FIRST LIGHT , Signed by Geoffrey Wellum
(Signatures)	Royal Air Force Battle of Britain Legend Squadron Leader GEOFFREY WELLUM.
(Dimensions)	1st Edition Mint Condition hardback book
Price	£0.00

Description

FIRST LIGHT - RARE FIRST EDITION (Signed). A cut well above the bog standard wartime reminiscences of many retired pilots. For a start Geoffrey Wellum can write, but more than this he has an instinctive feel for a good story. He begins First Light as a fresh-faced, rather obnoxious public schoolboy keen to blag his way into the RAF in March 1939; just three years, two full tours on Spitfires, the Battle of Britain, nearly 100 escorts and fighter sweeps over occupied France and a Malta convoy later, he was physically and mentally burnt out before the age of 22. An old man in a boy's body. His descriptions of the excitement, freedom and, at times, sheer terror of operating in a three-dimensional airspace are vividly powerful, but perhaps his greatest gift is to get across the way the fatigue and the emotional shutting off creeps up unnoticed. At the start, the death of a friend leaves him 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 he 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... 1st Edition Mint Condition hardback book signed by Squadron Leader GEOFFREY WELLUM...priced @ Sold