A fascinating story that I’m keen to follow. At the time my own grandfather was on the ground as a machine gunner, though his younger brother was in the RFC as a bomber pilot (he’d joined the RFC when he was 17 and was a Flight Lieutenant age 19).
My grandfather, Hugh Thomas Haldane Unwin, known as Thomas, was one of the first fighter pilots in history, and the eldest of four brothers who fought on the front in the First World War: Thomas, Shadforth, Bobby and Gerald. Defying the statistics, all the brothers survived the war. Three of them also earned the Military Cross. My grandfather’s citation in the Supplement to the London Gazette of 1 February 1919 reads:
Lt. Hugh Thomas Haldane Unwin, 1/1st York. Dns [Yorkshire Dragoons].
On the night of the 17th/18th September 1918, with eight men of his platoon, he raided a strongly wired pill-box on the north bank of Zillebeke Lake. After resistance, the garrison escaped while his patrol was endeavouring to get through the wire. With conspicuous courage he entered and thoroughly searched the pill-box, obtaining valuable identifications. Three previous attempts to raid this post had failed.[1]
Prior…
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Mind Bursts 