A unique 'propeller cross' grave marker which honours a dashing World War One fighter pilot killed in action is to be loaned to an overseas museum.
The propeller, fashioned into a cross, is a treasured centrepiece of the collection at The Worcestershire Soldier at Worcester City Art Gallery and Museum in Foregate Street.
Inscribed with the name of Lieutenant HC Cutler of No. 24 Squadron (Royal Flying Corps) and recording the date of his death in action on May 10, 1917, there are few objects to compare to it for sheer rarity, says the museum's curator.
Now it will be returned to Flanders to go on display there as part of a temporary exhibition.
The de Havilland DH2 fighter was part of the world's first single-seat fighter squadron but, by early 1917, was outclassed by enemy planes.
The wooden propeller was salvaged from the wreckage of the plane in which Lieutenant Cutler died and transformed into a memorial cross to him, the plaque secured by .303 bullets. He survived in the skies just under two months before he was killed in action.
It is now destined to be moved temporarily to the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres in Belgium by 77-year-old Colonel Stamford Cartwright, the honorary curator of The Worcestershire Soldier Museum.
Colonel Cartwright said he would transport the precious object in early April and it will be displayed at the museum from April 14 for 10 months.
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"It will be great for people from across the world to see this incredible object," said Colonel Cartwright who commanded one of the RFC successor squadrons, the 67th Queen's Own Warwickshire and Worcestershire Yeomanry.
The In Flanders Fields Museum learned of the artefact because it was featured in The Archaeology of the Royal Flying Corps by Melanie Winterton.
Colonel Cartwright described the soldier as 'a handsome devil' who looked like a '1920s filmstar'.
Only child Herbert Cecil Cutler was just 26 when he died, a great shock to his father, a stocks and shares broker.
The day before the terrible news, he received letters from his son, written on the day of his death.
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In the letters, his son recorded details of a narrow escape after his aeroplane was shot away.
Colonel Stamford Cartwright will personally deliver the poignant object to the In Flanders Fields Museum.
It first came to him in 1982, brought to his home in Ombersley, rescued from a garden in Bromsgrove, possibly the home of the lieutenant's parents who wanted to remember the sacrifice of their only son.
Lieutenant Cutler volunteered for war service and was selected for officer training.
He was commissioned as 2nd Lieutenant of the Queen's Own Worcestershire Hussars (the Worcester Yeomanry) on March 24, 1915.
He began military life as an officer with the 2/1st Worcestershire Yeomanry and trained at Cirencester Park in the Spring of 1915.
Lieutenant Cutler is buried in Templeux-le-Guerard British Cemetery in the Somme.
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