You Never Know Your Luck - Battle of Britain to the Great Escape: The Extraordinary Life of Keith 'Skeets' Ogilvie DFC

When the Royal Canadian Air Force wouldn't accept him as a pilot in the summer of 1939, Keith ‘Skeets' Ogilvie walked across the street in Ottawa and joined the Royal Air Force. A week later he was on a boat to England and a future he could not have imagined.

Some unusual luck won him a transfer as a Spitfire pilot to No. 609 (White Rose) Squadron, just as the Battle of Britain was being joined. Over the next months he firmly established his credentials with six confirmed victories and two probables, along with several enemy aircraft damaged. Shot down over France the following July, he was fortunate to be treated for grievous injuries by top German surgeons. Skeets' home for the balance of the war was Stalag Luft III prison camp. He was the second last man out of the ‘Great Escape' tunnel but was recaptured three days later. For reasons he never understood, Skeets was one of 23 escapees who were spared from being murdered by the Gestapo. 50 of his fellows were not so lucky.

In London on a night off from flying duties, Skeets had been introduced to a fellow Canadian expatriate, Irene Lockwood. While he was testing the limits of his luck, his future wife was experiencing her own adventures in London, living through the daily stress of the Luftwaffe bombing campaign and working with MI12, and later as a wartime photographer with the RCAF.

You Never Know Your Luck is the story of two modest people who found themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and who rose to the occasion like so many of their contemporaries. Skeets' and Irene's own words and memories are the foundations on which the experience of wartime unfolds. A unique perspective from individuals who never failed to wonder at their own fortune.

Battle of Britain London Monument - further information on P/O  Keith Ogilvie 

Available from:
Casemate

A Spitfire Pilot's Story - Pat Hughes: Battle of Britain Top Gun

Pat Hughes is today perhaps the greatest unsung hero of the Battle of Britain. Ranked sixth in the ‘ace of aces’ of the aerial campaign of summer 1940, he shot down at least fourteen enemy aircraft, mostly the Spitfire’s closely matched rival the Messerschmitt Me 109.

As a flight commander in 234 Squadron he advocated bold, close-in tactics and during July 1940 scored the squadron’s first victories of the epic battle for air supremacy. The burden of command fell on his shoulders before the squadron transferred to the heart of the Battle in the south-east of England, where he endured the heaviest and most sustained period of fighting of the Battle of Britain.

Revered by his fellow pilots, Hughes began a shooting spree on 15 August that only ended when he was killed during the first huge daylight attack on London on 7 September. In his last three days alone he contributed at least six kills. His death in mysterious circumstances left Kathleen, his bride of just six weeks, a war widow. This volume is illustrated with over forty photographs, including many from his family that have never before been published.

Pat Hughes - Wikipedia

Information on Pat Hughes' burial at St James Church, Sutton on Hull, England

Available from:

Amberley Publishing

New & Notable - 15th April

Penalty Strike The Memoirs of a Red Army Penal Company Commander 1943-45
by Alexander Pyl'cyn (Stackpole Books)
The focus of this book are the author's vivid memories of service as a company commander in a Red Army officers' penal battalion on the Eastern Front 1944-45. During this time, he and his unit participated in the 1944 Soviet summer offensive Operation 'Bagration', the Vistula-Oder operation into eastern Germany, and the final assault on Berlin.

Alexander Pyl'cyn was a platoon commander and later a commander of an officers' penal company. He was a senior lieutenant having a degraded regiment commander as a second-in-command. He and his company had to carry out the most difficult and dangerous operations in order to break through the enemy defenses. With more than 80% of the men lost his company succeeded in completing their missions. The horrors of war, the hand-to-hand fights with a desperately struggling enemy are described in this book along with a story of a strong feeling between the young officer and a hospital nurse Rita. Thanks to Alexander Rita was appointed a nurse in the penal battalion. She saved dozens of soldiers, carrying them from the battlefield under enemy fire. It was Rita who saved Alexander Pyl'cyn from death, when he was badly wounded near Berlin. She became his wife in the last months of the war.
Available from:
Amazon.com

Hurricane Pilot: The Wartime Letters of W.O. Harry L. Gill, DFM
Edited by Brent Wilson with Barbara J. Gill (Goose Lane Editions)
Harry L. Gill was born in Devon and attended Fredericton High School. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force in Moncton in 1940 at the age of 18 and was among the first to pass through the British Commonwealth Air Training Program. . After flying training he was posted to 607 Fighter Squadron of the Royal Air Force.
In February 1942, Mr. Gill’s squadron of Hurricane Fighters attacked the German warships Scharnhorst and Gniesenau during the infamous “Channel Dash”. Mr. Gill’s bravery and flying skill in that action won him a Distinguished Flying Medal. In June of 1942, he traveled with his squadron to India to shore up Commonwealth defences against the Japanese. On Jan. 17 1943, at age 20, Harry Gill was shot down and killed in action. He lies buried in Maynamati Commonwealth War Cemetery in Bangladesh.

Drawing extensively on Gill's correspondence with his parents and his siblings, this very personal account of war shows how Gill was transformed from a small-town boy to a mature fighter pilot serving in a global war on another continent. His letters depict the enthusiasm of youth, a strong sense of humour, his plans for the future, and this continuing attachment to home.
Available from:
Goose Lane Editions

We Remember D Day

Frank and Joan Shaw compiled a small number of books in the 1990s, all compiled from personal recollections of momentous occasions during the Second World War.

We Remember D Day contains the stories of over 130 men and women, from many of the Britsh regiments that landed on Gold and Sword Beaches on the 6th June 1944. Members of the 6th Airborne Division, VAD Nurses, RAF pilots, Royal Navy sailors, US Army soldiers, Resistance fighters, and many more individuals provided their memories for this book. It was produced so all profits would go to Normandy veterans (the Normandy Veterans Association and the Royal British Legion).

A slight criticsm is that some of the stories are a bit on the short side, however they all include information on the individuals arm of service (in most cases regiment or ship), so this helps to put them into context. There are a large number of period photos, and 'then and now' photos of the contributors which bring a human face to the stories. This is an excellent book to read alongside one of the numerous overviews of D Day that have been published, although it is now out of print.

Available:
Believed to be out of print.
Amazon

A Member of the RAF of Indeterminate Race: WW2 Experiences of a former RAF Navigator & POW

Cy Grant, born in British Guyana, was one of about 400 Caribbean men who joined the RAF as aircrew in the Second World War.

He came to Britain and joined the RAF in 1941, qualifying as a navigator, and was posted to 103 Squadron. As part of the crew of an Avro Lancaster, his plane was shot down during a raid on Gelsenkirchen in June 1943. It was only his third operational mission. Bailing out, he landed in Holland, where he was captured and sent first to Amsterdam - where his photo was taken by the Germans. It was later to appear in the newspaper Volkischer Beobachter, with the caption 'A member of the RAF of indeterminate race'.

Imprisoned in Stalag Luft III until 1945, the camp was evacuated before the invading Russians, and Cy and his fellow prisoners were sent to Stalag IIIA at Lukenwalde, where they were liberated by Soviet troops (although not actually release for a number of weeks!).

Cy Grant's memoir provides a unique perspective on the war, coming from a Caribbean volunteer with the RAF and POW. Cy states that the only racism he encountered while serving was the institutional form, from within some of the higher echelons of the RAF, and none from any of the rank and file Canadian and British airmen who he served with.

Obituary: Cy Grant (from The Daily Telegraph 15th February 2010)

Available from:
Woodfield Publishing

Welsh Sailors of the Second World War

Welsh Sailors of the Second World War is predominantly a book of first-hand accounts of the experiences of Welsh men and women serving in the Merchant Navy, the Royal Navy, Fleet Air Arm, dockyards and naval bases during the Second World War.

The book also contains chapters focusing on particular snapshots of the war at sea - the contribution of one Welsh Port, Barry, to the Merchant Navy; the sinking of the Anglo Saxon by the German raider Widder and the survival of two of her crew members after 51 days adrift in the Atlantic; the sinking of the SS Elwyn; and the story of the war service of the seven Hortop brothers.

The personal recollections recall service on a large number of Royal Navy and Merchant Navy ships and Fleet Air Arm Squadrons including (but not limited to) 767 Squadron and HMS Ark Royal (sinking of the Bismark); HMS Swift; Merchant Aircraft Carriers; LCTs at D Day, Merchant Navy crewmen on the Russian and Atlantic convoys; the sinking of the MV Empire Cromwell; HMS Jamaica; HMS Catterick; a DEMS Gunner on the Empire Prince; HMS Talent; MV Dolius; LST 165; 206 Squadron (Coastal Command); Baron Oglivy; HMS Glasgow; MV Empire Confidence; HMS Warspite; HMS Frobisher; MTB 469; and the Royal Navy Patrol Service.

At over 400 pages, this is a considerable book - the coverage is comprehensive, and is going to be of interest to anyone with an interest in the Royal and Merchant Navies during the war.

Available from:
Glyndwr Publishing

Further reading:
Barry Merchant Seamen