An air battle depicted on a huge mural dedicated in Carleton Place last Tuesday marks a sky duel that happened April 21, 1918, and still reverberates through this town.
It’s nine metres wide and more than six metres tall, and shows a red German Fokker triplane being attacked by a British Sopwith. Native son Roy Brown is in the process of shooting down the Red Baron (Manfred von Richthofen), who with 80 kills to his credit was the First World War’s undisputed top air ace.
The air battle happened above the muddy battlefield of the Somme, and over the heads of thousands of Australian riflemen. Modern technology has recently been used to claim the fatal shot came from the ground.
If the replay is correct, nobody would be happier than Roy Brown.
In a 1997 interview, Brown’s brother Howard, younger by 12 years and at age 97, told me Roy was never comfortable carrying the title of the man who killed Richthofen. Any time he was asked, Roy’s reply was always the same.
“God, I hope not.”
Confirmed air “kills” were not handed out easily, and using information provided by eye witnesses and medical officers who examined the scene, British air authorities credited the downing to Brown.
“That’s our story and we’re sticking to it,” said Carleton Place Councillor Rob Probert, master of ceremonies at the dedication. He’s also a member of the Roy Brown Society. Only a few steps from the mural on Bridge Street, the town’s main drag, is the Roy Brown Museum.
In that air battle Roy was 24 and Richthofen 22. When Brown returned to base he filled out a combat report that said his attack on the red plane was “indecisive.” With the change to “decisive,” he wrote a letter home, saying: “If he had been my dearest friend, I could not have felt greater sorrow.”
Air war was new and the daring young men in their flying machines became something like gladiators. Their arena was the air, the Colosseum was the front, and newspapers became the screaming crowd. It was a ritualistic method of killing. If a pilot was downed in enemy territory he was given a funeral with full military honours, pictures were taken, and a memorial package was tied to a black ribbon and dropped over his home airfield.
The Red Baron was the most famous air fighter of his day and his death was felt ’round the world. Pictures appeared in newspapers, purporting to show Roy Brown at Richthofen’s funeral. Howard said the picture was from another funeral. It would have been bad form, according to the unwritten code, to attend the funeral of a man you killed.
Roy Brown had a hard war. Like almost every other fit young man in the town, he “answered the call”. With his best friend and hockey teammate, Stearne Tighe Edwards, they opted for the air war. To join it, they had to show up with pilots’ licenses. They earned them in Dayton, Ohio, at a flying school operated by Wilbur and Orville Wright. The cost was $600 each.
Roy was so badly injured in a crash that he was placed in a temporary morgue to await burial. Edwards went to say goodbye, and detected signs of life. Military medics said he couldn’t be saved. Edwards used a motorcycle to get a doctor from a nearby town, and Brown survived.
Nov. 11, 1918, to celebrate the end of the war, Edwards took a fighter up, and came over the airfield to do a victory roll. He crashed. Now it was Brown’s turn to sit in a hospital room and coax a friend to live. Edwards died two weeks later.
A short stroll north from the mural is St. James Anglican Church, and in its foyer is a memorial plaque to Edwards. It went up in 1920. Roy Brown was asked to unveil it and say a few words. Howard was there. He said Roy removed the cover, but said nothing. “He cried.”
Roy Brown’s great feat during that war was that after he became a squadron leader he never lost a man in battle. He developed a method that made every new pilot stay out of his first action and, from the air, observe at a distance.
Brown had war damage and died in 1944 at his home in Stouffville, Ont. He was 50. With the rise of Nazism in the ’30s, Brown was advised to carry a pistol. The knights of the air were becoming gunslingers.