I Had a Row With a German: A Battle of Britain Casualty

By Thomas Percy Gleave and Dilip Sarkar

Thomas Percy Gleave began his RAF career in 1930, three years later becoming a member of the RAF aerobatic team. He joined Bomber Command on 1 January 1939, but at the outbreak of war Gleave requested a return to Fighter Command. He took command of 253 Squadron just in time for the start of the Battle of Britain, acquiring fame for claiming five Messerschmitt Bf 109s in a single day.

Tom Gleave, however, is remembered more for the misfortune which befell him on 31 August 1940. On that day he was shot down and badly burned when his Hurricane caught fire. In his memoir Tom Gleave tells of the early days of his encounters with the German aircraft in dramatic detail and, particularly of that dreadful day when he escaped his dying aircraft with severe burns to much of his body and his face.

After being taken to Orpington Hospital, Gleave was transferred to Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead where he was one of the first pilots to undergo plastic surgery by Archie, later Sir Archibald, Mclndoe and his brilliant colleague, Percy Jayes.

Gleave received leg and facial grafts, and his nose was reconstructed. The Guinea Pig Club was formed at Queen Victoria Hospital on 20 July 1941, with Mclndoe as President and Gleave as Vice-President and a Founder Member, being the club’s first and only Chief Guinea Pig until his death in 1993.

Originally written in 1941, this moving and graphic story is not one of despair but of overcoming adversity with cheerful determination not to allow circumstances of the past to determine the future. For, despite his terrible wounds, Tom Cleave returned to duty, becoming station commander of RAF Northolt and later RAF Manston. Above all, I Had a Row With a German is a ripping yarn of the cut and thrust of the Battle of Britain by one of Churchill’s memorable ‘Few’.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pen and Sword
• Release date: Feb 16, 2023
• ISBN: 9781399072748

Thomas Percy Gleave

Having gained his pilot’s licence in 1928, THOMAS PERCY GLEAVE was commissioned into the RAF in 1930. A gifted pilot, by 1933 he was a member of an RAF aerobatic team. On the outbreak of war in 1939, Gleave requested a transfer back into Fighter Command. Shot down in the Battle of Britain, he became a founding member of the Guinea Pig Club. Having a held a number of staff posts, including serving as Eisenhower’s Head of Air Plans at SHAEF in 1944 and 1945, Gleave was invalided out of the RAF in 1953. He passed away in June 1993.

Book preview

I HAD A

ROW WITH

A GERMAN

A BATTLE OF BRITAIN CASUALTY

I HAD A

ROW WITH

A GERMAN

A BATTLE OF BRITAIN CASUALTY

GROUP CAPTAIN THOMAS PERCY GLEAVE CBE

Introduced by Dilip Sarkar MBE, FRHistS

Foreword by Air Vice-Marshal Leigh-Mallory

I HAD A ROW WITH A GERMAN

A Battle of Britain Casualty

First published in Great Britain in 1941 by Macmillan & Co. Ltd.

This edition published 2022 by

Air World Books,

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd,

Yorkshire - Philadelphia

Main text Copyright © Group Captain Thomas Percy Gleave CBE,

Introduction Copyright © Dilip Sarkar MBE, FRHistS

Foreword Copyright © Air Vice-Marshal Leigh-Mallory

ISBN 978 1 39907 273 1

Epub ISBN 978 1 39907 274 8

Mobi ISBN 978 1 39907 274 8

The right of Group Captain Thomas Percy Gleave CBE to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

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Contents

Introduction by Dilip Sarkar MBE, FRHistS

Part I

THE JOURNEY TO PUBLICATION

Part II

I HAD A ROW WITH A GERMAN

Foreword by Air Vice-Marshal Leigh-Mallory

Preface

Chapter 1 I Make a Vow

Chapter 2 The Black Cross

Chapter 3 The Red Cross

Chapter 4 The White Cross

Acknowledgements

Part III

AFTER PUBLICATION

APPENDICES

Appendix I Tom Gleave’s Combat Reports

Appendix II Selected Wartime Reviews

Appendix III Notes on Tom Gleave’s Service Record

Appendix IV Tom Gleave’s Decorations and Awards

Introduction

by Dilip Sarkar MBE, FRHistS

Thomas Percy Gleave was born in in Liverpool on 6 September 1908, the second son of Arthur and Amy Gleave – and was an exceptional individual by any standards.

Privately educated at Westminster High and Liverpool Collegiate schools, Tom developed an early fascination for aeroplanes and in 1927 became a founder member of Merseyside Flying Club. On 6 July 1929, Tom was awarded his ‘A’ Licence to fly civilian aircraft, his mother having funded the lessons necessary to convert his dreams of flight to reality. Although the young aviator wanted to become a full-time pilot, he was persuaded to remain in the family tanning business, so spent six years ‘making leather with flying as a sideline’.

In the summer of 1929, the adventurous Tom joined the Beardmore Tanning Company in Ontario, where he flew with the Toronto Flying Club. Although his father considered full-time flying far too dangerous an occupation, Tom was determined and applied to join the Royal Canadian Air Force. Only then did his father relent, but on the condition that Tom came home and joined the Royal Air Force. So it was that in September 1930, Tom Gleave accepted a Short Service Commission in the RAF, and after service flying training joined No 1 (Fighter) Squadron at Tangmere.

Flying single-engine biplane fighters, including the Siskin and Fury, Pilot Officer Gleave excelled at aerobatics, joining No 1 Squadron’s aerobatic team. Ever intrepid, on 11 October 1933, Tom attempted to become the first man to fly from England to Ceylon. Taking off from Lympne in a civilian Simmonds Spartan, four days later a downdraught forced him to ‘land in a tree’, in a Turkish ravine. The crash, Tom recalled, ‘modified’ his nose.

Pilot Officer Tom Gleave pictured whilst serving with No 1 Squadron at Tangmere in the 1930s.

Flight Lieutenant Tom Gleave married Miss Beryl Pitts in Chichester on 16 March 1935, the happy couple seen here on their wedding day.

A 253 Squadron Hawker Hurricane.

Back home, in 1934, with a rare ‘exceptional’ pilot rating, Tom became a flying instructor. In anticipation of war with Hitler’s Germany, his commission changed to one of medium-term.

By December 1938, Tom was a squadron leader at Fighter Command HQ Operations Room, serving as one of three Bomber Liaison Officers. Having always been anxious to see action once war broke out, eventually, on 2 June 1940, the day the Dunkirk evacuation successfully concluded, Squadron Leader Gleave, by now a married man and a father, joined 253 Squadron as a ‘supernumerary’ officer to gain experience on the Hawker Hurricane monoplane fighter and current operational conditions.

What happened next was traumatic – and is the subject of this book. In sum, 253 Squadron was posted to Kenley during the Battle of Britain, suffering a number of casualties in the first few days, including the Commanding Officer, Squadron Leader Harold Starr, who was shot down and killed on the morning of 31 August 1940. Having already temporarily commanded 253 previously, Tom assumed command, but was himself shot down in flames that afternoon.

Escaping from the furnace that his Hurricane cockpit rapidly became, and descending by parachute, the horrendously burned airman was taken in by the farming folk on whose land he had alighted. His main concern was the mess his wounds were making of Mrs Lewis’s clean bed linen!

Although the journey in an open-top car to Orpington Hospital seemed an eternity to Tom, fifteen minutes after departing the Lewis farm he was admitted to into the care of its staff. On 3 September 1940, Tom’s wife, Beryl, received a telegram in error informing her that her gallant husband had been admitted, but that his condition was ‘not serious’. Nonetheless, Beryl rushed to Tom’s bedside – finding him encased in dried Tannafax – and dangerously ill. Shocked and struggling to find words, Beryl laconically enquired ‘What on earth have you been doing to yourself, darling?’

The attendees of the first meeting of the Guinea Pig Club pictured outside the Surgeon’s Mess on 20 July 1941. Left to right, they are Tom Gleave, Geoffrey Page, Russell Davies, Peter Weeks, John Hughes, Michael Coote, and Archibald McIndoe.

Group Captain Tom Gleave in Paris with the surgeon Sir Archibald McIndoe – to whom he and other ‘Guinea Pigs’ owed so much. The extent of Tom’s facial injuries are still all-too evident.

Tom’s reply was priceless: ‘Had a row with a German’.

So serious were Tom’s injuries that he required specialist treatment at the now world famous ‘Ward 3’, the Burns Unit of the Queen Victoria Hospital at East Grinstead. He was moved there at the end of October 1940.

Under the care of the gifted surgeon Archibald McIndoe, Ward 3’s patients were restored to good health in both mind and body, as Tom later recalled: ‘Archie generated a bond of fellowship in which rank was forgotten. He believed that nothing could stand in the way of making terribly mutilated human beings whole again, and so we had much more freedom than was traditional in medical circles.’

On the afternoon of 20 July 1941, after a typical Ward 3 Saturday night ‘thrash’, a number of patients, amongst them Squadron Leader Tom Gleave, decided to form a drinking club. So it was that the ‘Guinea Pig Club’ was formed, membership comprising wounded airmen treated by McIndoe. It would become far more than just a drinking club, however, and as Chief Guinea Pig, Tom, always supported by Beryl, would devote much time and energy over the years to ensuring the welfare of its members.

The original caption to these three images states ‘The Surgeon’s Art: 1. Original eyelids; 2. Burnt eyelids; 3. New eyelids.’

Group Captain Tom and Beryl Gleave pictured in later life.

Tom’s memoir I Had A Row With A German was published in 1941. It was amongst the first such accounts published and in advance of several published in 1942, including David Crook’s well-known Spitfire Pilot, Brian Lane’s ever-popular Spitfire!, ‘Widge’ Gleed’s classic Arise to Conquer, and Richard Hillary’s tour de force, The Last Enemy. Tom’s account was well-received.

After many operations, which he would endure periodically for the rest of his life, Tom returned to active duty. In February 1942, Wing Commander Gleave was commanding RAF Manston during the infamous ‘Channel Dash’, when the Germans audaciously passed the cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen through the Dover Strait. It was Tom who waved off the six Fairey Swordfish biplane torpedo bombers led by Lieutenant Commander Eugene Esmonde. There were few survivors, Esmonde not amongst them – and it was Tom who successfully recommended this brave Fleet Air Arm pilot for a posthumous Victoria Cross.

Some of Tom Gleave’s papers, including Eagles of Nemesis, pictured during my visit.

Later that year, Tom was still commanding Manston during Operation Jubilee, the great combined operation during which a predominantly Canadian amphibious force was landed at Dieppe – suffering grave losses. That day, 19 August 1942, Manston, a coastal airfield in East Kent, became a hive of activity, as aircraft from far and wide put down to re-fuel. These were historic events – and Tom Gleave witnessed them first-hand.

Tom became a group captain on 5 September 1942 and was appointed ‘Group Captain Air Plans’ on the Special Planning Staff at Norfolk House, Portsmouth, working in Operation Round-Up – later to become Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy. Group Captain Gleave remained on the staff at what became Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) until Germany surrendered, after which he became Senior Air Staff Officer to the RAF Delegation in France. Having subsequently served as Group Director at the RAF Staff College, Bracknell, Group Captain T.P. Gleave CBE was invalided out of the service in 1953 – as a direct consequence of his Battle of Britain injuries.