Deadly drama revealed of rookie pilot's first - and last - fight
One hundred years ago, during a dark period for Britain's flyers of the Great War which has gone down in history as "Bloody April," Kevin Furniss had a fateful - and fatal - encounter with a German air ace.
It is only now, thanks to research done by the RAF Museum at Cosford, that some of the last pieces of the jigsaw surrounding his death have fallen into place for his niece, Mrs Carol Bawden.
Letters, photos, memorabilia and artifacts relating to 19-year-old Second Lieutenant Furniss were found in the attic of her parents' home in Church Stretton, and were donated to the museum by Carol about three years ago.
Last week, just two days shy of the exact centenary of his death, which was on April 29, 1917, Carol was invited along to the museum to be filled in on the researches done by assistant curator Clare Carr.
And for the first time, she saw a picture of the German pilot who had shot her uncle down.
"How fantastic," she said as Clare showed her the photo.
"I didn't know about it. Even after 100 years there are still things we are finding out, and there is this incredible emotional rollercoaster ride associated with it. It is like a jigsaw."
Clare said: "I always wanted to do something for the centenary of Kevin's death. We had never really looked into the circumstances of what happened in the engagement in which he was lost and went missing, and what happened to the other chaps he was on patrol with.
"I thought it was a perfect opportunity to do so, and also a nice opportunity to invite Carol here.
"It's nice to have the complete story.
"It turns out the commanding officer of Kevin's squadron who wrote to notify the family was Major Leighton, the uncle of Sir Michael Leighton of Loton Park."
Having flown only a handful of patrols since arriving at the front, Kevin, who was with 23 Squadron, was to be killed in his first engagement.
Flying a Spad VII fighter with the Royal Flying Corps, Kevin and his colleagues had turned for home after escorting a formation of bombers attacking Cambrai aerodrome on April 22 when they were attacked by marauding German Albatros fighters.
New boy Kevin is thought to have been the first to have been shot down, a victim of Offiziersstellvertreter Edmund Nathanael, of Jasta 5, a 28-year-old German ace who had already scored 10 kills.
Two others from the five-strong Spad formation were also downed.
Grievously wounded, Kevin was taken as a prisoner to a hospital in Cambrai, suffering from burns and gunshot wounds. He died there on April 29, and was later buried in the cemetery alongside the hospital.
For weeks his family lived in hope that he had survived as a prisoner, but those hopes were dashed when the confirmation came through in August that he had died.
Nathanael was himself shot down and killed - by a member of Kevin's squadron - a few weeks later.
Kevin had been a pupil of Wolverhampton Grammar School. He had lived at The Birches Farm, Codsall, but at the time of his death the family home was at Trysull.
Various items of his, including his flying logbook and a half-smoked pipe, were kept as cherished mementoes by his grieving sister Miss Muriel Furniss. When she died, Carol's parents became the effective custodians of the items, which followed them in a move from Codsall to Church Stretton, where they were found when the attic was sorted on their deaths.
Carol, from Worcester, and whose maiden name is Furniss, says she is strictly speaking Kevin's "step-niece."
"Kevin was from my grandfather's first marriage and when his first wife died he then married the youngest daughter from the same family. My father was a child from that marriage, so Kevin and my father were half brothers."
