CHAPTER 1
John Gard’ner was blissfully unaware that he had been spotted by a German formation of fighters. Patrolling over the English Channel in his Boulton Paul Defiant fighter, this would be his first and last action of the Battle of Britain. As the twenty-two-year-old New Zealander concentrated on maintaining the close formation flying of his all-too-recent training, he suddenly felt a ‘thud, thud, thud on the aircraft’.
Mercifully the former draughting cadet with the Public Works Department in Nelson was plucked from the frigid Channel waters, living to tell me the tale of how he thwarted death.
Seven decades later, I interviewed Gard’ner—at the time, one of only four Kiwi Battle of Britain pilots still alive—by telephone; he was in Tauranga, I was in Auckland. At ninety-three, one of his few concessions to old age was a very recent withdrawal from the fairways and greens of the local golf course. But this compromise with his advancing years was nowhere reflected in his ability to recall the days of his youth as a member of Winston Churchill’s lionised ‘Few’. He was one of 134 New Zealanders and 37 Australians who took to the air to fight Adolf Hitler’s intruders and was rightfully proud of their collective achievement. I voiced my desire to travel to Tauranga in the near future to meet him in person, but in the meantime I wanted to know what had led up to his watery brush with death. How, I asked him, had freshly graduated schoolboys from the farms and cities of the British Commonwealth’s southernmost Dominions found themselves in a life-and-death aerial struggle in one of history’s most important battles?
He told me that, like most of his Anzac compatriots, he was captivated by the flying craze at an early age.[2] As a ten-year-old, Gard’ner had seen three Great War-era aircraft land on the mudflats off Dunedin and he had bicycled a mile and a half to scrutinise the fantastic winged machines of the air, watching in awe as ‘three little gods’ stepped out of their respective cockpits.
Fellow countryman Alan Deere was also touched by the heavenly vision of flight at a young age. He later recalled that one long summer’s day in the small coastal town of Westport, nestled at the edge of New Zealand’s Southern Alps, he heard the mechanical throb of what turned out to be a tiny biplane. He watched the fabric, wood and wire machine circle the township and land on the beach at the water’s edge. Deere, with two childhood friends, ran the four miles to the landing site and for the first time laid their eyes on an aircraft at close range. ‘We stood and gazed in silent wonder at the aeroplane until eventually our persistence was rewarded by an invitation to look into the cockpit. There, within easy reach was the “joy stick” ... the very sound of the words conjuring up dreams of looping and rolling around in the blue heavens. As I gazed at these innermost secrets of the pilot’s cockpit,’ Deere later reminisced, ‘there gradually grew within me a resolve that one day I would fly a machine like this.’[3]
Queenslander Gordon Olive’s earliest memories were similarly of an aircraft. ‘I was probably no more than two years old,’ he recalled, [when] ‘this very black object making a terrific droning noise ... flew over my little world.’ In the days following, in his Brisbane suburb, the future Battle of Britain ace occupied himself ‘running around with three sticks tied together ... to look like a biplane’.[4]
The young boys’ interest in aviation was part of a general popularisation of flight in 1920s New Zealand and Australia. This was in good part due to the rise of the long-distance aviation pioneers who captured the imagination of the public in general and youth in particular. In May 1928, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith, a decorated Australian Great War pilot, prepared to make the inaugural commercial flight between Australia and New Zealand in his famous Fokker tri-motor monoplane, the Southern Cross. News of the impending trans-Tasman attempt was eagerly consumed by the New Zealand public through radio broadcasts and as reports of the impending arrival spread through the city of Christchurch, 35,000 residents flocked to Wigram airfield to greet the intrepid ‘Smithy’.
One New Zealander avidly following the Southern Cross broadcasts was Arthur Clouston, a resident of the tiny, upper South Island town of Motueka. As the Southern Cross began its final leg, Clouston made a night-time dash across the Southern Alps in an overly optimistic attempt to be on hand when the Australian arrived in the morning.[5] The eighteen-year-old was predictably late and the crowds had long dispersed from the aerodrome. Nevertheless, the Southern Cross was parked in full glorious view. ‘Covered with oil and dust, squashed flies and midges, the exciting travel-stains of the first flight across the Tasman Sea,’ the aircraft imprinted itself on Clouston’s imagination: ‘I knew as I walked slowly around the machine that I wanted to fly.’ Convinced his future lay in aviation, he joined the fledgling Marlborough Aero Club and after just over four hours’ tuition was flying solo in the de Havilland DH 60 Moth. Clouston was hooked and sold his prospering automotive business, casting his lot in with flying.
Richard Hillary, Battle of Britain pilot and author of the 1942 classic, The Last Enemy, first became enamoured of aviation at fourteen years of age. Born in Sydney, he accompanied his family to London, where his father took up a position at Australia House. There Hillary saw the eye-catching advertisements for Alan Cobham’s ‘Flying Circus’. In 1932, the great pioneer founded the National Aviation Day displays which offered the English public barnstorming displays and the possibility of a joyride in the ultimate symbol of modernity and adventure: the flying-machine. In the summer of 1933, at High Wycombe, the young Australian persuaded his parents to take him to Cobham’s Flying Circus. The pleasure flight, popularly known as the ‘the five bob flip,’ was an all-too-short circuit of the field. Hillary was hungry for more and after much pestering, his father consented to his son sitting in the front seat of one of the aircraft for the finale of aerobatic manoeuvres involving rolls and loops.[6] Hillary was in his element and came through the experience, like many of his generation, longing to emulate the skilled aviators.
Films, magazines and books retelling the stories of long-distance pioneers and the exploits of either real Great War aviation heroes or fictionalised aviators—most famously Captain James Bigglesworth—were consumed in vast quantities across the British Empire. The daring Biggles, created by W.E. Johns, first appeared in the 1932 compilation The Camels are Coming, charting his exploits in the pilot-adventurer’s favourite Great War mount, the Sopwith Camel. In 1916, the underage seventeen-year-old Biggles—he had conveniently ‘lost’ his birth certificate—joined the Royal Flying Corps to begin the exciting, noble and, sometimes, romantic life of a military pilot.
While the imperial mindset and racist assumptions of the novels have not stood the test of time, in their own context of the 1930s the books were immensely popular. No less so in the Empire’s southernmost Dominion, where young men were pleased to discover Biggles’ observer over the Western Front was a fictional New Zealander, Mark Way.
Cinematic portrayals of the war in the air, like the Academy Award-winning Dawn Patrol, starring Richard Barthelmess and Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and the Howard Hughes-directed Hell’s Angels, starring Jean Harlow, were eagerly watched by the movie-going public of the 1930s. Hughes’ big-budget project, set in the Great War Royal Flying Corps, was jam-packed with death-defying stunts, an impressive aerial battle against a massive German Zeppelin, international locales, and the ‘Blonde Bombshell’ Harlow, all presented in glorious Multicolor. As was the case elsewhere in the world, the young men among its Australian and New Zealand audiences fell prey to the allure of the flickering air adventures portrayed on the big screen.
As these youths entered and exited high school, it became apparent that local opportunities for aspiring Dominion pilots were not great. The ambitions of many pilot hopefuls were shaped by the looming war clouds over Europe. In the mid-1930s, the RAF began an ambitious expansion programme in the face of growing unease about German intentions on the Continent. In the wake of rising German nationalism and militarism under Hitler, average annual recruitment in the RAF jumped from 300 pilots to 4500.[7] These included men from all parts of the Empire. Australia and New Zealand, along with Canada, produced just the type of robust, self-sufficient, and air-minded men the Air Ministry was looking for.
Advertisements were placed in Dominion papers declaring the pilot’s life would appeal ‘to all men who wish to adopt an interesting and progressive career’. Leave was described as being ‘on a generous scale’, and although candidates were required to be ‘physically fit and single ... no previous flying experience’ was considered necessary.[8] The accompanying picture of a Hawker Hurricane single-engine fighter and the ₤500 annual pay, plus the promise of a ₤300 gratuity at the completion of four years’ service, was heady stuff for young Dominion men in search of adventure. This was how the great majority of Anzacs who flew fighters in the Battle of Britain found their way into the RAF.
New Zealander Colin Gray and his twin brother Kenneth, a schoolmaster in Wanganui, leapt at the chance offered by these short service commissions.[9] While Ken flew through the medical, Colin failed two examinations. To advance his prospects, the scrawny youth left his clerical position in Napier for a six-month stint of hard farm labouring. After this toughening-up period of mustering, milking and pig-hunting, he easily passed his third examination and in late 1938 was on his way to England. Alan Deere also saw the advertisements as his opportunity to fulfil his childhood dreams. The obstacle was his father, who resisted his son’s wild flying-lust.[10] Sidestepping paternal censure, Deere convinced his mother to affix an illegal signature to the application form and begin the process for his eventual entry into the RAF. The selection board was evidently happy with the young candidate, his educational qualifications were up to the mark, and as a first-rate cricketer and rugby player his medical was a mere formality.
In addition to sporting achievements, it was believed that if an individual could ride a horse they had the delicate touch for flying. ‘Air Force people always thought there was an association between handling horses and flying an aeroplane,’ noted the bemused Otago native John Noble Mackenzie years later.[11] Perhaps this equestrian factor tipped the scales in his favour. Selected from 5000 applicants, he was the ‘luckiest boy alive’.
One young man of the very last cohort to leave for Britain in this manner was John Crossman of New South Wales. Crossman, who worked for a Newcastle engineering enterprise and was studying accountancy, could only secure his father’s signature on the condition he passed his accounting exams. The top-of-the-class result procured his father’s promised moniker when he was twenty. Only weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War, his family and girlfriend, Pat Foley, were dockside as Crossman embarked on the SS Orama with a group of fellow Australians bound for Britain. ‘My feelings were awfully mixed and I didn’t feel so good after I said goodbye to everyone,’ he recorded in his diary. ‘Mother and Pat [were] very bright at the boat, but I guess not so bright after it sailed. Dad waved both hands and ran the wharf until I couldn’t see him any more.’[12]
The New Zealanders commonly traversed the east Pacific, entering the Atlantic via the Panama Canal or the Straits of Magellan, while the Australian candidates were transported west through the Indian Ocean and the Suez. The initial excitement of being at sea soon gave way to boredom as, bundled up in rugs on the decks of their ships, young Kiwis and Australians—typically ranging from eighteen to twenty-one years of age—spent weeks gazing out into a seemingly endless ocean. Panama City was often the first port of call and for prospective New Zealand airmen it was an exotic introduction to the wider world. At the conclusion of a lecture by the ship’s Medical Officer on the dangers of fraternising with the females of Panama City’s less salubrious districts, Deere and his wide-eyed companions disembarked for shore leave in the early hours of the morning. The famed night life of the city did not disappoint:
The recruits passed through Panama in waves and became a regular and easily recognised sight in the city. By the time Gard’ner and Gray made landfall in Panama City, over a year later, all the girls in the red-light district were sitting in their cabins shouting, ‘Oh you New Zealand boys, you New Zealand boys come in and have a good time.’[14] For Deere, the ‘wonderland’ of Panama City came to an end all too soon, but ‘the memories of our former life’ in New Zealand, he wrote, ‘had already dimmed by the revelations of this new world’.
James Paterson departed Auckland in the cargo ship Waimarama, rounding Cape Horn before heading north to the delights of Rio de Janeiro. In May 1939, after dropping anchor in the splendour of Rio harbour, the young New Zealander and four others hired a local guide to show them the sights, from the ‘fine pure white crystal’ sands of Copacabana beach to the imposing statue of Christ the Redeemer. After run-ins with monkeys, snakes and the famous mangrove crabs, the early evening was spent sipping ‘Chopp’—the local draft beer—and smoking cigars at a cafe on the Rua Rio Blanco. Around midnight, the indefatigable New Zealanders headed off to a nightclub where they spent an agreeable hour or two dancing with ‘dainty little Spanish and Portuguese girls’. The city of one and a half million was intoxicating for the twenty-year-old from Gore, who spent the next few days swimming, sunbathing and bargaining with local shopkeepers over the price of curios and tobacco. Paterson and his companions were reluctant to say goodbye as the Waimarama slipped its berth and the warm embrace of Rio harbour ‘leaving behind us one of the most picturesque places one could possibly wish to see, with the many lights gradually getting fewer and fewer, soon all we could see was that huge statue of Christ ... against a tropical starry sky’.[15]
The loss of homeland and family was also tempered by the friendships struck up on the long journey. Within a handful of days of leaving the great southern continent, Crossman faced his girlfriend’s birthday with sadness but surrounded by his new companions. ‘Pat’s birthday to-day,’ he scrawled in his diary. ‘Should have liked to send a cable but costs too much. We had bottled cider, sandwiches and biscuits in my cabin at night and drank to her health.’[16] On 28 August, the twenty-one RAF hopefuls crossed the equator and in accordance with naval tradition and in the spirit of youthful exuberance were initiated into the watery court of ancient monarch of the deep, King Neptune. A three-day break in the city of Colombo, Ceylon, was a good chance to enjoy the heady delights of the British colony.[17] A natural port that had seen 2000 years of traders was now an attractive stepping stone for the young Australians heading to northern Europe. The Suez Canal and the Mediterranean followed, further stepping stones to Britain. The final night on board the SS Orama arrived in mid-October, two months after departing Sydney. An air of expectation hung over the evening meal as the diners laughed over self-authored limericks directed at each other. The typed-up rhymes were signed by all and treasured as mementos marking the end of their high-seas journey and the beginning of the great enterprise ahead.
Weeks of oceanic voyaging, however, did little to prepare the colonials from the sun-favoured cities and farms of their homelands for the British Isles in winter. Sailing up the River Thames, five weeks after departure, Deere and his fellow New Zealanders stood at the deck railings and avidly picked out the famous landmarks from their schoolboy history lessons. The chaotic water trade and the sights and smells of London were a reminder to the colonials of just how far from their small antipodean towns they had travelled. However, Deere’s dreams of a ‘luxurious gateway to London’ were soon shattered by ‘the grim rows of East End houses, pouring smoke into the clouded atmosphere’ and he was ‘appalled by the bustle and grime of Liverpool Street Station’. Notwithstanding the shock of London’s grimy early winter cloak, he was taken aback by its sheer size and complexity, and the ‘wonderful things to see, and the great achievements possible’ at the very heart of the British Empire’s ashen yet regal capital.[18]
Gordon Olive, who had arrived on one of P & O’s old ladies of the sea, Narkunda, earlier—in 1937—shared Deere’s impressions. ‘Our first glimpse of our future home was a bleak one,’ noted Olive. ‘Between squalls of rain we could see the flat grey coastline which was just discernible from the cold grey sea.’ In the pouring rain the arthritic ship gingerly docked in the Thames on an ‘Arctic morning’. London in winter was no tropical Panama City, Rio de Janeiro or Colombo. ‘How unbelievably wet and cold and dreary! And millions of little houses all looking the same,’ recalled the Australian as he and his countrymen gazed upon the eastern suburbs of the great city through train carriage windows.[19]
Training began soon after landfall and involved three main components. First, the pupil pilots were instructed at one of Britain’s civilian flying schools operating to RAF contracts over a period of eight to twelve weeks, incorporating an initial twenty-five hours of dual pilot flight training followed quickly by twenty-five hours solo.[20] Second, two weeks at RAF Depot Uxbridge was scheduled for RAF disciplinary instruction. The final phase of thirteen to fifteen weeks was at the RAF’s own Flying Training School (FTS). The two terms at the FTS—Intermediate and Advanced —totalled some 100 hours of flying time. This regime was, with some variation and diminution as war became increasingly likely, commonplace from 1936 onwards. The training involved the first meeting of British and Dominion personnel.
At the civilian schools the Anzacs noted not only the chilly weather of England, but also their sometimes frosty reception by their British counterparts. Accustomed to making friends easily, they were bemused by the odd English cold shoulder. Even as late as July 1940, when the straight-talking Wanganui-born Bob Spurdle was introduced to Uxbridge, he and a fellow New Zealander were uncouthly and off-handedly referred to by an officer as ‘bloody coloured troops’.[21] In Deere’s case, at the De Havilland Civil School of Flying at White Waltham near Maidenhead, he generously put the less than enthusiastic reception down to the ‘natural reserve of all Englishmen.’[22]
On the whole, social lines were blurred by the colonials who did not really fit into the strict class-based hierarchies of British society and its military machine. Most RAF pilots were drawn from the upper echelons of society and were invariably graduates of public schools.[23] While British officers of the pre-war RAF were more or less considered of a higher social standing than their Dominion counterparts, class distinctions in the southern Dominions were less well defined. Athleticism was a key to easing into the new environment. More than any other sport, the game of rugby served to break down class differences. Deere’s low status was brushed aside with a ‘game of rugger’ some weeks later. In winning this first rugby game by an extremely wide margin, he and his compatriots had demonstrated to the Englishmen that ‘we wouldn’t be such bad chaps after all and that, perhaps, under our rough exteriors there existed people like themselves’.
At the civilian or elementary schools the young men trained eagerly for the moment that had brought them thousands of miles from their native lands: the experience of taking to the air. The hatchlings were initially familiarised with the flight controls and the engine, and then progressed to execution of the all-important take-off and landing.[24] How to handle an engine failure, forced landings, low flight and turns all had to be mastered before the Anzac fledglings were considered proficient enough to leave the nest in solo flight—invariably in control of a biplane.
Deere’s irrepressible desire was evident in his first unaccompanied flight, which was preceded by a circuit with the instructor who, after disembarking from the machine, stood beside the cockpit and gave the over-excited Kiwi some final pre-flight advice. Barely able to suppress his enthusiasm, Deere promptly forgot the instructor and opened up the throttle, forcing the officer in mid-sentence to dodge the aircraft’s tail section as it roared past, with the resultant slipstream tossing him to the ground.[25] After touching down, Deere was so pleased with his first effort he immediately took off again, much to the consternation of the flight instructor, who, in the process of trying to give him a piece of his mind, again found himself cast to the ground by the Tiger Moth’s slipstream. Deere and the officer repeated this graceless ballet once more before the Anzac finally landed and cut his engine off. He was confronted by the red-faced officer, who tore strips off the young New Zealander. Deere, however, in his post-flight euphoria, was more fascinated with the man’s large moustache which had collected fat drops of dew from ‘kissing’ the grassy airstrip.[26]
Spurdle had his first solo flight in New Zealand and years later still remembered with great clarity the Royal New Zealand Air Force (RNZAF) Flying Instructor uttering the thrilling directive, ‘Go ahead—and don’t prang it.’ ‘There are no words,’ he recalled, ‘however magic to describe completely the thrill of having, for the first time, a whole aircraft to oneself. The absence of that rasping, chiding voice of the instructor in one’s ear, all the troubles a mile below and the shining wings slipping through the whispering air. And the Sky—that huge beautiful arena.’[27]
Pupils who survived the training then considered placement with bombers or fighters. At the time most observers gave greater weight to the future of the much larger machine. Orthodoxy held that bombers could prevent a repetition of the interminable misery of the Great War’s trenches by directly attacking industrial production and enemy morale, thereby crippling an adversary’s war-making capacity. It was also believed that the bomber, as an offensive weapon, could strike unexpectedly anywhere, and, even if intercepted, its powerful defensive armaments would fend off fighters. This fostered the widely accepted maxim ‘the bomber will always get through’.
With this in mind, many elementary school instructors and students were of the opinion that the bomber offered the best possibilities for future advancement. Some trainees, like Olive, also felt experience in large bombers would aid them in their eventual entry to multi-engine airline flying. Although to Olive’s mind the ‘fighter was a machine of the past’, his chief instructor was adamant: ‘You’re a natural for the fighter my boy!’[28] Most Anzac short service commission men, however, had not signed up with a view to career climbing or post-RAF careers; they simply wanted to fly, and to their minds the best way to do this was in the single-engine fighter.[29]
Like all RAF hopefuls, the Anzac pilots who made it through the elementary phase at civilian schools were then shipped off to the RAF Depot at Uxbridge. The pupils were now Acting Pilot Officers on probation. The two weeks among the dreary red-brick buildings at Uxbridge were an initiation into RAF disciplinary training and, as Wellingtonian Alan Gawith reasoned, to ‘try and make gentlemen of you’. The young men were inoculated, marched endlessly around the parade ground, lectured to, fitted out for their uniforms and instructed on the finer points of mess etiquette.[30]
‘Square-bashing’ soon gave way to a posting to an RAF Flying Training School, and the civilian aircraft of the elementary schools were replaced with military machines. As early as possible in the intermediate term, the pilots were introduced to the rudiments of aerobatics in order to acclimatise them quickly to their machines and the frenzied cut-and-thrust of aerial combat. To these aerobatic manoeuvres was added an introduction to cross-country flying. Careful observation and thorough planning was needed for airmen to find the way to their targets and home again.
Hillary’s first solo cross-country flight in Scotland nearly ended embarrassingly when his airborne reverie was interrupted by an irritating ‘winking’ red light. Within moments the engine cut out. ‘The red light continued to shine like a brothel invitation,’ recalled Hillary, ‘while I racked my brain to think what was wrong.’[31] More concerned with the prospect of ‘making a fool of himself than of crashing’, it was not until he had glided down to 500 feet that he remembered the light indicated low fuel and he quickly flicked over to the reserve tank. ‘Grateful that there were no spectators of my stupidity, I flew back, determined to learn my cockpit drill thoroughly before taking to the air again.’[32]
One of the scarier, but necessary, skills was the ability to fly at night. It proved the undoing of many pilots. In his first solo night-flying session, Hillary recalled losing his bearings completely when the airfield’s ground flares disappeared momentarily from view.
Hillary rose halfway to his feet and with a sigh of relief caught sight of the flares, and, ‘thoroughly ashamed’ of himself, soon had the light biplane skimming the ground as he delicately brought the machine in for landing. His post-panic contemplation was cut short when it became clear that the very next trainee had lost sight of the landing lights and was headed towards the coast and open waters. The mangled plane and dead pilot were soon discovered by Hillary and the attending officer, straddling the beach and the water’s edge. ‘I remembered again the moment of blind panic and knew what he must have felt,’ reflected Hillary. In the dead man’s ‘breast pocket was ₤10, drawn to go on leave the next day. He was twenty years old.’[34]
Even instructors could fall prey to errors of judgement. The six-foot, five-inch and seventeen-stone Aucklander, Maurice ‘Tiny’ Kinder, remembered one of the more gruesome examples of this while he was under training at Sealand, Wales. An air commodore came to educate the budding pilots in accident prevention. He instructed his understudies to ensure that the wooden chocks were in place and to stand clear of the propeller before starting the engine. All of this seemed simple enough until the officer ‘went to his own aircraft with the propeller turning ... [and] did what he had just been telling us not to do. He walked into his own propeller and was decapitated.’[35]
Before graduating to the second term of FTS, one of the most important events in the life of an RAF trainee took place: the presenting of the pilot’s Wings. Recognised worldwide, the Wings of the RAF were as coveted then as they are now. At a ceremonial parade, the silver and gold insignia were pinned on the blue tunic of the proud pilots. ‘I can recall the thrill of the achievement and pride of service as I stepped forward to receive the famous emblem of a qualified pilot,’ reminisced Deere. With their newly acquired Wings, the pilots entered the final stage of training in their advanced term: war-making was applied to their general flying skills and knowledge.
This incorporated everything from formation flying to high- and low-level bombing, to air-to-air gunnery and close air support.[36] As with a number of flying skills, formation flying was first introduced to pilots in a two-seater, and then subsequently a solo attempt was made. This usually required the new pilots to take up their position behind their leader. The constant adjustment of the throttle in order to hold position took time to master. The most important gunnery exercises were the air-to-air attacks. These were carried out by a student towing a drogue target for attacking students. At Penrhos, North Wales, Gray found that drogue duty was undersubscribed—the live ammunition combined with the inaccuracy of some new pilots made the task perilous.[37]
Towards the end of the course, pilots were often introduced to the most modern service machines available in preparation for their postings to active squadrons. Deere was selected for fighters, and proceeded to the last instalment of his preparation at No.6 Flying Training School, Netheravon, Wiltshire. With the completion of this first term, and the presentation of his Wings, he went on to fly the Hawker Fury: ‘This single-engine biplane fighter ... was a wonderful little aircraft and I shall always remember the first time I sat in the deep open cockpit, behind the small Perspex windshield, and the thrill of pride at being at last behind a real fighter aircraft.’[38] Gray found himself attached to No.11 Fighter Group Pool at St Athan, Glamorganshire. Here the New Zealander was introduced to the new North American Harvards; with an enclosed cockpit, retractable undercarriage and instrumentation for full blind flying, they were among the cutting-edge trainers of the day. Gray and Deere recall that their enjoyment of the last few days of training was tempered by the outbreak of war on 1 September 1939.
Two days later Britain declared war on Germany and it was clear that the airmen would soon be asked to put their training to the test in combat. New South Wales-born Paterson Hughes found his instruction overtaken by the German invasion of Poland, and a few days into the conflict he wrote home to his brother: