Arthur Spurling

Arthur Rowe Spurling, DFC (19 May 1896 – 1984) was a Bermudian who served during the First World War as an infantryman and an aviator, becoming an ace credited with six aerial victories.

Although required to fulfil their roles as part of the Bermuda Garrison, both units immediately proposed sending drafts to the Western Front.

The contingent, consisting of Captain Richard Tucker and 88 other ranks,[2] left Bermuda for England on 7 May 1915, travelling to Canada, then crossing the Atlantic in company with a much larger Canadian draft.

In July 1917, he received a commission in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC),[5] one of sixteen BVRC enlisted men who would become officers while serving in France.

Newly commissioned officers were not obliged to return to their original units, but could choose to join any of the regiments or corps of the British Army.

Spurling was one of two who chose to join the RFC, the air arm of the British Army (the other was Henry Joseph Watlington),[6][7] although more than a dozen other Bermudians would reach the RFC by different routes (including another BVRC rifleman, later Major Cecil Montgomery-Moore, who detached from the Corps in Bermuda, and Second Lieutenant Lennock de Graaf Godet, who had left his studies at the University of Oxford with the declaration of war).

49 Squadron RAF in July 1918, flying the Airco DH.9, a light bomber with two crew members (a pilot and an observer who doubled as a defensive gunner).

Despite the disadvantages of his flying a bomber and being vastly outnumbered, Spurling dived through the centre of the formation, shooting down one machine in flames; two others were seen to be in a spin, one of which crashed.

Five of them then closed on his machine, but by skillful manoeuvring Spurling enabled his observer, Sergeant Frank Bell, to shoot down two of these in flames.