The Orphan Gunner by Sara Knox

Author:Sara Knox
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781920882761
Publisher: Giramondo Publishing
Published: 2011-07-20T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Crew

The warrant officer was good to her word. Olive was granted a change of scene for her grieving, and was sent across the Humber, into East Yorkshire, to spend seven lonely months at Holme Upon Spalding Moor. The Flying Control Office there was a particularly depressing one, done out desk to floor in a brown linoleum constantly polished by a crash tender crew left idle, as were the R/T operators, when no planes were nearby in the air. Sometimes after the crew had done their mopping and buffing Olive would take out the shove ha’penny board and they’d have a game to pass the time.

While at Holme, she saw none of her friends. She would have had to cross half of the country to get to Evelyn. And the hundred miles to Wiltshire, where Ida fretted, or to Lichfield, where the gunners were completing their final training, were distances she couldn’t manage. What free time she had was spent walking the moors, or in the warmth of the hall at Market Weighton where picture shows were screened, and dances held for allied servicemen and women. Of that time Olive was to remember very little, detached as she was – an escaper’s compass spinning at the end of duty’s thread.

She did get letters, although the gunners’ productivity declined after they were sent to 103 Squadron at Elsham Wolds, one of the many aerodromes just south of the Humber. Evelyn was more reliable. Mail from her came weekly, although the tone of her letters was pinched throughout winter as she lost patience waiting for the move to White Waltham and her conversion to ‘heavies’ – four-engine bombers, like the Stirling and Lancaster, with which scattered squadrons in 5 Group had already been equipped. Olive thought it only right that Evelyn should wait longer for a conversion course than her brother had – by then Duncan and Lofty had survived most of a first tour of operations flying Wellingtons, those commodious, stable airframes that could go no higher than 12,000 feet fully loaded. There was nothing so obliging to the enemy’s flak batteries as a Wimpy, and over the target they risked sailing into the tonnage that rained from the bomb bays of the Lancasters and Stirlings above.

Duncan never complained. To him, the Wimpy was a dear old plane, and its low ceiling of operations a blessing. Most of the drama went on above, and a Wellington’s crew got a much better view of the target than most. Duncan made the Wellington’s flaws sound like virtues. Lofty, on the other hand, was even-handedly disparaging about every aspect of operations. Olive couldn’t trust either of them to be honest about how they were getting on, because aircrew never were – not to each other, not to the intelligence officers at interrogation, nor to anyone on station – with the odd exception of confidences imparted to a trusted medical officer, or squadron leader – and they weren’t telling.

She had a letter from Anne Battersby

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.