Pilot Officer L Wright

The First Ten Months

Twenty-seven-year-old Pilot Officer Leslie Wright, a No 151 Squadron Hurricane pilot who was educated at Grey College in Port Elizabeth and commissioned in 1937, drowned in the Channel after combat on June 18th while Prime Minister Churchill was addressing the House of Commons, “… I expect that the Battle of Britain is about to begin…. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war…. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, ’This was their finest hour” 19.