Oliver Byerley Walter Wills, 27/06/1982 - 10/11/1918
Bedales 1906-1910, Honourable Artillery Company, Royal Flying Corps, Royal Air Force

From the Bedales Record:

“O. B. W. Wills was at Bedales from 1906 to 1910, and by all his contemporaries, and many of those who have only seen him here as an old boy, will be thought of with Paul Montague as the soul of the fun of any Play or merry evening in which he took part. He was at Trinity College, Cambridge until the beginning of the war, and then joined the H.A.C. From this he obtained a commission in the Flying Corps, and, went out to France in 1917. In the same year he obtained the Military Cross for his daring work as pilot. In 1918, as Lieutenant, he was attached to the Armament Experimental Station of the R.A.F. in Suffolk. It was while engaged on his work there that he met his death just at the time of the Armistice. He had been up with a pilot, and just as they were landing, quite naturally and quickly, was seen to fall from the machine— no one knew how — and was killed at once.”

The Bedales Chronicle added this pen-portrait:

"Mooner" was one of those who mark epochs in the history of a school. He was at Bedales from 1906 to 1910. His powers of entertainment and merry making were varied and endless. He never have called himself a naturalist, but he had a knowledge of and an intimacy with Earth and her beasts, birds and fishes that Melampus might have envied. He was a lover of music, inspired by and in turn inspiring his friend Paul Montague, in his singing and playing and research.

“He had a firm-rooted faith in Democracy and loathed every form of militarism.”