The clock turned back 71 years yesterday for Neville Selwood.
The World War 2 veteran marked Armistice Day by flying over the Dunedin Cenotaph in a Tiger Moth - his first flight in this type of plane since 1943.
''It was wonderful,'' he said after landing.
''It made me feel like I got rid of a lot of those 70 years. It made me feel like a young 19-year-old flying again.''
The 90-year-old said Armistice Day, which marks the end of World War 1, held particular significance as he remembered those he flew alongside in World War 2 and those who had come before during World War 1.
''You think of the cost of war. I had quite a few relatives killed on the Western Front during the Great War and some more in the Second World War,'' he said.
''Flying around the Cenotaph, I gave my own salute.
''I remembered all the fallen and particularly the airmen who went in two-seater planes like this ... you just have to admire their courage.''
Mr Selwood was only 18 when he enlisted with the Royal New Zealand Air Force in December 1942.
''I had a job getting my mother's signature [to allow me to join the Air Force],'' he said.
''I got my dad's signature OK, but my mother was a harder thing.
''I nagged at her, got her signature, sealed up the envelope and she put it out in the rural delivery letter box, and I thought she will change her mind overnight. So once she went to bed I got up, got it [the envelope] and rode down the road to put it in another farm letter box.
''And sure enough in the morning she got up to get it out and was very upset that I had foiled her.''
He performed fighter plane training in Tiger Moths before leaving for Canada, where he completed bomber aircraft training.
Growing up near Invercargill, he was always fascinated by aircraft, he said.
However, he was not well off enough to experience flight until he joined the Air Force, and even that seemed precarious.
During training, he was grounded because of heavy concussion from a rugby match. But an Air Force doctor helped him skirt the rules.
''He said: 'I'm going to take this medical report grounding you and shove it at the bottom of your file','' Mr Selwood said, recalling the memory with a laugh.
The issue of concussion was never raised again and he went on a tour of duty as the navigator of an Avro Lancaster in the 75th Squadron.
Despite the horrors of war, it was ''kind to me'', he said.
''I met a wonderful air force girl and got married on V-J Day.''
The 69 years which followed included time as a chartered accountant and as an Anglican clergyman, and commemorations such as Armistice Day reminded him of how lucky he was and how much he experienced at a young age.
''I'm the only member left of my aircrew of seven,'' he said.
''I look at fellows still at school and think: 'Yeah, I was learning to fly'.
''It was pretty intense.''
