World War II
He gained the rank of Group Captain in the service of the Royal Auxiliary Air Force. When World War II broke out Loel Guinness went on active duty with the Royal Air Force. In 1940 Loel flew as a fighter pilot in the Battle of Britain, famously buying a petrol station near his aerodrome when his driving was restricted by rationing. In 1944 he became commander of a wing of the Second Tactical Air Force and by the war's end he had been mentioned in despatches five times. He was invested as an Officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1942. The Netherlands made him a commander of the Order of Orange Nassau and France made him an officer of the Legion of Honor and awarded him a Croix de Guerre.
Read more about this topic: Thomas "Loel" Guinness
Famous quotes containing the words war ii, world and/or war:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”
—W.E.B. (William Edward Burghardt)
“Armageddon. The slaughter of humanity. An atomic war no one wanted, but which no one had the wisdom to avoid.”
—Edward L. Bernds (b. 1911)