First World War
When the United Kingdom declared war on the Central Powers in August 1914, the part-time volunteer army units in Bermuda, the Bermuda Volunteer Rifle Corps (BVRC) and the Bermuda Militia Artillery (BMA), were mobilised. Although required to fulfil their roles as part of the Bermuda Garrison, both units immediately proposed sending drafts to the Western Front. The BVRC formed a detachment in December 1914, which was to train in Bermuda over the winter before being dispatched across the Atlantic. This contingent was composed of volunteers who were already serving, as well as those who enlisted specifically for the Front. Spurling volunteered for the contingent in February 1915. The contingent trained at Warwick Camp through the winter and spring.
The contingent, consisting of Captain Richard Tucker and 88 other ranks,[2] left Bermuda for England on 7 May 1915, travelling to Canada, then crossing the Atlantic in company with a much larger Canadian draft. It had been hoped that the contingent could be attached to the Second Battalion of The Lincolnshire Regiment (2 Lincolns), which had been on Garrison in Bermuda when the War began. When the contingent arrived at the Lincolns depot in Grimsby, the 2nd Battalion was already in France and it was attached to 1 Lincolns, instead. Captain Tucker carried written instructions from the War Office that ensured that they remained together as a unit, under their own badge. Despite this, the riflemen were given regimental numbers by the Lincolns, Spurling's being 3/17150 (his old BVRC number was 989).[3]
The contingent arrived in France on 23 June, the first colonial volunteer unit to reach the Front, as two extra platoons attached to a company of 1 Lincolns, and remained as such until the following summer, by when its strength had been too reduced by casualties to compose even a single platoon, having lost 50% of its remaining strength at Gueudecourt on 25 September 1916. The survivors were merged on 17 October 1916, with the 33 men of a Second Contingent of the BVRC, newly arrived from Bermuda, and all were retrained as Lewis gunners.[4]
Rifleman Spurling was twice wounded in 1916: in the hand on 3 July, and in the foot on 13 July (when he reported he was also "buried for a few hours"). In July 1917, he received a commission in the Royal Flying Corps (RFC),[5] one of sixteen BVRC enlisted men who would become officers while serving in France. Newly commissioned officers were not obliged to return to their original units, but could choose to join any of the regiments or corps of the British Army. Spurling was one of two who chose to join the RFC, the air arm of the British Army (the other was Henry Joseph Watlington),[6][7] although more than a dozen other Bermudians would reach the RFC by different routes (including another BVRC rifleman, later Major Cecil Montgomery-Moore, who detached from the Corps in Bermuda, and Second Lieutenant Lennock de Graaf Godet, who had left his studies at the University of Oxford with the declaration of war).[8]
Second Lieutenant Spurling trained as a pilot at the Royal Flying Corps School of Instruction at Hendon Aerodrome and joined No. 89 Squadron RFC on 30 August 1917. He was posted to No. 49 Squadron RAF in July 1918, flying the Airco DH.9, a light bomber with two crew members (a pilot and an observer who doubled as a defensive gunner). By then, the Royal Flying Corps had merged with the Royal Naval Air Service on 1 April 1918 to create the independent Royal Air Force (RAF), to which service Spurling now belonged.
On 23 August 1918, Spurling was returning from a bombing mission when he became separated from his formation. Thinking he was over the British lines, he prepared to land on a German airfield near Lens which he mistook for his own, but was attacked by a German Fokker D.VII fighter. He then saw a formation of thirty more Fokkers. Despite the disadvantages of his flying a bomber and being vastly outnumbered, Spurling dived through the centre of the formation, shooting down one machine in flames; two others were seen to be in a spin, one of which crashed. Five of them then closed on his machine, but by skillful manoeuvring Spurling enabled his observer, Sergeant Frank Bell, to shoot down two of these in flames. These five victories immediately made Spurling an ace in a day. It was for this action that Spurling was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross[9] and Sergeant Bell was awarded the Distinguished Flying Medal. Two days later, Spurling shot down another D.VII over Mont Notre Dame.[10][11][12]