Back Bearings: A Navigator's Tale by Group Captain Eric Cropper

Author:Group Captain Eric Cropper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Aviation/World War 2
ISBN: 9781844688104
Publisher: Pen and Sword
Published: 2010-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Cranwell

It was strange to be back in Leeds, so familiar but such a contrast to our lives in the previous two years. The Clean Air Act had noticeably improved the atmosphere of the city; the ubiquitous trams were still running but had only a year or so of life before they were replaced by buses. (To our minds, Leeds was never the same again.) Much building was in progress, and the view from Joan’s parents’ house was no longer of fields with cows grazing, though such encroachments had been going on for some years.

I reported to the Air Ministry by telephone and was given fifty-six days’ leave, to report to Cranwell on 18 June. The bad news was that a married quarter was unlikely to be available until September, and so we needed to find somewhere to live near the College until then. The first requirement was a car, and for the first time in our lives we had built up sufficient savings in the bank to be able to buy one without too much difficulty. Joan and I went down to Leeds a couple of days after we had returned home, and bought a Singer Hunter from a dealer in Albion Street, a smart two-year-old black saloon (most cars were black then). We had a short drive around the city with the salesman, and for the first and only time I automatically tried to drive on the right of the road after leaving a junction, luckily managing to pull over to the correct side and avoiding a collision with a horrified driver coming in the opposite direction.

It was delightful to drive up into the Dales again and see violets and primroses flowering in the trees alongside the lanes in Littondale, where thankfully little had changed, and we were able to picnic on Hawkswick pastures above the Skirfare as of old. We gave ourselves a short breathing space and then set about finding somewhere to live for a few months within reach of Cranwell. Despite my wartime postings in Lincolnshire and our time at Waddington and Scampton, we were not too familiar with the area around Sleaford, and I had never visited Cranwell. Sleaford was a small, pleasant market town about seventeen miles south of Lincoln and some three or four miles from the RAF College. The River Slea ran under the main street, and we remember thinking that the houses directly above the water would be able to fish from their windows. Neither Joan nor I can remember how it came about – presumably through an estate agent or the local press – but by the middle of May we had arranged to rent Homa House in Quadring, a small village in the fen country between Sleaford and Spalding: it was a square turn-of-the-century house, with four rooms downstairs, including a not very satisfactory kitchen and scullery, and three bedrooms upstairs with a bathroom. There was a garage and a sizeable garden with a summerhouse, which pleased Sue

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