Elementary rule one: never relax vigilance.
(First Light, page 152)
This is a charming, very readable and high-spirited memoir of Wellum’s career as a Battle of Britain pilot and beyond. He was just 17 when he applied to join the RAF at the start of 1939, still a schoolboy excited at being appointed captain of the cricket first XI at his public school, still in awe of the headmaster – and he carries that schoolboy zest and excitement into his training and combat experiences, and into this account, which brims with candid, innocent enthusiasm.
In fact the RAF wouldn’t let young Geoff join till he was the legal age of 17 and a half, so that’s how old he was when he commenced the training in the summer of 1939, achieving his first solo flight just 2 days before Britain went to war on 3 September 1939 (p.19).
Present tense and short sentences
Wellum’s style contributes to the text’s pace and impact, and has several distinguishing features. The most obvious is his use of the historic present tense throughout.
And so this sunny morning finds me walking down Kingsway.
I’ve never been into a pub on my own before, so I stride into the saloon bar as if I own the place and ask for a pint of bitter.
Another trait is the use of clipped phrasing, as in the third sentence here:
Do I really want to join the RAF and become a pilot? I suppose I’m doing the right thing? Still time to turn round and go home.
This is achieved by dispensing with verbs, at least the main, active verb. Thus ‘There’s’ has been dropped from the third sentence above and any main verb from this sentence:
Down below, a cluster of cottages; smoke from their chimneys rising vertically into the still air. (p.77)
There are many sentences like this, with the main active verb removed. The result is a series of static pictures, like a slideshow.
- A large crowd all chattering away around the notice board in the ground training block.
- A final day with ‘C’ flight before a spot of leave.
He especially uses it in the first sentence of a chapter, painting a picture, setting the scene:
- A cool afternoon, rather dull and lifeless with rain in the air. (p.199)
- January 1941. Deep winter: mist, that horribly thick, drizzly sea mist, fog, frost, low cloud. (p.248)
Learnings
Generally speaking you should take your first solo flight after about ten hours’ tuition. If it drags on longer than that there’s a problem.
Usually every trainee pilot has a blank spot, a recurrent problem they have to overcome. For Geoff it was taking off.
The training course was very competitive. As the ten-hour deadline passed people on the course slowly dropped out or, more precisely, stopped appearing for breakfast. The slang expression is being handed a ‘bowler hat’ i.e. turfed back into Civvy Street.
Training and then deployment to an active squadron involved a surprising amount of moving about from one airfield to another. We follow Wellum from:
- Tiger Moths at Desford
- Kidlington
- Little Rissington
- Warmwell
- Kenley
- Northolt
- Pembrey Wales – failure to engage bomber over Bristol
- Biggin Hill
- Manston, 92 Squadron
The joy of flight (p.73)
Halcyon day, warm sunshine, blue skies and light Indian-summer breezes. Flying as God meant it to be. Open cockpits, helmets and goggles, heads in the slipstream, biplanes, wood, canvas and vibration, quivering bracing wires and the eternal drumming of the engine. I am master over machine. Pride and confidence flow into me. (p.23)
First light
At first glance the title of the book seems a bit cryptic or mystical but slowly we realise that, once he’s posted for wartime duty, day after day the pilots are woken just before dawn, and the sights and sounds and smells and feel of dawn breaking over an airfield just coming to life, with the pilots staggering into the mess and pouring themselves coffee while the ground crews start servicing and firing up the Spitfires, all this acquires a deep and evocative beauty.
My impressions of the last two months or so revolve around dawns. Pink dawns, grey dawns, misty, rainy and windy dawns, but always dawns: first light. (p.127)
No surprise that by the time we’re half way through the narrative, an entire chapter, Chapter 4, which drops us straight into the middle of the Battle of Britain in September 1940, is titled ‘First Light’ and, by virtue of its constant repetition, the phrase beings to build up a charge and force.
It is first light and still and rather beautiful; the birth of a new day. (p.137)
First light, high noon, evening, dusk and then the quiet hours until the next dawn and first light again. It is a relentless ritual which will continue until this bloody war is over (p.162)
What a truly bloody day it’s been. Everybody is fed up with it, packing up for the time being. It will all start tomorrow at first light. (p.244)
The joy of flying
Up here the air is pure and clean. The sheer joy of flight infiltrates the very soul and from above the earth, alone, where the mere thought in one’s mind seems to transmit itself to the aeroplane, there is no longer any doubt that some omniscient force understands what life is all about. There are times when the feeling of being near to an unknown presence is strong and real and comforting. It is far beyond human comprehension. We only know that it’s beautiful. (p.23)
Wellum is excellent at capturing the joy and wonder of flying, and in particular the deep joy of flying a Spitfire which is regularly described as a wonder of engineering, fitting like a glove, responding almost to the pilot’s thoughts rather than hands, his second home and eventually the only place he wants to be.
With an agility that never ceases to amaze me my fitter is out of the cockpit in a flash and putting his hand under my arm, almost lifting me into the aircraft. At once I feel better. The vibration humming through the Spitfire, here we are, home again. (p.143)
They are alive these Spitfires. They live, just like the rest of us, they understand. (p.145)
God
The text is littered with references to the deity but all of a fairly superficial schoolboy level, for example, his repeated wondering why the God who made the beauty of the world permits war and death.
Dear God, fancy allowing this sort of thing to happen. What are You up to? It’s ghastly. They’ll probably tell me it’s not You, it’s the Devil. (p.169)
What a strange life we pilots lead. This is the sort of moment that only those who can fly can fully understand. I wonder how this compares with the Peace of God. How does the blessing go? ‘The Peace of God that passeth all understanding.’ Surely, at moments like this, alone and lonely, one must be very close to Him even though there is a war raging and I don’t understand why He allows it to happen. (p.184)
It’s all bloody wrong somehow, that twentieth-century civilisation should have been allowed to come to this. Just total war, I suppose. What’s it all about, for God’s sake? (p.207)
Presumably God favoured us during last summer; or did He – with the glorious weather that must have suited the purpose of the Hun? In any case, why does He allow this sort of thing to happen? Whatever he decides, many thousands of people, ‘His children’ we are all taught to believe, are going to be slaughtered before it’s all over. (p.210)
In a similar completely superficial vein are his frequent requests for God to be with him during that day’s battle and so on, not very much more sophisticated than asking God to help you score the winning try in the school rugby competition.
Come on then God, get it over with or I’ll go over to the other side, you see if I don’t.
Listen God, you’re not only difficult to find you’re also a hard task master.
Or a hearty blessing:
I am, thank goodness, totally reconciled to death. No doubt my turn will come one day and there is nothing I can do about it. I can only trust that God is with me when I go; something quick perhaps. Let Him be with all pilots who catch it, friend or foe. (p.264)
He lacks any intellectual depth whatsoever but it doesn’t matter. He was, after all, only turning 19 during the Battle of Britain, hadn’t been to university, had come fresh from the cricket pitch at the age of 17 and a half. They are the thoughts of a bright, optimistic, entirely unintellectual schoolboy.
I wonder what on earth I would have done if I had been turned down [when he applied to the RAF]? Wasn’t all that long ago, really. Now look at me; a Spitfire pilot. Whoever would have thought it? I’m a lucky bloke! (p.177 cf p.221)
Here he is thinking about the origins of the war as he accompanies a squad of Blenheim airplanes to bomb Abbeville:
Down there someone is going to get hurt and, presumably, it doesn’t matter who. What a funny war. Don’t like the idea of bombing much. At least the role of fighter pilot seems cleaner somehow. Makes you wonder what life is all about. It must be a lousy way to get yourself killed, to have a bloody great bomb dropped on you. In any case, the Huns started it all, so it serves them right. (p.259)
First Light is, in this sense, quite a superficial account, but in a positive way (if that makes sense). The lack of ‘depth’, the fifth form reflections, don’t matter at all, what matters is the vividness with which he describes his sensations, the intense engagement with all the different types of weather he has to fly in and above all the bounding joy of flying a Spitfire.
Looking out of the tiny cockpit as we flow about the cloud-dappled sky I experience an exhilaration that I cannot recall ever having felt before. (p.105)
(Compare the description of flying the new Spitfire Mark VB, taking it higher than ever before, and being able to see the breath-taking panorama of the whole of South East England, p.250)
The schoolboy shallowness of his occasional reflections about God or the war or so on only emphasise the powerful immediacy of the nervous anticipation, then the phone call telling the squadron to scramble, the hurried take-off and then the numerous nailbitingly exciting descriptions of aerial combat, wonderfully vivid, visceral and immediate.
At several places Wellum himself goes out of his way to emphasise how dim he is. He, at different times, makes two friends, both nicknamed Tommy, and is at pains to describe them as intellectuals, chaps who have big discussions about books etc (‘Both Tommys are obviously intelligent’, p.175). Whereas Geoff knows himself, not a deep thinker, instead a chap who loves playing cricket, salmon fishing and flying Spits. It’s noticeable that he fairly frequent attempts to think about the war or God or the meaning of it all generally end with him admitting to being hopelessly confused.
On another occasion he expresses a dismissal of ‘intellectuals’ which really only serves to bring out his own anxieties on the subject.
What a sight! The colour, the different shades of green of fields and woods, the bright roundels on the Spitfires; this is something very close to my ideal of beauty. No doubt I would incur the derision of the self-styled intellectuals and pacifists but I bet they have never felt as totally happy and wonderful as I do now. (p.108)
Or take his feelings when various friends and colleagues get killed.
Poor Butch. Wonder where he ended up. He may be OK, of course, but it’s doubtful. It’s all rather ghastly when someone you know well gets the chop. (p.164)
Not a profound eulogy, is it? But that’s the point. Schoolboy Geoff notices all the lovely surfaces of the world, of the huge blue sky, the dappled countryside, his friends, the beautiful planes, the exciting fights, without ever letting any of it go in very deep. Callow youth with boundless determination and unthinking patriotism. Thank God we had them.
Patriotism
Like everything else about the book, Wellum’s patriotism is not exactly deep and considered, rather the opposite, light and boyish, but nonetheless real for that:
Closing steadily we drop down into a thin layer of haze sitting on the sea and the 109s are just in the top of it. Four lethal determined-looking Spitfires are closing in behind them looking for the kill. Pilots hunched forward in their cockpits, concentrating and intense. The roundels on the Spits standing out clearly as if to say: ‘We’re British and we’re going to clobber you for coming over here to kill our people uninvited.’ (p.205)
Pass the test, be a man
The rather long and clunky sub-title is ‘The Story of the Boy Who Became a Man in the War-Torn Skies Above Britain’ and, at various points, in fact on a steady series of occasions, Wellum is very aware of the fact that he is undergoing a series of tests. First off to see if he can even be accepted for the RAF training course, then seeing if he can actually learn to fly (quite a struggle), to see if he can past the basic flying tests, then the tests to become an advanced flyer and gain his wings. And all of these pale in comparison with the ultimate test which is finding out whether he is a coward or not. He, like all the pilots, will have to fight the ultimate battle with himself in order to conquer exhaustion and fear. And in the process, he hopes he will become a man.
As he says of the pilots of the first squadron he joins, at Hornchurch, most of them had been over Dunkirk several times on just one day.
These chaps have won their private battles and these are battles they will have to go on winning , for there is another day tomorrow. As of now, however, they have proved themselves men. (p.100)
And:
Throughout the squadron there is the feeling of girding one’s loins for a sustained, supreme, almost superhuman effort in the near future. Everything we have been taught, how we react and respond to intense pressure, will be tested to the utmost. Private thoughts are ever with me. Will I have the courage needed?… There will be only one way to go and that will be forward into the approaching hordes of German aeroplanes. Except for Wimpey [his best friend] and I, the others know the form. They have won their private battles although, of course, they will now have to start again. I’ve got to start from the beginning. I’ve got all that to come and only when my own private battle is over and won will I be able to join ranks with the others and be a true fighter pilot. (p.127)
And:
I am down on the order of battle for tomorrow morning at first light: readiness at dawn. So be it. Soon I shall know what the others already know. I shall be either a man or a coward. I’m afraid of being a coward. (p.131)
This may all be true on its own terms but it’s also a reminder that Wellum has only just stopped being a schoolboy whose life consisted of preparing for exams and tests and, at the kind of well-provided private school he went to, regular sporting competitions. In a sense everything was still a test and competition for him.
Battles
And he does pass the test and he does become a man, via a series of aerial battles described with extraordinary intensity and immediacy: such as the sorties described in detail on pages 143 to 158 and 177 to 185; and the extended passage describing the nail-biting patrol he undertakes in pouring rain and thick cloud, getting hopelessly lost in the North Sea before eventually finding his way back to the aerodrome with extraordinary persistence and luck, pages 212 to 241.
Taking the battle to the enemy
The last 50 pages or so describe the change in strategy which took place at the start of 1941. Having won the Battle of Britain, having denied the Germans the supremacy of the skies which they needed in order to mount an amphibious invasion of Britain, at the very beginning of 1941 the RAF began to fly into France to attack strategic targets i.e. bombing. And the role of squadrons like Wellum’s shifted from defending against bombing raids on Britain, to accompanying and protecting allied bombing raids on France.
Acceptance of death
In the last 50 pages, also, he describes how he has come to a state of accepting the possibility of death, stopping being afraid of death.
The main reason for my relaxed frame of mind and my great content is because, among other things, I have overcome the fear of dying. It no longer concerns me. (p.263)
A shiver runs through me as I sit strapped in my cockpit waiting for the exact time to start the engines. I bet the Channel is cold this morning. Suppose some poor bloke from some wing or other will go plop into it before this operation is over. Don’t mind the waiting these days as much as I used to. No butterflies, just total acceptance. I figure out you’ve got to go and that’s all there is to it. (p.275)
It is a judgement call, though, whether this is the result of careful philosophical reflection (unlikely, given the boyish superficiality I’ve highlighted) or more the peace of exhaustion. In September 1941 he realises that he has had only one week off in the entire year (p.286). The aerodrome commander has a quiet word and for the first time he can remember, he is left off the flight roster. Like all overworked people he is, at first, bereft. The daily routine of preparing, scrambling, flying, fighting, returning and recovering is all he knows. After a break he’s back into it for months.
But then comes the moment he knew would have to come: he’s stood down. He’s told as he strolls towards the dispersal hut that his active service days are over, he’s flown his last sortie, he’s being sent off to do training. No black mark, no reflection on him, but he’s done his time and he’s worn out and he serves a rest (p.291).
I turn my little £5 car out of the gates for the last time. A has-been. No further use to anybody. Merely a survivor, my name no longer on the Order of Battle in the dispersal hut. A worn-out bloody fighter pilot at twenty years of age, merely left to live, or rather exist, on memories, reduced to watching from the wings. (p.293)
Training
In my ignorance, and in my close reading of the letter of the text, I thought this meant his days of combat flying were over but they weren’t at all. He is packed off to join 65 squadron as a Flight Commander where, sure enough, he gives lessons in dual trainers and then supervising pilots going solo.
During this period he is invited to Buckingham Palace to receive the Distinguished Flying Cross. He’s posted to RAF Debden and then, to my confusion, is back in action, leading his flights in fighter sweeps and bomber escorts over France, Holland and Belgium, where they have to contend with a new German plane, the Focke-Wulf FW 190 (p.299).
Something’s broken inside him. He is gripped by fear and anxiety, partly about whether he is up to it any more, whether he’s as good a pilot as he was in first, fearless months. He lies awake worrying at night. He drinks a lot in the bar after sorties. ‘I’m not what I used to be,’ (p.303). He is getting increasingly bad headaches behind his forehead.
Malta
At short notice he is posted abroad. With two hours notice he is sent by train from Euston to Glasgow. Here he is welcomed abroad a Royal Navy ship. He is one of a contingent of Spitfire pilots aboard an aircraft carrier. Trouble is the carrier deck isn’t long enough for Spits to get up to flying speed so he discusses the various bodges and hacks the engineers come up with.
They’re part of Operation Pedestal, the assembly of a huge number of merchant ships carrying oil and munitions, accompanied by aircraft carriers and destroyers, which is sailing for Malta. (It was in support of Operation Pedestal that author Eric Newby took part in an ill-fated attempt to sabotage German Ju 88s at an aerodrome in Sicily, as described in the opening chapter of his war memoir, ‘Love and Death in the Apennines’.)
Malta is vital because it acts as a staging supplies onto Egypt to supply the Desert War, Egypt itself being key to control of the Suez Canal, through which comes all the Allies’ oil supplies, and to the oil fields of Persia and the Middle East.
Long story short, Wellum is tasked with leading a squad of 8 Spitfires from the deck of his aircraft carrier, over Tunisia and on to Malta. The whole thing goes off like clockwork, although he struggles with the glare of the Mediterranean sun and has more of his headaches. During the operation Wellum suddenly remembers that it’s his 21st birthday.
Soon after his squad have landed and are immediately taken over by RAF ground personnel, they witness the arrival of what remains of the huge convoy. Of the 14 merchant ships, nine were sunk and the navy lost an aircraft carrier and two cruisers (p.329).
Last orders
There’s plenty more fighter flying, sweeps for enemy planes and flying cover for bombers attacking Sicily but his headaches are getting worse and one several occasions he loses his peripheral vision. Eventually the squadron medical officer sees him, diagnosed inflamed sinuses, he’s admitted to hospital where they cut into them and discover a cyst/abscess. This leads to the diagnosis that he is exhausted, run down and needs a complete break. He is put on the next flight to Gibraltar and from there on to England. Before he goes he apologises to the squadron leader, Tony Lovell, for letting everyone down and, when the man is kind to him, almost breaks down in tears. He is at the end of his tether.
Flight to Gibraltar where he’s astonished at the lack of rationing, then a plane onto Plymouth, then a train to London. He has done two tours of duty and spent three years as a fighter pilot defending his country in its hour of greatest need. He is exhausted.
Restoration
There’s a two-page epilogue which made me cry. He goes home, back to his parents’ house, back to his old bedroom, where he lies in his bed and cries his eyes out for all the good friends he’s lost, three years of strain and nervous exhaustion and grief gushing out of him.
The weeks pass in peaceful walks and fishing. After 6 weeks he goes for a medical and is passed and goes to see one of his old instructors about getting a posting and ends up being sent to the Gloster Aircraft Company as a production test pilot. The narrative ends with him climbing into the cockpit of the new Typhoon, pressing Contact and preparing to return to the skies. I found it immensely moving.
Dispensable pilots
[Instructor]; ‘You may be a little overconfident which in its way is no bad thing, but just watch it, accidents can happen and aeroplanes cost money.’
[Geoff]: ‘What about me?’
[Instructor]: ‘There are plenty like you.’ (p.25)
Thanks
Lastly, thanks. I’ve taken to pieces various aspects of the text which interest me but it shouldn’t detract from what I think should be our fundamental attitude, which is of profound gratitude. Thank you, Geoff, our thanks to you and to all the young men who fought alongside you and to the many who had their young lives cut short, fighting to defend this country and, by extension, all of Europe, from the nightmare of Nazi tyranny. Thank you.
Credit
First Light: The Story of the Boy Who Became a Man in the War-Torn Skies Above Britain by Geoffrey Wellum was first published by Viking Books in 2002. Page references are to the 2020 Penguin Centenary Collection edition.
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