Editing Flight Sergeant Albert Spencer (section)

==Background==

Before the war Albert Spencer was a farm hand and poacher preying the Royal Family's Sandringham estate in Norfolk. When war came he signed up in late 1914 on the promise of pay and regular meals, and was assigned to the 1st/5th Battalion, the Norfolk Regiment. There was some small friction between him and members of the 5th Battalion who were former Sandringham gamekeepers began to suspect the crack-shot Private Spencer might be the poacher who'd been eluding them for the last couple of years.
In 1915 he saw service in the Gallipoli Campaign. During the attack on Turkish positions at Sulva Bay, he suffered a minor shrapnel wound and severe concussion from a shell, and remembers dazedly watching his battalion marching into a fog shrouded wood and never being seen again.
Largely due to his claims he saw his battalion "Taken by a cloud", the doctors assumed his head wound was far more serious than mere concussion and he was returned to Britain for convalescent leave. After a few months the Doctors decided there was nothing physically wrong with him and returned him to active service in early 1916, where he was sent to the 8th Battalion of the Norfolks as part of the buildup of troops for the Somme offensive.
Skills learned as a poacher came in handy when the British increased their use of snipers/observers before the battle, but after turning in a series of increasingly 'erratic' reports to the Battalion Sniping Officer, higher ups arranged for him to be transferred to the Royal Flying Corps, where he proved a competent rear seat gunner and observer and more importantly for the Norfolk Regiment - somebody else's problem.

Whilst Sgt Spencer excelled as a gunner, he's a reluctant pilot and only scraped a pass from flight school.