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Here we see a Colt Government Model Serial # C8792 and it shows all the classic signs of the initial M1911s including the double-diamond grips, the lanyard loops on the frame and magazine, early patent numbers and C-prefix serial that traces back to a 1914 commercial run of these guns.
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The gun is currently in the NRA Museum in Fairfax, VA, but has a rather spotty history from 1917-2007.
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Note the marking, “1st Reserve Park Division” CANADA, Storer’s original unit before he transferred to the flying corps. The 1st Canadian Division embarked for France during February 1915 and was soon holding the line near Ypres.
After over a year of sitting in the trenches as a member of the Royal Canadian Army Service Corps, young Lt. Hume-Storer had endured enough and put in for re-assignment to the Royal Flying Corps. In December of 1916, pilot officer candidate Hume-Storer passed his flight training in Britain and soloed.
On February 17, 1917, Captain John Cameron Hume-Storer R.F.C.(C.A.S.C.), took off on a routine morning patrol from Ramsgate to Dover on the English Channel, a short 15-mile journey. He was never heard from again. No trace of wreckage from his plane was ever found and no ground reports indicated that the young pilot had experienced any adverse weather.
Did he overshoot Dover and wind up ditching in the English Channel? Did he make it all the way to the Western Front and wind up behind the lines somewhere, forgotten in some shell hole?
Did he fly into limbo?
All we know for certain is that John Cameron Hume-Storer’s battered pistol was to turn up in an American gunshop in 2007. Did he pass it into the care of a friend for safekeeping during his routine flight? Or perhaps only this pistol was destined to return from whatever place his plane traveled to on that fateful day in 1917?
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As for the good Captain himself, he is memorialized at Hollybrook Cemetery, Southampton and is recorded on page 260 of the First World War Book of Remembrance
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