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2nd Lieutenant James Oscar Reginald Stewart SAUNDERS
110 (Hyderabad) Squadron, Royal Air Force Date of birth: 19th June 1898 Date of death: 21st October 1918 Killed in action aged 20 Buried at Niederzwehren Cemetery Plot III Row G Grave 1
James Oscar Reginald Stewart Saunders was born at 43 Konigin, Augusta Strasse, Berlin on the 19th of June 1898 the third son of George Saunders OBE, Berlin correspondent for the Times newspaper, and Gertrude (nee Hainauer) Saunders later of Cross Lanes Farm, Woking in Surrey. He was educated at Summer Fields School at St Leonards from 1909 and at the Oxford branch of the school from September of that year. He went on to Lancing College where he was in Heads House from May 1912 to December 1914. In 1914 he won a school prize for "carpentering" and was a member of the Officer Training Corps. He enlisted at Whitehall as Private TR/61004 in the 28th (Reserve) Battalion Royal Fusiliers (City of London Regiment), University and Public School Corps on the 21st of July 1916 and was posted to A Company, 104th Training Reserve Battalion based at Edinburgh on the 1st of September 1916. On the 3rd of September he went absent without leave and on the following day he was sentenced to three days confined to barracks by 2nd Lieutenant J. Scott. He was promoted to Lance Corporal on the 11th of December 1916 and to Acting Corporal on the 2nd of May 1917. He applied for a commission on the Royal Flying Corps on the 2nd of April 1917 and underwent a medical at Edinburgh on the same day at which it was recorded that he was five feet eight inches tall and that he weighed 142lbs. On the 22nd of October 1917 he was posted to the Officer Cadet Wing at St Leonard's. On the 14th of December 1917 he was posted for training to the School of Military Aeronautics and on the 13th of April 1918 he was posted to 129 Squadron at Duxford. He was posted to 123 Squadron on the 19th of May 1918. He was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Flying Corps on the 9th of August 1918 and on the 22nd of August he was posted to No. 1 School of Navigation and Bomb Dropping. 110 Squadron arrived in France in September 1918 having been training for bombing using the DH9A aircraft. James Saunders joined the Squadron on the 26th of September. On the 21st of October 1918 James Saunders took off for a raid on Frankfurt and Cologne as the pilot of DH9A F986 "Hyderabad No.5" with his Observer 2nd Lieutenant William John Brain. Their aircraft was shot down at Endbach Hesse-Nassau killing both men. Theirs was one of seven aircraft from the squadron shot down that day, the heaviest number of casualties suffered by a single unit of the Independent Air Force during the war.

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