LIEUTENANT WILFRED STUART LANE PAYNE, MC
ROYAL FLYING CORPS
4TH SEPTEMBER 1917 AGE 24
BURIED: MENDINGHEM MILITARY CEMETERY, PROVEN, BELGIUM
Wilfred Payne's brother chose his inscription; it might surprise him to learn how much his brother is not unknown to history. This is the result of the Internet and the digitization of records.
Payne's full names, rank, age, previous service with the Royal Garrison Artillery, parents - Charles and Anna Lucy Payne of British Guiana - Military Cross and place of burial are all recorded on the front page of his Commonwealth War Graves Commission website entry. Further CWGC documents show that he was attached to No. 7 Squadron whilst still a member of the Royal Garrison Artillery and that it was his brother, Mr RH Payne, Plantation Wales, West Bank Demerara River, British Guiana, who chose his inscription.
The digitized London Gazette records that he was gazetted a Second Lieutenant in the Royal Garrison Artillery on 11 September 1915, and the 3 March 1917 edition published the citation for his Military Cross:
For conspicuous gallantry in action: he displayed great courage and skill when employed as Observation Officer. Later he rescued six men who had been buried in a dug-out.
Put Payne's full name into the Internet and a table in Wikipedia shows that he was the 14th 'kill' of the German flying ace, Rudolf Berthold, that Payne was the observer in an RE. 8 piloted by Thomas Ernest Wray and that they were shot down at 08:25 hours somewhere north of Ypres. Berthold, who went on to have 44 victories, 16 of them after his right arm had been paralysed by a bullet, was killed by Spartakists in March 1920.
A search for No. 7 Squadron RFC brought up theaerodrome, an online forum which provided the information that No. 7, was based at Proven. The UK Incoming Passenger Lists show that Payne sailed from Valparaiso, Chile and arrived in Liverpool on 5 September 1915, six days before he was gazetted Second Lieutenant.
Payne and nineteen-year-old Wray, are buried in adjacent graves in Mendinghem British Cemetery