From Dulwich he went on to University College, Oxford,[2] and from there entered the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve[3] in 1914 as a surgeon probationer.

[4] He served aboard a hospital ship, torpedo boat and a destroyer before transferring to the Royal Navy Air Service in 1916.

On a summer's afternoon he attempted a new manoeuvre in his Sopwith Camel and flew the machine up and over, and as he reached the top of his loop, hanging upside down, his safety belt snapped and he fell out.

He grabbed it with both hands, hooked one foot into the cockpit and wrestled himself back in, struggled to take control, and executed "an unusually good landing".

[4] After a tour as instructor at the Imperial Defence College in 1937 he became Director-General of Organisation, a post he held at the start of the Second World War.

[4] They had a son, born 1917, Flight Lieutenant Ian David Grahame Donald, who was shot down off Dover in a Boulton Paul Defiant and died in 1940, and a daughter,Jean who became a WAAF officer.