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LIEUT. FRED REILLY REPORTED DEAD
Believed To Have Been Wounded in Airplane Fight and Died Afterward
His Observer Was Killed in the Machine-They Were Attacked by Fifteen German Planes.
[Welland Telegraph, 13 August 1918]
J.D. Reilly received a cable on Saturday morning from the secretary of the British Air Ministry at London stating that his son, Flight Lieut. Fred Reilly, had died on or about the day he was reported missing. This makes a very sad ending, indeed, to weeks of harrowing suspense.
Lieut. Reilly was with Lieut. Hall of Woodstock and were over the British lines on May 28th when they were attacked by fifteen German planes. A letter from the front at the time gave the following particulars of the incident:-
“Fred’s Flight Commander being ill, they were sent over the flight under the leadership of an inexperienced man to bomb_______. Arriving there, they were severely shelled by anti-air craft guns and the formation was split up. Fred and his observer, a Canadian, Hall by name, from Woodstock, were separated from the rest and fifteen Bosche machines sat on his tail and shot him down.”
The writer inclined to the belief that Fred had been taken prisoner.
Hall’s relatives at Woodstock were notified on Friday that Hall had been killed on May 28 and from the nature of the cable now received by Mr. Reilly, it is to be presumed that Fred, though he was able to bring down his machine, was wounded and died shortly after.
The young man was 20 years of age and went overseas in August of last year. He had been on the fighting front for two months and had been very busily engaged in the air offensive that has been carried on by the British behind the German lines.
The young man is survived by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. J.D. Reilly, Maple avenue, two sisters, Mrs. Charles Coulson and Miss Beth, and one brother, Capt. James Reilly, who went overseas with Col. Ashton’s battalion in the spring of 1915, and is still in France. They have the most heartfelt sympathy of many friends in the great bereavement they have been called upon to bear.
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