Son of Wallace C. Winter of Chicago, student at the Sheffield Scientific School in the class of 1918, and well-known football and golf player. As a member of the Naval Reserve, he took leave to pass the entrance tests to the Lafayette Escadrille. He passed and was honorably discharged from the Naval Reserve. One month before his transfer to the American Air Force, he was killed in an air fight.

Winter went to the Front in December, 1917, joining Escadrille N. 94, and transferring in January to the N. 156. This latter was one of the few squadrons which received the small Morane monoplanes. With Winter in the N. 156 were Putnam and Shaffer, and though their machines were soon pronounced unsafe and no one was ordered to fly them, the four Americans were constantly over the lines on volunteer patrols. Winter was with Putnam when he shot down his second Boche, and for his part in the combat was decorated with the Croix de Guerre. Although the Sector was at that time very quiet, he was constantly in the air, hunting the enemy far within his own lines, and his French comrades soon came to recognize in him an indomitable spirit of aggressiveness and action.

On March 8, 1918, the eve of his transfer as a First Lieutenant to the American army, Winter made his last flight. It is characteristic of the man that, at the time, he was not even connected with the escadrille, but simply waiting there for orders to report to American Headquarters, for he was not the type which searches for excuses to avoid flying. The Commanding Officer, out of courtesy to a man he liked, granted his request for a machine. In the mist of early morning, five little Moranes, swift and graceful as dragon-flies, rose from their aerodrome near Chalons and headed for the lines. A French pilot who was on the patrol is the only man who saw the fall. Shortly after they reached the lines, he perceived a pair of German two-seaters well below him and attacked at once, plunging down at headlong speed. When close to the Boche, he found that his gun was jammed and sheered off to avoid the enemy's fire while clearing his mitrailleuse. Glancing over his shoulder at this moment, he saw another Morane diving straight on the German from behind; suddenly, when the distance between them was only a few yards, the wings of the Morane seemed to fold up and it plunged down, to disappear, its bracing cut away, undoubtedly, by German bullets. It was Winter.

Source of information: - Google book "The Lafayette Flying Corps, Volume 1" by James Norman Hall, Charles Nordhoff, Edgar G. Hamilton, Houghton Mifflin publisher, 1920.