Keith Chisholm

Keith Bruce Chisholm, (22 December 1918 – 23 August 1991) was an Australian pilot who served in No. 452 Squadron RAAF during the Second World War. He was recognised for his exploits with the Polish and French resistance after being shot down over France in October 1941.

Early career Chisholm was born in Petersham, New South Wales, and educated at Newington College (1930–1936). While training as a dentist, war broke out, and he joined the Royal Australian Air Force, in 1940 and trained with the Empire Air Training Scheme in Canada, being one of the first Australian graduates.

With No. 452 Squadron and capture Squadron Leader Keith Truscott (left) and Sergeant Chisholm (centre) of No. 452 (Spitfire) Squadron RAAF at an RAF station, with the Squadron Intelligence Officer, 20 September 1941 In May 1941 he was assigned to 452 squadron, a Royal Australian Air Force squadron which belonged to the RAF Kenley Wing. In April 1942 he and another RAAF airman exchanged identities with two soldiers and were able to join a working party outside the camp. In June, Chisholm and several others escaped. They were recaptured near Brno, in Czechoslovakia, and returned to Lamsdorf Prisoner of War camp.

Successful escape In August 1942, having again swapped his identity, Chisholm and three others managed to escape from a work camp near Gliwice in occupied Poland. After a week they made contact with sympathetic Poles from Home Army and were taken to a resistance leader in Kraków. Chisholm lived with a Polish family in Warsaw for much of this time. Plans for escape back to England were developed and abandoned as the war progressed.

The official account of his escape notes a degree of audacity in his activities; on one occasion, when a fellow escapee's papers were challenged in Poland, he pushed a German policeman into the Vistula river to effect their escape. The German subsequently drowned. According to Krap's diary, Chisholm overreacted to a routine document check, which endangered them and caused Krap's, whose document was recovered by the Germans, much trouble, forcing him into hiding.

Official War historian John Hetherington commented: For more than two years he had by tenacity, effrontery and resilience kept himself free in enemy territory and despite repeated failures as his successive plans neared fruition, had finally surmounted all difficulties and escaped completely.

"I always fall on my feet" he told the Western Mail in 1952, following his engagement to 24-year-old Eliane Defferriere, in Paris in 1952. After the war he became a woolbuyer, moving to Andover, Massachusetts in 1957.

Chisholm died in 1991, survived by his second wife, Marie-France, and four children. A memorial service was held in the Newington College Chapel. In 1993, his ashes were returned to Australia by his widow and stepson and interred, with full military honours, at Rookwood Cemetery with a Newington College Guard of Honour.