'I found myself running straight for the bulk of the destroyer and swerving close under the tail of another Blenheim. The ships were bristling with gun flashes. A rattle of hammer-blows told me that some smallarms stuff had found us and Weeky opened up with his Brownings in reply. I dived below the stern of the destroyer, between it and the cleaving bows of the next ship. I had a clear run now for the big tanker!' Ron Gillman's account captures in a truly remarkable way the essence of war in its mixture of heroism and trepidation, high living and tragedy. It is the record of his posting to Malta in 1940 as a pilot in a Blenheim fighter-bomber squadron engaged in low-level daylight attacks on supply shipping, harbours and motor transport in the Mediterranean theatre. Ron Gillman has a gift for putting you in the pilot's seat: his flying descriptions will have you fighting the controls as you weave your way in against the tracer and pull up over the mastheads at the last moment. But his book is much more than an action story; it is an evocation of the whole frontline way of life in any war, where deeds of heroism alternate with uninhibited sorties on the town in search of relaxation and forgetfulness; and the occasional spell of serious illness brings temporary escape but also the difficulty of starting all over again. Few who have known the touch of war will fail to be moved by Ron Gillman's memories.
Front photograph (courtesy of 82 Squadron)
A Blenheim drops a stick of bombs across a merchant ship