One of the youngest Spitfire pilots in the Battle of Britain

In the mid-1970s, Geoffrey

Geoffrey Wellum was at Wellum

his lowest ebb, said The 1921-2018

Independent. His marriage had ended, his business was failing and he had nowhere to live. In despair, he sat down to write about his youth. “I just wanted to sit quietly and convince myself that at some point in my life I had been of use,” he recalled years later. Wellum’s story was extraordinary: he’d joined the RAF on the eve of the Second World War and become one of the youngest pilots to fly in the Battle of Britain. But he hadn’t written it for publication and the manuscript sat in a drawer for decades. Then, in 2000, he sent it to a young writer who was researching a novel set during the War. Stunned by its “emotional punch”, James Holland handed it to friends at Penguin. The book, First Light, was published in 2002, when Wellum was 80 years old, and became a bestseller. Geoffrey Wellum was born in Walthamstow, Essex, in 1921, the son of Edith and Percy – a veteran of the Gallipoli campaign who ran an off-licence. Plane-mad as a boy, Geoffrey joined the RAF as soon as he left Forest School, in Snaresbrook. It was August 1939 and he had just turned 18. Only nine months later, with his training barely completed, he was sent to join 92 Squadron, to fly Supermarine Spitfires – a plane he had never set eyes on before, let alone flown. It was, he said, “intimidating”; he imagined the plane as a thoroughbred horse, eyeing up a novice jockey and wondering how much trouble to cause him. “Once I was inside, the Spitfire, quite frankly, flew me,” he recalled. Owing to his youth and inexperience, he was nicknamed “Boy”.

His first commanding officer, Roger Bushell, was shot down immediately, said The Times, and was executed by the Gestapo in the aftermath of the Great Escape. Spitfire pilots had an average life expectancy of four weeks. Wellum was stationed first at Pembray in South Wales; then, in September 1940, when the Battle of Britain was at its height, he was sent with his squadron to Biggin Hill in Kent, where he flew as many as three sorties a day. Taking part in dogfights over the Home Counties, he faced death almost daily and lost several close friends. Later, he took part in 60 or so sweeps across France. Awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross in 1941, he was promoted to flight commander with 65 Squadron, before being dispatched to lead eight Spitfires in the relief of Malta. By then, however, he was suffering from intense headaches. Doctors recognised that, after three years of combat, he was exhausted. “I’d shot my bolt,” he wrote later. “Something inside me gave way and I broke down... I felt destroyed by the War.” He was 20 years old. Evacuated to England, he worked as a test pilot before becoming a flight instructor. Wellum remained in the RAF until the early 1960s. He then worked briefly as a commodities broker before retiring to Cornwall. Although he was never one to romanticise war, he felt as though his life had peaked at 22 and that everything afterwards had been a bit of an anti-climax. “That made the unexpected attention he received in his 80s all the more gratifying,” said The Times, “though he always saw himself as a representative of all who had served. ‘It’s nice to be remembered,’ he reflected, ‘because being remembered covers everybody, including all those chaps who were killed. That’s what’s important, not medals or thanks.’” Of the “Few”, the 3,000 or so members of the RAF who defended Britain in the summer and autumn of 1940, only a handful are still living. Squadron Leader Wellum’s death, aged 96, follows that of Wing Commander Tom “Hawkeye” Neil, the last but one surviving Battle of Britain fighter “ace”. Neil died on 11 July, aged 97.