Captured First World War pilot's note reunited with family in Ottawa

In May 1917, a German fighter plane made an unusual delivery to a British airfield in France.

A brick fell from the sky. It carried two folded notes, one in German, the other in English.

"Herewith a German patrol sends you news of Lieut. Mactavish and Captain Allen," the first note read.

Capt. Arthur Spencer Allen was dead, but Duncan Mactavish survived after the Germans shot down the BE2e reconnaissance plane he piloted during the Battle of Arras.

It was his first and last flight; Mactavish was captured. But before he headed to Germany as a prisoner of war, his captors allowed him to write a few lines in pencil.

"In the First World War, there was a much more genteel custom whereby if an aircraft was shot down, the pilot, if he survived the shooting down, was allowed to write a note and send it across to his squadron commander," said Anthony Inglis Howard-Williams, the grandson of Mactavish's commander.

One hundred and seven years later, Inglis Howard-Williams still has Mactavish's note. He recently brought it across the ocean from London to Ottawa to recreate a tradition tying together two families.

The tradition started when Inglis Howard-Williams' grandfather, the former squadron commander, died in the late 1960s.

"My father was going through his effects and found one of these notes and he thought, wouldn't it be wonderful if some of his family were still alive?" he said. "Wouldn't they like to hear this story?"

After a lengthy search, he said, his father learned that Mactavish himself was still alive and living in Winnipeg. They met in 1976. Inglis Howard-Williams still has the photo of his father with Mactavish, then in his 80s, holding his note.

That could have been the end of the story, had Michael Payne not started digging into the papers of his mother-in-law, Barbara Welch, Mactavish's daughter.

"We discovered this material, my wife and I," said Payne. "When I looked at it, I thought, this is an amazing story."

He had a copy of the note. As a trained historian, he wanted to know more.

Inglis Howard-Williams isn't hard to find. He's a famous orchestra conductor in London and an ambassador for the Royal Air Force Association. Payne said he thought there was an "outside chance" he might still have the letter.