Stanley Benskin Henson, another King's Bruton old boy

2/Lt. Stanley Henson, Somerset Light Infantry. Killed in action at Ploegsteert Wood, 19 Dec 1914

Stanley Henson was born on 20th June 1886 in Norwood, London, the eldest son of William John Henson, physician. He attended King’s School, Bruton, and later Pembroke College. Stanley Benskin Henson was an officer of the Special Reserve, originally from Wedmore in Somerset. This young subaltern had returned at his own expense from Penang Island, where he was employed as an officer in the Straits Settlement Police, to rejoin his regiment and was placed in command of a platoon in B Company.

In December 1914, the battalion was in Belgium holding the line in the infamous Ploegsteert Wood. The 1st Somerset Light Infantry’s Commanding Officer was informed on 12th December that his battalion would attack enemy troops who had occupied a small salient dubbed the ‘The Birdcage’ in the former British frontline trenches lying at the eastern end of Ploegsteert Wood, between the villages of Le Gheer and St. Yves. This attack was intended to occupy German attention and prevent enemy reserves being moved to oppose a French offensive further south.

The morning of 19th December dawned bright and clear and at 9.00am British 4.5” and 6” howitzers began bombarding ‘The Birdcage,’ although most shells fell short of the target. The assault troops were in position by 1.00pm with B Company lining the trench on the eastern edge of Ploegsteert Wood and C to its immediate rear.  The two leading platoons of B Company, led by 2nd Lt. Stanley Henson and 2nd Lt. Kenneth Dennys, began the assault promptly at 2.30pm, dashing forwards from the edge of the wood towards the German trenches 120 yards away, heavily encumbered with wire ‘mattresses’ and wire cutters.

 Although a direct bombardment by supporting mountain artillery and machine guns the half hour before had destroyed the heavily defended position at ‘German House’ it had failed to cut the wire in front of the enemy trenches. The unshaken German defenders immediately opened fire with machine guns and rifles and enemy artillery shells began falling in No-Man’s-Land. To add to the noise and confusion four 4.5” British shells fell short amongst the attacking troops after they had covered 40-50 yards causing heavy losses.

The heavy going through the deep clinging mud in No-Man’s-Land, pocked with deep water-filled shell-holes, made progress slow. Before reaching the German wire, Henson fell victim to a machine gun or rifle bullet.  As his CO later informed his grieving parents:

“As to the manner of your son’s death, I can only tell you he died a very brave man. He was leading his men in the attack on the German trenches, and had outstripped the rest of his company by about twenty yards, when he was shot through the heart and killed instantly. Those of his company who were fortunate to come out of the action alive speak in the highest terms of your son’s courage. He was a great loss to the Regiment.”

Under heavy fire the 1st Somerset Light Infantry’s attack stalled half-way across No-Man’s Land, despite gallant efforts by its officers to keep up the forward momentum. Since the ground was too wet to dig-in the survivors of the attack withdrew overnight to the former trenches in Ploegsteert Wood.

The abortive attack on ‘The Birdcage’ had cost the 1st Somerset Light Infantry dear, with five officers dead and one wounded and taken prisoner. 27 Other Ranks were killed in action, 52 wounded and 30 reported missing. Its only positive result was that the Germans had been driven completely out of the Ploegsteert Wood.

Henson’s body was recovered by the German troops from No-man’s-Land during the unofficial Christmas Day truce and returned to his regiment. Later that day he was laid to rest in what is now Ploegsteert Wood Military Cemetery.   

 

Some text reproduced from an article by TR Moreman

Eric Barnes, King’s Old Boy

Eric Barnes

Eric Barnes entered King's Bruton School in January, 1904, and left in July, 1912. He was a House Prefect, and a member of the cricket, football, and hockey elevens. After passing through Sandhurst he was gazetted as Second Lieutenant to the 1st Lincolnshire Regiment on February 1st 1914.
There are some boys who possess a certain indefinable charm which makes them general favourites. Barnes was one of these. One of the traits that made him such an attractive character was his cheerfulness; he was a born optimist, and genuine optimism is infectious. Another was the frankness so clearly expressed in all his features. A third was the keenness he displayed in everything he took up. He may not have achieved any great distinction either intellectually or in athletics, but he was an admirable specimen of the best type of all-round usefulness.
The fact that he enjoyed life immensely heightens the tragedy of his early death. Lt.-Col. Smith, his commanding officer, wrote:

‘He fell whilst gallantly leading his Company in the attack on a village (called Wytschaete), which the regiment had been ordered to take. He was struck by a bullet and never moved again. He died as he had lived, upholding the best traditions of the Regiment he loved so well, and his loss is deeply deplored by us all.’

Lt. H. Ingoldby, a brother officer, wrote:

‘It was a terrible battle when we came in contact with the enemy in pitch darkness. Eric was just near me in the advance, and when I got up to take a few men forward in a rush, he was the next to come, but, as I heard, immediately he stood up from the ditch we were lying in to lead his men forward under very heavy fire, he was shot straight through the head and, I believe, died immediately. I was so fond of him, and never have I known such a plucky little fellow – always eager and active in the firing line, regardless of shell or bullet.’

He is remembered on the Menin Gate Memorial at Ypres.

First of many

Harold Edwin Hippisley Killed in Action, 23/10/1914

Harold Hippisley

 Killed in action: Second Lieutenant Harold Hippisley, aged 24, a former pupil at King’s Bruton.

Recently Married

A School Prefect in his last year at King’s, on leaving school, he entered the Royal Agricultural College, Cirencester. He then spent time in land-agency work. He was about to secure a post under the Board of Agriculture when the War broke out. He obtained a commission as a Second Lieutenant with the 1st Battalion Gloucestershire Regiment. He went to France in August, 1914, and fought almost continuously from then until he was killed in defence of Langemarck. A particular sadness is lent to his death by the fact that his marriage took place on the very day of his leaving to join his regiment. 

Eyewitness Account

Hippisley was in charge of a platoon of A Company of the 1st Gloucesters, which was blocking the Langemarck-Koekuit road. The young lieutenant and his men gunned down hundreds of Germans – they could hardly miss – but still they kept on coming.  Private Barton, one of the few survivors of the day, takes up the story:  “About this time (10.30 a.m.), Lieutenant Hippisley, the platoon commander, was hit. The bullet struck the middle of the forehead. He was attended by his servant, Private Brown, who was under the impression that if he kept the brain from oozing out of the hole he would be all right. After a time he was convinced that the wound was fatal and that his master had no chance. He then divided his time between the parapet, where he would fire a few rounds, and then return to Lieutenant Hippisley.  Between his concern for his master and his desire for revenge on the Germans, he seemed to have gone crazy.”   His commanding officer, Lieutenant-Colonel Lovett, writes:  “Hippisley’s company was occupying a trench which was heavily attacked by hostile infantry. There was a severe rifle fire by which his platoon lost sixty percent in killed and wounded. By the steadiness of the men at this point, due to the confidence in their officer, the situation was maintained. Had the enemy in their great numbers penetrated at this point, the result would have been most disastrous. I need hardly say how popular he was amongst everyone, and how deeply we deplore his loss.”  2nd Lieutenant Baxter describes how the left flank was exposed:  “The Germans enfiladed our trenches. The casualties began in real earnest. Harold doing his duty nobly was shot in the head. He died like a soldier and a gallant Englishman. The Gloucester Regiment are proud of him and I am proud to say he was my friend.”

Keen and Gifted Sportsman

Hippisley was an outstanding sportsman and leader; he captained the three major teams – Football, Hockey and Cricket – for an unprecedented three years, and he won the Ridley Cup three times. He had the rare distinction of playing cricket for Somerset when he was still 18, a few weeks after he left School. He also continued with his Hockey, playing for Somerset, as well as for the West of England in two international trial matches in the spring of 1914. He was a regular visitor at King’s between 1909 and 1914, playing for the Old Brutonians as well as in invitational teams in football, hockey and cricket. In his last cricket game at Bruton, in May, 1914, he scored 99 to ensure victory for the Bruton Nomads over the School. Intellectually he was not especially gifted by nature, but by honest and conscientious perseverance he achieved results which brought credit alike to himself and to his School. In athletics he was eminently naturally endowed, but here again it was not the success – which seemed to come so easily to him – that appealed most forcibly to those who watched his performances, so much as the spirit in which that success was won.

All That is Best in Public School Life

Essentially a trier, he never knew what it was to be beaten and was never satisfied with anything short of his best. The peculiar charm of his personality will be readily recalled by all who knew him here: modest and unassuming, healthy in mind as in body, cheery and equable in temper. He stood for all that is best in public school life, and has left behind him a host of friends to whom his memory will always be a treasured recollection. It is sad indeed to think of his life being cut short on the very threshold of so promising a career, and it is sadder still to think of the domestic happiness which we had all anticipated for him, coming to so untimely an end.

Dental hygienist

I went for a check-up the other day. I was lying back in the chair, enjoying the relaxed atmosphere you always get when anticipating discomfort and pain, and after my teeth had been examined, the dentist took it upon himself to give me a lecture on how to look after my teeth better. I let it wash over me like pink mouthwash. But then I had to see the hygienist. She (they always seem to be women – why is that?) had a poke around, and then asked how many cigarettes I smoked each day. Through a mouthful of her latex-covered fingers, I announced that not only did I never inhale, I also never lit-up; I have never smoked. A momentary silence.

‘Alcohol units per week?’ she enquired, in what sounded like an accusation. Now, I already think that the introduction of alcohol units as a way of measuring your consumption is a government-sponsored way of taking all the fun out of one of the few pleasures left in life. Every time I open my mouth to take another sip of the smoky heaven that is Laphroaig, I think of the health secretary and it spoils my evening. ‘You do drink?’ she said. I mumbled something about 21, knowing that’s below the recommended daily allowance. ‘Mmmmm,’ she replied. Another, longer, silence.

‘A coffee drinker, then?’ she enquired. I nodded, and mentioned espresso. Although I could only see her eyes, and only dimly through both my safety goggles and hers, I could see she was pleased to have discovered my dirty, little, teeth-staining secret. Would she reach for the intercom to announce my filthy addiction to her colleagues and the other orally-disgusting customers sitting in the waiting room? Or perhaps she would wait until she and her co-workers were down at the spa, sipping mineral water, and she would shock them ‘..and then he told me he drank coffee...espresso!’, and some of the younger listeners might actually faint with horror.

‘Coffee, eh? I thought so,’ she smiled. I could only imagine she was smiling because, of course, my mouth was so foul that she was wearing protective sheeting around her lower face. She picked up a probe from her toolbox, and as she began I arched my back so that only my heels and the crown of my head touched the chair. Some time later, with the enamel gouged from my teeth, I lowered my buttocks back onto her recliner, and she began a lecture about the benefits of flossing, demonstrating on a little dental model. With the aid of a mirror held to my face by her able assistant, I was encouraged to practise on myself. She then informed me that I was to return in a few weeks so she could see how I had been getting along with my new dental-hygiene regimen.

What if everyone behaved like dentists? Imagine if you went to buy a new pair of trousers and after being made to stand awkwardly whilst you and your current trousers were minutely examined, you would then receive a lecture on how to wear the new trousers correctly; on how to avoid unpleasant places to sit; on how, because of your disgusting lifestyle, your trousers were prone to damage from revolting stains, and that you should therefore change your lifestyle to ensure trouser-longevity. And if you happened to look above your head during this extensive lecture, you would be faced with a large, grinning, pink elephant with immaculate trousers holding a lint removal roller in his trunk. Finally, you would then be asked to pop back into the store in a few weeks to check that you were adhering to these sartorial guidelines.

Having got through the dental ordeal, I went straight to the café and ordered a large espresso.

Windows 10

Windows 10 Preview on Lenovo Miix 2 8

OK, so to be honest, I cannot see any significant differences so far. But then, my device is touch, and I would have expected the touch experience to remain the same.

Note: I installed the 32 bit version of the preview on my tablet because I have a 32 bit version of Windows 8.1 on it now.

But there are some differences. The Modern UI version of Internet Explorer seems to have gone walkabout. I’m sure it will turn up, and I certainly hope so, because the Desktop version is difficult to use with fingers – even fingers as svelte as my own.

Windows Technical Preview Build 9841

The installation, in my case an upgrade retaining apps and settings, was easy. I just launched setup from the ISO. But, it failed numerous times, and I’m guessing it was lack of free disk space. Having cleared some clutter, it proceeded normally. Cannot give you any figures for free space required, and I could be wrong anyway. I failed to install with 4 GB free, and succeeded at 7.5 GB.
I have also installed the OS into a virtual machine which is running within Hyper-V on a 64 bit Windows 8.1 Enterprise client. I will report back on this as I discover more.

Summary. Not much to tell as yet.

One device

 

First of many - a Psion Organiser, circa 1988

I’ve been conducting an experiment recently. I’ve been trying to determine if a single device can address all, or even most, of my day-to-day computing needs.

A bit of background. Over the years, I have been searching for the elusive perfect device. The one that you can work on, use to play games, and still fits in a pocket. I started this search before the Internet existed, and before mobile phones were portable. As new devices came along, I tossed out the old and bought the new. But in truth, it’s only in the last year or so when that elusive device has finally come within my grasp. And yet, has it?

The Next Generation Psion, somewhere in the early nineties.

My study has focused on two devices: a large mobile phone (6 inch display) and a small tablet (8 inch display). They both run a variant of the Windows operating system. Specifically:

• Nokia Lumia 1520 with Windows Phone 8.1
• Lenovo Miix 2 8 with 32 bit Windows 8.1

Now, I am using both of these as consumer devices. I ‘consume’ content, such as webpages, Twitter, videos, games and so on. I haven’t really tried to do much serious work on either of them. In fact, I am typing this report sitting in front of my extremely large and powerful Windows 8.1 laptop (Core i7 and lots of memory and an enormous display).
Here are my thoughts.

The Nokia 1520 with Windows Phone 8.1

Nokia Lumia 1520

The Nokia is not my mobile phone, although I have just stuck a Nano SIM in it. I use an old Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray running an old version of Android for that because it’s small and light and fits in a pocket and I can take it anywhere. So, the Nokia is a secondary device.

When I opened the box, I loved it. It’s sleek, and smooth (is that the same as sleek?), and has a wonderful display (1920 by 1080 – although I cannot see the text on webpages without glasses). Windows Phone synced my apps and settings with my other devices as soon as I signed in with my Microsoft account (one benefit of operating devices within the same ecosystem).

And then I started using it as my only consumption device. I put away the tablet and just used this. And it’s pretty good. The web browser works reasonably well, although it’s not quite as slick as IE on the tablet.

I was able to configure email, Skype, Twitter and the rest with relative ease, and for a week, I seriously considered selling the tablet on eBay.

But then a couple of things I didn’t like.

First, Skype on Windows Phone does not support SMS texting. Now, you’ll say ‘but it’s a phone, use the SMS feature of your telecom provider. And I agree, but I have always used Skype for SMS, and I want to carry on. So, this is irritating. It’s not the phone’s fault, nor even the operating system’s. It’s the version of the app that Microsoft provide. I guess I can live without it now I do have a SIM installed.

Second, and this is a big deal, the Bluetooth on the handset doesn’t support a keyboard profile. I hear you saying ‘what on earth would you want to add a keyboard to a mobile phone for?’ And I would remind you we’re searching for the one device you can stick in your day bag and do everything on, so adding a keyboard is an issue, potentially, at least. Without a keyboard, I cannot work. I don’t know my touch type rate, but its pretty fast on a proper keyboard, even the small (but perfectly formed) Microsoft Wedge I have. I am, after all, a writer.

Thirdly, there is not much inking support in the operating system. With the tablet, I can choose to use handwriting recognition as an alternative to the (crappy) onscreen keyboard. Not here. It’s the keyboard, onscreen only, or nothing.

Fourthly, and another killer. The micro USB port used for charging does not appear to support my OTG cable with the consequence that I cannot add memory sticks to the mix when I want to copy files or even to play media from an old memory stick. That’s irritating. It means I must plug the phone into my laptop and drag files across from that. I can live with that process, but someday, I’ll be out of the office, and someone will offer me a file on a memory stick and …. well, you get the idea.
Minor gripes include the fact that I cannot use Outlook for my email and contacts etc. I must use the Mail, Calendar and People apps. They’re OK, and in some respects, pretty good for a mobile phone, but this is inconsistent with the tablet. Interestingly, I have a POP3 email account. While the Mail app on the Nokia is cool with that, the same Mail app on the Windows tablet won’t let me access the mailbox, so I HAVE to use Outlook.

There is a procedure provided my Microsoft in which you use an Outlook.com account that acts as a middleman to bypass this issue. Essentially, your Outlook.com account retrieves your POP3 mail. You can then retrieve that mail from Outlook.com using IMAP. But I tried to get this to work and after an hour, I gave up. I’ve been working with Microsoft products for over 25 years, and it’s beyond me. Microsoft, please add POP support to your Mail app.

While we’re on the subject of Office, which is provided on the handset, I have found that slightly annoying. A large number of my documents won’t open in editing mode because of versioning issues. What? Work harder, guys. I shouldn’t have to save different versions of files to open on different devices. Although, of course, without a proper keyboard, editing is somewhat pointless anyway.

Having said all that, there are some things I love about the device.

In no particular order, I love the Nokia mapping apps. You can even download the maps to make them available offline FOR FREE. You can also choose to use a surfer dude to voice your navigation to your destination. He signs off with cool ‘No need to thank me, dude. It’s what I do. It’s who I am.’
I like Kids’ Corner. You just enable this feature and decide what your kids can access (games, movies, apps and whatever) and then you hand them your handset. They can only access what you setup. It’s a doddle.

There’s plenty of other stuff to like, and although I could never use the Nokia 1520 as a phone (because for me, it’s just too big for that), I have been carrying it around it my man bag for a couple of weeks and have yet to find a situation when I wished I’d had the tablet instead.

The Lenovo Miix with proper Windows 8.1

Lenovo Miix 2 8

I previously had a ten inch tablet running Windows 8. I found this to be just too big to carry around daily. It didn’t fit in my man bag, and it certainly wouldn’t squeeze into a pocket. Also, Windows 8 was pretty frustrating. eBay came to the rescue, and I managed to liquidate the device for the same as I paid from Argos.

I bought the Miix 2 8 because it was too cheap not to. £199 quid including shipping got me the 32GB version.

Now, a lot of folk bang on about available storage. They complain that after Windows is installed, there’s only 8GB left. Well, there is a hidden recovery partition that provides the fantastic feature of total device recovery for the small cost of about 5GB or disk space. So, zap that. No other OS provides  that. Now you’re up to 13GB, which is pretty good in a £200 device. And then you can add more storage through a Micro SD card (which you can move between Windows devices fairly seamlessly) and you can even plug memory sticks into the Micro USB port via an OTG cable.

Many people call storage ‘memory’, which, of course, it’s not. Pundits that cannot differentiate between storage and memory should be ignored.

Note that if you have enabled BitLocker on your SD card, Windows Phone seems unable to read the card. If you don’t know what BitLocker is, read on; this won’t matter to you.

What I like about this device is that because it’s proper Windows, I can, if I like, install any desktop app that I want. I installed Memory Map and then the WW1 trench maps I own. Brilliant. 

Note that one MAJOR frustration is that Windows 8.1 does not assign virtual comports to navigational software, such as commonly available GPS systems (including Memory Map). This means that although the tablet knows where it is on the surface of the earth, it won’t share this information with any desktop apps. There is supposedly a workaround piece of software available, but as with the Outlook.com issue above, I was woefully inadequate to the task of getting it to work.

Although the display has a lower resolution (1280 by 1024 I think), it’s actually more usable. 1920 displays sound great, but on a device this small, that can prove a challenge for all but the youngest eyes. It’s good enough to use all the apps and play all my videos.

And, of course, I can pair my keyboard, and mouse, to the device and work on it. I have used it to write some content, and it was fine. I wouldn’t want to write a novel on it (not being flippant here – I actually write novels), but for when the onscreen keyboard is not enough (and for me, that’s anything beyond simple text speak), it’s very handy. Mind you, when you add the 300 grams for the tablet, and 500 for the keyboard and its cover, and whatever for the mouse, you might as well have an Ultrabook and be done with it.

I like the Lenovo. BUT, and it’s a big but, I have never taken it out unless I planned on using it. That’s planned. I take the Nokia out just in case, even though I know I shan’t really need it. But the Lenovo is just a bit big for that. Even at only 8 inches.

Summary

I thought that at last, I had reached computing nirvana. The promised land of the single device. But I think that’s a fairy tale. It doesn’t exist – at least, not yet. So for now, I use the Nokia most of the time to view webpages, watch videos and the like. For work, I use a laptop. And the tablet? Well, that seems to be sitting on a shelf. In truth, I shall probably load Windows 9 onto it when I get the preview, and then we’ll see.

Rogues' Gallery

I've used all these over the years. They've all been OK in their own way, but never quite achieved what I was looking for.

Compaq Pocket PC - with Windows CE

This Jornada was a pretty good device. Again, Windows CE - but a 'proper keyboard'

This Sharp Zaurus ran Linux. Slide down the bottom to expose a keyboard

Windows Phone, about 2007 I think

Captain A S M Summers, Royal Flying Corps

Captain Summers' Cavalry Sword

A friend asked me to take a sword along to the Antiques Roadshow. It’s a First World War cavalry sword. My friend had done quite a bit of research about the blade, having determined from it’s serial number to whom it belonged.
The then Lieutenant A S M Summers took delivery of his sword in October 1909 from Wilkinson Sword. When war broke out, this former Yeoman officer was with the 19th Hussars. This regiment was attached to the infantry divisions in the BEF for the early months of the war, and Lt.Summers was assigned to the machine-gun detachment of his squadron.
He later joined the Royal Flying Corps as a pilot, and saw action with 60 Squadron RFC. Amongst his peers in August and September 1916 was Albert Ball, VC. Captain Summers, by then a flight leader, was killed in action on 15th September 1916 during the Battle of Flers–Courcelette.
I tracked down the following article that explains how he died. He was involved in an attack on enemy observation balloons using a new air-to-air weapons system.



Summers in front of his Morane fighter

In 1914 aircraft armament was a carbine in the cockpit and maybe a grappling hook trailing behind and below. Then, in only a matter of months, fighter plane fire power advanced to machine guns that fired through a rotating propeller and even wing mounted rockets which were crude but effective enough to be used by both the Allies and the Germans air services.

First air-to-air missile combat victory, Lt. A. M. Walters RFC Sept. 16, 1916 at the Battle of the River Somme

And so this sets up one of the great forgotten stories of WW I— a British pilot scores the very first aerial victory by air-to-air missile but then his accomplishment—and name—is lost in the drama and fog of battle. And even more ironically, this war fighter’s exploit was recorded in a large dramatic painting by a famous artist, but he was misidentified and so his historic action has only came to light when the painting of the air battle was discovered on the wall of a modest house in Bristol, Rhode Island almost 100 years after the historic aerial event.

The man who made air-to-air missile ordinance operational was Lt. Yves Le Prieur, a French army officer assigned to Japan before the war and who extrapolated the idea of turning fireworks into an airborne weapons system. Le Prieur’s rockets were just a cardboard tube filled with black powder, attached to a wooden stick fitted with a triangular knife blade to form a spear point. They were far from accurate and a little dicey when it came time to throw the electrical ignition. But a few forward thinking military minds recognized the possibilities, and for a short time in 1916, Le Prieur fire rockets became an important factor in air war strategy.
The story of Le Prieur’s rockets is fascinating and amusing. Le Prieur had to show the Generals that his idea worked before they would install them on an airship. So the inventive inventor took a Piccard-Pictet roadster, strapped on an actual airplane wing to which his rockets were attached, and then shot down a runway at 80 mph, blazing away. Apparently, whatever was destroyed this first rocket salvo did not embarrass anyone, and so M. Le Prieur became the first person to effectively prove that air-to-air missiles were a realistic war-fighter option.
All this then circles back to the story of the long forgotten painting (above) by an artist called Farre who personally captioned his work as an exploit of a “Lt. Summers.” This was to later cause much confusion because when research on the painting began, there was lots of information about an ace named Lt. Summers—but that fellow flew a different aircraft and all his victories were in 1918.
Finally, members of the League of WW I Historians solved the mystery, and here is the (edited) story they unravelled:

On September 15, 1916—the opening day of the Third Phase of the massive Battle of the Somme— RFC headquarters wanted the German balloons in the sector of the Flers-Courcelette assault all destroyed. General Trenchard (in command the RFC) visited No. 60 Squadron (which included the famous ace Albert Ball) and asked for volunteers to attack the balloons. Capt. Ball, 2Lt. A M Walters, 2Lt Euan Gilchrist, and Capt. A.S.M. Summers all volunteered. They all took off in (French) Nieuports armed with LePrieur Rockets.
Albert Ball and 2/Lt Walters found their balloons hauled down. They therefore attacked a formation of German planes. Ball fired off eight rockets but missed so he shot down the enemy fighter with conventional machine-gun fire. His wingman, 2Lt A M Walters, fired his rockets at one of the LVG two-seaters and saw a rocket hit the LVG in the fuselage, setting it aflame. The flaming LVG fell at Bapaume. This may very well have been the first air-to-air rocket victory against a heavier than air target.
Meanwhile, Gilchrist had destroyed his balloon and another was also destroyed and credited to Capt. A S M Summers, who was sadly shot down in flames by the anti-aircraft fire. Summers died in Nieuport 16, military serial number A136.
So, it was not actually Summers but Walters who destroyed an enemy airplane with LePrieur rockets. Lt. Walters fired 4 rockets. One hit the LVG and brought it down.

And there you have it. Lt. Walters, who actually made aviation history, and has languished invisible for a century, and would be forever unknown except for a diligent artist who captured that fleeting moment in a scene of celestial beauty and dramatic death.

This painting ended up in the USA because in 1918, the French government sent the artist and his war time artwork on a tour of the United States, ostensibly to raise money for the widows and orphans of slain pilots, but more likely to increase support for the US as it mobilized troops entering the European conflict. This painting was purchased in New York at the Anderson Galleries during the first exhibit on the tour, and then stayed with that family for three generations.