YOU NEVER KNOW YOUR LUCK Battle of Britain to the Great Escape. the Extraordinary Life of Keith ‘Skeets’ Ogilvie DFC

When the Royal Canadian Air Force wouldn’t accept him as a pilot in the summer of 1939, Keith Skeets Ogilvie walked across the street in Ottawa and joined the Royal Air Force. A week later he was on a boat to England and a future he could not have imagined. Some unusual luck won him a transfer as a Spitfire pilot to No. 609 (White Rose) Squadron, just as the Battle of Britain was being joined. Over the next months he firmly established his credentials with six confirmed victories and two probables, along with several enemy aircraft damaged. Shot down over France the following July, he was fortunate to be treated for grievous injuries by top German surgeons. Skeets home for the balance of the war was Stalag Luft III prison camp. He was the second last man out of the Great Escape tunnel but was recaptured three days later. For reasons he never understood, Skeets was one of 23 escapees who were spared from being murdered by the Gestapo. 50 of his fellows were not so lucky.