Blue Plaque for former Express reporter who had secret 'cure' for injury

FOUR years before he died aged 74 in July 1995, retired Group Captain Hugh Dundas, the former air correspondent of the Daily Express, was invited to speak about “leadership in war” at the RAF Staff College in Bracknell, Berkshire. A Spitfire pilot alongside his brother John, who was killed in action, Hugh “Cocky” Dundas had flown during the Dunkirk evacuations and the Battle of Britain before later leading a wing of fighter bomber squadrons supporting the advance of the 8th and 5th armies during the final phase of the Italian campaign.

No doubt spines tingled as he told his audience: “True courage is about overcoming and subordinating fear. That is what most people most ardently wish to be able to do when faced with battle, that is what in their hearts of hearts they find most difficult, and that is what they most want to be shown how to do by their leaders.”

The feat was something he had learned through example, from those who “were not generally the kind of men who win Victoria Crosses. The astonishing supreme act of heroism which wins that award is often a one-off, like a meteor’s swift flight and passing, but a notable leader in war has to be able to show courage continuously through long periods of hard slogging and danger”.

His words, as true today as ever, are a reminder of how the greatest heroes are not always those with the highest enemy kills – they are the modest exemplars of courage.

Which is why it is fitting the former Expressman and his brother have now been honoured by twin blue plaques on Dale House in Cawthorne, South Yorkshire, where they grew up. John and Hugh – lauded among Winston Churchill’s “Few” – served their country with distinction having joined the Royal Auxiliary Air Force in 1938, aged 23 and 18 respectively. “They were both incredibly brave,” Hugh’s daughter Amanda Service, 69, says. “My father first flew in combat at the age 19, which is remarkable in itself. At the age of 24, he was the youngest person to be made Group Captain.”

John had attended Oxford University, graduating with a First. “He was very clever,” says grandmother-of-five Amanda, of Bucklebury in Berkshire. “My father adored him and wanted to follow in his footsteps. That’s one of the reasons why he was so keen to sign up as a fighter pilot at the start of the war. John had been to Germany, he had seen the writing on the wall and came back to join the RAF.”

Both men had an extraordinary story. By 21, Hugh was a flight commander and had received the Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC). At 22, he was promoted to wing commander to take over flying typhoons. In early 1943, he was posted to North Africa and then back onto Spitfires. That was followed by deployments to Malta.

John was shot down and killed aged 25 off The Isle of Wight in November 1940, flying a Spitfire of 609 Squadron. A month earlier, he had been awarded the DFC like his brother.

Having survived the fierce fighting during the crucial summer of 1940, he’d found himself embroiled in a furious dogfight with a Messerschmitt 109 flown by the “ace” Major Helmut Wick, who had at least 50 victories to his credit, on November 28. Although Wick was shot down and killed during the engagement, John was last seen pursuing another German fighter out to sea. No trace of him was ever found. In 2000, a memorial was erected at Freshwater Bay on the Isle of Wight close to The Needles.

Devastated by the loss of his brother, Hugh fought bravely on. Known as “Cocky” within the service, the sobriquet was attributed to his gangling height (he stood 6ft 4in tall), a shock of red hair and beak-like nose, leading him to resemble a cockerel.

“He was a bit of a rule-breaker,” smiles Amanda. “He had a scarlet lining on his RAF tunic, which he thought was rather dashing.”

Cocky endured his own terrifying moments as a Spitfire pilot with 616 Squadron. Later, he would become aviation correspondent for this newspaper.

He is remembered locally in Cawthorne as a tall, gangling youth, roaring round the neighbourhood on an extremely noisy motorcycle. When its roar caused the policeman to stop him one day, he is reputed to have shouted “You’ll have to speak up, I can’t hear you for this thing!”

Stories of John also abound locally. On one occasion in 1939, as part of the first 609 squadron formation take-off, John’s engine cut out. He throttled back but decided he couldn’t clear nearby houses, so put the aircraft earthwards. It touched down at considerable speed, skidding through the aerodrome fence, chopping down a windsock, which fell on a boy on a pushbike, and turned on its nose in the back garden of a nearby house.

The aircraft ended up leaning against a tree, its rudder resting on the house roof. A lady occupant had hysterics and was restored with the aid of brandy. The craft was a write-off, the accident blamed on a mechanical defect.

On August 22, 1940, high over Folkestone, Cocky narrowly escaped death when shot down by an unseen attacker. Centrifugal forces trapped him in the cockpit of his spinning fighter and he struggled to get out. Later, he wrote: “I thought, Christ, this is the end!”

Pulling himself together, he shouted: “Get out you bloody fool; open the hood and get out!” The trouble was, the hood was stuck fast. Eventually, with a Herculean effort, he wrenched the cockpit canopy open and parachuted to safety, albeit with a dislocated shoulder. Before he landed, he watched, “…somewhat detached from any reality” as his Spitfire exploded violently into a field, scattering a flock of sheep. “Bloodied and hurt, I idly and rather bizarrely thought, ‘I hope the sheep are OK.’”

Although neither John nor Hugh Dundas achieved the sort of public fame and adulation heaped on contemporaries like Douglas Bader or “Johnnie” Johnson, both were highly regarded by their peers.

When John failed to return in November 1940, the official squadron record book noted: “His courageous example and breezy personality are sorely missed.”

Of his abilities as a pilot, his commanding officer noted a certain “over-confidence”. And that singular trait might have contributed to his death. Having reputedly dispatched Wick, he was heard to yell over the wireless, “I’ve finished an ME 109 – Whooppee!”. That triumphant battle cry might be regarded as his epitaph, but with no known grave, he is instead commemorated by name on the CommonwealthWar Graves Commission Runnymede Memorial to the RAF’s missing.

Aside from this, and the new blue plaques, he has another spectacular memorial. In the atrium of Lambeth’s Imperial War Museum, a Spitfire hangs from the ceiling. Incredibly, this is the aircraftJohn Dundas sometimes flew during the Battle of Britain.

For Cocky, the loss of his brother was keenly felt. And later, following the loss of Bader on August 9, 1941, and another pal, Lionel “Buck” Casson, Cocky realised he was the only surviving original member of the squadron – a “terrifying thought”.

One of those flying with Cocky during that time was a young New Zealander, Sergeant Pilot Jeff West. He wrote in 1990: “He seemed indestructible, always exuding calm determination. Nothing ruffled him, and yet he looked most unlike the popular image of the steely-eyed, rough, tough fighter pilot sort… He was the pilot you wanted alongside in a scrape!”

Cocky went on to lead the first Hawker Typhoon fighter-bomber wing and then served with distinction in North Africa. By this time, he had been decorated with the DFC and Distinguished Service Order – a bar to the DSO being added later. But Cocky’s score of aerial victories across five years of service – four enemy aircraft destroyed and six shared with other pilots – came nowhere close to his brother John’s tally across justfive months.

Indeed, Cocky Dundas had an eventful wartime career, but post-war life was sprinkled with glittering success, too. Retiring as a Wing Commander in 1947, he took up employment as the Air Correspondent for the Daily Express, then owned by Lord Beaverbrook, whose son, Max Aitken, had served as a fighter pilot alongside Cocky. It was this connection which led to the appointment, a role in which he excelled until 1961.

He was posted to Washington DC in 1953 for three years as this paper’s correspondent for North and South America, before returning to Britain and a series of glittering jobs. He was knighted in 1987 for his services to business and the media.

“We as a whole family are incredibly proud of him,” says Amanda, the youngest of Hugh’s three children (her sister Sally died in 2022 followed by her brother Jamie a year later). We absolutely adored him. He was a lovely, charming, interesting, very clever man but with absolutely no airs or graces. He was a marvellous father and a wonderful grandfather to my children and a wonderful husband to my mother Rosamond (Robby).”

Robby and Cocky were introduced by Lady Annaly, a family friend of Robby’s who was a close friend of the Queen Mother. In 1947, she organiseda supper party in London, to which she invited the then Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, who had just got engaged.

Hugh and Robby, who died aged 98 in 2023, were among a group of young people invited to meet the royals afterwards. “Whether that was the first time my parents met I’m not sure, although I think that clinched it,” smiles Amanda.

Her parents were married in 1950. “My father asked my mother to marry him in a bus shelter in Bayswater Road. They used to point it out to us as children when we went past on the bus. He used to say, ‘Well, the bus was a long time coming and I couldn’t think of anything else to say!’ He always had a joke about everything.”

Yet he was never one to boast of his achievements.

“He was the most incredibly modest of men,” adds Amanda. “He was very modest about his service in the RAF and his success in journalism and business.”

Now, the blue plaques honour the warrior brothers.

Former parish councillor Sharon Pitt, whose original idea it was, says: “It’s been wonderful – the plaques look beautiful and the villagers cherished the Dundas brothers, there are various village stories about them.

“There are people still alive who remember their parents talking about them. The blue plaques will help ensure a new generation gets to know them. It’s a fitting way of making sure their heroism inspires future generations.”

As a nation, the recent 85th commemoration of the Battle of Britain was the first anniversary witnessed by no living veterans of that battle. Ever more reason that men like the Dundas brothers, these “guardians of liberty”, should be remembered.