2nd Lieutenant Oswald Nixon
70 SQUADRON, ROYAL FLYING CORPS
BORN IN CAPE TOWN, 20-YEAR-OLD Oswald Nixon was the youngest of almost a dozen children of an army officer. Educated near the family home at Reigate, Surrey, by 1913 Oswald was at an agricultural college. Enlisting as a private at 18, he was then commissioned in October 1914 and transferred to the Essex Regiment, but soon he was forging a career for himself above the battlefield. A quick way into the Royal Flying Corps for a young officer was to offer to be an observer in two-seater aircraft, because it required far less training than that of a pilot. Oswald did just that and went to France on 25th October 1915. After a long stint at the front he returned home the following May to train as a pilot. Oswald Nixon graduated as a flying officer on 23rd August 1916, re-embarked just over a fortnight later and on 11th September was posted to 70 Squadron. Oswald’s unit belonged to GHQ and flew two-seater Sopwiths on some of the RFC’s most distant reconnaissance missions, far over enemy lines, counting trains moving enemy troops far behind the battlefield and observing artillery positions.
The air war had progressed since the onset of the Battle of the Somme. At the beginning of July RFC pilots would be hard pressed to find an enemy airman, but now German reinforcements had arrived. British airmen bore the increased numbers of their enemy counterparts, but there were bloody encounters for 70 Squadron. Dawn patrol on 15th September, as the Battle of Flers–Courcelette began, saw the squadron’s airmen led out by a veteran pilot who had been flying on the Western Front since 1914. His ambition had been to meet the great German ace Oswald Boelcke in the air, but when this momentous event finally transpired that day he fell to earth with his shattered machine, possibly taken down by the great man himself. Another Sopwith had its petrol tank pierced and the observer was mortally wounded. The pilot was forced to land in enemy territory, while two more aeroplanes were shot up badly and reached Allied lines with dying observers. The squadron’s pilots were scattered and forced to fight their way home independently.
A Sopwith 1½ Strutter, of the kind used by Oswald Nixon. (Australian War Memorial)
Two days later Oswald Nixon vanished on a standard Somme reconnaissance when his engine failed and he was forced to land 15 miles into German territory. His father, a colonel in the Royal Engineers, was away when the news arrived and his mother was naturally frantic. ‘What can be done to ascertain what has happened, please, anything. He is our youngest and 20 only,’ she pleaded. ‘Was he alone? I know the crowd of agonised hearts that fill your every moment with appeals but I cannot help writing and imploring that all possible may be done to trace him.’ Sunday 17th September was a sore day for the RFC, most of the victims falling to Boelcke’s new fighting squadron, which was one of a number introduced to begin to address Allied superiority in the air. But the RFC was hopeful. Oswald’s observer was alive and in German captivity, having been picked up from the wood where they had come to ground. The authorities told his mother that Oswald’s name was about to be included on a list to be sent to Germany via the US Embassy and circulated to hospitals and internment corps.
Unbeknown to the British authorities, Oswald’s crash had been violent and he was killed instantly. Retrieved by the Germans, they removed his buttons and badges, presumably as souvenirs, before giving him a suitable burial at Hervilly Churchyard to the East of Peronne. Those in charge of German Grave registration erected a cross that read ‘Unknown British Officer – Aviator’. In May 1917, having received no further information, the War Office was finally forced to accept Oswald’s death as having occurred on 17th September 1916. Oswald Nixon’s career as a pilot had lasted just six days on the Western Front. In 1929 the grave at Hervilly was exhumed. Using dental records as part of the identification, the Imperial War Graves Commission was able to identify Oswald. Both his parents had died within weeks of each other in 1924 and never knew that their youngest son had had a grave all along under an anonymous marker. Nearly thirteen years after his death, Oswald Nixon was laid to rest at Serre Road Cemetery No.2, plot XIX.O.10.