The Archaeology of the Royal Flying Corps: Trench Art, Souvenirs and Lucky Mascots by Melanie Winterton

Author:Melanie Winterton [Winterton, Melanie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781399097260
Google: N2iIEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Pen & Sword
Published: 2022-09-15T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter 8

Trench-art Propeller Grave Markers and the Stories they Tell

The following quotation is evocative of early aviation:

A mechanic swung the propeller and the engine coughed, fired and spluttered again; then someone behind me yelled ‘Contact’ and the propeller melted into a blue mist in front of me.¹

Propellers of First World War aeroplanes were made from wood, often mahogany, and their unique shapes are characteristic of a period lasting about fifteen years, from December 1903 when the Wright brothers first flew at Kittyhawk, North Carolina, to the end of the First World War in November 1918.

In this chapter I investigate wooden aeroplane propellers retrieved from crashed aircraft and reworked into trench-art propeller grave markers for aviators’ graves. Pilot Duncan Grinnell-Milne observed, ‘[w]here’s poor old P buried? We ought to stick a propeller-cross over his grave. A damn good fellow.’²

Taking a ‘biographical approach’ this chapter identifies the events in the ‘social life’ of these distinctive objects through combing the literature to identify common events. Such markers may be considered ‘in terms of their involvement in the expression and the creation of emotional relationships’ and, since ‘emotions are culturally constructed … they are amenable to archaeological [and anthropological] analysis’.³ My aim is to reveal how the grave markers became imbued with pilots’ flying experiences, and how new memorial spaces were created when these propellers were moved post-war to, for example, churchyards and private gardens. Adopting Hallam and Hockey’s phrase ‘spatialised memory’, we see how these new spaces became powerful symbols of loss and memory and perhaps a living reminder of a loved one.⁴

This aspect of my investigation reveals (and in some ways creates) ever closer relationships between anthropology and archaeology through its shared focus on material culture and on human-object interaction. Individual stories attached to ‘acquisition events’ – the appropriation of the propeller, usually removed from a crashed aeroplane – bestow significance on the commemorative legacies and give the deceased a powerful presence today.

Before the standardized Portland stone headstones of the Imperial (now Commonwealth) War Graves Commission were erected, graves were marked by simple wooden crosses bearing a metal plate with an identifying inscription or, in some instances, for aviators of the RFC, a propeller grave marker.⁵ Very few of these have withstood the test of time and it is mainly photographic and textual evidence that attest to their existence.

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