He attended school at Pelham House, Sandgate, and Harrow School where his younger brother the Rev. Philip Henry Bryant later became an assistant Master. Though he expected to join the British Army, he won in 1916 a scholarship to Pembroke College, Cambridge. Despite that, he joined the Royal Flying Corps the following year, as a pilot officer. While there, he served in the first squadron to bomb the towns of the Rhineland during World War I. He was also for a time the only British subject formally attached to the United States' Expeditionary Force's Air Service, to one of its detachments that had arrived in England for training for frontline service.