He had changed over from being an army officer
in the Duke of Wellington's regiment and got trained to fly
in the Air Force without his father knowing
which didn't get on very well.
And he flew Lysanders, an army co-operation.
In fact, there's a story of the youngest
of the three brothers who was in the Army.
My Uncle Alan was in France during The Phoney War,
at the end of 1939,
in charge of a Royal Artillery gun battery.
And it was his 21st birthday and he was rather surprised
to see a Lysander fly over.
And it dropped a message, one of those message streamers
with the multi-colored cloth and the little weight,
and the message would be in a little canvas bag.
And the streamer dropped out of the Lysander
which circled around a couple of times and went away.
And the message said Happy 21st, John.
And my Uncle Alan said he never knew how my father
had found out where they were 'cause it was supposed
to be completely secret and he'd flown over
from Odiham in his Lysander
to drop this message off and then gone back again,
quite unofficially, of course.
