100 Kiwi Stories: Fatal flight of a Kiwi Canadian airman

Son of prolific New Zealand artist dies after his biplane is shot while on patrol in Belgium in 1917.

71 Frank Bullock-Webster took the long road to the Western Front.

The eldest son of Harry Bullock-Webster, Frank went to King's College and worked in Waikato before following in his father's footsteps and heading to Canada to join the Hudson's Bay Company.

Established in the 17th century, the company owned a vast area of Canada and built up a lucrative fur trading business. Harold Bullock-Webster worked as a clerk for the company for eight years, until he found a better job in New Zealand with lawyer, politician and "Queen St farmer" Thomas Russell.

A prolific artist, Bullock-Webster's collection of drawings showing hunting and trapping activities are part of the Hudson's Bay archives.

He performed a similar service for his New Zealand employer, and his collection of diaries in the Waikato Art Museum contains illustrations of people and animals from colonial New Zealand.

His son Frank joined the Hudson's Bay Company in 1905 at 17 and was sent to the Yukon as a clerk. Company files suggest Frank was not cut out for the job.

His "somewhat stiff dull character" did not find favour but his assessors saw promise that the strapping young Kiwi - he was more than 1.8m tall - was "shrewd enough" to do better at his next posting at Laird in the Canadian mid-west. Instead he left the company and headed for the goldfields in 1906, his employment record shows.

Almost a decade later, Frank Bullock-Webster joined the Canadian Forces as an officer in the machine-gun corps. He sailed for England and went to the front in early 1916, only to fall ill with trench fever. After recovering, Bullock-Webster transferred to the Royal Flying Corps as an instructor in aerial gunnery.

By September 1917 Lieutenant Bullock-Webster was with the 23 Squadron based near Poperinge in Belgium. He took off on an offensive patrol on the 20th in a Spad 7 biplane.

At some point he was hit and had to land. He died the same day.

He was buried at Menin Rd South Military Cemetery. His name can be found on a war memorial in Lloydminster, Canada.

100 Kiwi Stories runs every Monday and Thursday. To read the first 70 stories in this series go to tinyurl/nzhworld.warone