Reginald Maurice Brooks

Flying Officer Reginald Brooks enlisted early in the war, graduated as a sergeant pilot in 1941 and went overseas shortly after getting his wings. His stay in England was brief before he was transferred to the Middle East. After flying through the remainder of the North African campaign, the fighter pilot flew with British and Canadian airmen providing air support for the Allied landings on Sicily. He helped chase the Germans and Italians from Sicily and then continued with the Allied forces up the boot of Italy. 

In December of 1943, Brooks was transferred back to Canada to become an instructor in the Commonwealth Air Training Plan. One can imagine how relieved his widowed mother, Nellie G. Brooks of North Street in Moncton, would have been to have her son serving in Goose Bay, Bagotville, and finally, just a day’s drive away at the Greenwood Training Station, what is today CFB Greenwood. After so much air combat, Brooks had surely earned the right to serve his country in the safety of Nova Scotia. 

The demands of war, however, had yet to extract a final sacrifice from the young pilot. Nova Scotia proved to be as dangerous to Brooks as it was to Lloyd Briggs. 

On April 27, 1944, While Brooks was teaching an advanced training class in the challenging but necessary discipline of formation flying, the wing of a student’s Hurricane fighter collided with the wing of Brooks’ aircraft during a turn. Both planes plummeted 10,000 feet to the ground below. 

The 24 year old Brooks was briefly reported missing, apparently in the hope he had somehow parachuted to safety and was somewhere in the Nova Scotia woods. His body was recovered and he was borne home to Moncton, escorted by a fellow pilot from Greenwood. A guard of honour from the RCAF Training Station Moncton was part of a capacity crowd at Highfield Baptist Church for Brooks’ funeral. The son of the late Maurice 0. Brooks, he was laid to rest in Moncton’s Elmwood Cemetery.