SECOND LIEUTENANT FREDERICK HORACE REED
ROYAL AIR FORCE
23RD OCTOBER 1918 AGE 20
BURIED: TERLINCTHUN BRITISH CEMETERY, WIMILLE, FRANCE
This is one of the very rare instances when the War Graves Commission doesn't give an exact date of death. Frederick Reed, an observer with 6 Squadron RAF, was shot down on 23 October 1918. His plane crashed behind the German lines and he was taken prisoner. He died of his injuries sometime between the crash on the 23rd and the 27 October. That is why the Commission's records and his headstone give his date of death as 23/27 October.
Reed was buried by the Germans as an 'Unknown British Aviator'. On 16 September 1920 his body was exhumed and reburied in Englefontaine Churchyard - still as an unknown British aviator. The exhumation record shows that there was nothing in the grave to identify him, not even a uniform; he had been buried only in a ground sheet.
At the bottom of the form are the words, 'Dame Adelaide Livingstone Informed'. In September 1920, this remarkable American woman was head of the War Office mission to trace British soldiers reported as missing in France and Flanders. At some point Reed's body was identified and the details in the Graves Registration documents amended. This means that when in February 1975 the body was exhumed again and reburied in Terlincthen Military Cemetery (for what reason I don't know) he was known to be Second Lieutenant Frederick Horace Reed.