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This small monument is on the border
of the road between Hamel and Bouzencourt, 50 meters south of this hamlet.
Shaped as a truncated column, it is supposed to symbolise lives suddenly
stopped. The place is a little square with some ornemental bushes and especially
two singular pine-trees. The inscriptions are in French.
On 15th of May 1918, at 12:50, a British plane crashed there after being attacked by three German planes. This was the 6th victory for a German ace : Lieutenant Johann Janzen of Jasta 6 flying a Fokker DRI. |
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Lieutenant Francis Leopold Mond
("Captain" according to the inscription) and Lieutenant Edgard Meath
Martyn from 57th squadron, Royal Flying Corps, were flying a DH4 bomber,
(the A7645, see picture on the left) and were back from a raid against
an ammunition dump at Bapaume. They died above the British lines and are
buried in Doullens communal cemetery extension. The pilot, Mond, an Englishman
from a wealthy family, was 22 years old and had first served in the Royal
Field Artillery. He is known to be memorialized somewhere in a fine statuette
of St.George by the famous sculptor sir George Frampton. Martyn, the observer,
a Canadian from North Bay (Ontario), was 25 and had started the war in
the 2nd Canadian Mounted Rifles. Before, he was a contractor.
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A DH4 Bomber
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A "V" (for "Victory") and a cross
of Lorraine are engraved on the base of the monument. These symbols of
the Resistance date from World War II and remind in a way that some allied
pilots have been hiden by local people during the Occupation. The site
of the monument was saved from farming worn down. Hamel municipality take
care of it because the place is not in charge of the Commonwealth War Graves.
The Monument is said to be yearly visited by a parent of one of the men
who died there.
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