William Ash (writer)

William Franklin Ash MBE (born 30 November 1917) is an American-born British writer and Marxist and served as a pilot with the Royal Canadian Air Force in World War II.

Born into a lower-middle-class family in Dallas, Texas, Ash was a migrant worker during the U.S Great Depression and graduated from the University of Texas with a BA degree, doing privileged pupils' essays in order to gain money and also for his personal development as an author. It was around this time when the Spanish Civil War broke out, and the largely apolitical Ash, driven by a hatred of bullies and fascism, decided that if the war was still going when he was old enough to fight (aged 21), he would join the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.

In 1939, he left for Canada and joined the Royal Canadian Air Force and passed out as a fighter pilot, reaching the UK shortly after the end of the Battle of Britain. He flew Spitfires in World War II on many defensive and offensive missions, including an attack on the German battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, culminating in "big wing" fighter sweeps over France, on one of which, in March 1942, he was shot down and was caught by the Gestapo, twice being sentenced to death before being "rescued" by the German Luftwaffe, and shipped off to Stalag Luft III. He was later moved to and escaped from Oflag XXI-B through the latrine tunnel with Harry Day and Peter Stevens. Escaping became his prime preoccupation for the rest of the war and he was subsequently appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for his escaping activities in 1946. He ended the war as a flight lieutenant.

Demobilised back in England at war's end, he discovered that the act of "taking the King's shilling" in 1939 had robbed him of his U.S. citizenship and that he was now a stateless person. He became a naturalised Briton and went to Balliol College, Oxford to read for another degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics, before getting himself a job in the BBC's overseas service and posted as the Corporation's official representative to the Indian sub-continent.

Returning to England some four year later, and still on the staff of the BBC's External Services, he began to take an active part in left-wing "Gutter Politics", frequently to the embarrassment of his employers. He soon found himself out of a job and at about the same time the Communist Party of Great Britain refused him membership.

Later, he was able to get work in the BBC's radio drama department as a script editor, but he never did enter the ranks of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Instead, he and others formed the Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and his association with it took him to China; to Paris as a secret agent; and into close relationships with leading men and women of the Left all over the world.