28/11/19"FIRST LIGHT" by GEOFFREY WELLUM

The author, Geoffrey Wellum, joined the RAF in 1939 at the tender age of 17. He tells his story in this book: learning to fly, ‘going solo’, getting his ‘wings’, serving as a Spitfire fighter in the Battle of Britain (July – October 1940) and beyond, and leading a group of eight Spitfires in a daring mission to get supplies to the stricken island of Malta.

He wrote this book 35 years later, from notes taken during those three hectic years – apparently not much embellished in style or content and making no attempt to embroider or to add historical context and analysis. In his Squadron they called him ‘The Boy’ as he was the youngest, although almost all were very young. Boyishness shines through to the text, perhaps it was his nature as much as his age.

We made comparison with a book we read last year, No Parachute, the diary of a fighter pilot from World War I. It is written in a more mature style; and that pilot (Arthur Gould Lee) rose to the high rank of Air Vice Marshall. His book is quite different, including opinion, criticism of how the war in the air was waged, and historical context.

Perhaps the boyish Wellum better conveys the man-machine relationship. One reader startled us by making the unexpected comparison with the book Half Man, Half Bike about Eddy Merckx the legendary racing cyclist. Both books portray how rider and machine blend in a symbiosis.  For example, the author writes:

They are alive, these Spitfires. They live like the rest of us, they understand. Never, no matter what the circumstances, shall I cease to be thrilled and excited by such a sight and the wonderful feeling of being involved in what I see. My thoughts are apt to stray from the task at such moments.

Yes, there are insights into psychology. The day-to-day fear of failure, overcoming the fear of death, coming to terms with loss of comrades and sheer mental exhaustion – these are all well represented. The good times are there too: the exhilaration of flight, the warmth and companionship of the Officers’ Mess and the evening excursions to the pub with its pretty barmaid.

Some of us were surprised that the pilots seemed unaware of ‘the bigger picture’. Did they  not read newspapers? Were they huddled around the radio in the Mess? Probably not – these things are scarcely mentioned in the book. Like soldiers, they followed orders from above. In the day-to-day action there was little free time; any free time was spent writing home, going for a drink with ‘the chaps’, generally unwinding. I checked newspaper reports: it’s all there for anyone to read – the Battle of Britain is vividly portrayed though often with inflated claims of numbers of downed German aircraft. Wellum has no comment on newspaper reports, and says nothing about what is happening beyond his squadron – for instance the extraordinary feats of the foreign pilots exiled from Nazi-occupied Europe, and pilots who came from Commonwealth countries. They formed entire squadrons and were very successful.  Nor does he mention the controversial ‘Big Wing’ idea favoured by Douglas Bader whereby several squadrons attack together. It seems a pilot’s interest was survival rather than the tactics and the progress of War as a whole. Again, very boyish.

Wellum joined the RAF because he wanted to fly. We have the impression he got more than he’d bargained for.  He learned skills in training and on the job. He didn’t shoot down many enemy planes, and he got lost on several occasions. But he survived whilst most of his colleagues and friends were killed or captured.

Compared with some of our books, this one was certainly an ‘easy read’, and for most of us, it was thrilling and enthralling to the end. You are there with him in squadron 92 (call sign Gannic), in the cockpit, looking out for bandits (enemy), especially snappers (Messerschmitt 109 fighters) and flying to the angels (clouds):

Gannic leader, this is Sapper. One hundred and fifty plus approaching Dungeness at angels twelve. Vector 120. Over.

Sapper, this is Gannic, message received and understood.

Gannic, bandits include many snappers (I say again, many snappers, keep a good lookout. Over.

Sapper, this is Gannic. OK, understood. I am steering 120 and climbing hard through angels seven. Over.

He dodges the flak, learns to out-manoeuvre the enemy, and shows no hesitation in going for the kill. To kill or be killed; to be killed or to fly away. In peacetime these young men would be what today we call ‘boy-racers’. Boy-racers annoy us in peacetime but become heroes in war-time, and they get medals.

We discussed the recruitment policy of the RAF at the time of the War. It seems Wellum was accepted following the revelation that he had captained his school cricket team, and we know he attended an independent school, suggesting he came from the ruling classes. In fact, in contrast to WWI, most pilots were middle-class. Later, Churchill observed the “failure” of Eton, Harrow, and Winchester schools to contribute pilots to the Royal Air Force1.  Less than 10% were from elite schools. Churchill said, “They left it to the lower middle class”. Of those “excellent sons” of the lower middle class, Churchill concluded, “They have saved this country; they have the right to rule it.”

What was it like to shoot down an enemy plane? The author says this to himself:

Geoff, you’ve just killed a bloke, a fellow fighter pilot…That was just about as callous and as calculating as you can get, just plain cold-blooded murder…It’s all bloody wrong somehow, that twentieth-century civilization should have been allowed to come to this.

We considered the morality of war. Ironically, when the same English coast was being defended in Elizabethan times there were Rules of Engagement. But not so in the twentieth-century. However, at the start of the War Hitler gave strict orders that civilians should not be targeted in bombing raids, but when the RAF bombed Berlin he was furious and changed his mind.

We were joined by one of our e-mail members, an ex-RAF man; he greatly assisted our discussion about the tactics of the protagonists and the strengths and weaknesses of their respective aircraft. On the central question of ‘how did Britain manage to win this battle?’, the answer seems to lie less with the speed and agility of the aircraft i.e. the Spitfire and the Hurricane versus the Messerschmitt Bf 109, and more on the fact that Luftwaffe aircraft (fighters and bombers) would run low on fuel and be forced to head home after ten or twenty minutes of engagement. There were also strategic errors on the German side: they should have realised the difficulty of flattening enough airfields to disable RAF operations, and they should have focused their bombing on eliminating Spitfire manufacture. Was German intelligence good enough? Maybe not; they seemed to have under-estimated the size and strength of their enemy.

By the summer of 1941 Hitler abandoned his plans to invade Britain; Wellum’s squadron participated in ‘sweeps’ over occupied France escorting Blenheim and Stirling bombers in an effort to take war to the enemy. That summer Wellum was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. In September 1941 he is told he is ‘over the hill’ (although he’s just 20 years old); he is gutted. He was taken off duty from Squadron 92 and posted to a training squadron, flying Hurricanes. But there’s a final twist to his story: he resumed action to become a Flight Commander and in July 1942 he is sent to Glasgow for the top-secret Operation Pedestal – a convoy mission to carry supplies to the besieged garrison at Malta. He commands a flight of eight Spitfires operating from the aircraft carrier HMS Furious, sailing from the Clyde. This account occupies 30 pages of the 338-page book, but for some of us it was even more interesting than the Battle of Britain – it tells an incredible story we never knew, despite our recent family holidays in Malta.

We pondered the title First Light. Where does it come from, and what does it mean? Squadron 92 was often scrambled early in the morning, in the silent beauty of dawn, aka First Light, but with the fear and apprehension of flying eastward, blinded by the low sun and presenting the aircraft as easy targets for the oncoming Luftwaffe fighters.

The short Epilogue describes the physical and mental fatigue when it is all over. He is still a young man. He recovers and become a test pilot, remaining in the RAF until 1961. Civilian life may not have agreed with him, he suffered business failure and divorce. He settled down to become a deputy harbour-master in Cornwall; he lived to the age of 96 (he died in 2018).

1Ricks, T.E. 2017 Churchill and Orwell: The Fight for Freedom. Penguin.