He Who Would Valiant Be

Book excerpt: Two generations of one family, two of whom fight in World War 1 at The Dardanelles and The Somme; two are World War II bomber crew, one of whom was killed when his Stirling went down in the English Channel after a raid on Turin in 1942 and his pilot won the VC; another was a soldier in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders captured at Calais in 1940 only to escape in the last few months of the war, and one was a nursing sister captured by the Japanese in Singapore in 1942. She survived brutal PoW imprisonment, then met and married a Polish bomber pilot at a medal presentation in Buckingham Palace in 1946. The seventh was Sir Billy Snedden who left school at 15 without even a leaving certificate, joined the RAAF in 1945 too late to fly but went on to study law, became a barrister and a prominent politician who led the Australian opposition to the 1972 election, losing and failing to become prime minister by the narrowest of margins. Of the seven, three died in battle or of their war wounds, three survived to lead normal family lives and Snedden went on to political success and fame only to die in bed with a lover at the age of 61. All characters lived fought and died as described in this book.