Continuing the story of 208 Squadron in Italy this from the obituary of ken Lambden on the Squadron's association website ...
A veteran of the Italian campaign in 1944, Flight Lieutenant Ken Lambden also served in Palestine after the war during the Jewish insurgency. Ken, of Bardon Hill, was born on December 31, 1923 at Micheldever Station near Andover in Hampshire where his father, Frederick, was an accounts clerk for a local farmer. Ken grew up with two elder and two younger sisters and a love of flying. He went to local schools and then won scholarships to Huish Grammar School in Taunton and then Brasenose College, Oxford where he joined the University Air Squadron. While there he enjoyed flying Tiger Moth biplanes out of Abingdon airfield but he found the privileged world of Oxford University a real eye-opener. He said one of the hardest aspects of it was coming to terms with the Oxford tradition of having a manservant, known as a 'scout'.
From Oxford he continued his training on American Harvard fighter planes in South Africa in 1943 at an airfield near Johannesburg and in 1944 flew Hurricanes and had his first solo flight in a Spitfire at Petah Tikva in what is now Israel. At 6ft 2ins, he found squeezing into the Spitfire cockpit a challenge and it was compounded by having to try to balance maps on his knees while flying. In October, 1944 he joined 208 squadron (known as the 'flying shuftis' because of their role in carrying out photo reconnaissance flights) in Florence as the Allies tried to overcome stubborn German resistance. His memories of that time were of the rain, mud and the fog of the Po valley and the empty chairs in the mess as the war took its toll among the squadron's pilots. The squadron's role was gathering photographic intelligence, so he had to fly straight and low while enemy ground troops took pot shots. The role also involved disrupting enemy supply lines, which meant strafing trains and road convoys. At the end of hostilities Ken was posted to Palestine where the British were policing Palestine during the emergence of Israel. Having survived the war, he had his closest brush with death there. He was in a warehouse where he was working with a group of WAAFs (Women's Auxiliary Air Force). The warehouse was besieged by an angry mob out for blood and Ken says he was saved by the WAAFs who used hockey sticks to beat off men trying to climb through the windows - until help finally arrived.