LETTER FROM KENNETH, 1941

I recently found the following letter amongst some old paperwork of my late father. Kenneth was one of his friends, all of whom were of the generation whose lives were completely changed when they enlisted during World War II. Kenneth joined the Royal Air Force, and the letter has been written during the course of his training at Cranwell. I have left it word for word. The opinions are his, like them or not, and they died with him. It gives a rare insight into the thoughts of a young man who has become accustomed to hiding his real feelings with a kind of false jollity, but who will share some of his thoughts with his friend.

No 25 Course

Royal Air Force College, Cranwell, Lincs

19^th June, 1941

Dear Noel,

Many thanks for your screed. I had been meaning to write you but was not sure where you would be now. The unconfirmed rumour as to my whereabouts is quite correct and Cranwell is proving, in the balance, very satisfying. It is now just an S.F.T.S. fundamentally like any other except that we all live in the college, have a batman and use the officers’ mess. Usually about 60% of the chaps pass out with commissions though it all seems very chancy. There is oodles of bullshit in the shape of ceremonial parades and conventions of the college but it is a treat to be served at meals with good food instead of ladles of spoiled food. Fortunately they don’t seem to have heard of rationing. The work though is really frightful, and at times I really wonder that there are any qualified pilots at all. This is by far the most concentrated part of our training so far and I really can’t imagine why we didn’t start some of the stuff before. The navigation syllabus seems pretty colossal and in addition there is armaments, (including Browning Guns, Vickers G.O., Revolver, Bomb sights), Theory of bombing & Pyrotechnics, Theory of flight, airframe & engine construction and maintenance, signals and wireless, Airmanship, Meteorology, Link Trainer and of course actual flying by day and night below, in and above cloud and formation flying.  

 

Airspeed AS10 Oxford

After Magisters [trainer aircraft] these Oxfords are rather dull. They cannot be acrobated but, of course, they are comfortable to ride in, and we certainly get around the county. Most of our cross country flights have been down in Somerset, Oxford and Bucks. We do quite a lot of flying with other pupils which proved excellent opportunity for going where we wish. Last Monday my sparring partner and I got off our map and lost, and finally had to land in Hertfordshire being short of fuel. We managed to get 110 gallons of petrol but no lunch and consequently arrived back here jolly hungry. Our best effort really was losing the tail wheel of our machine when low flying. We hit a goods train, I think, though we cannot be sure because we felt nothing at the time.

I can’t imagine myself now on the ground (P.B.I.). I should be scared stiff at the prospect of attack from the air and the Army has no air arm of its own yet, and I really cannot see that it is likely to have during this war unless the RAF is pretty seriously weakened which would be pretty disastrous. The RAF are doing now a hell of a lot more than is generally thought and every plane is wanted. I really think that the Army wants tanks even more than air support, and that certainly the latter without the former would not help a lot. What it all seems to boil down to is simply that everybody wants RAF assistance.

I wonder what Turkey has been up to lately. I don’t distrust her, but I think she is and could be damn all use to us. Those poor money-grabbing Frenchmen could be more helpful but I don’t envy their position. Russia, too, would not help us much, I fancy. Hitler would smash them just as Hindenburg did if they start anything, or oppose him actively. Well, all this chatter is really nonsense. I find that nowadays there is little enough time to do just what one is told to do in the way one is told to do it, and I expect it will be the same when I get on to operations. I expect you find that politics in the mess is barred. We have to be content to gaze at a solitary tree in this bloody forest.

I hope to get a week’s leave about the middle of July: to be precise 19/7 – 26/7, when we are finally finished here and, with luck, get our wings. Can’t you arrange to get your leave then? It would be grand to have a reunion at home and go places once more. Lord knows, though, a week is not long. Fortunately we can, if lucky, get air transport to sundry places when going on leave which saves no end of time.

Well, I must get to bed. I am perpetually tired these days.

All the best and hope to see you soon. I suppose you haven’t an aerodrome near you where we could land and meet for a chat?

Keep smiling

Yours ever

Kenneth

SAYING GOODBYE TO CHRIS

Music...

‘Grateful Dead’

Grateful Dead?

Enter the Chapel,

High ceiling, flowers, stillness,

Nervousness.

I can do this...

A seat at the front,

A hymn.

Rosie reads; her voice

Flat with sadness.

We pray,

A kind man leads us.

Dave tells us of his friend,

Plain simple truth, no frills.

His voice strong, loyal, he describes

The places visited;

The heights – both earthly and

Chemical.

The bliss...

‘Grateful Dead’.

‘All things Bright and Beautiful’.

Tears.

ELAINE AND CHRIS – LEW BODY DEMENTIA AND PALLIATIVE CARE

My cousin Elaine wrote to me in March and told me she had Lew Body Dementia, at about the same time that we learned of my brother-in-law’s perforated stomach ulcer. Both of these events were shocking. How do you react to the first, something unheard of which turns out to be a hideous combination of Parkinson’s Disease and Altzheimers and involves frightful and frightening hallucinations? You think you would prefer to have the perforated stomach ulcer – until you learn that a chest abscess has developed and that poor old Chris’s condition has snowballed, or rather alvalanched, into an irreversible near-death with breathing difficulties and oxygen fluctuations. And then you are told he has moved into palliative care, so you know that there is no hope.

We all feel immortal until our lives are touched by the decline and death of those close to us. I refer to closeness of heart, because Elaine and I are thousands of miles apart, and Chris – although only two hundred miles from us, might as well be with Elaine for all the good it would do to visit. I can only type out the words: ‘I am thinking about you’ or ‘I am hugging you in my thoughts’ when I long to be able to take their hands and press something of my soul into them.

Losing family and friends impacts subtly, creeping into our lives, eating away at our security and forcing us to adapt to a quieter and less colourful patchwork of existence. Sometimes it takes years to realise how much you miss these people, because you have turned your back on them, refusing to accept that they have gone. It must be better to try to face their pain and suffering, but this is often too difficult and stressful; bravery is old hat, these days and we jump into the next task awaiting us in our daily lives, convinced that this is the right move. Shock plays its part too, for who could be so callous as to be completely unaffected by grief?

Elaine and Chris are still alive – at this moment – but they are not the people we knew and loved. Severe and desperate illness has changed them forever, as we in turn are changed by accepting their decline. It is important to remember them as they were, or we lose them completely. So I will remember their youth, exuberance and kindness, and above all the laughter. Both of these two were people who lived to laugh, and who would wish to infect others with their happy, sparkling take on life. Laugh on, you two! As hard and as much as you possibly can. I long to hear it.

LETTER TO MY COUSIN IN VANCOUVER: JANUARY

Dearest Elaine

Well, here we are in Devon in mid-January. Oh the horrors of a wet winter!  I don’t think I have ever seen so much rain pouring out of the sky as we have had in the last four weeks, and it’s still coming – but not today. There is a bright blue sky as I write to you, and when I glanced across at Dartmoor earlier it rolled across the horizon, vivid and clear enough to touch...

I am working hard on 'The Illandrian Diamonds'. It has spread out, both in my mind and on cyber-paper, like an enormous sheet of patchwork. Sometimes I grapple with it, searching fold after fold for the bit I have missed, then finding it but failing to link the correct colour or pattern – or so it seems. I am in two minds about Leo, my 14-year-old boy of mixed parentage. Mark, his father, loves him already even though he has only just discovered him, and will defend him to the end. But is Leo on the side of the angels, or is there something dark lurking behind those glittering pale eyes so like his mother’s? I want him to be the one who saves them all, but I think that he has a more sinister side. We shall see. Meanwhile the Illandrians continue to be infuriatingly naive and Helen struggles on...

Alfred

As the Winter Olympics approach I recall my hopes to come out to see you four years ago, and the huge disappointment of realising that it was simply, financially, beyond us. When you discover a far-flung relative, and you eventually meet them, you are unprepared for the bond which may flash into existence between you. Perhaps we were lucky, and this does not always happen? From the moment we met at the airport it was as though I had discovered the sister I never had, the best friend I knew might exist. Our grandfathers were brothers, so we share our great-grandparents. Your grandfather, Alfred was born 9^th February, 1868; my grandfather, Reece was born 31^st January, 1871.

Reece

From what we know and from their letters to each other and to others, I guess that Alfred was the braver of the two. To journey across an ocean and a continent and then to make a home at Chilliwack showed huge reserves of strength, both physical and mental. Reece was more solid and placid. I don’t know why he went into the Church, but it was often the case that the third son in a Victorian family like ours did just that. He was the only one to go to university, boasting in a letter to his sister: ‘I have been getting some awfully good marks lately – I think I could get an Exhi? [Exhibition – a kind of scholarship]’ I do not know whether he did or not, but I believe he was a clever man.

What have we inherited from them? I leave this question for another time. I amuses me to think that both of them came late to parenthood – as did both of our fathers, as a result of which we have grandfathers who we could not hope to have known, Reece dying in 1938 and Alfred in 1951.

I am juggling my writing life with my new obsession: knitting. I discovered Ravelry, where you can record all of your projects as well as discuss crafts – and many other subjects – and get ideas; and where a vast number of people knit socks. My latest project is an Icelandic sweater, rather daunting in its complicated design, but when approached with something like relaxed amusement, most enjoyable! It is hard though, and I have struggled to translate little black and white dots on a grid into black and bright purple stitchery which approximately resembles snowflakes. Or not.

Write to me! I send love...

TWO THIRDS MYSELF

‘What sort of a title is that?’ you ask. Well, I am glad to be able to reassure you that I am still whole and have not lost any part of myself – except for one small organ: my gallbladder. This was extracted by Mr Cooper on 19^th November, 2012.

My ‘gallstones attacks’ began over the Diamond Jubilee weekend. I will not describe the excruciating pain – that is for another day. Suffice it to say that on the Doctor’s advice I reduced all the fat in my diet to a bare minimum and by the time of the operation I had already lost 3 stone in weight.

Yes, I had been heavy! In April 2012 I weighed myself for the first time in years, for the purpose of a pension annuity declaration. The scales climbed to 13 stone 7 lbs. I was size 20. Chubby and tubby.

The weight fell off, dramatically at first, then slowly and surely. One year after the operation it had stabilised at 9 stone, which is where I am still: size 10/12. Skinny!

Over Christmas, a cousin who I never see asked me whether I have got used to this, and I realised that it has definitely changed me. It is not just the extraordinary (and costly) wardrobe replacement, which dropped from 20 to 16 (where did 18 go?) then on down through 14 to 12, finally stopping between 10 and 12. Nor is it the fact that all of my treasured rings, including my beloved wedding ring, are far too big; my teeth feel strange and some shoes are loose. My other half has had to get used to me too – a hug from him now envelopes me completely!

It is lovely to look at myself in the mirror and see this slender person staring back, but is it really me? I don’t think so. Not yet. I need to get used to this stranger who now has cheekbones and a neck. A huge bonus health-wise has been the suppressing of my hiatus hernia and the almost complete lack of heartburn, as well as – of course – the lack of pain. I can walk up hills again, easily, and getting myself out of the bath (which I no longer squeeze into) is a doddle. These are all wonderful surprises, but they still feel very strange.

I wish I could have told my 40-year-old self what to do to stay thin, but I fear that it would have changed the last 21 years of my life. You have less energy and lower stamina on this ‘diet’/way-of-life. Of course this might be because I am older now, but I wonder how I would have reacted then?

You cannot change the past; only warn and advise from experience. It may take a long time before I am completely comfortable with being two thirds myself, but I know one thing for certain: I am healthier and happier in my day to day life than I have been for a very long time. And that has to be a 1/3 bonus!

BOOK REVIEW: 'JUST ONE EVIL ACT' by Elizabeth George

- read November, 2013

I suggested this to a thriller readers' group - and wished that I had not, as no-one liked it. In fact I may be the only member of the group who finished it! Excluding the spoiler, here is what I reported back to the group:

At last I have reached the end of `Just One Evil Act' and it has been a real roller-coaster of a ride. I am left wondering what to say about it - simply because it is SO long and parts of it are so tough to get through. The last quarter of the book is the best by far. I think that the entire book could have been cut right back with some judicious editing. I could also have been made much easier to read by the exclusion of Italian words - you have to ask yourself WHY she felt the need for this when it actually detracts from the reader's understanding and enjoyment of the book. Bizarrely in the first part of the book the description and behaviour of Barbara Havers drove me mad and, I believe, has put some readers right off the book - and yet once she arrives in Italy this all seems to change. The character of the Italian policeman Salvatore Lo Bianco is beautifully drawn and his interaction with Barbara is intriguing as it combines compassion with a fierce intelligence.

Am I glad I read to the end? Yes, and I actually enjoyed the last 20%! Would I recommend it? Er... probably not.