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This story has been submitted by the regional Outreach Officer on behalf of the author, who has given his permission for it to be added to the site.

In ancient Greece and Rome, ‘decimation’, the killing of every tenth man, was usually considered a fairly drastic deterrent against all but the most determined fighting forces.

After World War II, I discovered that one in six of the boys who had been at school with me had died in that war. That applied to both those at Summer Fields, Oxford, (1929-33) and at Stowe (1933-38). One of the latter was my study-mate and best friend, Mike Franklin, who had left Stowe a year before I did. He had gone to the Royal Air Force Cadet College at Cranwell; and had died flying in Coastal Command. When I, later, served at Cranwell, I found that half of all the pre-war cadets had died in the war. After leaving Stowe, I had gone, in 1938, up to Cambridge to study engineering; and I had joined the University Air Squadron to learn to fly. Again, half of all those CUAS members died in the war.

I spent the first half of my war on the Home Front, in England. At the end of 1942, though, and just 40 days (and nights) after getting married, I sailed from the Clyde as engineer officer of No. 241 Squadron. We had 18 Hurricane Mark II fighter-bomber aircraft and 24 pilots when we set up at Maison Blanche airfield outside Algiers. We soon moved up to the Tunisian frontier, firstly at Souk-el-Arba and then at Souk-el-Khemis. We were about 20 miles behind our front line in Tunisia. Our task was to reconnoitre and harass enemy troops. My job was to see that, every morning, 16 or 17 of our 18 Hurricanes were ready for take-off.

Whilst there, our fuel storage depot, about 20 miles to our rear, got bombed by the USAAF, whose aircraft had got into the wrong valley. We, too, once bombed our own front line troops. Friendly fire is no recent phenomenon.

By the end of the campaign in May 1943, of those 24 pilots, five had been killed and three lost as prisoners of war (PoWs). Of the 18 replacement pilots joining the squadron during that same period, three had already been killed and one lost as a PoW. Overall, of those 42 pilots, there had been 12 casualties, eight dead and four PoWs. Also in that period, four pilots were posted out, leaving 26 pilots with the squadron. Five DFCs were awarded to members of the squadron as a result of the North African campaign.

In the next seven months, we waited in Tunisia, eventually to be rearmed with Spitfires Marks VIII and IX. During that period, one of the 26 pilots was lost in an accident, nine more were posted in and eight posted out, leaving 26 to go on to the Italian campaign.

During the 17 months in Italy, three more of the 24 pilots who had been with the squadron since the start were killed. Thus, of those original 24, eight had been killed and three taken as PoWs, nearly a 50 % casualty rate. Of the 18 who had joined later, but also took part in the North African campaign, five were killed in Italy. That was in addition to the three killed and one taken prisoner in North Africa. Thus, half of those 18 became casualties, too.

Of the nine who joined in the period whilst waiting in Tunisia, five were killed and one taken PoW in Italy. One of those killed had been awarded the DFC. Another was mentioned in despatches. Two thirds were casualties.

Overall, of the 51 pilots who had been with us in North Africa, 21 had been killed and five taken as PoWs by 1945, just half being casualties.

In Italy, a further 71 pilots were posted in, though nine were with the squadron for very brief periods of only a month or two, and there were 14 who only arrived during the last two months of the war. Six of the 71 were killed, including one of those last 14, one was reported missing, and six became PoWs. Omitting the 23 ‘short service’ pilots, 12 of the other 48 became casualties.

In total, 122 pilots spent a total of about 845 pilot-months with the squadron, an average of seven months each, varying between less than a month to 25 months. 24 (20 %) had been killed (or missing believed killed) and 12 (10 %) taken as PoWs. However, the casualty rate was noticeably higher in the North African campaign than in the Italian one. In Italy, there was much greater air superiority; and the Squadron had more up-to-date aircraft.

I have felt fortunate to have survived that war, not because I was much at risk, but because circumstances kept me risk-free. Had they not done so, there would have been a half chance of my being killed. That made, and makes, me feel that I need to exert myself twice as hard as I might otherwise, to make up for those killed.

Death in World War II tended to be selective. Those at most risk were the sub-mariners, the convoy escorts, the small-boat sections, the commandos, the Special Air Services, the parachutists, the bomb disposal squads and aircrew. They were nearly all volunteers, prepared to do something new, different and dangerous. As a country, we lost a lot of irreplaceable talent.

I conclude that, without a willingness to undertake the risks of war, a community stands at risk of subjugation by any more willing and ruthless enemy. The risks of war are, however, mostly undertaken by the young of a community. For them to be willing to do so, they need to learn to accept the necessity of sacrifice for the good of the rest of the community. They need to be assured that they will not be sent into an unjust nor unnecessary war, and that, should they be killed or injured, the rest of the community will honour them and look after their dependants at least as well as they would have been able to if they had survived unharmed.

Judging by what has happened to the Gulf War veterans, and those who survived being prisoners of the Japanese, our community is rather stingy.

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