Ace, POW, and Author: Captain Duncan William Grinnell-Milne MC, DFC, RFC/RAF

Duncan Grinnell-Milne

Captain Duncan William Grinnell-Milne MC, DFC, (1896–1973) was an English Great War pilot credited with six confirmed aerial victories, a prisoner of war who escaped from German captivity, a flying ace, and an author.  After serving with his brother in the 7th Royal Fusiliers, Grinnell-Milne was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps in 1915. After training, he joined 16 Squadron in France, where he scored his first victory flying the B.E.2. Toward the end of 1915 he was shot down and captured, spending more than two years as a POW before escaping back to France in early 1918. 

Later that year, Grinnell-Milne assumed command of 56 Squadron and scored five more victories as an S.E.5a pilot in the final weeks of the war. In 1919 and 1920, he served with 214 Squadron and 14 Squadron in Egypt. After serving as assistant air-attaché in Paris, he left the Royal Air Force in 1926 with more than 2000 hours of flight time in various aircraft. During World War II, Grinnell-Milne returned to service, flying Wellington bombers over Libya in 1940 before health problems forced him out of the RAF. He took a job with the BBC, remaining there until 1946. 

In later life, he became a well-known author, publishing several books including his memoirs Wind in the Wires and An Escaper's Log. The two World War I works were republished a number of times in the past century. In this latest version they have been combined in a single volume. Here are some excerpts that I feel give a sense of the excitement and authenticity of his accounts:

His first student flight: 

"After listening awhile to the engine, the pilot waved hands. . . and the machine moved forward slowly, lurching in slightly over the uneven ground like a a cow going out the pasture. . .the forest of struts, the network of piano-wire, the nacelle with its occupants, all hanging rather mysteriously together, moved away at increasing speed.  The draught from the propeller rippled the grass, rushing back to make us duck and clutch our caps.  When I looked  again the Longhorn was scurrying across the aerodrome at the most alarming speed. . . the noise of the receding engine made me think of nothing so much as a lawnmower running amok.. I watched, holding my breath. And—lo!—it began to unstick from the earth. It rose a few inches; it flew! O wondrous contrivance: 'Hail to thee, blithe spirit, bird thou never wirt!' Shelley should have been a pilot."

"Once I had got used to it [anti-aircraft fire], it had not seemed so terrible after all. I imagined that it could never be as unpleasant as heavy shelling on the ground. . . Flying was always like that: at one moment you were splitting your sides at a harmless joke, at the next shuddering at a tragedy”

“Youth, adventure, high spirits – those wound up for us the mainspring of life. We would have fought just as well without propaganda; we had no bitter hatred. So it may have been in the days of chivalry”

He recalled the feeling of shame as he crashed behind enemy lines. “I had a sensation of misery, depression and hopelessness, which grew so strong as time went on that I felt almost physically sick.”

Returning to flying after two years as a POW, he observed “a sort of devil-may-care, hard-drinking recklessness about, that earlier pilots, by this point sadly killed or captured, lacked.”

Looking back [from 1933?]: " After all the war left its mark on all who fought and shellshock is a convenient label. That is not to say that all war-writers are shell-shocked—at least, I hope that I shall not be placed in the doleful category. I never suffered much from shell-shock since that is the especial misfortune and privilege of infantrymen; yet, although the memory does not encourage brooding upon such things, I have not forgotten the horrors, the crashes, the burnings to death, the mutilations, the carnage below and aloft. But some of our cleaner fights I can live again, those in which the enemy gave nearly as much as he took. I can hear once more the wires scream [. . .] Sometimes I dream of those days with regret—were they not a part of Youth? - but I do not lose much sleep over them. For, by some odd mental twist, my worst dreams are those in which I fancy myself in gaol or fortress.  . .  From that nightmare of unrest I shall never be free."