Hillary begins with his prewar days at Oxford, through his training, the fighting during the Battle of Britain to his slow, and painful, recovery from his burns received when he was shot down over the North Sea. He provides us with a narrative of his changing viewpoint that starts from the self-centered point of view that: "the war solved all problems of a career, and promised a chance of self-realization that would normally take years to achieve." After his long recuperation, he assists in the digging out of a woman and her dead child from an apartment that had collapsed from bombing. She looked at him, with his disfigured face and said, as she died, "I see they got you too." It was in that moment he saw, as his friend Peter Pease had, that if the Nazis won World War II, that only meglomaniacal tyrants like Hitler would dare to do anything. That fear and evil would triumph...

It is a view that has remarkable resonance with the War on Terror and the Iraqi problem...

I hope that it will be published, or republished here in the United States soon. It is a message with hearing.


A wonderful book - not just for those interested in air war   July 25, 2001
 15 out of 17 found this review helpful

Not only those interested in aviation or WWII will enjoy this book: Hillary's remarkable but brief life encompassed a privileged education, service in the RAF, horrible injuries and disfigurement, and then life in the fast lane courting a Hollywood star. This is a painfully honest account and one is left with the question of how many other talented people had their lives cut short by the war before they had realized more than a fraction of their potential. Read it.