Charles Bruce Campbell was born in 1890 at Yarralumla homestead, now the site of Australia’s Government House but then the seat of the Campbell family’s pastoral empire. Doted on by his parents, he had the carefree childhood of the wealthy elite, and divided his time between his family’s sprawling properties and a leading Sydney boys’ school. The firstborn son, and heir to the Campbell fortune, Charlie was a product of his time and his class: assertive, self-confident and full of a boyish enthusiasm for Empire. And, like many young men, he had a love of risk and adventure.

When war came to Australia, Charlie was the manager of Cooinbil, a 60 000-acre sheep station in the New South Wales Riverina. Like many Australian lads, Charlie was keen to enlist – but not necessarily in the ranks of the Australian Army. Old families like his were accustomed to serving in a British regiment, and a number of Charlie’s peers had been successful in applying for a commission in the Royal Flying Corps. War in the air had an appeal to Charlie that ordinary soldiering did not. It promised glamour and adventure. Charlie set his sights on becoming a pilot and paid his own way to England. Using family connections Charlie secured a commission within weeks of arriving in London. Flight was still in its infancy and the planes he would train in were flimsy, primitive and mechanically unreliable. But Charlie knew the Flying Corps would change the face of modern warfare, and he wanted to be a part of it.

But the life of a pilot was not all that Charlie had hoped for. Much of the training was dull and uneventful, and the weather tested the Australian lad, used to sunshine and warmth. Writing to his brother Walter, Charlie complained:

This climate is only fit for ducks and [Eskimos] we usually drill here in a sea of mud or snow . . . what use all this is teaching one to fly I don’t quite know . . . I haven’t seen a plane . . . yet.1

That same weather plagued Charlie’s squadron, even once they’d learnt to fly. The ‘beast of a climate’ ensured that the men of the 49th had little time to train as a unit before being sent on to France.2 Some of the men in Charlie’s squadron had only fifteen hours in the air solo, and they didn’t even have the chance to practice battle formations before they were sent into the action.3

Poor training wasn’t the only disadvantage pilots faced. The new two-seater De Havillands were faster and more powerful than anything the Flying Corps had used before, yet still they came up short against the formidable German Albatrosses. In 1917 alone, over two thousand men of the RFC were shot down. In what they called ‘Bloody April’, the life expectancy of a new pilot was between three and eight weeks.4

Charlie and his men took off for their ‘first show’ at the end of November 1917. Although they were keen to ‘do something useful in the way of annoying the Hun’, adrenaline and terror sent blood pumping through their chests.5 At first the flight went well enough. The weather had recently turned and the French countryside was covered in a thin blanket of snow, eerily calm and peaceful from above, it seemed to almost veil the fury taking place below. The men of the 49th swerved their way across the sky, dodging the German guns as the Battle of Cambrai rumbled on beneath them. With their observation mission a success, and seemingly unopposed, they turned for home.

Just as their hearts began to settle in their chests, a distant roar alerted the men to danger. Scores of brightly coloured machines came swiftly through the mist, outnumbering Charlie and his men three to one. Charlie recognised the markings of those aircraft instantly. The Red Baron’s Flying Circus were closing in on them.

The 49th panicked and the lead plane swung left, throwing the formation into chaos and confusion. Charlie’s plane was the very last in the squadron, and the very first to be isolated. Elite German pilots swooped down from above and peppered his machine with bullets. The fuel tank was hit and Charlie’s hapless aircraft was engulfed in flames. The De Havilland plunged towards the earth – ablaze and out of control.

Back in Australia, Charlie’s parents, Christie and Fred, were told that their boy was ‘missing’. Despite the numerous reports that his plane had been seen going down in flames, they still held out hope that he had survived. Perhaps Charlie had managed to land his crippled aircraft? Perhaps he was a prisoner of war in Germany? Christie, unable to imagine a life without her son began to write him letters:

Dear Charlie, on Thursday last since the news came that you were missing and no further news since.

Your machine was seen in flames & this awful nightmare still haunts me, oh Charlie Boy, surely this suspense cannot go on much longer.6

I get through the days hoping and hoping on news that you have been saved.’7

. . . perhaps some news will come through this week.8

Charlie Boy: A portrait of Charles Campbell. Courtesy Walter Campbell Memorial Trust, Charles Sturt University, Regional Archives and University Art Collection, Wagga Wagga.

In time, the men of Charlie’s squadron wrote to the Campbells. Their letters offered sympathy but also finality. Several of Charlie’s comrades were able to provide first-hand accounts of his death. But still, for Christie, the loss of ‘Charlie boy’ was unimaginable. Despite all the brutal evidence, she clung to the belief her son would come home.

She clung to the belief her son would come home: Christie Campbell gazes out from the verandah of the family home, Yarralumla. Many parents left the rooms of their sons unaltered in the hope they would return to them. Courtesy Walter Campbell Memorial Trust, Charles Sturt University, Regional Archives and University Art Collection, Wagga Wagga.

In 1918, Christie and her daughter Kate travelled to Egypt. There they met up with Charlie’s brother Walter, then in camp with the Australian Light Horse. As soon as peace was declared, the three Campbells travelled through France in search of Charlie. They questioned his comrades, sought out German records, and – on finding a grave near Cambrai marked C.B. Campbell RFC – demanded it be opened. Not finding the answers she wanted to hear, Christie visited the mother of Charlie’s observer, William Samways, in England. There, two women bereft of their sons comforted one another and shared the burden of their grief.

Returning to Australia, Christie began to come to terms with her loss. Like many grieving parents, she turned to the task of remembrance, memorialising Charlie’s life in every way she could. Christie began a scholarship in his name at his old school; had a window commissioned in his honour at their local church; and sent ornately framed photographs of her handsome boy to friends and family, urging them to remember him. As late as the 1920s, a generous provision was made in Fred Campbell’s will for a son who would never return home.

A window in his honour: Charlie Campbell’s memorial window in St John’s Church, Canberra. The window bears the motto of the Royal Flying Corp, Par Ardua ad Astra, Through Adversity to the Stars. Courtesy Bruce Scates.

Despite the enormous physical distance between them, the bond Christie had formed with Flora Samways grew stronger over the years. The two women often corresponded, nurturing the memories of their sons, forging a kind of kinship in their grief. ‘It’s comforting to know that they are not divided,’ Flora wrote to Christie. Their ‘two heroes’ were ‘born on the wings of high adventure to the presence of god where they now rest’.9 And one day – soon, she hoped – they would join them on ‘that shining shore’.10

SOURCES AND FURTHER READING: This story draws on the Walter Campbell Memorial Trust, Charles Sturt University Regional Archives and University Art Collection, Wagga Wagga and contemporary newspaper reports. The authors would like to thank the Reverand Paul Black and St John’s congregation. For more information on the Campbell family and the Yarralumla estate, see Charles Newman, The Spirit of Wharf House: Campbell Enterprise from Calcutta to Canberra, 1788–1930 (Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1987); and C D Coulthard-Clark, Gables, Ghosts and Governers-General: The Historic House at Yarralumla, Canberra (Sydney: Allen & Unwin in association with the Canberra and District Historical Society, 1988). The authors would like to thank Chris Clark for directing us to the Campbell story.

1 Charles Campbell to Walter Campbell, 10, March, 1917, Walter Campbell Memorial Trust, Charles Sturt University Regional Archives and University Art Collection, Wagga Wagga.

2 Charles Campbell to Christie Campbell, 11, April, 1917, ibid.

3 Charles Campbell to Walter Campbell, date unknown, ibid; I. Philpott, The Birth of the Royal Air Force (Barnsley: Pen & Sword Books Ltd., 2013) p. 210.

4 ibid, p. 291.

5 Charles Campbell to Christie Campbell, 8 October 1917, Walter Campbell Memorial Trust, Charles Sturt University Regional Archives and University Art Collection, Wagga Wagga.

6 Christie Campbell to Charles Campbell, 27, January, 1918, ibid.

7 Christie Campbell to Charles Campbell, 5, January, 1918, ibid.

8 Christie Campbell to Charles Campbell, 13, January, 1918, ibid.

9 Flora Samways to Christie Campbell, 1919, ibid.

10 Flora Samways to Christie Campbell, 1919, ibid.