'You learn to act and think alone'

Adam Hart follows in the footsteps of his great-grandfather Frank Griffiths, an RAF hero whose youth spent wildfowling on the Dee helped him survive the Second World War

- Adam Hart

AS THE rain lashed my back, the wind howled in my ears and the mud sucked at my boots, I finally understood what my great-grandfather had been writing about. It had been 56 years since the Second World War but for Frank Griffiths it was the Dee Estuary his mind returned to when he sat down to write about his extraordinary life. He believed his youth spent wildfowling, fishing and sailing on the Dee was destiny taking an early hand.

For it was only through enduring the hardships the River Dee had to offer,' wrote Griffiths, 'the biting cold of shooting the marshes in winter and the self-reliance of messing about in boats that I survived the war later on.'

Despite a perilous war, he was doubtless referring to 14 August 1943. Tasked with dropping explosives to the French Resistance, he flew a Halifax bomber deep into occupied Europe, arriving at the drop zone at 2.30am. His crew searched desperately for their reception party in the moonlit fields but an Italian corporal spotted their lumbering aircraft. He loosened off a few potshots and severed the fuel pipe in the starboard wing, draining the engines of fuel. Haemorrhaging altitude, Griffiths ordered his crew to crash stations and watched in terror as the shadowy rooftops of a French village crept upwards.