INSPIRING RECORD

Evening Post, Volume CXL, Issue 54, 1 September 1945, Page 8

INSPIRING RECORD

N.Z. IN THE AIR WAR

MR. MITCHELL'S FINE BOOK

No writer in Britain was so well able, so well placed, to write of New Zealand airmen in Britain and their part in the European war as Mr. Alan W. Mitchell, a Fleet Street journalist who for some years before the outbreak of war was London correspondent for "The Post" and other Dominion newspapers and through the war years added to that very full-time work the enthusiasm of an unofficial liaison man between New Zealand servicemen in Britain, the great majority of whom were airmen, and their families and friends in this country. Call that interest in a way a part of his journalistic work, but his enthusiasm went far ahead of his professional interest. There were three always-expected visitors at air establishments where New Zealanders were stationed in Britain; they were Mr. W. J. Jordan, the High Commissioner, Mrs. Jordan, and -'Mitch." "Because of his long and close association he is well able to tell of their exploits, particulars of many of which were gathered by patient questioning and piecing together stories so reluctantly told," wrote Mr. Jordan in a foreword to Mr. Mitchell's book. Alan Mitchell would not have been told much that he has written had he not been to these airmen much more than a newspaperman—a good friend —so he was admirably placed to write "New Zealanders in the Air War," except, as he apologises in his preface, there was far too much to write into one book and the decision as to what to include and as to who should be left out was a worry to him: "Already twice the length it was originally intended to be, and still I have not included the stories of several men whose names were noted down in the first synopsis. I have found it possible to give only a sample of the work of the men in the R.N.Z.A.F., and also New Zealanders in the R.A.F., and restrict it as far as possible to their activities while based in Great Britain; but even here, in several cases, it has been necessary to include certain episodes in the Mediterranean theatre of operations where New Zealanders have fought as conspicuously as the men of any other nation." For all the glamour that used to attach to flyirfg and flyers, while flying was still very young, and for all the power that the air exerted upon the war just ended, air operations were the most difficult of all for correspondents and descriptive writers to handle. The air war, en masse, was so impersonal, so repetitive, the fleets of planes in their greatest strikes were so unrelated to the cities, workshops, and unknown humans they struck; but the stories of the individuals who flew in the hundreds of planes in single strikes were different; they could be written to claim keen interest and to be long remembered. There was no other way of writing of New Zealanders in the air war, ; too, because, though their contribution, from a small country among great nations, was superb, they fought as part of the great air machine of the United Nations. Mr. Mitchell has necessarily made his book a record of many air personalities, and from the reading of these many "samples," as he calls them, one has something ot the wider picture which was in mind as he set some of it down, section by section. There is nothing dramatic in his book, and it gains greatly thereby. The men are never acclaimed as heroes; there is no need to use the word, from which every one of them would shrink, upset as having been "let down by Mitch." "New Zealanders in the Air War" is published by George G. Harrap and Company, London, in two bindings, paper and cloth, but it is a book which parents and friends will not bujr, surely, in less than cloth, for it will gain in interest and value to them as the years go along, and if further editions are published perhaps the writer and publisher can be prevailed upon to add a name index, for though there are 20 "name chapters" some hundreds of New Zealand airmen come into the stories of these 20 headliners time and time again through the book; an indev would add a good deal to the value of the record. Later editions, too, could complete the picture of this Dominion's airmen in Europe, for the first was printed just before Germany began to crack wide open. The flying bomb had been feared, tackled, and beaten, the rocket had. replaced it, and airmen were flying, almost as they would, into Germany, just before the end. If he were asked to write an official history of the part of New Zealanders in the air war in Europe, Mr. Mitchell would probably be dismayed at first asking; for he knows the story in such detail from the men themselves that .the task would appear too great altogether. He could write it well, in a lifetime, but an official history could not convey the picture which he has built up by his samples. Of the book Sir Archibald Sinclair, former Secretary for Air, wrote: '"Mr. Alan Mitchell has told his story vividly, and the book is assured of a large public both in this country arid in New Zealand. What a superb story it is! The fighting qualities of the men of New Zealand —whether serving with the Royal Air Force or with the Royal New Zealand Air Force—are revealed on every page, and the reader is left with a profound sense of admiration and gratitude for the grit and the abounding cheerfulness and unflinching courage of those who have fought and won the great air battles of the wai\"