WEYBURN – Brian Glass of the Weyburn branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, left, accepted a plaque on Saturday from Sam Hennie, formerly of the Yellow Grass Legion, commemorating the life of Flight Sergeant Charles Sutherby of Yellow Grass.
F/S Sutherby died aged 26 when his Hampden plane was shot down over Germany on Aug. 29, 1942, and he is buried in the Rheinberg war cemetery in Germany. Charles was the only son of Richard and Lola Sutherby of Yellow Grass. He was a member of the 408 Goose Squadron of the RCAF, and was a wireless air gunner.
Richard came to Yellow Grass in 1919 as a telephone lineman, while Lola operated the town’s phone exchange for 45 years.
The plaque will go alongside one for Flight Sergeant Garnet Wilken of Yellow Grass, who died on Nov. 9, 1942 at the age of 21. He is buried at Stratford-upon-Avon cemetery in Warwickshire, England.
He was also an RCAF air gunner, and his Wellington crashed southeast of Lightome on a training flight from the No. 22 Operational Training Unit.
He was the son of First World War veteran Harold and Cora Wilken. Harold was wounded at Passchendaele; he had come to Yellow Grass from Ontario in 1899 to serve as the postmaster after the First World War.
