Geoffrey’s memoir opens in May 1940, when he was eighteen years old
and his grammar school in Kent was being
evacuated to Staffordshire, away from the danger of German invasion. The station
platform was crowded with hordes of exhausted soldiers rescued from Dunkirk, and the skies
alive with the aircraft which would soon be fighting the Battle of Britain.
In the autumn Geoffrey went up to Brasenose College, Oxford to read History, pursue his passion for
cricket, join the University Air Squadron and begin the one and only romance of
his life. One year later he volunteered for full-time service with the RAF. He
writes about wartime Oxford; pilot training in
Canada, England and Palestine; and operational flying in the Middle and
Far East. He took part in the highly dangerous
work of photographic reconnaissance over Burma,
flying unarmed Spitfires and Hurricanes low over heavily defended targets in
enemy occupied territory.
His descriptions of student life, learning to fly, foreign travel,
and camaraderie with fellow pilots are filled with excitement, hope and humour.
The mood becomes more serious in later chapters as he relates the death of
successive friends, his certain conviction of his own death during the Battle of
Imphal, and the miracle of his survival. The story has a happy ending; after the
war, despite being ‘shrunken and yellow’ on return from his harrowing ordeals,
he married his teenage sweetheart and completed his
degree.
