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    Coming in to Land: the memoirs of Wing Commander Bill Malins DFC
    Coming in to Land: the memoirs of Wing Commander Bill Malins DFC
    Coming in to Land: the memoirs of Wing Commander Bill Malins DFC
    Ebook266 pages3 hours

    Coming in to Land: the memoirs of Wing Commander Bill Malins DFC

    By Bill Malins

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    About this ebook

    At the age of 95, Bill Malins still remembers growing up on an Oxfordshire farm in the 1920s, where he would help with the haymaking, steer a horse-drawn harrow, milk a cow and ride sheep for entertainment. Amid the happiness there were moments of tragedy. There was the loss of his baby sister to peritonitis when Bill was seven years old. A couple of years later he had to stand by as the farm was burned to the ground, taking it with his favourite horse and dog.

    Bill would cycle each day to the local RAF base to deliver milk, often stopping to gaze at the aircraft overhead. By the time he was 22 years old he had become an RAF pilot himself. He went on to serve his country nobly during the Second World War as a reconnaissance flyer, seeing action in France, Germany and Holland, risking his life for his country, earning a Distinguished Flying Cross and rising to the rank of Wing Commander.

    Bill Malins was one of the first officers to set foot on Sicilian soil when the Allies invaded the island in 1943, and the same year he narrowly survived the deadly doodlebug which struck the Strand, killing more than 80 people. Bill was there when the Allies crossed the Rhine in 1945 in the closing stages of the war, and his squadron was one of the first inside the gates of Belsen when the notorious concentration camp was liberated.

    After completing a post-war world tour with the RAF Directorate of Accident Prevention, Bill gave up the airborne life in 1952 to return to the farm, where he has lived and worked ever since.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMereo Books
    Release dateMay 12, 2011
    ISBN9780956510266
    Coming in to Land: the memoirs of Wing Commander Bill Malins DFC
    Author

    Bill Malins

    Bill Malins, author of 'Coming in to Land', was recently published by Memoirs Books. The only son of a farming family, Bill gives a fascinating insight into rural Oxfordshire life during the 1920s and 30s, and then goes on to describe his 14-year career with the RAF, serving as a low level reconnaissance pilot during the Second World War and earning a Distinguished Flying Cross in the process. From his Oxfordshire farmhouse, Bill said, “It’s taken three years of hard work, but I’m delighted to see my memoirs in print at long last.” Bill’s phenomenal memory brings an incredible level of detail to the book, and his recollections of being trained to spray mustard gas on British beaches in the event of a German invasion and seeing the horrors of the Belsen concentration camp shortly after the war ended have already sparked interest in the national press. At the age of 95, he still remembers growing up on an Oxfordshire farm in the 1920s, where he would help with the haymaking, steer a horse-drawn harrow, milk a cow and ride sheep for entertainment. Amid the happiness there were moments of tragedy. There was the loss of his baby sister to peritonitis when Bill was seven years old. A couple of years later he had to stand by as the farm were burned to the ground, taking with it his favourite horse and dog. Bill would cycle each day to the local RAF base to deliver milk, often stopping to gaze at the aircraft overhead. By the time he was 22 years old he had become an RAF pilot himself. Bill Malins was one of the first officers to set foot on Sicilian soil when the Allies invaded the island in 1943 (and still has the top secret maps he was issued), and the same year he narrowly survived the deadly doodlebug which struck the Strand, killing more than 80 people. Bill was there when the Allies crossed the Rhine in 1945 in the closing stages of the war, and his squadron was one of the first inside the gates of Belsen when the notorious concentration camp was liberated. After completing a post-war world tour with the RAF Directorate of Accident Prevention, Bill gave up the airborne life in 1952 to return to the farm, where he has lived and worked ever since. Sadly Bill passed away shortly after his book was published.

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    • 5/5
      A beautifully lucid and evocative account of a life nurtured on, and engaged by, the land from which the author literally rises to his no less engaged one as a heroically distinguished pilot and leader in the RAF until he successfully comes back to land thereafter and takes up his life as a farmer as passionately as heretofore.

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    Coming in to Land - Bill Malins

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