RUSSELL, F/O Neil Gillespie (J8136) - Mention in Despatches - No.203 Squadron - Award effective 14 January 1944 as per London Gazette of that date and AFRO 874/44 dated 21 April 1944. See War Service Records 1939-1945 (Canadian Bank of Commerce, 1947). Born at Vancouver, 6 August 1919; home there (bank clerk). Enlisted there, 11 February 1941 when posted to No.2 Manning Depot; to No.3 SFTS, Calgary, 15 March 1941 (guard); to No.2 ITS, 22 April 1941; graduated and promoted LAC, 27 May 1941; to No.2 EFTS, 27 May 1941; to No.11 SFTS, 26 July 1941; graduated and commissioned 7 October 1941. To Embarkation Depot, 11 October 1941. To RAF overseas, 3 November 1941. Arrived in UK, 8 January 1942, and in Egypt 8 March 1942. Further trained at No.71 OTU. Flew a tour with No.250 Squadron (20 June 1942 to 3 July 1943). Promoted to Flying Officer, 1 October 1942; to Flight Lieutenant, 7 October 1943. On 14 January 1943 he was wounded and his aircraft badly damaged in the Bin Dufan area. Briefly with No.203 Squadron (3-25 July 1943), and then served at No.73 OTU, Abu Sueir (25 July 1943 to 10 January 1944). After leave in Canada he returned to Britain (7 May 1944), undertook refresher training at No.53 OTU (24 May to 23 June 1944) and went to No.416 Squadron (4 July 1944 to 29 March 1945). Returned to Canada, 2 May 1945; to Western Air Command, 18 May 1945; released 26 July 1945. Soon thereafter he articled to become a chartered accountant in the early 1950s. He stayed in public practice where he became a partner for his long successful public accounting career until his retirement at age 75. He was honored as Chartered Accountant of the year in 1999. Closely involved in the community of New Westminster where he worked and received a Citizen of the Year Award in 1995 in recognition of outstanding service to the city and enhancement to community life. He was a Paul Harris Fellow member of Rotary. He was also an active volunteer at the Royal Columbian Hospital where he served as a Trustee from 1977 to 1996 and as Chairman of the Fraser Burrard Hospital Society from 1984 to 1988 where he aided in overseeing the construction of RCH's new wing and donation fund raising. For his many years of service at RCH and to health care in the community he was honored by having a boardroom named the The Neil Russell Room at RCH. Died in Vancouver, 24 August 2010. Chris Shores, Those Other Eagles (Grub Street, London, 2004) provides a victory list as follows: 27 October 1942, one MC.202 damaged, Fuka (No.250 Squadron, Kittyhawk FR241); 4 November 1942, one MV.202 destroyed, Fuka (No.250 Squadron, Kittyhawk FR243, LD-R); 7 November 1942, one MC.202 damaged, east of Sollum (Kittyhawk FR243, LD-R); 28 July 1944, one FW.190 destroyed northwest of Caen (No.416 Squadron, Spitfire NH611); 25 September 1944, one FW.190 destroyed, Arnhem (No.416 Squadron, MJ770); 27 September 1944, one FW.190 damaged, Emmerich (No.416 Squadron, Spitfire MK838); 29 September 1944, one FW.190 destroyed, Emmerich (No.416 Squadron, Spitfire ML250). Photos PL-10241 (beside Kittyhawk in Africa) and PL-36067 (studio portrait). PL-43230 (ex UK-20277, 19 April 1945) has caption that states that he is using door of dispersal hut to fill out a report on a crash; “His crash occurred on the last operation of Russell’s second tour, when his aircraft was shot down by flak, but before which he was able to bale out behind our lines near the Rhine.” See his article “Experiencess With the Canadian Spitfire Wing, 1944", Journal of the Canadian Aviation Historical Society, Volume 25, No.1 (Spring 1987). // RUSSELL, F/L Neil Gillespie (J8136) - Distinguished Flying Cross - No.416 Squadron - Award effective 18 December 1944 as per London Gazette dated 29 December 1944 and AFRO 379/45 dated 2 March 1945. Award presented 13 July 1946. // During two tours of operations Flight Lieutenant Russell has completed numerous sorties. He has destroyed or damaged at least thirty mechanical vehicles. In addition he has destroyed four enemy aircraft and damaged a further two. On his first tour he participated in many dive bombing missions and attacks against various ground targets. He has always displayed a fine fighting spirit, keenness and courage which merit high commendation. // RCAF Press Release No.9315 dated 20 March 1945 from F/Ls R.G.B. Anglin and Dunbar, transcribed by Huguette Mondor Oates, reads: // ADVANCED RCAF AIRFIELD IN BELGIUM: -- Half an hour before the finish of his tour of operations, F/L Neil G. Russell, DFC, of Burnaby, B.C., was shot down by flak. // Back at base, he was heard to call “Break!” to his companions as the ack-ack guns opened up on them – then silence. Four hours later, he arrived at the airfield in an American jeep and bundled in his arms was the parachute with which he had bailed out over our own lines. // When he took off on the dawn patrol at 7:30 a.m., Russell didn’t know that permission had been received at the City of Oshawa squadron base to screen him from further “ops”, and that the good news was to be sprung on him when he returned. // “I had not been told that this was to be my last trip, but I did know that my tour was nearly up,” Russell exclaimed. A flight commander in the City of Oshawa squadron, Neil had destroyed three Focke-Wulfe fighters since the start of his second tour with a RAF Kittyhawk squadron in the desert. He followed the whole of the desert campaign from the last retreat through the El Alemein battle and subsequent victories until the Germans were driven out of Tunisia. // His first-tour score was one destroyed, an Italian Macchi 202, and two damaged. “We’ve got lots of other good pilots,” said S/L D. Mitchner, DFC, City of Oshawa squadron commanding officer, “but I know we’ll never find another flight commander like Neil. He always did precisely the right thing in the air and there wasn’t a finer fellow on the ground.” // RCAF Press Release 9582 dated 3 April 1945 from F/L R.G. Anglin, transcribed by Huguette Mondor Oates, reads: // WITH THE RCAF OVERSEAS: -- F/L Neil G. Russell, DFC, son of Mr. and Mrs. A. B. Russell, 2339 Dow Avenue, Burnaby, B.C., is headed homeward from Belgium where he recently finished his second tour as a fighter pilot. The luck that saw Russell safely through one of the hottest “strafing dos” of the war and six successful aerial combats stayed with him on his last sortie before being “screened” when he was hit by flak but managed to bail out over Allied territory. // The 25-year-old Burnaby pilot has destroyed three Messerschmidt 109s since he started his second tour in Normandy last July. As a flight commander of the City of Oshawa squadron, he has led fellow Canadian pilots in many attacks on motor vehicles and trains during the assault on enemy transport which the 2nd Tactical Air Force has maintained continuously since the invasion began. During his first tour with the Desert Air Force, he shot down an Italian Macchi 202 and damaged two other enemy aircraft. // The day Russell simultaneously finished ops and joined the caterpillar club, his squadron was responsible for a continuous two-plane patrol over the front lines and was also assigned to “readiness”. That meant that after each pair of pilots returned from their sortie, they had to spend several hours sitting in their planes at the end of the runway prepared for instant take-off – a duty as tiresome as it is essential to the airfield’s safety. Thanks to having bailed out far from base, Neil didn’t get back to the mess by American jet till lunch time – when his flight came off duty. He was greeted with loud cries of mock derision. // “That’s going pretty far – bailing out just to dodge readiness!” “What a sensationalist – getting shot down just so’s you could finish your tour in a blaze of glory!” Which was just the way the other fliers took of expressing – in reverse English – how glad they were to see him safely back, and gives some idea of how highly Russell was regarded. One Intelligence officer put it in plain language; “When you’re writing about Neil, just say he was the nicest guy that ever lived.” // F/L Russel won his wings at RCAF Station Yorkon, Saskatchewan, in October 1941, went directly overseas and with scarcely a pause in Britain, was shipped out east to take his O.T.U at Khartoum. He was posted to a RAF Kittyhawk squadron based near Tobruk – then Tobruk fell in Rommel’s last and nearly successful drive towards Egypt, and the squadron had to retreat three times. But the Nazis were stopped and as the ground-air team of Montgomery and Conningham prepared to launch the great El Alameim offensive, Russell got his first kill. // “We were escorting Mitchell bombers sent out to attack a German airdrome. Six or eight Italian fighters came climbing up toward us, though I don’t think they were after us or actually even saw us until we were all mixing it up. “It was really a lucky hit,” Russell relates. “I met one Macchi almost head on and fired all six of the Kittyhawk’s machine guns. They got his motor which started throwing white glycol smoke – and he went right into the deck.” // Two “damaged” were later added to the score on that tour, but the most exciting few hours’ action came much later after the Americans had landed and were driving east to meet the British Eighth Army and force the Germans out of Tunisia. The New Zealanders staged a long, secret trek through the desert to surprise the Germans and turn the Mareth line, in what became famous as the battle of El Hama. “This was the first real job of close-support of the army by the air force,” Russell recalls, “and it obviously caught the Germans by surprise. My squadron went in on the first strafe of the day. We could see our own troops crouched, waiting to attack as we swept down on the Germans just 100 yards ahead of them. As the line moved up, the New Zealanders lobbed smoke shells ahead of them to show us where to attack. The German flak was terrific. My plane was shot up a bit that day, and many of our pilots were shot down. But a lot of them got back through our own lines. A special mess tent and billets had been set up for them – furnished complete with tooth brushes! From a landing strip nearby, pilots were flown back to their own fields. Five fighter wings took part in that show, and captured Germans were shocked and dazed by the force of the attack.” // Russell did an instructor’s tour near Cairo and spent 30 days’ leave in Canada before returning to Britain just after the invasion had started, in time to be posted to a RCAF wing in Normandy. One day towards the end of July, he was on a front-line patrol with five other Oshawa squadron Spitfires. High overhead, the Canadians saw a formation of Liberators returning from a mission. “Suddenly 20 to 30 Messerschmidts dropped on the Liberators, attacking them as they dived. They plunged right through and fell into our formation. I got on the tail of one of them and went down after him, firing cannon and machine guns. He caught fire and went right into the deck,” Russel said. // Patrols and armed recces – shooting up enemy transport – alternated as the “fighter” pilots’ job became more and more the tactical one of providing army support. Then came the “Arnhem drop” when Luftwaffe dive-bombers came out in great gaggles to try and destroy the British-held bridges at Arnhem and Nijmegen. On two occasions when the Oshawa squadron was patrolling the Nijmegen area, fighting off German attacks on the bridge there, F/L Russell again got into combat, destroying two Me109’s. It was shortly after this that he was awarded to DFC.