Product Description

This is the memoir of a young man (17 years old when the story begins) who enlisted into the RAF weeks before the outbreak of World War II. We follow Geoffrey's progress through the demanding early stages of his training: he was distinctly below average and was reminded of this continually. He was obviously a sensitive young man and pressure on him tells. As the war raged in the air over the channel, Geoffrey, by then an 18-year-old spitfire fighter pilot with minimal experience, was posted to a squadron based on the south coast. He remained here for two years and despite the appalling casualty rate - friends disappearing almost after every sortie - he became a brave, decorated fighter pilot. Running through the book are his inner feelings - angst, bravado, comradeship - and it is this powerfully evoked sense of self that is one of the most moving aspects of the book. Geoffrey describes his first flights in a spitfire, as well as his first experience of aerial battle and one dreadful sortie over the English Channel where his radio broke and he was coping with thunderstorm, cloud and German planes. Finally in the writing one begins to see, through small references at first, the effect on Geoffrey of this endless stress and tiredness. He began to doubt himself, things went wrong and finally he snapped.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1407919 in Books
• Published on: 2003-04-29
• Released on: 2003-04-29
• Format: Audiobook
• Original language: English
• Binding: Audio Cassette

From Amazon.co.uk
Surviving Battle of Britain fighter aces were thin on the ground even in 1941, so any new book more than 60 years later from a previously unknown pilot is bound to get noticed. And First Light is not just any book. It might not turn out to be a lasting classic, like Richard Hillary's The Last Enemy or Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front, but it is a cut well above the bog standard wartime reminiscences of many retired military bods. For a start 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, Wellum 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 Wellum 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 Wellum 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. The only one false note is his desire to see his role as part of a bigger picture; written many years after the events he describes, Wellum sometimes interjects thoughts and feelings about the war that simply do not ring true. That aside, one is left wondering what became of Wellum the man between the war ending and the book's publication. What sense did the prematurely aged fighter pilot make of the post-war age and did he learn to love again? But that, maybe, is the subject for another book. --John Crace

Review
"An extraordinary, deeply moving and astonishingly evocative story. Reading it, you feel you are in the Spitfire with him, at 20,000 feet, chased by a German Heinkel, with your ammunition gone." Independent

From the Back Cover
'Wellum's First Light deserves to be read for many years to come. ' -The Times (of London) High praise for England's bestselling First Light. . . 'An extraordinarily gripping and powerful story. ' -The Evening Standard (London) 'A work of exceptional quality. . . a passion and immediacy which make it compelling reading. ' -Max Hastings, author of Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy 'A remarkable book, amazingly fresh, honest, and modest. . . utterly gripping; it is without question one of the best books I have read in the last few years. ' -Professor Richard Holmes, author of Redcoat: The British Soldier in the Age of Horse and Musket 'Startlingly vivid recollections. . . this is air war at its most intense. . . his readers get a strong sense of immediacy. ' -The Spectator (London) 'Geoffrey Wellum's book is a wonderfully evocative find. . . a book for all ages and generations, a treasure. ' -Daily Express (London)

Customer Reviews

First Light
A most moving and vivid account of a young mans journey from boyhood to manhood in a very dangerous time. A young man who upon leaving school has a desire to fly 'fighters', a young man who succeeds in his ambition and has to watch his friends and peers perish both in training and in combat in the skys above England and Europe during the second world war. It is a tribute to those young men and to the author himself that determination against all odds by a handful of young men really did make a difference to the lives and wellbeing of a nation. It is also tells of the duresses that these young men had to bare,and how prolonged stress can even cause the fittest of men to breakdown, and recover.

A magnificent read, and one I could not put down. A real insight into what it took to be "one of the few."

An Excellent Book
'First Light' is one of those books that is destined to be remembered as a "classic" and rightly so. This is a wonderful book of a young man who joined the Royal Air Force before the start of World War Two and who later fought during the Battle of Britain and survived. Most of the book is taken up with his training as a pilot and the fighting during the Battle of Britain. However the book continues on to cover his role in Operation Pedestal and the fighting over Malta until his return to England as a tired and worn out pilot.

I truly enjoyed Geoffrey Wellum's story of his training and chuckled a good many times whilst reading about one thing or another. Mr Wellum has a wonderful way of telling a story and you can easily picture the details as you read his narrative. I found myself amazed as I read the book of how much this young man and his friends suffered in defending their country and their mates in the air.

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.

I really enjoyed the author's style of writing, he was witty, descriptive and came across with a sense of telling a story with understated facts. He downplayed his own role during the Battle of Britain and I was really hooked on the narrative as it moved along at a cracking pace. I found it hard to put the book down late at night, which brought forth a moan from my wife about turning the lamp off or else!

This is a great story and in finishing I would like to add the following comment from a great historian about this book: "A work of exceptional quality.....his prose has a passion and immediacy which make it compelling reading" - Max Hastings. He's not wrong either!

repetitive
This book certainly does not rate more than two stars. It is repetitive ------ with beers, toast, tea, clouds and dozens of names. The trouble is some sixty years after the experiences Wellum tries to write as a twenty year old rather than tell the whole story other than `Boys own' Except sometimes when he moralizes with hindsight which is dreadful. There is no mention in the book whatever of any German attacks on the airfields he flew from which were well bashed by Goring and his boys prior to the Battle of Britian.
The feel of what went on does not come through with the passion it deserves.