<p>Follow the last five airmen to escape to Spain on 5 June 1944.\nJourney to the Horizon is a tribute to aircrew who were forced down and evaded capture. It also honours those who died and those who endured a long time in a PoW camp and in one case in Buchenwald concentration camp.\nThe main character is Donald Kenyon Willis, an American pilot who fought with the Fins against the Russians in 1940, then joined the Norwegian Naval Air Service against the Germans, escaped to the Shetlands, joined the RAF as one of the first Eagle Squadron pilots, until he finally joined the USAAF.\nDonald Kenyon Willis was an American furniture maker and a whiskey smuggler, who decided that he should volunteer to help the Finnish people in their fight against the communist Soviet Union. When the Finns surrendered, he fled the country at the end of March and arrived in Kirkenes a few days after the German invasion of Norway on 9 April 1940 had taken place. When Noway was at the brink of defeat, Willis joined the crew of his pilot Hans-Andreas Bugge and flew to the Shetland Islands to save the Heinkel He115 from German requisition. Willis followed his Norwegian friends to Canada. He returned to Britain and became a Spitfire pilot in one of the American Eagle squadrons. He flew operational sorties with them until the Americans entered the war. Willis then joined the 4th Fighter Group. In April 1944 he participated in a P38 raid against Gutersloh airfield as a tactics evaluation officer. After his aircraft was hit, he force-landed at Oud-Gastel in Holland behind a football pitch where a match was being played.\nFrom the book: Later, after his return to England, Willis wrote in his Escape and Evasion Report: ‘I saw spectators and players run from the soccer field and at least 500 people gathering around the place where I touched down. Some of them had dropped their bicycles along the road, not far from the place where I was hiding. I went to the bicycles while they were climbing on my aircraft and took one that had a red coat tied to its carrier. I put the coat over my uniform and jumped on the bicycle. Then I rode off as fast as I could and caught up with a few cyclists who were heading away from the aircraft. We followed the road until it went up a dike then followed the dike and passed a few German soldiers who were watching the scene of the crash through binoculars. Other Germans ran, from what looked like an anti-aircraft battery, to the aircraft and started to chase the people away. I rode next to a woman who looked at me from the corner of her eyes several times, but who said nothing. She knew that I was not a local, but she never gave me away’.After staying with the Dutch Kuppens family, he walked on his own until he reached Antwerp and was spotted by someone who was connected to the Comete Evasion and Escape line. In Paris he met the other four airmen who were to travel to the Pyrenees.<br />
They crossed the Pyrenees during the night before D-Day, thus becoming one of the last five airmen to evade capture.\nHis fellow evaders were two Americans: Lieutenant-Colonel Thomas H. Hubbard and 2nd Lieutenant Jack Cornett and two Britons: Pilot Officer Len Barnes and Sergeant Ron Emeny.<br />
Ron Emeny was among the crew of Lancaster ND556, EM-F for Freddie of No.207 Squadron. The aircraft took off from RAF Spilsby during the night of 03/04 May 1944. Their target was the German tank training area of Mailly-le-Camp, a lethal danger for the troops that were to land in Normandy one month later. The aircraft was shot down by a German night fighter, killing the rear gunner. The skipper Warrant Officer Leslie Lissette RNZAF (who was the uncle of co-author Brian Lissette) remained behind the controls of the burning bomber until all crewmembers had bailed out. Then it was too late for him and Lissette died in the crash, sacrificing his life for his crew.</p>

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