Hardcover, azure blue cloth cover, with a paper dust jacket, entitled "Canadians in the Royal Air Force" by Leslie Andrew "Les" Allison, published by Les Allison of Roland, Manitoba in 1978, printed in Canada by Friesen Printers of Altona, Manitoba, ISBN 0-919213-91-X. The inside front cover endpaper is signed in blue ink by the author, "Les Allison / Roland, Man. / 1980" and is stamped in black ink with the previous owners' name. As described on the dust jacket: "This is a list of Biographies of some 2,000 Canadians who joined the Royal Air Force mainly before W.W.II. It also contains 35 short stories of those from the Air Force who were involved in flying and combat which may be described as heroic, tragic, bizarre and controversial. Numerous other statistics are also included. The accomplishments of this small group were many times greater than any other similar company. They suffered 50% casualties, but earned over 600 decorations. Their contribution to the cause in the first year of the war, when numbers of trained men were so scarce, has never before been assessed. Certainly the Battle of Britain could have been lost without their help. The 126 Canadians who flew Hurricanes and Spitfires in fighter command during this four month critical battle may well have turned a possible defeat into a British Victory. Those many hundreds of Canadians who flew bombers with bomber and Coastal Command, were in constant action against enemy targets in this same period. They suffered even higher casualties mainly because they had to raid enemy airfields, invasion barges and military targets, plus even Berlin, quite often in daylight. And they had no fighter protection because every fighter was desperately needed in Britain." The book begins with a A Pilot's Prayer, followed by a Foreword, a Table of Contents, an Introduction, an Acknowledgements, a Non Acknowledgements, a Prologue and a Preamble. It encapsules thirty-five short stories, along with many pictures of the men at leisure, at work, in POW camps, many of aircraft on the ground and in flight, plus five pages of statistics. The bulk of the book totals 110 pages and is devoted to the biographies of the over 2,000 Canadians who served in the Royal Air Force, some brief, others expanded upon where the information is known, interspersed with photographs of the individuals. Each biography states the individual's name, his hometown, his rank, his serial number, details their service in the RAF, any awards received, noting whether they survived or were killed, and their burial location. It concludes with a section entitled Events, Incidents & Information, and a five page Register of Hometowns, the four page Epilogue listed in the Table of Contents missing. The book contains 236 pages, enhanced with multiple photographs complementing the detailed text, printed in black ink, on a white paper stock, measuring 220 mm (w) x 285 mm (h) x 20 mm (d). The dust jacket exhibits extensive wear, tearing and discoloration, the book itself with a slight warp in the front cover, foxing on the bottom of the pages, with light staining on pages ix-x, the remaining pages on the interior unaffected. Very fine.
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