Bombers First and Last
by Gordon Thorburn

List Price: $35.00  Hardback: 432 Pages
Publisher: Robson Book
Publish Date: May 1, 2006







Book Review
by Brian Grafton

Gordon Thorburn's Bombers First and Last, ostensibly about the air war in Europe in World War II, is not for everyone. This is not to say it is not a good book: it is excellent in many ways. But it is also a complex book, in inception, presentation and outlook, and the complexity may confuse many readers who do not appreciate what Thorburn has created.

At its simplest, Bombers First and Last reminds me somewhat of a family biography. Thorburn's family, however, is 9 Squadron, RAF Bomber Command, part of 3 Group when war began in 1939 and transferred to 5 Group in 1942. The volume details the history of the squadron family – the births and deaths, the successes and failures, the 'bests' and 'worsts' – during the six-year-long war. If this is all that could be said about it, Bombers First and Last would still be a book worth reading. But the book is much more than that. It is also – for the general reader – much less.

A general reader might expect, for instance, that a book dealing with a World War II RAF squadron would deal with the basic events and chronology of World War II. Bombers First and Last will leave such expectations unmet. There is, for example, only a quiet hint at Barbarossa. There is only a glancing mention of Pearl Harbour or of the American entry into the war. There is little mention of the USAAF, whether flying from England or from Italy. There is, in truth, little mention of any issue which does not affect 9 Squadron immediately. In other words, this is not a broad history of the air war in the ETO during World War II: it is an annotated biography of those who were part of 9 Squadron, RAF. Readers who want a more general history of the air war in Europe will be disappointed by Bombers First and Last.

What, then, is attractive and compelling about Thorburn's story, if it is so circumscribed? The answers to that question lie in matters of approach, tone, layout, passion, philosophy and other qualities which have been captured in Bombers First and Last. While each of these deserves consideration, in combination they make the book an appealing read. These complexities define the excellence of Bombers First and Last.

Let's begin with the approach Gordon Thorburn has taken in his book. If we continue the "biographical" idea, then the author includes some strange family members. The air crew are there at centre stage, of course, and Thorburn parades them one after the other – individually, and as crews – as they appear, fly their kites into danger, and disappear. Thorburn also gives time to "erks" – the ground crews who kept the aircraft flying. He is not unique in doing so, of course, but he includes different detail than many other studies which pay lip service to ground crew. As well, he includes in his family history those senior officers who have been left behind by the new war, WAACs who served as everything from waitresses to drivers to parachute distributors to radio operators. His most appealing inclusion in the family, however, is the aircraft themselves. Foremost amongst the aircraft is W4964 WS/J. Designated J-Jig, and later J-Johnny (along with a host of other names, including "Johnny Walker"), W4964 WS/J makes its first appearance in the book's cover photo. J-Johnny's career – both independent of and as a measure of air crew survival – is, the reader senses, as important as the survival of the humans who flew in her. Unlike any of 9 Squadron's air crew, W9464 WS/J survived over 100 Ops. In Thorburn's world, 9 Squadron was not simply fliers. It was fliers, ground crew, station personnel, WAACs and machinery – aircraft, bombs, incendiaries, machine guns, and the like – which made up the totality of 9 Squadron. Thorburn is at pains to recognize this, and it makes Bombers First and Last a better and more compelling volume.

Thorburn's tone is perhaps the most striking component of Bombers First and Last. It is also the most difficult to encapsulate. The book makes considerable use of personal diaries and reminiscences, which capture the immediacy of the events being described. Balancing these are extracts from 9 Squadron's Operations Record Book (ORB), the official record of squadron operations, which are both objective and short. Linking the two is Thorburn's own prose, which can be dark, ascerbic or kind in its turn. The combination of the three elements creates a certain tension in the work which contributes to the story Thorburn tells. The tension is furthered by abrupt, sometimes puzzling switches from one topic to another, giving a sense that Thorburn feels compelled to match his narrative with the inexorable pace of the war.

The tension is offset by an effective device, perhaps suggested by the publisher but probably insisted upon by the author: the use of 9 Squadron's "Line Book" – a squadron volume which, even through the most difficult times, captured the continuing wit, humour and life of the members of the squadron. The "Line Book", housed in the Officers' Mess, was a repository for whimsical comments which were, in one way or another, outrageous nonsense. Incorporating excerpts from the Line Book in Bombers First and Last provides a leavening agent for the desperate, unchanging world of destruction Thornburn has chosen to present. Often, these excerpts have nothing to do with the text surrounding them. They are simply there, confirming – amongst other things – that the spirit of the squadron remained unbroken.

Bombers First and Last is, then, not a book for everyone. It is a serious, moving, sometimes angry book which attempts to capture the attitudes and travails of a squadron in a war seemingly without end. In this book, the enemy are not the Germans, though they were the adversary. The enemy becomes war itself, whether in the orders which are issued or in the demands which are made on mere flesh and blood. Not surprisingly, the book ends with the last Bomber Command Op of the war, carried out against Berchtesgaden on 25 April, 1945. Thorburn's description is typical:

On the last day of the air war in Europe, 25 April 1945, a force including some 360 Lancs attacked Hitler's holiday cottage at Berchtesgaden, probably the only holiday cottage ever to have several miles of tunnels for air-raid shelters. The Op was viewed by many aircrew as a PR exercise, a needless risk and a potential waste of good men. Others thought killing Hitler a great idea except, unbeknown to them, he wasn't in. He was in Berlin, trying to win the war with imaginary armies and a few boy scouts. ... Two bombers went down on this Op, only two, both Lancs, with most of the crews surviving and four killed, only four for a PR stunt. It could so easily have been more.

Here is the last fling of Bomber Command. In Thorburn's eyes, it is a meaningless gesture against a valueless target, as his language makes abundantly clear.

At the time of this raid, the war still had two weeks to run to its end. When that end was reached, Thorburn offers not one of his own words. He offers instead a passage from 9 Squadron's ORB, followed by a selection from the squadron's Line Book:

	Operations Record Book, No. 9 Squadron, 8 May 1945: 'Intermittent thundery rain. Thunder storms at dusk. One aircraft detailed for cross-country. VE (Victory in Europe) Day.'
	'There was a gale blowing and my aircraft was going backwards so fast I was afraid to land in case I stuck the tailskid in the ground.' P/O Maude-Roxby

The war was over. More important, 9 Squadron would continue, its spirit unbroken.

As I said, this book is not for everybody. But if you're not looking for a stereotypical war volume, and you want to get a sense of how the prosecution of World War II was lived from a squadron perspective, I would recommend Thorburn's Bombers First and Last without any question. It reminds me of some of the better publications which various individuals from various nations have produced: Elmer Bendiner's The Fall of Fortresses (Putnam's [NY, 1980]) and Eric Stofer's Unsafe for Air Crew (HERSS [Victoria, 1989]) come to mind. The difference – and the complexity – between such individual or personal remeniscenses and Gordon Thorburn's book is the breadth of the authors vision and his ability to make the chaotic life of RAF Bomber Command, and the utter stupidity of war, comprehensible.

While Bombers First and Last isn't for everyone, I recommend it highly, both for the quality, precision, and vision of the author and for the challenging view he offers of a part of the war – the bomber war in Europe – which is still not fully understood.

Review by Brian Grafton (bg@briangrafton.com).

 

* Views expressed by contributors are their own and do not necessarily represent those of MHO.