Review
A POW Remembers
by John Freeman
Special to The Plain Dealer, Cleveland
August 16th, 2001
Spitfire Down
On October 27th, 1941, Brian Hodgkinson was one of 30 Royal Canadian Air Force fighters sent as
decoys on a sweep of Northern France. It was one of Hodgkinson's earliest flights, and it turned out
to be his last, as an overwhelming number of German "yellow noses" swooped down and plucked 17 Spitfires
out of the sky, Hodgkinson's included.
Shot in the thigh, choking on smoke and scorched by burning airplane fuel, the 6-foot-6-inch Canadian
parachuted to the ground from 35,000 feet and was captured just as he passed out.
Spitfire Down is Hodgkinson's memoir of his experience as a POW for 3 1/2 year during World War II.
Unlike so many recent books about the POW experience, Spitfire Down recounts a great deal of
camaraderie and decency between Hodgkinson and his captors. Halfway to earth, his parachute flapping
in the wind as an easy target, Hodgkinson sees a German fighter pilot salute him as a fellow aviator.
When he lands, the German military sends Hodgkinson to a hospital near Calals where, with the exception
of a sadistic orderly, he was given professional treatment.
Several weeks into his rehabilitation, the German pilot who had saluted Hodgkinson stops by to check on him.
Just as Spitfire Down begins to resemble and old Sinatra film complete with the snappy, buck-up
speeches and kittenish French nurses, Hodgkinson tempers his story with vignettes that capture the
horrors of war. One night, nurses wheel in a man so mutilated that Hodgkinson doesn't recognize him as
one of his own. "What we saw was the most hideous deformation of a human head that any of us had ever
experienced. It was swollen to at least three times its normal size, and so puffed and inflated were
the cheeks and forehead that the poor soul's eyes were barely visible."
Another downed pilot in the group suffers wrenching nightmares, recalling over and again the look of his
co-pilot as he slipped through his arms and fell to the earth without a parachute.
Hodgkinson skillfully portrays how quickly allied POWs formed bonds in hospitals and prison camps, bonds
that became their lifeblood to survival. After he gets well, Hodgkinson is shipped off to a compound in
in Moosburg, Germany, where 200,000 Russians, French and Brits are corralled. Humor, cultural exchange and
vigorous complaining about the food buoy their spirits, as the men cagily sit out the rest of the war. To
prisoners' chagrin, a German colonel even allows them to march every day as a way to maintain their pride.
A former Cleveland radio personality, Hodgkinson died in 1999. His tale, edited by former Plain Dealer columnist
George Condon, has the Bunyanesque swagger of someone accustomed to an audience. He draws out dramatic
moments, embellishing them with florid adjectives and an unfortunate quantity of cliches, ranging from
"by the grace of God" to the way he so consciously marks events for "the memory book."
In spite of this, the reader's patience is never overtaxed. The men Hodgkinson befriended, from a Frenchman
known to shake men's hands as they were engaged on the toilet to a British sergeant who managed to open a
mini grocery within the camp, emerge as larger than life.
It is this fondness for memories that makes Spitfire Down so likable, inspite of its flaws. With wit a
good dose of humor, it documents an experience that requires constant tending. It is a shame that Hodgkinson
did not live to see it published. One can imagine it would have made a terrific broadcast.
Freeman is a critic in New York City.
Copyright 2001 cleveland.com Online.
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