British Airmen-Aeroplane Cemetery

Aeroplane Cemetery, CWGC, this site was in no man’s land until 31 July 1917. During the first day of Third Battle of Ypres, the 15th (Scottish) and the 55th (West Lancashire) Divisions captured Verlorenhoek and Frezenberg. The cemetery was begun by the 15th (Scottish) and 16th (Irish) Divisions on 1 August as the New Cemetery, Frezenberg. It was renamed Aeroplane Cemetery on account of a wreck of a British aeroplane being near the site of the Cross of Sacrifice that we see today.

There are two British Airman buried here.

1872 Sergeant Louis Gray, Pilot, 6th Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, Killed in action 7 June 1917, age 24. Grave VII.C.10. Son of Lewis and Isabella Gray, 73 Union Grove, Aberdeen. Awarded special prize at Royal Highland Show held at Aberdeen in August 1912, for exhibition of model flying machines. On the 7 June 1917, he was flying in an RE8 (A3214) with the Observer Second Lieutenant Morrice Frederick John Halliday when they were shot up by enemy anti-aircraft fire and crashed east of the lines in No Man’s land near Hill 60. At that time, Second Lieutenant Halliday's body was unable to be identified and he was buried in a makeshift graveyard some 500 metres to the east of the village of Zillebeke. His body was exhumed and reburied in Poelcapelle British Cemetery. It is unclear where Sergeant Gray was buried, though it may also have been close to the village of Zillebeke.

RE.8

Second Lieutenant Spencer Leslie Hatten Symonds, Pilot, 7th Squadron, Royal Flying Corps, Killed in action 12 November 1917, age 20. Grave VII.B.34. He was one of  three sons and a daughter of Spencer and Minnie E. Symonds, of Shackerland Hall, Badwell Ash, Bury St. Edmund's. He was educated at Framlingham College leaving in 1915. He enlisted as a Private, No. 764914 in the 28th London Regiment, Artists Rifles, and then joined the Officer Training Corps and then the Royal Flying Corps General List as an Observer. He was at Oxford 25 Training Corps from 5th May 1917 until withdrawn on 13th August to attend flying instruction and went to France on 2nd October 1917. He was flying as an Observer in an RE.8 (B2255) piloted by Lieutenant William Alan Sewell, attached from the 4th Border Regiment, when they were shot down by enemy anti-aircraft fire and crashed in No Man’s land in front of the French lines. Lieutenant Sewell’s grave was lost and he is listed on the Arras Memorial.