Canadian’s rumoured grave may derail project

For decades, staff at the Dunsfold Aerodrome in southern England talked about the dead Canadian beneath the runway.

Clifford Davies heard the story when he started working there in the 1960s, two decades after a battalion of Royal Canadian Engineers built the aerodrome during the Second World War.

The story, as Davies recalled, was about a Canadian accidentally killed by a machine during construction of one of the runways. Under pressure to complete the aerodrome on schedule, the serviceman’s comrades kept working, leaving him entombed in the cement at the airfield, 60 kilometres southwest of London.

“It was a very strong rumour,” Davies said.

But with the historic aerodrome now facing the prospect of being replaced by a massive housing development, Davies — a long- time opponent of the proposal — is raising concerns that construction on the site might amount to the desecration of a grave.

After receiving a letter from Davies last month, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has taken notice. So, too, has the Canadian Department of National Defence. But without a name or an exact location of the grave, there is not a lot they can do.

“I think the commission is simply going to have to monitor the situation,” said Dominique Boulais, a spokeswoman with commission’s Canadian agency.

For its part, Rutland Group, the developer, said the rumour has been discredited but it will still provide two kilometres of parkland over the aerodrome’s main runway, to be lined with Canadian maples.

However as local historian Paul McCue pointed out, the airfield was built with three runways. And the rumour lacks clarification on which runway the serviceman is supposedly entombed beneath.

In his 1992 book,Dunsfold: Surrey’s Most Secret Air- field, McCue found that the only known death during the three-month construction in 1942 was an Irish contractor who drowned when his tractor fell into a pit filled with rain water. “Local word of mouth eventually distorted this fact” into the wargrave rumour, he said.

A group of veterans from the Royal Canadian Engineers who were at Dunsfold during the construction told McCue they believed the rumour to be true, but none witnessed the incident.

A DND researcher has been assigned to analyze war diaries for any mention of a death or an unmarked grave, said Maj. Ivan Dellaire, the Canadian Armed Forces heritage officer — though he’s skeptical that they will turn anything up.

“It’s kind of an unlikely story,” he said.

Last month, U. K. Secretary of State for Communities Sajid Javid called for a review of the development amid outcry that it would transform sleepy countryside into a congested suburb.

An inspector has called for public comments ahead of an inquiry. Davies has already formally lodged his concerns about the rumoured grave.