Beyond the Blue Hills by Katie Flynn

Author:Katie Flynn
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781446428702
Publisher: Random House

Chapter Eight

July 1940

Mike sat in the mess clutching a handful of envelopes, for today’s post had been a rich one: three letters from Tess, one from Laura, one from his father and one from Tina. He loved getting letters – everyone in the forces did – but he had been starved of correspondence whilst he was in France covering the retreat. Not that he had remained in France for long; the air force had realised that the heavy losses which would have resulted had they not withdrawn their air power would have left England unprotected in the event of an invasion. So they had clawed back the squadrons and closed down the airfields in France very soon after they began evacuating the troops from the beaches and the result was that Britain still had planes and pilots to defend her land. Of course the plan had had its detractors, and you could scarcely blame them; Mike had heard a great many soldiers saying bitterly that they had not so much as glimpsed ‘the Brylcreem Boys’ whilst they crouched in the dunes and queued up to their necks in water to board the craft which would, they hoped, carry them to safety. Mike and his fellow fliers knew that the air force’s actions had been sensible, for the Luftwaffe was better equipped and had many more aircraft than did Britain, but it was difficult to explain these facts to men whose friends had been strafed and killed by Messerschmitts on the long, pale beaches whilst they looked in vain for the small planes with the roundels on their wings to come to their rescue.

But right now, even the most sceptical were beginning to realise that Dunkirk, as it was being called, had indeed been a strategic withdrawal and not the ignominious defeat which some people had made out. The air force was preparing to attack the troops and vehicles which had been gathering at the Channel ports ever since France had fallen, the army was retraining and re-equipping the many thousands of men who had managed to get back to Britain, and the Navy was doing its best to guard the merchant ships as they tried to transport vital supplies across the Atlantic. The Americans still held aloof from the conflict, but they were selling the Allies weapons of war as well as desperately needed supplies.

And then there was his darling Tess, hoeing carrots, cutting hay and cycling miles on a dreadful, creaking old bicycle to get to work every day at some ungodly hour. She had sent him a photograph of herself in her uniform – it stood beside his bed in a cheap Bakelite frame, one of his most precious possessions. When she had written to tell him she had been posted to Norfolk it had meant little to him – he had been in France – but now he thought there was a good chance that he, too, might end up in that part of the country. Every

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