Ōtaki College Everiss Scholarship winners Krisha Modi and Jess Thomsen (centre), with their Scottish hosts, honour RNZAF Pilot Officer Carlyle Everiss at his memorial plinth in Cowie, Scotland, where he died in an air accident in 1941. The two students travelled to Scotland in 2023. Photo / Courtesy of the Highland Reserve Forces and Cadet Association
Ōtaki College Everiss Scholarship winners Krisha Modi and Jess Thomsen (centre), with their Scottish hosts, honour RNZAF Pilot Officer Carlyle Everiss at his memorial plinth in Cowie, Scotland, where he died in an air accident in 1941. The two students travelled to Scotland in 2023. Photo / Courtesy of the Highland Reserve Forces and Cadet Association
Gisborne-born Spitfire pilot Carlyle Everiss continues to be honoured in Scotland 84 years after his death. On the eve of Anzac Day 2025, the Gisborne Herald’s Wynsley Wrigley recounts the career of a man who it is believed sacrificed his life to save innocent villagers during the Battle of Britain.
Scottish civilians hold their breath as a pilot struggles to control his stricken Spitfire above the village of Cowie.
They do not know the pilot is a New Zealander – Carlyle Gray Everiss, born in Gisborne in 1914.
It is October 7, 1941 - more than a year after the Royal Air Force (RAF) persevered in the Battle of Britain.
But the RAF and the Luftwaffe continue to battle each other and losses are high on both sides.
The villagers initially fear their homes may be struck by the aircraft but still despair as the Spitfire descends into a deadly tailspin and strikes a nearby railway siding.
Villagers rush to the crash site to pull Everiss from the burning Spitfire, but the trainee pilot dies a short time later.
It is generally accepted Everiss, instead of bailing out, sacrificed himself to prevent his Spitfire from striking homes in the village.
The Scots still gratefully honour the pilot each year with a memorial service, but his story is little known in Gisborne.
Military records show that when Everiss enlisted in 1939, his father Fred was “late of Gisborne”, mother Murielle lived in Hamilton and wife Phyliss resided in Te Kūiti.
Everiss enlisted in the Royal New Zealand Air Force and began pilot training in January 1941.
A copy of the portrait of Kiwi Spitfire pilot Carlisle Everiss, named The Face of Courage, which is on display in the bowling club of Cowie, Scotland. Everiss died in an air accident at Cowie in 1941 during World War II.
After gaining his pilot’s wings in Canada, Everiss was sent to the United Kingdom and posted to No 58 Operational Training Unit at Grangemouth, beside the Firth of Forth in central Scotland and just 10km from the mining village of Cowie.
He was flying near Cowie, accompanied by another Spitfire, when his aircraft developed engine problems, leading to his death.
Everiss, a Pilot Officer, lies at rest at Grandsable Cemetery in Grangemouth.
John Craig was one of those watching villagers who pulled Everiss out of his Spitfire in 1941.
Craig travelled to New Zealand in 1979 and tracked down a brother-in-law of Everiss in Auckland, who gave him a photograph of the pilot in RNZAF uniform.
A painting, based on the photograph of Carlyle Everiss and titled The Face of Courage, remains on permanent display today at the Cowie Bowling Club.
A cadet of the Highland Reserve Forces and Cadets Association places a wreath on the grave of Pilot Officer Carlyle Everiss in Grangemouth, Scotland in 2023. The Gisborne-born pilot remained in his stricken Spitfire to ensure it did not crash into the village in 1941. Photo / Courtesy of the Highland Reserve Forces and Cadets Association
In 2007, villagers raised £12,000 ($27,320 today) to create a bronze bust of the New Zealander, which sits on a plinth on a site outside the bowling club and is named the Carlyle Everiss Memorial.
“No one here underestimates the contribution Carlyle Everiss made in sacrificing his own life for the sake of not just the villagers at that time, but for all generations to come,” councillor Gerard O’Brien said when the bronze bust was erected.
Today, an Everiss scholarship allows students from Ōtaki College to reciprocate a New Zealand scholarship for Scottish students from Robert Gordon College to travel to New Zealand in memory of Archibald Bisset Smith VC, captain of the New Zealand Shipping Company vessel, the SS Ōtaki.
Smith was killed in battle with a German raider in 1917.
The students visit Everiss’ grave in Grangemouth before attending an annual wreath-laying ceremony at the Carlyle Everiss Memorial.
The service is also attended by representatives of the RNZAF and RAF, Lord Lieutenant of Stirlingshire and Falkirk, and representatives of Robert Gordon’s College in Aberdeen, St Margaret’s Primary School, Highland Reserve Forces and Cadets Association and Cowie Bowling Club.
The first Everiss scholars travelled together to Scotland in 2023 after their trips were delayed by Covid-19.
The 2025 Everiss scholar, Maddie Simpson, at February’s service, read the poem High Flight, which was written by Royal Canadian Air Force pilot John Gillespie Magee.
He was also killed on a training flight in 1941 in England.
The poem became well-known in modern times after US President Ronald Reagan quoted it following the deaths of all seven crew members of the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded in mid-air in 1986.
