CAPTAIN ARTHUR NORBURY SOLLY
ROYAL FLYING CORPS
11TH AUGUST 1917 AGE 23
BURIED: LONGUENESSE (ST OMER) SOUVENIR CEMETERY, FRANCE
"Brothers in arms": the usual meaning of these words is that the men were fellow combatants. In one sense this is what the inscription does mean, but in a more literal sense than usual. Captain Solly and his observer Lieutenant Hay are buried in the same grave. On 11 August 1917, Solly, an experienced pilot with nine victories to his name, took off on a test flight. Reports differ but one says that all was going well until the wings collapsed at 7,000 feet. The plane crashed to the ground and caught fire, the ensuing inferno making it impossible to separate the two bodies.
Educated at Rugby and Gonville and Caius, Cambridge, Solly intended to be a doctor like his father. However, the war broke out and he left his studies after only one year. He served originally in the Manchester Regiment before transferring to the Royal Flying Corps in October 1915, first as an observer before receiving his wings in November 1916.
His photograph in the Rugby memorial register shows a handsome, devil-may-care young man. Several reports testify to his bravery and to his disregard for danger. On one occasion he made a solo reconnaissance flight over the front line, circling and diving, in total disregard of German efforts to shoot him down, until he was satisfied that he had seen enough of their troop arrangements and gun emplacements. An infantry officer watching him wanted Solly to be told that, "all ranks in the Salient felt proud to think that such work, apparently by one Englishman, should be carried out with such bravery".
The inscription is quoted within inverted commas, which would suggest that it was more than just a phrase. Perhaps Solly's parents had in mind a poem by Arthur Perceval Graves, father of Robert Graves, which was published in an anthology of war poetry in 1916. Titled Brothers in Arms, the poem tells how:
At their Mother's call, her mighty daughters,
Sprang, as Pallas sprang, full-armed to birth.
These 'daughters' are the countries of the British Empire, which joined with the French and Belgian nations in challenging the German foe:
Trusting surely that how oft soever
Back and forth War's crimson waves may flow,
On our faithful, chivalrous endeavour
Victory's full-orbed sun at last shall glow.
