RAF losses in North-West Europe began on only the second day of the war.
The funeral above, conducted with full military honours, took place in October 1939. It is thought to be that of Percy Edmund Boyce Sproston, from 144 Squadron, who was killed on 29 September 1939.
During the war, German burial methods ran the whole gamut from the meticulously respectful to the lazily slipshod, the latter style becoming increasingly prevalent as the bombing campaign became more intensive and the war was gradually lost.
More information on the German treatment of the RAF dead will be added at a later date.