[SIR CRISTOPHER LEE]
Flying Officer C. F. C. Lee in Vatican City, 1944, soon after the Liberation of Rome
He was then attached to No. 205 Group RAF before being commissioned as a pilot officer at the end of January 1943,and attached to No. 260 Squadron RAF as an intelligence officer. As the North African Campaign progressed, the squadron “leapfrogged” between Egyptian airstrips, from RAF El Daba to Maaten Bagush and on to Mersa Matruh; they lent air support to the ground forces and bombed strategic targets. Lee, "broadly speaking, was expected to know everything."The Allied advance continued into Libya, through Tobruk and Benghazi to the Marble Arch and then through El Agheila, Khoms and Tripoli, with the squadron averaging five missions a day.As the advance continued into Tunisia, with the Axis forces digging themselves in at the Mareth Line, Lee was almost killed when the squadron’s airfield was bombed.After breaking through the Mareth Line, the squadron made their final base in Kairouan; following the Axis surrender in North Africa in May 1943, the squadron moved to Zuwarah in Libya in preparation for the Allied invasion of Sicily.