The Airmen's Stories - Sgt. C A L Hurry

Charles Alexander Lyall Hurry was born on 24th March 1916 and attended Heaton Technical School, Newcastle.

He joined the RAF as an Aircraft Apprentice on 1st September 1931 and passed out in August 1934 as a Metal Rigger.

In Aden in 1936 Hurry applied for pilot training and was selected in 1938. He did his initial training course at 2 E&RFTS Filton and then went on to 6 FTS Little Rissington.

In 1939, with his training completed, Hurry went to the Air Observers School at Acklington as a staff pilot at the Gunnery School.

After the war started he did a gunnery course at Warmwell. He arrived at 11 Group Pool St. Athan on 28th December 1939, converted to Hurricanes and joined 43 Squadron at Acklington in January 1940. On 8th August 1940 Hurry probably destroyed two Ju87s and damaged three others and on 5th and 6th September Hurry claimed Me109s destroyed.

On the 11th he joined 46 Squadron at Stapleford Tawney. He claimed a Do17 destroyed on the 15th and three days later he was shot down in Hurricane P3816 and baled out with bullet wounds in the leg and burned on the face and hands (see below).

Hurry was admitted to Chatham Hospital and afterwards went to the Queen Victoria Hospital at East Grinstead for plastic surgery, where he became one of Archie Mclndoe's Guinea Pigs.

Fit again, Hurry was posted to Brough for an Air Traffic Controllers course, after which he went to North Weald as Duty Pilot. Later in 1941 he did an instructors course at Perth and was posted to the staff of EFTS Wolverhampton, moving later to EFTS Carlisle.

Commissioned in March 1942, Hurry joined the Communications Squadron at Northolt and flew as personal pilot to Air Chief Marshal Sir Roderic Hill until the end of the war.

He was awarded the AFC (gazetted 1st January 1946).

Hurry was released in January 1946 as a Flight Lieutenant. After running his own businesses in Britain he went to live in Canada in 1970.

He died there in 1995.