THE curator of a city museum has described the poignant moment a fighter ace's 'unique' propeller grave marker was returned to the place he died.
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.
Now the monument to Lieutenant Herbert Cutler is on loan and will go on display as part of a temporary exhibition at the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres in Belgium.
It has been around 100 years since the heartbroken parents of the fighter ace brought the cross back to Worcestershire as a memento of their courageous son who made the ultimate sacrifice for king and country.
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. Indeed, there may be only one other in existence.
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Colonel Stamford Cartwright, the honorary curator of The Worcestershire Soldier Museum, delivered the object in person last week.
He said: "l think what hit me most of all was when l landed in France in transit to Ypres Belgium and thinking that the propeller was returning to France after around 100 years.
"That was quite a poignant moment. The museum in Ypres are overjoyed with the loan and confirmed that although they knew of one other, supposedly in a church, the church authorities could not locate it. How wonderful that it has received the care and attention from the family and the Museum of the Yeomanry Cavalry over the years guaranteeing its survival."
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 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.
Only child Herbert Cecil Cutler was just 26 when he died, a great shock to his father, a stocks and shares broker.
The marker first came to Colonel Cartwright 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.
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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