Andrew Beauchamp-Proctor was a teen-aged engineering student when he left his native
South Africa in February 1917 to join Britain's Royal Flying Corps as a trainee pilot.
Seventeen months later, when the war ended, he had become the fifth-ranking fighter
ace on the Allied side in the First World War, with 54 confirmed "kills" to his credit.
He had been awarded the Victoria Cross - Britain's highest award for gallantry -
plus the Distinguished Service Order, the Military Cross, and the Distinguished Flying
Cross. Not bad for a young man who stood only 5' 2" tall in his flying boots.
After the Armistice Beauchamp-Proctor remained in the RFC, by then the Royal Air
Force, as a star performer in the RAF aerobatic team. So much is documented fact.
After that, things became a little strange, as author William Norris discovered when
he overheard a chance conversation in a London bar between two RAF officers.
It appeared that in the early 20's Beauchamp-Proctor had died in a flying accident
and had been buried in the churchyard at, Wiltshire. However, after an appeal to
Winston Churchill by South African premier Jan Smuts, the body had been exhumed and
transported to South Africa, where it was re-interred with great ceremony at the
airman's home town of Mafeking.
There things rested until more than 50 years later when a South African tourist noticed
Beauchamp-Proctor's grave in Upavon, and told the local vicar that this was curious,
because he had seen the same man's grave in Mafeking, where he was revered as a local
hero. The vicar, perturbed, contacted the diocesan authorities, who had no record
of an exhumation being carried out.
So where, if anywhere, did the young pilot's body lie? At least one grave had to
be empty, but which? William Norris has explored the possibilities of what might
have happened all those years ago, and turned it into an action-packed story of espionage
and treason, with an enthralling climax set in the skies above Salisbury plain.
To read the first chapter of A Grave Too Many, click here.
OTHER BOOKS BY WILLIAM NORRIS
