LIEUTENANT CLAUD ALGERNON FELIX-BROWN
ROYAL FLYING CORPS
26TH DECEMBER 1916 AGE 21
BURIED: VLAMERTINGHE MILITARY CEMETERY, BELGIUM
"Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death;"
Solomon's Song 8:6
With these words, Ernest Felix-Brown states the permanence of his love and remembrance for his eldest son who was killed on Boxing Day, 26 December 1916.
Lieutenant Felix-Brown enlisted on the outbreak of war in the London Rifle Brigade and went with the 1st Battalion to France on 5 November 1915. According to his obituary in the Hendon and Finchley Times, Felix-Brown was invalided home with shell-shock in December 1914 but returned to the Front in February 1915. A few months later he received a commission in the West Yorkshire Regiment. He went to Gallipoli attached to the Lancashire Fusiliers and spent Christmas 1915 in hospital in Alexandria.
In April 1916 Felix-Brown joined the newly formed 46 Squadron Royal Flying Corps and went with them to Belgium that October. Flying two seater Nieuports, the Squadron was engaged in artillery spotting and reconnaissance. On 26 December, Felix-Brown and his pilot, Captain John William Washington Nason, were shot down over Railway Wood by the German 'ace' Alfred Ulmer. They were 46 Squadron's first deaths and the third of Ulmer's five kills before he too was shot down on 29 June 1917.
[There does not seem to be any agreement over whether Felix-Brown was a hyphenated surname or not, nor whether Claude was spelt with an 'e' or not. I have been consistent but I am not necessarily correct.]