Lilac Lecture – The Madness of Courage: Grilt Stuart Group Captain Martin Insall, VC, MC – RAF Museum

On Tuesday, March 4, 2025, at 12:00, Dr. Tony Insall will look at the life and heritage of his great-chicho, captain of the Gilbert Insall VC, MC group. This lecture will host practically through Crowdcast and live from the London website of the RAF Museum.

The captain of the group Gilbert Izal is the only person to win a cross of Victoria and successfully escape from the German prison camp during World War I, winning a military cross; Two acts that demonstrated quite different types of courage. This lecture will tell his story.

Gilbert grew up in Paris, where he is interested in aviation and is introduced to the famous pioneer aviators Luis Bleriot and the Pharman brothers who give him flights. He joins the Royal Flying Corps and is posted to France. In November 1915, he hired a German aircraft, forced it and went down to a low level to ensure its destruction. In the process, his own machine was disabled and he was forced to land just behind the Union front line. By withstanding a constant bombing, he controls the repair of his aircraft undercover the darkness so that he can fly him home the next day.

In December 1915, he was removed and captured, quite seriously injured, spending several months in hospital. After recovering, he made three attempts to escape, all of which require at least some temporary retention in unpleasantly narrowed areas. He dug a tunnel of forty yards to get out of Heidelberg in the middle of winter and was free for five days in freezing conditions. Then he hid on a horse’s stroller to get out of Crefeld. Finally, Gilbert and a few satellites hid in a claustrophobic small space that were excavated under the bathroom floor (outside the bearing perimeter) and stayed there for seventeen hours, withstanding the heat of a summer day while the fruitless search was to be performs. They appeared early the next morning and reached the Netherlands a few days later in September 1917.

Location

This hybrid lecture will host personally on the London website of the RAF Museum in Sunderland’s apartment. Visiting is personally free, but registration is required through Digitkets.

Livestream

To attend in practice, register through crowdcast.

D, Tony Insall has been working for more than thirty years at the Foreign and Municipal Municipalities Service and served in Nigeria, Hong Kong, China and Malaysia, before spending five years in Norway. He was also the editor of FCO historians and published several books and articles mainly about Norwegian and Scandinavian history, including Haacon lies, Dennis Heli and the creation of Anglo-Norwegian special connection 1945-1951. and (for FCO historians) Brussels and North Atlantic Treaties, 1947-1949.

He is the author of Secret unions. Special Operations and Intelligence in Norway 1940-1945(Biteback 2021) A comprehensive study of the Anglo-Norwegian resistance to resistance during World War II.

He is a senior visiting contributor to the Department of Military Research at King’s College London and an associate of the Royal Historical Society.