Cecil Marks

Captain Cecil Hoffnung Marks was an English officer of the Royal Flying Corps who died during the First World War.
He was born on 3 December 1887,Ancestry.com. Great Britain, Royal Aero Club Aviators’ Certificates, 1910-1950 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations Inc, 2008. at Hampstead, the son of Claude Laurie, an officer in the militia, and Caroline Marks (née Hoffnung). His paternal grandfather was David Woolf Marks, first rabbi of Reform Judaism's West London Synagogue.William D. Rubinstein, Michael Jolles, Hilary L. Rubinstein (2011), The Palgrave Dictionary of Anglo-Jewish History, p. 648. His mother, widowed in 1910, remarried in 1925, to the 16th Marquess of Winchester.O'Connor, Michael (2003), Airfields and Airmen: Cambrai
Marks received his education at Eton, after which, emulating his father, he entered the army. He was commissioned in 1906 on passing out from Sandhurst and joined the Middlesex Regiment.The London Gazette (27944), p. 5872. 28 August 1906. Retrieved 15 December 2013. In 1911, Marks obtained a Royal Aero Club Certificate, becoming one of the first 100 English officers to be qualified as a flyer.The Times (41003), Col C, p. 11: "Fallen Officers". 4 November 1915. He entered the Royal Flying Corps shortly after its creation as a branch of the army. The aviation publication, Flight, noted in 1913 that Marks and two others had developed and now held a patent for a new "inclinograph" that could record lateral and longitudinal inclination."An Inclinograph". Flight (1 February 1913), flightglobal.com. Retrieved 15 December 2013.
By April 1915, Marks belonged to the 9th Squadron and served actively on the Western Front. He was withdrawn to Britain that year in the capacity of an instructor and wireless expert at Brooklands. A return to frontline service beckoned when, on 5 October, he transferred to the recently constituted 13th Squadron as a flight commander. The squadron deployed to the Western Front two weeks after he joined. Less than a week later, on 23 October 1915, Marks was dead. He had been engaged in an escort and reconnaissance patrol when a German fighter, piloted by Hans-Joachim Buddecke, shot down his BE2c in the vicinity of Saint Quentin. His observer, Lieutenant Will Lawrence, brother of Lawrence of Arabia, perished with him - the first two casualties sustained by the squadron.
The pair were initially buried in the German Soldiers' Cemetery, where they remained until being reburied at St. Souplet British Cemetery after the war. In 1919, a deposition from officials of St. Quentin implied that the two airmen had been murdered. It was alleged that the town clerk, M. Vatin, had illicitly examined their bodies, identifying multiple gunshot wounds and noting that they were covered in mud, which he suggested was indicative of some form of struggle.
==Notes==
==References==
*Marks, Cecil Hoffming, cwgc.org. Retrieved 15 December 2013.
Category:1887 births
Category:1915 deaths
Category:British military personnel
Category:British Army
Category:Royal Flying Corps
Category:British people of Jewish descent
Category:Buried in France
Category:Captains