'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...