If you'd rather place an order by talking to one of our cheerful order desk clerks, please call 1-888-232-4444 (USA and Canada only) or 250-383-6864. From Europe, ring our UK order desk clerk at local rate number 0845 230 9601 (UK only) or 44 (0)1865 722 113.

Lucky Alex: The Career of Group Captain A.M. Jardine AFC, CD, Seaman and Airman

by Colin Castle

332 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #01-0456; ISBN 1-55369-054-0; US$30.50, C$35.00, EUR25.00, £17.50

The Career of Group Captain A.M. Jardine AFC, CD, seaman and airman. Adventures at sea, on land and in the air, from hard times to Cold War 1929 to 1965.

Read more!

about the book      about the author      excerpts      catalogue info

About the Book     'Lucky Alex' is the biography of Group Captain Alex Jardine who was born in Vancouver, lived in Victoria and went to sea at 15, to give his mother fewer mouths to feed. His career included 5 years on Canadian and British merchant ships, 10 years in the RAF - during which he flew Catalinas against Japan out of Singapore and spent years as a POW in Java, and 20 years in the RCAF. His flying went from Tiger Moths to jets. His singular personality makes the story a good one, right to the bitter end, when he loathed being an air attache on the cocktail circuit in Prague.     Alex Jardine was different from most career airmen in that he combined a deep seriousness about doing the best possible job at all times with a love of fun and jokes which enabled him to make light of the most desperate assignment. Consequently his story is never dull even when he is flying a desk. He has not a pompus bone in his body.     His career is contained enough action for several lifetimes and he found himself is some crucial historical spots. For example, he was a sailor on shore-leave in Hamburg when Hitler was conducting Germany's last election for 12 years in 1933; he flew anti-submarine patrol for the Prince of Wales and the Repulse the day before those two ships were sunk by the Japanese - and was sent out to confirm the awful truth when this was thought to have happened; he escaped from a Japanese POW camp in Java and, having failed to find or build a boat, managed to be recaptured with no harm done to himself or his companions - no mean feat; he survived 3.5 years in the same POW camp as Laurens van der Post, with two guards who were subsequently executed for war crimes; he was commanding CF100 jets at RCAF St. Hubert in October 1956, when the Suez and Hungarian crises made WW3 seem imminent; and he was Canadian air attache in Prague - and insisted on keeping on drinking with the Russians - during the darkest days of the Cuba Missile crisis.     Alex was once declared the most eligible bachelor in singapore, yet he remained unmarried until he was 44. One of the book's themes is this personal journey. he had an extraordinary ability to direct his own life and to avoid pitfalls of love and marriage - when those delights would have detracted from his being able to do the job assigned or, more importantly, when the job assigned would not have allowed him to be responsible for a possible wife's welfare. he watched other men, as doomed as himself, marry before the bullets started to fly. But that was not for him - not until his future seemed predictable again. and that only happened when he became a base commander in the RCAF.

---

About the Author     Colin Castle was born and educated in the UK. He lives with his wife Valerie in Kelowna, where he taught high school history for thirty years. During that time he came to know alex Jardine because both men had married Johnston wives. For a World War II schoolboy aircraft-spotter, with his own Service experience, and who had taught the history which Alex lived, the task of writing this story had instant appeal. When he retired from the classroom in 1998 he had the time to do it. Castle expects to write further books.

---

Excerpts

    At 0100 on Monday the 8th of December 1941, minutes earlier than the attack on Pearl Harbor, Alex was woken by the CO: "Better get dressed, Jardine! Attack on the way!" Indeed it was; the first bombs caught him still struggling into his pants. Flying high and in the dark, the Japanese did well actually to hit the airfield. Alex's dressing was punctuated by a huge clump of dirt landing on his verandah. Dishevelled and half dressed, he jumped into a trench outside the door and waited. The bombers made another pass, dropped more bombs and then disappeared. The All Clear siren sounded and some rather stunned officers gathered in the mess. Most of them were astonished. It seemed almost unbelievable that the Japanese had had the nerve to carry out such an action. As Alex was to tell Agnes when reflecting on this event a month later: " I think the normal reaction was: 'Well, I'm damned, the cheeky little so-and-so's!'"
    205 Squadron was not the only unit to be surprised. As a Japanese armada was pouring troops ashore just north of the Malayan border, Japanese bombers, mostly escorted by fighters, rained bombs on the northern airfields. General Percival wrote: "The rapidity with which the Japanese got their air attacks going against our aerodromes was quite remarkable ... the performance of Japanese aircraft of all types, and the accuracy of their bombing, came as an unpleasant surprise. By evening our own air force had been seriously weakened."

    page 126

    The scene that followed could have been everybody's last. One minute they were trudging up the road in morning sunshine, each man concentrating on his thoughts and his footing; the next minute a truck, which had been rumbling towards them, suddenly skidded to a halt. Staccato orders were barked excitedly in Japanese. Soldiers tumbled out of the back, filling the road and surrounding them at the double. As they ran the soldiers fumbled with rifle bolts which were noisily drawn back and slammed shut. In a few seconds, rifles with long bayonets were levelled at them from every direction. There was silence. Then a calm voice, in English, told them to stand still and put up their hands. A command in Japanese brought two soldiers running towards them; roughly they prodded the stretcher cases to their feet with bayonets, making them stand up with the rest. The atmosphere was electric. "TENSE is the word - we had heard stories of Jap brutality," Sid recalled. Alex remembered "... young Japanese soldiers, with bayonets as long as they were almost - bayonets as long as their arms - all very uncomfortable-looking," breathing hard and ready to kill them all on the slightest pretext. "The young officer, with his sergeant-major, began searching our equipment, mainly for weapons." After working in silence for a while, the sergeant-major reached Sid and read his shoulder flash. "Ah, New Zealand! I play rugby in New Zealand!" "Rugby," Sid shot back. "I play rugby. Who do you know?"
    Instantly, the tension was broken. Sid remembers the "Jap sergeant ... thought it was a great joke that we had been trying to build a boat! He spoke very good English - was a Tokyo University graduate who had played rugby against a NZ university team way back in 1934-35. I had a New Zealand flash on the shoulder of my shirt, we were almost buddies!" They began exchanging names of players they both knew, amid shouts of delight and astonishment. "Taking a cue from their sergeant, the Nips produced cigarettes and ice drinks and treated us like human beings." The pleasant interlude was brief but had a happier sequel than they had a right to expect; instead of being made to march the hundred, or more, kilometres to Garoet, they were transported there by truck. Alex maintains that the rugby coincidence saved their lives. Without that stroke of luck, "... It's as likely as not that the Japanese would have done their usual - and that was bayoneted the lot of us."

---

Catalogue Information

---