224980 Sgt Harry Shirley Foulsham Royal Flying Corps 6 Squadron from:36 East Dulwich Rd, London SE Shirley Foulsham joined the army on 21st October 1914 serving with the City of London Yeomanry. He transferred to RFC in 1916 and was a Sergeant Observer and aerial gunner on photographic reconnaissance, flying in RE8 aircraft with 6 squadron in Belgium. I have aerial photographs taken by him. He is in a photograph on this website with a sergeant pilot/navigator wearing goggles under the details of Hector Cameron Gardner.
Shirley Foulsham, who was my father, was shot down on 3rd September 1917 and captured near Menin with a machine gun bullet in his left wrist and taken to Courtrai Hospital for 3 days before going to Magdeburg Hospital in Germany as a p.o.w. from 9th September. He was repatriated on 12th January 1918. He was debriefed on arrival in UK and the record is in the National Archive Ref: WO/161/100/112. He convalesced on a farm in Stradbroke, Suffolk where his father had been a dispensing chemist. He married Martha Catling who was the farmer`s eldest daughter. He later became a representative for Fisons Fertilisers. In WW2 he became a Captain in the Home Guard and a town, district and county Councillor and JP. He died on 9th December 1972.
|