William Wallace Allison Burn

Qualifying as a pilot the following year, he was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps soon after the outbreak of the First World War and sent to Mesopotamia to serve with the Indian Expeditionary Force (IEF) there.

His aircraft was forced down with mechanical problems while on a flight to Basra and he and his pilot were killed by hostile Arab tribesmen.

His parents, Forbes Burn, a station manager, and his wife Isabel née Ayers were originally from Christchurch in New Zealand.

[1][2] By 1913, there was increasing awareness in the New Zealand Military Forces of the potential role aviation could play in defending the country's coastline against naval intruders.

[6] As its aircraft were unarmed, the role of the Half Flight was to conduct reconnaissance missions, supporting the advance of the IEF's 6th Division up the Tigris by gathering information of the movements and dispositions of the Ottoman forces.

Burn was the observer on a subsequent flight to Kut, mapping out a route through an uncharted part of the Tigris region.

Armed with revolvers, Burn and Merz attempted a fighting retreat back to a distant refueling station but were killed.

Arab witnesses were able to provide details of the fates of Burn and Merz, who were the first military aviators from their respective countries to be killed in action.

[10][11] Burn's name is recorded on the Basra Memorial, which commemorates the nearly 40,500 personnel of the British Empire who were killed in operations in Mesopotamia during the First World War and the immediate postwar period.