Geoffrey Wellum was still a 17 year-old schoolboy when in March 1939 he volunteered to join the RAF – one of many teenagers inspired to join up at the time. What made him different was that he survived to write an account of his experiences so honest and so graphic that it still stands out as one of the best memoirs of flying in the Second World War.
A week after leaving school young Geoffrey begins his training as a pupil pilot, learning from the opening talk by the ‘very frightening’ Chief Ground Instructor that ‘the air force is fairly easy to get into these days, but it’s also very easy to get out of and we are to bear this fact in mind’. Despite this there’s a feeling of exhilaration in these early chapters as Geoffrey savours the oily smell of the planes on the tarmac, makes friends with other young trainees, and is finally allowed to make his first solo flight.
But in September 1939, with the declaration of war, the atmosphere changes. The failures are weeded out and Geoffrey passes selection to train as a fighter pilot at a base in the Cotswolds, flying Harvards, American training aircraft with a reputation for ‘sorting out the men from the boys’. It’s a phrase that could sum up the rest of this story as the scene darkens and the inexperienced Geoffrey, by now not quite 19, becomes the youngest Spitfire pilot in the prestigious 92 Squadron.
There have been other, famous accounts of flying in the Battle of Britain and after, but none perhaps that take the reader so close to the feelings of a young pilot facing death several times a day in the skies over southern England and northern France, which range from utter terror to serene acceptance that this time it may be his turn. It’s truly an incredible story and one that’s never been told by a braver, more open or more modest man.
Vivid, wholly convincing, compelling. One of the best memoirs for years about the experience of flying in war
A brilliantly fresh, achingly written memoir. Thrilling and frightening on virtually every page . . . Wellum takes you into battle with him. A book for all ages and generations, a treasure
An extraordinarily deeply moving and astonishingly evocative story. Reading it, you feel you are in the Spitfire with him, at 20,000ft, chased by a German Heinkel, with your ammunition gone
An intimate account . . . rich in detail