World War II
Upon the outbreak of World War II Hillary applied to join the air force, but withdrew the application before it was considered because he was "harassed by religious conscience". In 1943 Hillary joined the Royal New Zealand Air Force as a navigator and served in 6 then 5 Squadron RNZAF on Catalina flying boats. In 1945 he was sent to Fiji and to the Solomon Islands where he was badly burnt in a boat accident, after which he was repatriated to New Zealand.
Read more about this topic: Edmund Hillary
Famous quotes containing the words world war, world and/or war:
“If the Third World War is fought with nuclear weapons, the fourth will be fought with bows and arrows.”
—Louis, 1st Earl Mountbatten Of Burma Mountbatten (1900–1979)
“This might be the end of the world. If Joe lost we were back in slavery and beyond help. It would all be true, the accusations that we were lower types of human beings. Only a little higher than apes. True that we were stupid and ugly and lazy and dirty and, unlucky and worst of all, that God Himself hated us and ordained us to be hewers of wood and drawers of water, forever and ever, world without end.”
—Maya Angelou (b. 1928)
“... the ... radio station played a Chopin polonaise. On all the following days news bulletins were prefaced by Chopin—preludes, etudes, waltzes, mazurkas. The war became for me a victory, known in advance, Chopin over Hitler.”
—Margaret Anderson (1886–1973)