The Last Post Ceremony commemorating the service of (422329) Pilot Officer Stanley Mountford Wright, No. 106 Squadron, Royal Air Force, Second World War

The Last Post Ceremony is presented in the Commemorative area of the Australian War Memorial each day. The ceremony commemorates more than 102,000 Australians who have given their lives in war and other operations and whose names are recorded on the Roll of Honour. At each ceremony the story behind one of the names on the Roll of Honour is told. Hosted by Joanne Smedley, the story for this day was on (422329) Pilot Officer Stanley Mountford Wright, No. 106 Squadron, Royal Air Force, Second World War.

422329 Pilot Officer Stanley Mountford Wright, No. 106 Squadron, Royal Air Force
KIA 25 June 1944
No photograph in collection

Story delivered 6 April 2015

Today we pay tribute to Pilot Officer Stanley Mountford Wright, who was killed in the service of the Royal Air Force in 1944.

Born in Asquith, a suburb of Northern Sydney, on 31 October 1922, Stanley Wright was the son of Harold Andrew Wright and Alice Maud Wright.

Upon finishing school Wright worked as a clerk for Australian Cash Orders in Pitt Street, Sydney. On 28 April 1942 he enlisted in the Royal Australian Air Force and began training as a pilot. In May 1943 he embarked in Brisbane for overseas service.

As part of the Empire Air Training Scheme, he was one of almost 27,000 RAAF pilots, navigators, wireless operators, gunners, and engineers who joined Royal Air Force and Royal Australian Air Force squadrons in Britain throughout the course of the war.

Upon arriving in Britain Wright undertook further specialist training before eventually being posted in May 1944 to No. 106 Squadron, Royal Air Force. As part of Bomber Command, No. 106 Squadron was equipped with the four-engine Avro Lancaster heavy bomber. There he joined a crew of two other Australians and four British airmen. Together, with Wright as pilot, they flew six missions. Wright himself flew a total of eight.

On the night of 24 June 1944 Wright’s Lancaster was taking part in a bombing raid on the V-1 rocket – or flying bomb – launch site at Pommeravel. After the Allied invasion of Normandy in June 1944 the Germans launched a terror-bombing campaign on London and southern England using the new rocket. Between June and October 1944, V-1 attacks on Britain resulted in the deaths of 10,000 people.

It was on this mission that Wright’s Lancaster crashed near the village of Bully, near Neufchatel in Upper Normandy, north-west of Rouen.

Five of the seven crew were killed, including Wright. Only two of the British crewmembers managed to bail out, and they returned to Allied lines and back to Britain. The Mayor of Bully reported that the bodies of the crew were recovered from the crashed Lancaster and buried in a nearby cemetery. Their remains were later reburied at the British War Cemetery at St Sever on the outskirts of Rouen. Stanley Wright was just 21 years old.

Wright’s name – along with those of the two Australian members of his crew – is listed here on the Roll of Honour on my left, along with some 40,000 Australians died in the Second World War.

This is but one of the many stories of service and sacrifice told here at the Australian War Memorial. We now remember Pilot Officer Stanley Mountford Wright, and all of those Australians – as well as our Allies and brothers in arms – who gave their lives in the hope for a better world.

Dr Lachlan Grant
Historian, Military History Section