Posted by: Brendan McCoy
Flying Officer Robert William Clarke, age 21, member of the Royal Canadian Air Force, was killed in action on June 2, 1943 near Epinay, in Normandy, France.
Robert Clarke was the son of Mrs. N. T. Clarke; his father had already passed away, and he had 2 sisters in the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service (WRCNS). Robert’s mother lived at 8 Harvard Ave. in what was then Ottawa South, and he was a graduate of Glebe Collegiate Institute.
Flying Officer Clarke was a pilot serving with 400 Squadron of the RCAF. He was killed when his P-51 Mustang fighter aircraft was shot down over France. He was reported to have successfully attacked a train locomotive before he was shot down and killed as he tried to parachute from his crashing plane.
In a letter to his mother, an RCAF casualty officer said the young man’s body had been buried in occupied France in the small village of Epinay near where he died. He was buried in a fine coffin provided by a local carpenter and attended by over 400 villagers and a German guard of honour. The grave was reported to have been covered by flowers the next day and recent photographs indicate that flowers are still left at the grave.
While many war dead were later moved to larger Commonwealth War Cemeteries, Robert Clarke’s body is still buried in the small French village of Epinay where he was interred in 1943. By the grave is a plaque in French and English with information about the young man. He was just one of almost 100 men who died while on military service and who listed the addresses of next-of-kin in (Old) Ottawa South during the First and Second World War.
Brendan McCoy is the OSCAR Editor.
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