_RAF Regiment web site
Assyrian Levies RAF
The RAF Career of Maurice 'Roy' Skeet
RAF Habbaniya Association
A Story of War
Superb blog. The sections on Iraq provide a rare personal picture of the Siege.
(From the blog:
About A Story of War
My father, Colin Diarmid Campbell Dunford Wood, kept war diaries continuously from early 1939, even before the Second World War broke out, to the time of the Indian Partition. After graduating from Sandhurst in 1938, he joined the Leicestershire Regiment in India, seeing service in Waziristan, (fighting pretty much the same people we are fighting today – will we never learn?) before being posted to the 13th Frontier Force Rifles in Madras. Stuck in an Indian Army backwater (as he saw it) as World War Two raged around him, he volunteered to join the RAF. The problem was, his eyesight was less than perfect, but he managed to cheat on the eye test and got accepted for the 4th Intermediate Flight Training School at RAF Habbaniya, Iraq. He went on to fight in the air across Iraq (where he trained on Hawker Audax aircraft) , India and Burma (where he flew the last Hurricane out, before the advancing Japanese) and later in Northern Europe as the Allies crossed the Rhine.
He continued to keep diaries up to the time of his death in 1971. At that time I was 11, and did not have a chance to get to know him well. These diaries, therefore, have become a way for me to get to know the man – so this is both the story of discovery of a father by his son, and also a vivid portrait of war across several continents and campaigns. Rather than follow the ordered chronology of the tidy historian, who has points to make and theories to prove, the narrative follows the haphazard progress of war on the ground – encompassing fear, boredom, incompetence, luck, romance, and horror – all interlaced with a humour that kept the man sane.)
Assyrian Levies RAF
The RAF Career of Maurice 'Roy' Skeet
RAF Habbaniya Association
A Story of War
Superb blog. The sections on Iraq provide a rare personal picture of the Siege.
(From the blog:
About A Story of War
My father, Colin Diarmid Campbell Dunford Wood, kept war diaries continuously from early 1939, even before the Second World War broke out, to the time of the Indian Partition. After graduating from Sandhurst in 1938, he joined the Leicestershire Regiment in India, seeing service in Waziristan, (fighting pretty much the same people we are fighting today – will we never learn?) before being posted to the 13th Frontier Force Rifles in Madras. Stuck in an Indian Army backwater (as he saw it) as World War Two raged around him, he volunteered to join the RAF. The problem was, his eyesight was less than perfect, but he managed to cheat on the eye test and got accepted for the 4th Intermediate Flight Training School at RAF Habbaniya, Iraq. He went on to fight in the air across Iraq (where he trained on Hawker Audax aircraft) , India and Burma (where he flew the last Hurricane out, before the advancing Japanese) and later in Northern Europe as the Allies crossed the Rhine.
He continued to keep diaries up to the time of his death in 1971. At that time I was 11, and did not have a chance to get to know him well. These diaries, therefore, have become a way for me to get to know the man – so this is both the story of discovery of a father by his son, and also a vivid portrait of war across several continents and campaigns. Rather than follow the ordered chronology of the tidy historian, who has points to make and theories to prove, the narrative follows the haphazard progress of war on the ground – encompassing fear, boredom, incompetence, luck, romance, and horror – all interlaced with a humour that kept the man sane.)
