Group Captain Hugh Verity

DSO and Bar, DFC, Légion d'Honneur, Croix de Guerre avec Palme

I first met Hugh Verity with the author Shauna Baldwin although, a few weeks before we were due to meet him at his home, he sustained a broken hip but insisted on still meeting us despite having only escaped from hospital a couple of days beforehand.

He was a quiet, modest and unassuming man with a dry sense of humour who cared passionately and spoke movingly about his time with the Special Duties Squadron and the people he ferried to and from France.

He shrugged off the danger he faced himself in these hazardous missions - flying by moonlight with the aid of a torch and a map in an unarmed aircraft , never certain who will be in the reception committee on the ground in France, trusting that the landing site had been chosen carefully with no power cables, trees or other obstacles to add to the danger - with the comment that, "I was heading home after landing but my passengers were heading into the unknown".

Many of the passengers he ferried he never saw again, some he either picked up to return to England or found himself taking them back to France months later after they had returned on other aircraft. Others became life-long friends.

History is about people, their actions or reactions, individually or collectively, to events that occur in their life - whether natural or man-made - these in turn determine how we view the past. Everybody has their own story to tell and they are all worth hearing.

I count myself lucky to have heard some of Hugh Verity's story from the man himself.

More information on the Lysander.

'They Landed by Moonlight' and 'Special Duties' by Robert Taylor. Reproduced courtesy of the artist and The Military Gallery, Bath. More information.

I would like to record my gratitude to the artist Robert Taylor for allowing me to display the two art works depicting a Lysander on this page.

Please remember copyright always remains the property of the copyright holder - in this case the artist - and respect this.

I am most grateful to Sally Carruthers at The Daily Telegraph, Syndication Department for permission to reproduce this obituary notice.
Text Copyright © of Telegraph Group Limited 2000.

The Daily Telegraph

London, Friday 16th November 2001

Group Captain Hugh Verity, who has died aged 83, was a member of the small group of RAF pilots who flew clandestine missions to support Special Operations Executive (SOE) agents and the French Resistance during the Second World War; they also picked up aircrew who had been shot down in Occupied France.

When Verity and his fellow pilots were picking up "Joes", as their unidentified passengers were known, the enemy's occupation forces were danger enough; but this was compounded by the preference for operating on moonlit nights.

Piloting a high-wing, single engine Westland Lysander, Verity flew some 30 lonely and demanding missions. Apart from flying the aircraft without the benefit of advanced navigation aids, Verity had to find the small field where a reception party would be waiting for him.

On one sortie he was south of the Loire when he encountered impenetrable fog over his landing ground, forcing him to abort the mission. This was especially frustrating because he was to land Jean Moulin, the co-ordinator of General de Gaulle's Resistance networks in southern France.

Having decided to return to his base, Tangmere in Sussex, Verity first had to escape the attentions of enemy searchlights. When he finally found his home airfield, it too was blanketed in fog. Believing his wheels to be just above the runway, Verity cut the throttle; but he was 30 feet too high, and the Lysander smashed into the ground. Miraculously, it did not catch fire - and Verity, always the complete gentleman, apologised profusely in French. Moulin responded in kind, thanking his pilot for "a very agreeable flight".

Verity had come into this line of work in the fortuitous way of so many who became involved with SOE. He had long suffered from what he termed "a private shame" for his "physical cowardice" on the rugby field at school, and was determined to overcome it.

Consequently, in the winter of 1942 he arranged to get an introduction to Wing Commander P C Pickard, who commanded No 161 Squadron; this was designated to SOE and comprised Lysanders, Halifaxes, Wellingtons and one Hudson. Pickard in turn introduced Verity to his station commander, Group Captain "Mouse" Fielden, previously the Prince of Wales's personal pilot and captain of the King's Flight. Verity was soon accepted on to the team.

At the time, Verity's wife Audrey was expecting their second child, but he assured her that his new job would mean "very few operations and a lot of home life, which would be great fun". However, on the night of his first Lysander flight, November 6 1942, he was called to the telephone for the news that his second son had been born.

Verity soon became a hero to his French passengers and reception parties, sometimes flying a Hudson and picking up as many as eight people at a time. He was awarded the DFC and DSO in 1943. France awarded him the Legion d'Honneur in 1946.

Hugh Beresford Verity was born in Jamaica on April 6 1918, and educated at Cheltenham and at Queen's College, Oxford. After a brief period teaching at a prep school in Northern Ireland, he was granted a short service commission in the RAF. In September 1940, he was posted to No 608, an Avro Anson general reconnaissance squadron, and five months later to No 252, a Bristol Blenheim, later Beaufighter, squadron, stationed in Northern Ireland.

Having been detached briefly to Malta, he was on his way home when bad weather forced his plane to make a belly landing in Eire, where he was interned. MI9 - the War Office escape organisation - managed to free him in a secret operation in which Verity wore disguise.

He then moved to No 29, a Bristol Beaufighter night fighter squadron, in the autumn of 1941, serving afterwards on the night operations staff of Fighter Command's No 11 Group and also at Fighter Command headquarters. After his exploits flying into France, he became an SOE air operations manager organising drops and agent landings in Western Europe and Scandinavia.

In the autumn of 1944 Verity supervised clandestine air operations in South East Asia, then worked with the Recovery of Allied Prisoner-of-War and Internees organisation, arranging the dropping by parachute of medical staff into remote prison camps throughout South East Asia Command. Following a period in Singapore, Verity was posted to Quetta (then in India) as a member of the directing staff at the Army Staff College. Here he contracted polio and was invalided home.

He was later delighted to be passed fit to fly, and in early 1948 he received command of no 541, the photographic reconnaissance squadron equipped with the Spitfire XIX, at Benson, Oxfordshire. The next year Verity was posted to the Central Fighter Establishment as wing commander weapons, but he seized the opportunity to learn to fly jets. After two years he went to the Joint Services Staff College.

From the spring of 1954, as wing commander flying at RAF Wahn, he was responsible for three Gloster Meteor jet night fighter squadrons. In 1955 he took over No 96, a Meteor squadron.

Verity's subsequent postings included spells on the bomber operations staff at the Air Ministry and at the CENTO headquarters in Turkey, and command of the RAF station at Akrotiri in Cyprus. Finally, he returned to the Air Ministry, charged with special and operations staff duties.

Verity retired in 1965 and joined the recently established Industrial Training Board. In 1978 he published a book about his wartime experiences, "We Landed by Moonlight". He married, in 1940, Audrey Stokes; they had two sons and three daughters.

More information on the Lysander.

"We Landed By Moonlight"

Hugh Verity's book "We Landed By Moonlight" is available from Créchy Publishing Limited. The site uses frames so once there choose "Categories" and then choose "Espionage".

They also do a series of "Pilot's Notes". Facsimile reproductions of the original RAF publications issued to pilots.

Fine Art Prints

Limited edition prints of Robert Taylor's two paintings can be purchased on-line at www.militarygallery.com.

The Military Gallery has been at the forefront of aviation and maritime quality fine art for nearly 35 years (founded 1967). As well as Robert Taylor they are also responsible for publishing Nicolas Trudgian, Simon Atack, Robert Watts, Barry Rowe and other leading aviation, marine, and military artists. Their catalogue is large and comprehensive and each artist's portfolio has very detailed descriptions of the art work along with a biography of the artist.

The site also has a very useful "Collectors Section" with comprehensive definitions to the various types of published prints and with advice on how to look after and insure them - invaluable to a novice collector like myself!