Billy - a life in pictures

The early photographs show Billy as an infant and then a young child on Robben Island. He remained there until 1928, a year after his father’s death. Returning to Kinson in Dorset, we see him as a young boy and then as a young man.

Joining the RAF Reserve in 1939, we capture his flying training before he is commissioned in 1940. Official War Office photographs of the Hampden bombers were taken on his 21st birthday, and by unbelievable coincidence, it seems his squadron, and indeed his aircraft (AE 257-X), was chosen for the photoshoot - it’s therefore highly likely that these photographs show Billy at the controls.

The last photographs show the Sage War Cemetery where his body was eventually taken after with War. The final picture hung above his mother’s chair in her drawing room, until she died in 1989.