Career
Mare-Montembault was commissioned from private in the Inns of Court Officers" Training Corps to second lieutenant on 25 June 1915, assigned to the North Somerset Yeomanry, Territorial Force. He was later seconded for duty with the Royal Flying Corps and appointed a flying officer on 3 August 1916. Mare-Montembault was posted to Number.
32 Squadron Reconstruction Finance Corporation on 10 August 1916, flying the Airco Dialectics and Humanism.2 single-seat fighter.
He gained his first aerial victory on 15 September by sending a Roland C reconnaissance aircraft down in flames south of Bapaume. On 10 October he was shot down by Oswald Boelcke, but managed to crash-land unhurt within the British lines.
He was soon back in the air, as on 22 October he drove down an Albatros Doctorate.I "out of control" over Irles, and on 16 November he shared in the driving down of two Type C reconnaissance aircraft over Loupart Wood with Captain Hubert Jones and Lieutenants P. B. G. Hunt and H. G. Southon. The following day he drove down another solo over Bucquoy.
On the afternoon of 6 March 1917 in a dogfight east of Bapaume Mare-Montembault destroyed another Albatros Doctorate.I, but was then himself shot down by Adolf von Tutschek, crashed-landing behind the German lines, and was captured.
Mare-Montembault was eventually released following the armistice of 11 November 1918, and was repatriated to England in January 1919, but on 10 April he relinquished his Royal Air Force commission "on account of ill-health contracted on active service". On 16 December 1919 he received a mention in dispatches "for valuable services whilst in captivity".
