We few, we happy few

Geoffrey Wellum

(1921-2018)

 

 

Taking off in a small light aircraft (after climbing into the cockpit, and make no mistake climb is the right word) is a perilous enough affair even in peacetime. There is always the sense of taking a risk, more so than getting into a car or crossing the road, no matter what the statistics say. The airframe can feel positively flimsy, the ailerons likely to snap under the slightest strain, the wings attached as if by glue; as if the entire construction has been assembled from the contents of giant Airfix kit.

 

Consider then how much greater the peril when the aircraft has been built for the sole purpose of combat, when you are sitting behind at least one tank of highly explosive aviation fuel, and the wings to either side of you have been equipped with machine guns (eight in total), in the expectation that you will use these mechanised weapons to kill or be killed. Weapons which can, in short bursts of shocking violence, disassemble a plane in seconds, leaving no trace of its pilot behind.

 

The nature of courage varies from person to person and courage itself is not an inexhaustible commodity. So, it is impossible to say what would make a young man of eighteen or nineteen climb into such a war machine and take to the skies, knowing full well there are other young waiting there to destroy him. We can only be thankful that there were enough pilots with sufficient courage to test their bravery in the summer of 1940, and to defend their country in the process.

 

Geoffey Wellum was one. 

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"It was the finality of death that troubled him most. There would be no second chance, as there had been with his flight instructors. Alright, Jamie, let’s try that again. Remember to stick to me like glue and never fly straight and level for more than a few seconds. Forget the rule book. Close in for the kill and don’t start firing until you are two hundred and fifty yards from the target, or you’re just wasting your ammunition."

           

"His instructor had had the unnerving habit of imitating the sound of a Messerschmidt's guns as he ambushed his students, strafing their planes with a noise that sounded like the jaw bones of a skull knocking together. The sound, Jamie thought, of death laughing. A hideous gibbering that worked its way into his dreams, an audible thread that laced his nightmares together into a suffocating shroud, his sweat soaked sheets a burial cloth he struggled to escape from."

 

St Crispin's Day from the short story collection, The Painted Sky      

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