The future
Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith served in the
Royal Air Force (RAF) during the
Second World War, interrupting his studies at
Rhodes University in South Africa to join up in 1941. Following a year's pilot instruction in
Southern Rhodesia under the
Empire Air Training Scheme, he was posted to
No. 237 (Rhodesia) Squadron, then stationed in the
Middle East, in late 1942. Smith received six weeks' operational training in the
Levant, then entered active service as a
pilot officer in
Iran and Iraq. No. 237 Squadron, which had operated in the
Western Desert from 1941 to early 1942, returned to that front in March 1943. Smith flew in the Western Desert until October that year, when a crash during a night takeoff resulted in serious injuries, including facial disfigurements and a broken jaw. Following
reconstructive plastic surgery to his face, other operations and five months' convalescence, Smith rejoined No. 237 Squadron in
Corsica in May 1944. While there, he attained his highest rank,
flight lieutenant.
In late June 1944, during a
strafing attack on a railway yard in the
Po Valley in
northern Italy, Smith was shot down by
anti-aircraft fire. Parachuting from his aircraft, he landed without serious injury in the
Ligurian Alps, in an area that was behind German lines, but largely under the control of anti-German
Italian partisans. Smith spent three months working with the local resistance movement before trekking westwards, across the
Maritime Alps, with three other Allied personnel, hoping to join up with the Allied forces that had just
invaded southern France. After 23 days' hiking, he and his companions were recovered by American troops and repatriated. (
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