For me, creating the tension on the ground was just as important as in the air. I love the waiting scene in dispersal before Geoff's first combat - the tinkling of teaspoons in cups, the rustle of a magazine, Kingcome chewing on his match... and then the sudden shrill ringing of the phone - scramble! This is an account that anyone who has an interest in WW2 aviation will be delighted in. It's well told, full of humor, sadness, and death defying flying and combat action. These men, as young as 18, flew one of the fastest and deadliest aircraft at the time and many didn't make it through the campaign or even their first mission. You read with sadness the loss of many good pilots and friends but still the men continue flying day after day facing terrible odds. We were discussing a scene in which 'Boy Wellum', the hero of our story, makes his first flight in a Spitfire and our actor, Sam Heughan, couldn't wait to get into the air. He was then posted directly in May 1940 to 92 Squadron, flying Spitfires. He saw extensive action during the Battle of Britain. His first Commanding Officer was Roger Bushell, (later immortalised in 'The Great Escape'), and his close colleagues included Brian Kingcome. Amazingly fresh and immediate . . . absolutely honest, it is an extraordinarily gripping and powerful story Evening Standard

First Light (Wellum book) - Wikipedia

In First Light, Geoffrey Wellum tells the inspiring, often terrifying true story of his coming of age amid the roaring, tumbling dogfights of the fiercest air war the world had ever seen. Soon after Dunkirk, 92 Squadron was transferred from RAF Duxford in Cambridgeshire to RAF Pembrey in Carmarthenshire, Wales. It was there that Wellum began his combat career, "chasing isolated German aircraft all over the south-west". [3]

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In the mid-1980s, with the family business in liquidation and his divorce pending, [15] Wellum retired, as he had promised himself in his youth, to The Lizard peninsula, Cornwall, [15] settling in Mullion. He joined the local choir, and became deputy harbourmaster. [3] Over the coming months he and his fellow pilots play a crucial role in the Battle of Britain. But of the friends that take to the air alongside Wellum, many never return. By late September the Battle of Britain was over, and the blitz, the night-time onslaught on the country’s urban centres, was under way. For Wellum and his comrades the intensity eased, as Spitfires were unsatisfactory nightfighters, and the squadron moved into winter quarters at Manston in Kent. During the battle he had shot down a Heinkel He 111 bomber, and claimed a quarter share in a Ju 88. That November there were two damaged Bf 109s, and one shared. Another Bf 109 was claimed in 1941, and there may have been more, as he was not one greatly concerned with recording such things. Wellum claimed a Heinkel He 111 shot down on 11 September, and a quarter share in a Junkers Ju 88 downed on 27 September 1940. Two (and one shared) Messerschmitt Bf 109s were claimed "damaged" during November 1940. [9] 1941 [ edit ] An extraordinarily deeply moving and astonishingly evocative story. Reading it, you feel you are in the Spitfire with him, at 20,000ft, chased by a German Heinkel, with your ammunition gone' Independent

First Light by Geoffrey Wellum - Penguin Books New Zealand First Light by Geoffrey Wellum - Penguin Books New Zealand

That summer Wellum was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. By September his time with 92 Squadron had come to an end, and he was tired. He was posted to an operational training unit and did not return to squadron service until February 1942, when he became a flight commander with 65 Squadron, at Great Sampford in Essex. We soon decided that rather than shooting costly air to air footage, we would use outtakes from the Battle of Britain movie - and enhance it with CGI. The story was told well. You saw what little training the RAF had. You saw their raw courage. You felt their tension and watched them deal with the losses of each of their own the best they could. You saw them fly exhausted into battle over and over and over again. You saw what it cost them mentally and emotionally. Much later, in an unpublished interview with The Times, Wellum recalled: "After I joined the squadron they went to Dunkirk and by the end of that day we'd lost five people, four of whom I'd met the night before in the officers' mess. I thought, 'Hold on a minute, this is bloody dangerous!’ " [4]

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Shout out to Gary Lewis and Ben Aldridge as squadron leaders. The rest of the cast was wonderful as well. Very believable.

First Light by Geoffrey Wellum | Waterstones

Soon after his arrival, 92 Squadron moved from Duxford in Cambridgeshire to Pembrey in Carmarthenshire. There, Wellum made his first sorties, pursuing a Junkers Ju 88 German bomber as far as Weymouth, Dorset, and losing it in the clouds; attempting night-fighting around Bristol; and “chasing isolated German aircraft all over the south-west”. But all of this was a prelude to the squadron’s move, on 9 September 1940, to Biggin Hill in Kent, at the centre of that summer’s battle. After the war, Wellum remained in the RAF until 1961. Among his appointments he was with the Second Tactical Air Force in Germany, converted to jets – flying Gloster Meteors, de Havilland Vampires and English Electric Canberra bombers on reconnaissance sorties – served at RAF Gaydon, and finally, in East Anglia, with a Thor intermediate-range ballistic missile unit. Vivid, wholly convincing, compelling. One of the best memoirs for years about the experience of flying in war' Max Hastings, Sunday Telegraph

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People say to me how do you remember these things? How do you expect me to forget? You don't. You can't.... The experiences of being a Spitfire fighter pilot in the battle of Britain stay with you forever. And you can't do anything about it." Geoffrey Wellum He finished the war as a gunnery instructor, staying in the RAF, first as a staff officer in West Germany, followed by a four year tour with 192 Squadron. He married Grace, his wartime girlfriend and they had three children. This won't be so much a review as an injunction: read this book. That's right, stop reading this review right now and go and get hold of First Light however you can: buy it, borrow it, steal it if necessary (any writer in his deepest heart wants readers more than anything else, so if you can't afford to buy his work, he'll forgive someone who steals to read). I salute you, Geoff - however reluctant you are to be called a hero. I salute you and all those that fought alongside you. And I'm sure the audience will, too.