The Last Enemy [Hardcover]

Richard Hillary (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1983

"The Last Enemy" recounts Richard Hillary's experiences as a fighter pilot in the Second World War, in which he was shot down and spent months in hospital, undergoing operations to rebuild his face and hands. It was published in 1942, seven months before his death in a second crash.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

One of the classic works of World War Two. --Philip French, London Review of Books

This slim volume of Hillary's seems to have a weight which makes it sink into the depth of one's memory, while tons of printed bulk drift as flotsam on the surface. --Arthur Koestler

Rivetingly well told...It will speak to anyone who cares for the romance and tragedy of a lost hero. --Godfrey Smith, Sunday Times --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Richard Hillary was born in Sydney, Australia, in 1919. He was sent to boarding school in England and went to Trinity College, Oxford in 1937. He was still at Oxford when the Second World War broke out and, with other members of the R.A.F Volunteer Reserve, was immediately called to duty. He blew Spitfires in the Battle of Britain before being shot down and horribly burned. He underwent several operations by the great plastic surgeon, Archibald McIndoe. After a slow and very painful recovery, Hilary begged to be allowed to return to flying. He was killed, at the age of 23, when his plane crashed in a night training operation. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 183 pages
• Publisher: St Martins Pr (March 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312470797
• ISBN-13: 978-0312470791
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,194,521 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "We were disillusioned and spoiled", December 13, 2000

By 

Theodore A. Rushton (PHOENIX, Arizona United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Last Enemy: The Memoir of a Spitfire Pilot (Classics of War) (Paperback)

In 50 years of reading Battle of Britain books, and having personally known some of those pilots, this is the finest account I have read of the reasons men became a Royal Air Force fighter pilots who stopped the Luftwaffe cold.

It's not an aerial combat book. The author spent three weeks plus a couple of days in Battle of Britain combat before he was shot down, burned so badly that he was out of action from September 1940 until early 1943. The book was written during that long period of convalescence, when he had time to think. When he recovered enough to fly, he vanished on a training flight.

Hillary admits, "We were disillusioned and spoiled. The press referred to us as the Lost Generation and we were not displeased. Superficially we were selfish and egocentric without any Holy Grail in which we could lose ourselves." Those were the pilots, the majority of who died in defending their country in a manner that led Sir Winston Churchill to assert, "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."

Hillary wrote about the attitudes of pilots and the public during those precious few summer weeks when Germany tried to seize control of the skies and then invade England. Such terms as "heroic" come later, usually from those who weren't in the midst of it all. British pilots and civilians were simply content to do a job and spare others the burden of such sacrifice.

That spirit was nicely summed up by a London cab driver, when hundreds were killed every night and fires cut massive swaths through East London, who commented, "Thank God, sir. Jerry's wasting `is time trying to break our morale, when `e might be doing real damage on some small town." Later, a chaplain from East London, told him "my people have fallen from grace: they are beginning to feel a little bitter toward the Germans."

Hillary was one of the pre-war English elites who were educated at the better public schools such as Eton, Shrewsbury, Wellington, and Winchester. He attended Trinity College, Oxford, where he spent a lot of time rowing and flying as a member of the University Air Squadron. Except for the war, he could automatically have become one of the colonial ruling class of the Government of the Sudan, a "country of blacks ruled by Blues in which my father had spent so many years."

The war wasn't an exercise in grim determination to save democracy and all that rot. Instead, for Hillary, "I was glad for purely selfish reasons. The war solved all problems of a career, and promised a chance of self-realization that would normally take years to achieve. As a fighter pilot I hoped for a concentration of amusement, fear, and exaltation which it would be impossible to experience in any other form of existence."

Men such as him -- rich, pampered, spoiled and privileged -- saved the free world. As the book winds along, it shows Hillary's growing realization of the underlying stakes He wasn't heroic, he merely did his duty. He wrote this book, superbly capturing the mood of the pilots. Then he died.

The book is a monument to the spirit of the men who saved our freedom.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A well-written Spitfire pilot's story, March 3, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Enemy: The Memoir of a Spitfire Pilot (Classics of War) (Paperback)

This is a beautifully written account of one pilot's participation in a crucial WW2 battle. The book does not fall flat because the author spent only a relatively brief period in action; his description of his privileged period at Oxford, and of fighter training at the beginning of the time, are worth reading in their own right.

However, the real subject of this book is the recovery (sadly incomplete) he made from the horrific burns suffered after being shot down on the War's first anniversary. Burns treatment was crude before the outbreak of WW2, and shot-down pilots were the guinea pigs who enabled huge advances in this field to be made. (Hillary's plastic surgeon was the great Sir Archibald McIndoe.) Hillary's courage in fighting his way to this recovery, and the candour with which he describes it, make this book the best memoir I have read of the War.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A pilot's story: beyond the gunsight., October 10, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Last Enemy: The Memoir of a Spitfire Pilot (Classics of War) (Paperback)

This is not simply the story of a Spitfire pilot in the Battle of Britain. It is an account of dawning self-realisation in a twenty year old man, experiencing battle, injury and loss.

Hillary takes us from the rarified air of pre-war Oxbridge priviledge, into the Battle of Britain. It is during this period that Hillary is shot down in flames, suffering disfiguring burns to his face and hands. For many months following, Hillary undergoes agonising facial reconstruction. As we find from his book, whilst enduring this bodily transformation, and experiencing the loss of his closest pilot friends, he is also reconstructing his psychic self.

The Last Enemy is an invaluable read as a personal account of air warfare, and as a social commentary on the Oxbridge Volunteer Reservists. However, it is Hillary's exploration of himself, in the face of tragedy, to make sense of his suffering, and that of wider humanity, that marks this (sometimes uneven) read out as a truly profound article of wartime literature.