A Magnificent Story
Enemy Coast Ahead. By Wing Commander Guy Gibson, V.C., D.S.O., D.F.C. (Michael Joseph. 12s. 6d.)
"THIS is a magnificent story well and simply told by as great a warrior as these Islands ever bred. It is also History.' So begins Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Harris in his introduction to this book. In writing thus he makes a bold assertion, but no one who reads this moving and memorable book will be anything but in full agreement with him. It is one of those chronicles that stir the blood and fill the breast with pride that England breeds such sons. To those who may scoff at such emotion I make no apology at all. I ask them to read this book and experience for themselves what they owe to unconquerable men like Guy Gibson.
Most people are ignorant of the feelings of the combat airman toward flying. This is because Press and B.B.C. interviews always showed them to be intensely eager to get to grips with the enemy, and to be miserable when they were denied the chance. If he thought about it at all, the layman would shrug his shoulders and say to himself, "God knows why these youngsters want to try and get killed, but thank heavens they do. It's. not my idea of fun." It is not surprising that this fiction prevails, because the airman himself presented it to the public. The same conscience that made him volunteer in the first place (every man with wings on his breast was a volunteer who could have stayed safely on the ground) carried him on the crest of an urge to take his full share of the burden that lay on his comrades. His eagerness to fight, or to have the opportunity to fight, was in this way misinterpreted by the lay public. Guy Gibson was awarded the V.C., D.S.O. and the D.F.C. He carried out two full tours in bombers and, instead of having a " rest '' between them, managed to get himself posted to a night fighter squadron with which he flew all through• the 194o-41 Blitz. After he had completed his second tour of bombers and attained the staggering total of 173 sorties, he started organising and leading the brilliant operation against the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe dams. for which he was awarded the V.C. After a short "rest," which Mr. Churchill himself ordered, he was applying once again to be put on operations. "He always had direct access to me," writes Air Chief Marshal -Harris, "and on further pressure from him and his A.O.C., I quite wrongly .allowed him to return to operations.'
From the foregoing, the reader would be forgiven for thinking that here was a man without fear who genuinely enjoyed Operations over and above everything else. The fact is that he was as frightened as anyone. Returning from leave he had "a horrible feeling when I found I was on Ops that night." "This bombing was beginning to get me down," "I was scared stiff that I would have to go," "It's a horrible business, your stomach feels it wants to hit your backbone," "I sweated with fear as we flew on," "I thought again. 'this is terrible—this feeling of fear—if it is fear.' " Furthermore,
he had a young wife, and his touching references to the part the wives of the Bomber Boys played tell how much she was to him, and he to her. Gibson was the quintessence of selflessness, not a • selflessness which revealed itself in a brief halcyon moment of action, but one which he solemnly exercised over the primary in- stinct of self-preservation for five-and-a-half years practically with- out a break. Throughout that period be saw his friends go one after the other, and he often mentions his good fortune at surviving, and his hope for a home life. As one reads these passages by a young man who had done as much for his country as anyone in war history, it is especially poignant to know that he was subse- quently killed on a flight which was, as usual, a self-imposed dangerous task.
The ordinary reader is disinclined to read books on flying or the R.A.F. in view of a latent suspicion that they require a specialist knowledge or some personal interest for them to be appreciated. Let none fail to read this book on those grounds. The story of Guy Gibson lifts the soul and fortifies the spirit.
NIGEL TANGYE.
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