Grave location: Plot 6, Row C, Grave 15.

A standard Commonwealth Grave Commission (CWGC) inscribed gravestone.

Lieutenant Van Dyke Fernald was born in 1897 in San Francisco, California.  He was a student at Trinity College, Oxford when he naturalized to join the British Army in 1915.  He was shot down at Godega, near Conegliano, Italy, in July 1918. He may have accidentally broken formation – often a fatal mistake – but his fellow officers believed he had hung back deliberately at the end of a patrol in order to engage the enemy. His plane was either hit by anti-aircraft fire or attacked in the air – a letter dropped by the Austrians stated simply that he and his observer, 2nd Lieutenant William Watkins, had been killed. Whether they were killed instantly or died of wounds is unclear. In October 1918 two periodicals devoted to the new art of aviation, the Aeroplane and Flight, reported that Fernald had died as a prisoner in Austrian hands’.

Major Billy Barker, a Canadian ace (whose exploits inspired Hemingway’s ‘The Snows of Kilimanjaro’), offered this: ‘Your son was a splendid pilot and full of dash, and I feel sure that whatever happened he put up a good show.’ The commanding officer, Colonel Lincoln, met Josephine in London, and told her that her son and Lieutenant Watkins had earlier finished their ‘stunt’ for the day, but had volunteered to go out again. (From the London Times Review)

About Fernald from the CWGC file:

139th Sqdn. 

Royal Air Force

and 3rd Bn. 

The Queen's (Royal West Surrey Regiment)

Son of Chester Bailey, a popular author and playwright, and Josephine Harker, of San Francisco, California. An American, he became a naturalized Englishman in order to join the British Army.

A bit about the cemetery:  The village of Tezze was captured by the Austrians in the advance in the autumn of 1917 and remained in their hands until the Allied forces crossed the River Piave at the end of October 1918.

Many of those who died on the north-east side of the river during the Passage of the Piave during the Battle of Vittorio Veneto are buried in Tezze British Cemetery. It now contains over 300 Commonwealth burials of the First World War.

Text on the gravestone:

(SYMBOL OF THE ROYAL AIR FORCE)

LIEUTENANT

VAN DYKE FERNALD

ROYAL AIR FORCE

23^RD JULY 1918 AGE 20

(SYMBOL OF CROSS)

AGAINST THE BARBARIANS

FREELY HE GAVE UP

AN EVER JOYOUS LIFE.