Portfolio Example: Lieutenant John Beveridge Fotheringham

Lieutenant J. B. Fotheringham

Shot down and killed south of Ypres, Belgium 7 July 1917

Lieutenant John Beveridge Fotheringham was a Canadian infantry officer, seconded to the Royal Flying Corps, who was shot down and killed south of Ypres, Belgium, along with his pilot, British 2nd Lieutenant John Victor Ariel Gleed, on 7 July 1917. Lieutenant Fotheringham is commemorated on the Arras Flying Services Memorial in France.

For almost 90 years, his family believed that he was one of the 54,000 Allied soldiers (including 7,000 Canadians) who died in the Ypres Salient and have no known grave, likely being buried where his plane crashed, and lying in a farmer’s field in Belgium.

In 2007, with the assistance of military archival researchers in Ottawa and the UK, we discovered that there is a lot more to the story, and we continue to try to identify his final resting place, and to have his grave properly marked by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC).

This is the result of our research to date, and the journey continues.