Wellum suffered severe combat fatigue after three years' intensive flying, because of the immense strain that frontline British fighter pilots were put under during that period. He returned from Malta to Britain, becoming a test pilot on the Hawker Typhoon, based at Gloster Aircraft. Geoff watched these scenes with great interest and said that he felt the film perfectly caught the mood and emotions he felt at the time, both on the ground and in the air. An intimate account . . . rich in detail James Holland, Wall Street Journal, 'Five Best World War II Memoirs' Wellum's first commanding officer was Roger Bushell, (later immortalised in The Great Escape). [6] Bushell was shot down and captured almost immediately after Wellum's arrival, and was later executed by the Gestapo in the aftermath of the "Great Escape". [4]

Geoffrey Wellum obituary | Second world war | The Guardian Geoffrey Wellum obituary | Second world war | The Guardian

Wellum has contributed to various television documentaries on the Battle of Britain, including Spitfire Ace produced by RDF Media/Channel 4 (2004), [17] Dangerous Adventures for Boys produced by Channel 5 (2008), [18] and The Spitfire: Britain's Flying Past produced by the BBC (September 2011). [19] Right, got it? What, you mean you haven't bought it yet? Well, let me tell you why you should. Firstly, this book has moved, in a single reading, into my top five favourite books of all time. The achievement is all the greater in that the other occupiers of that list were books I read when I was much younger, unmarked, and could receive deeper and more lasting impressions from the books I read. But First Light has broken through the dull accretions, and the dullening, of age. So, if you would be young again, read First Light. Amazingly fresh and immediate . . . absolutely honest, it is an extraordinarily gripping and powerful story Evening StandardThen we had to work out how to create a full-blooded dogfight, and a nightmare flight in torrential rain over the channel - during which Boy shoots down a German bomber. These scenes were whole other cans of worms... Shout out to Gary Lewis and Ben Aldridge as squadron leaders. The rest of the cast was wonderful as well. Very believable. To mark the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, the BBC commissioned a one-off drama for TV called First Light, based on Wellum's book of the same name. The film was first shown by the BBC on 14 September 2010 starring Sam Heughan. [20] No other account of flying in the Battle of Britain has been articulated as well as Geoffrey's in First Light Gillian Crawley, Daily Express He retired from the RAF in 1961 to take up a position with a firm of commodity brokers in the City of London until his retirement to Cornwall where he still lived when ‘First Light’ was published in 2002.

First Light by Geoffrey Wellum | Goodreads

He finished the war as a gunnery instructor, staying in the RAF, first as a staff officer in West Germany, followed by a four year tour with 192 Squadron. He married Grace, his wartime girlfriend and they had three children. One plane was brown and green, the other brown and grey. And the real one was based at Wycombe air park and our replica was 80 miles away on the drama set outside Dunstable. Wellum's close colleagues included Brian Kingcome. [8] Officers and guests celebrating the first anniversary of the arrival of No. 92 Squadron RAF at RAF Biggin Hill, September 1941. He tells you about the patrols and dogfights and comrades lost; the escort missions with bombers over France. After the Battle of Britain wound down he was posted to besieged Malta where he ferried in a Spitfire squadron and continued air combat as Flight Commander.

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In First Light, Geoffrey Wellum tells the inspiring, often terrifying true story of his coming of age amid the roaring, tumbling dogfights of the fiercest air war the world had ever seen. Wellum left the Royal Air Force in 1960 [13] and took over the family haulage business. Later he became a commodities broker.