"Wellum s First Light deserves to be read for many years to come."
The Times (London)
"An extraordinarily gripping and powerful story."
The Evening Standard (London)
Geoffrey Wellum joined the Royal Air Force in 1939, at age seventeen. After piloting Spitfires during the Battle of Britain and flying nearly 100 missions over occupied France, he was mentally and physically exhausted an old man at age twenty–two. Now, drawing on notes he wrote at the time, Wellum re–creates his wartime experiences. The book vividly evokes the realities of wartime flying the camaraderie, the scrambles, the dogfights, the night flights, the foul weather. But it also gives us a moving portrait of a boy who anguishes over the loss of friends during training, broods over fears of failure and survives to become a battle–hardened ace, inured to death but never unaffected by it. Richly detailed, engagingly written, and emotionally resonant, First Light is a treat for military history buffs and anyone drawn to dramatic coming–of–age stories.
Geoffrey Wellum (Cornwall, UK) left the RAF in 1961 and worked for a commodities brokerage in London until his retirement.
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
At the start, the death of a friend leaves Wellum devastated and wondering when his turn will come; within the space of a few hundred pages, the failure of a pilot to return is dropped in almost as an afterthought. This is not the response of a man who cares too little, but of one who cares too much. Without being aware of it, he has experienced and felt too much and his mind and body have involuntarily separated. This comes into even sharper relief at the end when Wellum is stood down from active service; he is the only one not to see--quite literally, as his vision has become impaired--that his ailments are rooted in his psyche rather than his body. The only one false note is his desire to see his role as part of a bigger picture; written many years after the events he describes, Wellum sometimes interjects thoughts and feelings about the war that simply do not ring true. That aside, one is left wondering what became of Wellum the man between the war ending and the book's publication. What sense did the prematurely aged fighter pilot make of the post-war age and did he learn to love again? But that, maybe, is the subject for another book. --John Crace
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