Geoffrey Leonard Cheshire, Baron Cheshire, VC, OM, DSO & Two Bars, DFC (7 September 1917 – 31 July 1992) was a British Royal Air Force pilot, officer and philanthropist.
Cheshire fought in the Second World War. Among the decorations Cheshire received as a pilot was the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British and Commonwealth forces. He was the youngest group captain in the Royal Air Force (RAF) and one of the most highly decorated pilots of the war.
After the war he founded a nursing home that grew into the charity Leonard Cheshire Disability. He became known for his work in conflict resolution. In 1991 he was created a life peer in recognition of his charitable work. He is under consideration for beatification in the Roman Catholic Church.
Early life
Geoffrey Leonard Cheshire, known as Leonard, was the son of Geoffrey Chevalier Cheshire, a barrister, academic and influential writer on English law. His mother, Primrose Barstow, was from a Scottish Army family and named Leonard after her brother, who died fighting in Kūt in early 1917. Leonard had one younger brother, Christopher Cheshire, also a wartime bomber pilot. Cheshire was born in Hoole, Chester, where his paternal grandparents lived, but was brought up at his parents' home near Oxford. Cheshire was educated at the Dragon School in Oxford, Stowe School and Merton College, Oxford.
At Stowe he was taught English by the writer T. H. White, but he was adamant in later years that he never flew with him. At school, Leonard excelled at lawn tennis, becoming Captain and showed an aptitude for languages and an interest in reading and natural history. At the end of his final Easter term 1936, his father arranged for him a stay in Germany with the family of Ludwig von Reuter in Potsdam and while there, witnessed an Adolf Hitler rally. Cheshire caused considerable offence by pointedly refusing to give the Nazi salute. Most of his time was spent with von Reuter's three sons, cycling, swimming and visiting Berlin and other cities. An early love of motorcar racing was fostered by trips to the Nürburgring and he entered a local tennis tournament, which he nearly won.
He entered Merton College at the University of Oxford in 1936 and joined Oxford University Air Squadron the following month. His closest university friends were Jack Randle and Peter Higgs who both followed him into war; Jack was awarded the VC posthumously in 1944 for bravery in the Battle of Kohima that year, and Peter was the first RAF fighter pilot to be lost in combat during the Battle of Britain.
At university he became a typical student of the time, taking part in pranks and displaying a knack for getting himself in the newspapers, or "creating a sensation" as Leonard called it. On one occasion at Oxford he was bet half a pint of beer with landlord of the Chequers pub Jig Holloway, that he could not walk to Paris with no more than a few pennies in his pocket; he won his bet – getting to Paris on foot by doing odd jobs and hitchhiking, eventually giving a press conference on arrival and earning enough money to travel back in first class. A local newspaper headline "Undergraduate Astonished that His Car Could Do 40 m.p.h." was the result of a speeding charge earned in Peter Higgs' car, which in mitigation Cheshire had said was over 2 years old and never known to go above 30. Leonard later said his aims at Oxford were to "drive a Bentley, dress in a Savile Row suit, in short to make pots of money without too many scruples how" yet he had no clear idea how to make money, apart from cultivating celebrity. Fred Astaire was an inspiration; Leonard even took tap dancing lessons in the hope of emulating him and modelled his hair and habit of using a cigarette holder on The Saint. As a young man, his friends later described him as having a personality of many layers, self-sufficient yet full of nervous energy.
Academically he was thought intelligent but not wildly keen on his subject, jurisprudence. His tutor F. H. Lawson said he "kept up quite well ... He wasn't the pure intellectual type. I was always satisfied with his work because he was 'a trier' – without breaking his neck". During his university years, Cheshire was required to participate in one of the service clubs. He chose the cavalry, but soon found the early hours and physical demands were not to his liking, and he transferred to the Oxford University Air Squadron because it involved sitting down. There he learned his basic piloting skills. Cheshire graduated in 1939 with a second-class degree.
Military career Early training On 16 November 1937 Cheshire received his commission as a pilot officer in the Royal Air Force Volunteer Reserve. He joined as a way to get out of his university finals, but his father soon put his foot down and insisted he sit them, then apply for a permanent commission under the RAF's direct entry scheme. On 7 October 1939 he received his permanent commission with the RAF. In selecting his preference Cheshire listed 1) Fighter Command 2) Light Bomber Force and 3) Army Cooperation force. To his disappointment, he was assigned to Bomber Command, and sent for training at RAF Hullavington, and then to RAF Abingdon. It was here that his career in the RAF was nearly ended before it even got started. Cheshire made a loud joking remark at a pub about German troops having arrived in England, which was reported. He was called in to the station commander, and was nearly sent to the infantry, but he apologised and was kept in.
102 Squadron
On 7 April 1940 Cheshire was promoted to flying officer and in June he was posted to 102 Squadron, flying the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley. 102 Squadron was in 4 Group of Bomber Command, and shared the airfield at RAF Driffield with 77 Squadron. Cheshire remarked that upon arriving at Driffield he was filled with a fear that he would not measure up to what was expected of him, but soon found himself buoyed with the sense of being part of a tradition. He became good friends with a number of pilots there, including Hugh "Lofty" Long and Jimmy Marks.
As a new pilot at Driffield, Cheshire was placed under the tutelage of Long. Cheshire found Long both demanding and encouraging. From the outset Long tested Cheshire on every aspect of the aircraft. He expected Cheshire to know the aircraft inside and out. His goal was to make flying the aircraft so second nature, that when the point of critical action arrived all of Cheshire's attention could be focused on the problem, as none of his concentration would be diverted by the task of flying. Long made Cheshire spend every spare minute he had learning the machine. "Lofty kept drumming into my head the fundamental lesson of never thinking that you have mastered your job, of applying your whole heart and mind to the task of perfecting as far as is humanly possible the techniques of operational flying. He made me practice and re-practice, study and re-study, experiment and re-experiment. I had to sit in the cockpit blindfold and go through the different drills, sit in the rear turret, in the navigator's and the wireless operator's seat, and try and see life from their point of view."
Long knew every man supporting the aircraft, both in his flight crew and his ground crew, and the concerns and hardships each man faced. Long took Cheshire along when he spoke to his men, and impressed upon him the importance of the commander being aware of their concerns. Cheshire credited him for making him a good captain. Thinking back upon those days, Cheshire noted "I do not think there could have been a single piece of equipment or a single aspect of flying on which he failed to question me... There was the ground crew also, to each of whom Lofty introduced me individually, talking of their problems, and the background from which they came and explaining the importance of building up a personal relationship with them."
Cheshire's first ten missions were flown as second pilot to Long. On those early missions Long placed Cheshire in the pilot's seat early and often, giving Cheshire invaluable experience of flying through flak over a target. By June Cheshire was commanding his own aircraft.
Distinguished Service Order (DSO) mission
In the spring of 1940 Bomber Command began its campaign against German industry. On the night of 12/13 November 1940, Cheshire was briefed to attack the synthetic oil plant at Wesseling, near Cologne. While en route Cheshire found the target was obscured by bad weather, so decided to attack the railway yards at Cologne instead. Initially in his bombing run there was little flak, but suddenly two anti-aircraft rounds exploded near the aircraft. The two anti-aircraft shells had exploded almost simultaneously near the plane, one right above the cockpit, and the other just under the port wing. The flash from the first blinded Cheshire, and the second rent a huge tear in the fuselage, igniting one of the aircraft's flares. The aircraft was falling in a steep dive. Cheshire regained his senses and realised both engines were still working, and pulled the aircraft out at about 5,000 feet. The crew were able to extinguish the fire, though they had to take precautions not to fall out. By the time they did they realised they were flying deeper into Germany. Realizing he still had a functioning aircraft with a bomb load, Cheshire brought the aircraft around and returned to make another bomb run on the target. Arriving over Cologne he now was the sole bomber over the target and faced the concentrated flak of the city's defenders. Nevertheless, he made it to the marshalling yard, dropped his bomb load and managed to get the aircraft and crew safely back to base at RAF Linton-on-Ouse, Yorkshire. For bombing the yard in a badly damaged aircraft and still managing to get it back to England he was awarded the Distinguished Service Order.
Completing his first tour of operations in January 1941, Cheshire immediately volunteered for a second tour.
35 Squadron
Cheshire was posted to 35 Squadron in January 1941, where he joined Jimmy Marks, "Willie" Tait and George Holden. The squadron was converting to the new four-engine heavy bomber, the Handley Page Halifax. His time in 35 Squadron included seven raids on Berlin. Cheshire was promoted to acting squadron leader on 1 March 1941, and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) later that same month. Losses among Bomber Command continued. Four months after Cheshire completed his DSO mission, "Lofty" Long was killed during a mission on 13 March 1941. It was another close personal loss for Cheshire. "Whatever outward face I may have put on it, his loss affected me very deeply, and the memory of what I owed him and of all that he stood for remained with me throughout the war."
On 7 April 1941 he was promoted to flight lieutenant, and became commander of a flight.
Trip to North America At the start of May, 35 Squadron's Halifaxes were stood down to undergo modifications to address design flaws. Cheshire obtained a posting to the Atlantic Ferry Organisation to fly a Liberator across the Atlantic. On 4 May 1941 Cheshire reported aboard a Norwegian steamer to begin his trip across the Atlantic. The convoy was not intercepted by the German capital ships, but did suffer multiple attacks from German U-boats, and a number of ships were lost. Cheshire came through unscathed.