Lieutenant Shri Krishna Chanda Welinkar had disappeared while patrolling the skies above the Western Front in June 1918.
His family had to wait nearly three years before they finally knew for certain that he had died.
The story of the airman, who overcame prejudice to become one of only a handful of Indian fighter pilots in the First World War, has now emerged in archive files released by the UK’s Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC).
The never-before-published files, being brought alive as part of a digitisation project, contain correspondence — thousands of letters, pictures and other papers — between the commission and the next of kin of those who died in the war.
“For everyone who died in the First World War there was inevitably a partner, parent or child back home who had questions. The heart-breaking letters in the CWGC’s archive give us an insight into what it was like for those families trying to come to terms with their loss,” said Andrew Fetherston, chief archivist for the commission.
“They are stories that show desperate searches for closure, former enemies uniting and, on many occasions, the sad realisation that a missing loved one would always remain so. We are pleased to be able to make this invaluable piece of World War history accessible to a new generation and help deepen our understanding of how the First World War impacted those who were left behind,” he said.
Welinkar, who hailed from Bombay, was one of the 1.3 million Indians who had answered the call to fight for the British Empire. Nearly 74,000 never saw their homeland again and are remembered today in cemeteries and memorials throughout the world, including in France, Belgium, West Asia and Africa.
The well-educated Welinkar, who was studying at Cambridge University, trained to become an aviator in Middlesex as he wanted to join the Royal Flying Corps, later known as the Royal Air Force.
When he sought to enlist, Welinkar encountered the same prejudices as other Indians who wanted to be pilots and was encouraged to become an air mechanic instead. He was eventually given a commission in the Royal Flying Corps as an officer.
In 1918, he was posted to France and patrolled the skies above the Western Front. In June that year, Lieutenant Welinkar embarked on what would be his final patrol; he did not return. He was reported missing and his fate remained unknown for many months.
The newly released e-files chronicle the remarkable discovery of Welinkar’s final resting place long after WWI had ended. Colonel Barton, who knew Welinkar, acted on behalf of his mother and helped find her missing son. They spoke to former enemies and honed their search to the grave of an unidentified man, buried by the Germans as “Oberleutnant S.C. Wumkar” in Rouvroy, Belgium.
The body was later moved and reinterred in the Hangard Communal Cemetery Extension but it wasn’t until the vital clue, found in the original German burial records in February 1921, that it was confirmed beyond doubt that this grave was of Welinkar’s.
In May 1921, Colonel Barton, on behalf of Welinkar’s mother, requested that a commission headstone be placed on the grave with the following personal inscription: “To the Honoured Memory of One of the Empire’s Bravest Sons.”
The records — known as the Enquiry Files — are part of a collection of nearly 3,000 files that have never been made available to the public before. Nearly half have been digitised so far, alongside a previously unreleased collection of more than 16,000 photographs held in negatives in the commission’s archive.
The CWGC commemorates the 1.7 million Commonwealth servicemen and women who died during the two World Wars. But it is possible to release only surviving records from the First World War. Correspondence with families of Second World War casualties often involves people still alive today and cannot be made public for many years because of the UK’s data protection rules.
