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Lieutenant Colonel Robert Leith-Macgregor MC DFC (23 August 1917 – 14 November 2008) was a British Army officer and Royal Air Force pilot. He fought in the Second World War, initially as an infantry officer in the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers, before training as a pilot and transferring to the Royal Air Force. He was shot down several times and eventually became a Prisoner of War. Post-war he returned to the army, serving again with the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers in the Korean War, and later commanding a battalion of that regiment. ==Early life and Second World War== The stepson of an admiral, Leith-Macgregor initially trained at the Nautical College, Pangbourne but could not deal with the five hours of mathematics a day, and after three years transferred to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. On passing out he was commissioned into the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers as a second lieutenant on 25 August 1938, and was posted to the 2nd Battalion. He served in Belgium in 1939 but became bored with serving as a soldier, and instead volunteered to be trained as an army liaison pilot, gaining an additional RAF commission as a pilot officer in the Royal Air Force on 11 April 1940. After training on a de Havilland Tiger Moth he was taught to fly the Westland Lysander and posted to No. 241 Squadron RAF. He was transferred to No. 208 Squadron RAF to fly the Hawker Hurricane in the North African Campaign, and twice crashed. He was first shot down, but survived with no injuries despite his crashed aircraft being strafed by three German fighters before he could escape.〔 On the second occasion his engines failed and he was forced to crash-land; it later transpired he had taxied 75 yards in an active minefield without detonating anything.〔 He had retained his army commission and was promoted lieutenant on 1 January 1941, and in the RAF, war substantive flying officer on 11 April 1941. In June 1942, he was attacked by four Messerschmitt Bf 109s; he destroyed one, but was himself shot down. Despite again being strafed by the remaining planes he survived unharmed, and returned to his base just in time to find his flight sergeant (who had witnessed events) organising a burial detail. Leith-Macgregor was immediately awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.〔 The citation was published in the ''London Gazette'' on 28 July 1942: He was again shot down in August over El Alamein and was trapped inside the aircraft with the ammunition exploding. Nearby German soldiers broke through the canopy with an axe and helped him escape.〔 After an attempt to escape, he was transferred to an Italian Prisoner of War camp where he was brutally interrogated and held in a cage measuring five feet by three feet. He was transferred to a camp in Gavi and after the Italian armistice sent to Stalag Luft III; he did not escape in The Great Escape but was instead transferred yet again to a naval prisoner of war camp near Hamburg, where a sergeant from the Scots Guards cut the wire and let the prisoners escape.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Robert Leith-Macgregor」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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