Pilot Officer John Wilson Summerhayes

Personal Information:
John (Jack) Wilson Summerhayes was born in Ridgetown, Ontario April 17, 1921, the third of seven children born to Leo and Daisy Summerhayes. Raised in Brantford, Ontario, Jack attended high school for one year and did some farm work. In 1938 he started work as a mill hand at the Dunlop Tire and Rubber Company in Buffalo, New York, moving on to become a machinist at Goldie, McCullough in Galt. During 1940, Jack moved back to Brantford, Ontario where he was a machine operator for the Coshutt Plough Company.
On June 6, 1942, he married Bernice Anderson. Jack had previous military experience, having served for six months in 1940 with the Dufferin and Haldimand Rifles Regiment in the non-permanent active militia, when he enlisted with the RCAF in Hamilton on August 31, 1942.

Historical Information:
In the spring of 1944, the Allied Air Forces organised a large-scale bombing campaign against rail installations in Belgium and northern France in order to prevent the Germans from moving equipment and supplies towards the planned invasion front. Louvain was the target during the night of 12 to 13 May 1944; one hundred & twenty bombers took part in the raid, most of them with Canadian crews. The formation was attacked by German fighters.
Halifax LW 682 “M for Mother” went down in the Dendre marshes at 0109 hrs. None of the seven Canadians and one Englishman on board survived. The German occupation forces buried five of the crew, but found no trace of the other three. They disappeared into the mud with the wreck of their aircraft and were missing for half a century. Members of the Belgian Aviation History Society, assisted by the fire brigade, the local police and the federal Gendarmerie, organised a recovery operation over the weekend of 6 and 7 September 1997. The operation was funded by 426 Squadron Association and the Government of Canada. The team managed to recover the bodies of Fred Roach, John Summerhayes and Wilbur Bentz.
The three bodies were buried in the cemetery at Geraadsbergen on 10 November 1997 and the LW 682 monument was inaugurated on 15 May 1999 by Doug Summerhayes, son of one of the missing men.

Information has kindly been provided by the courtesy of the Veteran Affairs Canada and the Brantford Kinsmen Club.