Modest Shropshire war hero John tells it again

In it he merely listed some of his hazardous missions over Nazi Germany and left it to the very final pages to mention that he had won the Distinguished Flying Cross twice over.

Now that book "J For Johnnie" has taken flight all over again, expanded and rewritten in a collaboration with Telford author Ken Ballantyne, who encouraged him to go into further detail about his exploits and add more anecdotes.

"John and I have been friends for many years and we see each other on a regular basis. I just said to him: 'John, it's a great story, but it's under-told. You have been too modest. You haven't told your reader really about your operations,'" said Ken.

The upshot was that John, who lives near Market Drayton, asked if Ken would help in reworking the book.

"His wife was very pleased. She felt exactly the same and wanted somebody else to come along and say the same thing to him. We have revamped it and created effectively a new book.

"We've been through his logbook and extracted the details of some of the more notable raids that he went on. He went on 70. He has expressed some of his feelings about those raids and the experiences of taking part in them, rather than simply referring to them.

"Getting him to talk about his part in things is very difficult. He is a lovely man, but so modest. Eventually I managed to pull it out, like hen's teeth, and it's now made a much better story and an easy read as well.

"It's a very funny story, as well as a wartime story.

"John is 94 in September and is still flying his own aeroplane. He takes his wife Olwen as a safety pilot." He flies from Sleap airfield, near Wem, as a member of Shropshire Aero Club and is possibly Britain's oldest regular flier.

John and his book were a big hit when he and Ken took it to the Fairford Air Show to launch it, being given space with the De Havilland Aviation Museum stand.

His first wartime tour of operations had been in Wellington bombers with 150 Squadron based at RAF Snaith in Yorkshire, taking part in bombing raids on many heavily-defended German cities.

The odds were against surviving even one tour, but he went on to do a second tour, this time in Mosquitos of 692 Squadron, based at RAF Graveley near Cambridge, and part of the elite Pathfinder Force. He was to clock up over 2,000 flying hours and walked away from three crashes.

He was awarded the DFC and Bar for his exploits – the Bar is a second award of the same medal. There is even a remarkable story associated with his medals, which he sold, together with his logbook, during a time of financial hardship in the early 1970s.

In 2002 John became a widower, and later met Olwen, who was also widowed. Ken said: "When they got together she persuaded him to try to track down his medals. After several false starts and dead-end leads, eventually out of the blue he got an email from the other side of the world, from New Zealand, to say 'I have got your medals and you can have them for what I paid for them' which was jolly good of them because they were a dealer. He got his medals back in perfect condition, with his logbook – he had sold everything.

• “J For Johnnie” is available direct from Laundry Cottage Books, Laundry Cottage, Shawbirch Road, Admaston, Telford, TF5 0AD, for £9.99 plus £1 postage. Ken says it is also on sale at BookShrop in Whitchurch, Darlington’s in Ironbridge, and W H Smith in Shrewsbury, or by order from any bookshop.