Jocelyn Gore Cowell was born on 18th March 1899 in Exmouth, Devon. The older of two children, he was the only son to Edward and Eliza Cowell. Edward was a Captain in the Royal Fusiliers, and had served in India, where Eliza – who went by her middle name, Nita – had been born.

By the time of the 1911 census, Edward and Nita had moved to Milton on Stour, Dorset, where they were living in a ten-roomed house with a butler, a housemaid and a cook. Jocelyn, meanwhile, was one of fifty students boarding at a private school in Westgate-on-Sea, Kent.

When war broke out, Jocelyn was still a student. However, on 12th September 1917, he took a commission in his father’s former regiment. While he was studying, a new technology had caught his eye, and learnt to fly, gaining his wings on 18th October 1916. When he enlisted, he immediately followed his heart, and transferred to the Royal Flying Corps.

Attached to No. 3 Training Depot Station, Second Lieutenant Cowell was based at Lopcombe Corner Airfield, to the west of Salisbury, Wiltshire. On 28th January 1918, he was flying a de Havilland DH5 biplane form the airfield, when it crashed. The cause of the accident was unknown, an inquest unable to draw any specific opinions from the wreckage or crash site. Jocelyn was killed instantly: he was just eighteen years of age.

The body of Jocelyn Gore Cowell was taken back to Dorset for burial. He was laid to rest in what would become the family plot in the peaceful graveyard of Ss. Simon and Jude Church in Milton on Stour.

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