Captain Walter Llewellyn Clark was the son of Walter Clark and Emma Martha Clark née Goulding whose birth was registered in the 2nd quarter of 1889 in the Guildford registration district and who was baptised there on 12 June 1889. His father was a draper and his mother was a milliner. In the 1891 census he is shown as living at 113 High Street, Guildford, Surrey, with his parents, his siblings: Ethel Blanche Kathleen Clark (b.1887) and Hilda Marguerite Clark (b.1891), together with two female domestic servants, a lady's help, a monthly nurse, a female draper's apprentice, a draper's shop-woman, a female dresser and two milliner's shop-women. The 1901 census confirms he was still at 113 High Street, Guildford, with his parents, his sister Hilda, together with a governess, a cook and two housemaids.
From 25 January 1901 to February 1915 he was a student at the Royal Academy and in the 1911 census he is shown as an architectural student living at 'Douglas' The Grove, Church End, Finchley, with his widowed mother, his sister Blanche and a female general domestic servant.
Joining the 28th (County of London) Battalion, The London Regiment (Artists' Rifles) at the outbreak of World War One, in December 1914 he was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the 15th Battalion, the Duke of Cambridge's Own (Middlesex) Regiment and on 29 October 1915 he obtained his Royal Aero Club Aviators' Certificate, No.1972, flying a Maurice Farman Biplane at the Military School, Shoreham, Sussex. The certificate gave his home address as 15 Grosvenor Road, Westminster and his date of birth as 15 March 1890. This date of birth is at variance with his record in the General Register Office's Civil Registration Indexes of Birth that stated he was born one year earlier.
He was transferred to the Royal Flying Corps and in November 1916 he was promoted to Captain. He was attached to their No.6 Squadron when he died, aged 27 years, on 23 May 1917 flying a Royal Aircraft Factory R.E.8 aeroplane, serial number A4594, on an artillery patrol when at 6,000 feet it collided with a similar aircraft, serial number A4198. Both aeroplanes crashed to the ground killing him and his observer, Second Lieutenant Harry Stanley Diment. Both the pilot and observer of the other aircraft, Lieutenant Charles Gordon Brodie and Lieutenant A. I. McKimmie, also died. He was buried in Plot 10, Row A, Grave 34 in the Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Boescheepseweg 37, 8970 Poperinge, Belgium and the other three airmen were buried in adjoining graves.
Probate records show that his address was recorded as 15 Grosvenor Road, Westminster, and that when probate was granted to his mother on 6 September 1917 his effects totalled £915-16s-11d.
Credit for this entry to: Andrew Behan.
