Second Lieutenant Wilfred H. Collins trained at Toronto, Deseronto, and Camp Borden for three months, and was transferred as Instructor, to Camp Mohawk, embarking for England in October, 1917, and Crossing to France January 11th, 1918. With 73rd Squadron. Transferred to No 2 Fighting School, England as a fighting Instructor June 15th, 1918.

• Commission Second Lieutenant          August 18th, 1917
• Brevet                                                        August 21st, 1917
• Lieutenant                                                June 1st, 1918 (?)

Discharged from No 2 Fighting School, Marske-by-Sea, Yorks, England July 12th, 1919.

 Flight-Lieut. Son of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Collins. A letter from their son: CDP – 19/06/18.

 Flight-Lieut: Flight-Lieut. Wilfred Collins. France, Mat 12^th, 1918.  Dear Mother –  

Received two your letters today, dated April 10^th and 14^th it is awfully good of you to write so often. I have been getting quite a fair amount of mail lately and consider myself very lucky. I do get the Planet fairly regular. I was quite interested fairly regularly. I was quite interested reading about the riot in Quebec. Hoe they salt them down properly 

It is another dud day today after several fine ones. The day before yesterday we had an awfully crazy patrol to do. It was quite dud here – thick clouds down at five hundred feet – so we never expected anything 

At about 6:15 in the evening, however, we got orders to start off down south. We all got into our machine and were all ready to go when the patrol was “washed out”.

I went up for a little flip to test my bus, which had been vibrating and then came down and got out of my flying suit. We hardly got back to camp when we were ordered on patrol again. We managed to get started by about ten to seven and a half an hour later arrived down south where we found it was quite bright and sunlight 

We were able to get up to about 18 thousand and went over the lines and got arched a bit. It must have been awfully funny to “Blanco” Smith was leading and Audeson was on his tight and I on his left behind in the first formation. We were sailing along bored still and nearly going to sleep when lanco got an awful wallop right under his tail. 

Of course both Andy Lainad. I laughed our fool l heads off to see the way Blanco woke up all of a sudden with a duce of  a jump. Then Andy got one just the same and he woke up rather quick. I was laughing at him still when my turn came and I nearly did a loop I jumped so much.  

We stuck around for about half an hour seeing nothing but smoke from Archie and then Blanco dived after him but turned across in front. I looked back and saw that the other formations were clearing out so I went for home too. We only got a little way when we ran up against an awfully black bank of clouds that looked like rain and were very low. I saw the other people land at an aerodrome there, but I wanted to get home so I plunged into the clouds at about 500 feet where I could just see the ground  

I found it was not rain after all, scrambled right along, and in about half an four got to our aerodrome. As soon as they saw me coming they started firing Veri’s lights by the hundred and all colors. I fired one from my Veri’s pistol to show that I saw them, but they wouldn’t stop. 

When I got in I found that Blanco was already back and that we were the only Two more came later on but the rest stayed down south where they landed.

An S.E. 5 caused some excitement and I just got back in time for it. It was so dark and misty that he overshot and would have run into one of our hangars. He put his engine on again and it chocked for a second or two and then went on. He had scarcely any speed but pulled her up and did an awful climbing turn, just missing our hanger. 

He just got past the hanger when he stalled and dived into the ground with the engine full on. Luckily, he wasn’t burnt and jumped out immediately and the next instant the whole machine was a mass of flames. The thing burned down till the was nothing left but a tangled mass of wires and metal parts, the ammunition in the meantime going off like fire-crackers 

On the whole it was quite an utterly hopeless patrol. Apparently we got down there just too late to get into a pucker dog-fight in which three or four machines went down in flames and several out of control.

Cheerio.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Sources

IODE, Chatham Daily Planet (27-04-1917), Chatham Daily Planet (19-06-1918), Victoria Ave. United Church - Roll of Honour

Height	5' 9"
Eye Colour	Brown
Age	18
Complexion	Dark
Hair	Black
Race	White
Birthplace	Chatham Township
Religion	Methodist
Last Place of Employment	Student at Chatham Collegiate Institute.
Marital Status	Single
When Enlisted	April 1917
Where Enlisted	Toronto, Ontario
Next of Kin	Father- Fred Collins, Chatham, Ontario.

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