Whilst I am on the subject of Army officers flying with 53 Squadron, I would like to finish off by telling you about my all-time favourite. Lt W S G "Dick" Maydwell (Somerset Light Infantry) was posted in to fly Hawker Hectors in 1937. He was a very keen photographer and owned one of the very first Contax 35mm cameras and rapidly built up a large collection of beautiful air-to-air photographs, not just of squadron aircraft, but also flights of Hawker Furies, early Spitfires and Hurricanes, the prototype Wellington and God knows what else.
He converted on to the Blenheim and went off to France with everyone else in 1939. It so happened that he and his crew were on leave in UK when the Germans invaded the Low Countries on 10 May 1940. On his way back to join the squadron, he was commandeered in the resulting chaos to run a refuelling and rearming unit near Rouen which looked after Hurricane squadrons being sent over from UK on a daily basis. They fell back through Dreux, Dinard and St Malo to Jersey. There it was when Flt Lt Ian Bartlett found him when he landed during a sortie on 18 June and took him back to Gatwick. On arrival, Dick was immediately promoted to Flt Lt and became OC "A" Flight.
He served with 53 (now part of Coastal Command) through a particularly dangerous period attacking the Dutch coast and the Channel ports until he was promoted to Sqn Ldr at the end of 1940. He found himself in Egypt in charge of a small photo reconnaisance unit equipped with Martin Marylands. However, he very soon became OC 14 Squadron equipped originally with Blenheims but then the new Martin Marauder came on the scene. It came with a bit of a reputation but Dick reckoned that they soon got the measure of it. He was the sort of boss who believed in leading from the front and he and his crew managed to shoot down an Italian SM82 (3-engine transport), a Junkers 90 (4-engine transport) and then they encountered a Me 323 Gigant (6-engine transport) off Corsica. The Me 323 pilot threw it on to a beach. Dick landed at an airfield nearby and went to inspect his enormous prize. He sawed the three propeller tips off one engine.
He was promoted out of his job and became a Gp Capt in charge of 325 Wing at Trapani. He did not like being on the ground and after a while he went to HQ (now in Naples) to try and negotiate a return to flying. He was returning in the dark from the meeting driving a Jeep over a level crossing when he was struck by several railway wagons which had not been secured properly. This resulted in him losing his right leg. It took him a long time to recover but he did manage to fly the Meteor and the Vampire after the war.
He finally retired to a cottage out in the countryside not a million miles from Wincanton. I always used to call in on my way down to Cornwall. He was a bit of a country squire and sported a full-set beard. He used a large wooden staff with a fork at the top to help him walk and he looked for all the world like a smaller version of Moses.
Dick was a very keen sportsman and he was an excellent shot. In his gun room he had hundreds of deer skulls mounted on the wall, all with a caption of "what, where, when etc" in beautiful copperplate writing. In the middle was a large tiger's head ("Simla, old boy, not Somerset"). When I last saw him he was 85 years old and he was still shooting (he used the fork on the top of his wooden staff to balance his rifle) but he did admit that he was finding it a bit of a struggle, what with his wooden leg and all that, dragging the deer out of the forest!
In pride of place on the mantelpiece in the lounge was a mounted propeller tip from his Me 323. In 1982 he made contact with the captain of the Me 323 and went over to stay with him in Germany and to reunite him with one of the other propeller tips. They started a friendship which was to last for over 20 years.
My favourite memory was our first visit to his local pub. I naturally called him "Sir" but after about half an hour he said "You may call me Dick". It was like getting a medal! Gp Capt "Dick" Maydwell DSO DFC died in 2006 aged 92. I shall never forget him.