynn, pastor at St. Elizabeth Ann Seaton in Keller, read this prayer for the World War I dead:
“Let us remember before God
And commend to his sure keeping
Those who have died for their country in war;
Those whom we knew, and whose memory we treasure,
And all who have lived and died in the service of humanity
They shall not grow old as we that are left to grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning.
We will remember them.”
This report contains information from Fort Worth Star-Telegram archives.
