Rose Under Fire

‘You’re on the front line,’ I insisted.

There was this long, guilty silence at the other end.

‘Oh, you really are at the front,’ I guessed angrily. ‘What? They’re going to transfer you, aren’t they, now that the front’s moved back? Or are they getting the Royal Air Force Special Duties squadron to do ferry work so they can weasel out of sending civilian ATA pilots into Europe?’

‘They’re moving the squadron,’ Nick gave me cautiously.

I didn’t ask where. He wouldn’t have told me anyway.

‘Far?’

‘Yes.’

‘Oh.’

That means out of the United Kingdom. Maybe the Mediterranean. ‘Well –’ Nick hesitated. ‘We’ve got three days’ leave before we go. It’s not much time, but it matches up with your next two days off. We could get married.’

I am sorry to say that I laughed at him.

I mean, it is just so stupid. He is sweet and funny and kind and brave, and we talk so easily when we are together, and he is so proud to have a pilot for a girlfriend – ‘Looks like Katharine Hepburn and flies like Amelia Earhart’ is how he introduced me to his parents (an exaggeration in both cases but oh how I burned with joy and embarrassment when he said it)! But we still haven’t ever even been on a real date, dancing or to a film or anything like that – it’s always lunch in a pub or a quick cup of tea in the coffee shop at the train station just outside Portsmouth, which is halfway for both of us. It is so hard to get time together. Apparently Maddie has supper with her boyfriend Jamie at his airbase something like once every two months. And the last time Nick and I had the same day off, I had to stand him up because Uncle Roger and Aunt Edie were taking me out. Of course, it never occurred to me to stand up Uncle Roger – but I am in debt to Uncle Roger, I mean morally, for pulling the strings that got me here. Nick doesn’t get that. I know he was hurt.

And now I hurt him again, by laughing at his proposal. I tried to make it up to him by promising we would have a whole day, a real day to remember, all to ourselves before he went away.

It makes me angry. Why should it have to be like this, for all of us, all our generation? That the only way for a young couple to be together is to get married? No chance of a honeymoon, no flowers or champagne because the gardens are all full of cabbages and turnips and France is a war zone? No pretty silk dress unless someone manages to steal a parachute for you? No. I know I wouldn’t get married suddenly even if it weren’t wartime. I’d never do it without Daddy there to walk me down the aisle – with only a telegram to let him know!

It is the same for every young couple. We are all panicking that one of us will be killed next month, next week, tomorrow. All of us panicking that if we don’t do it now, we’ll never get a chance. Well, I don’t care, I’m not letting the war take over my life.

Maddie laughed too when I told her about Nick’s proposal.

‘I know where he got that idea,’ she said. ‘Jamie and I are getting married on the twelfth of August. Next week!’ She gave another hoot of laughter. ‘That is Nick all over. He’s like a puppy. You said no, didn’t you, Rosie? The poor lad! Tell you what – you can give him a good excuse and say you’ve a previous engagement. Come be my bridesmaid.’

‘Oh, how could I!’

What a thoughtless thing to say. Her dead friend wasn’t going to do it, was she? And all it did was remind her.

Anyway, of course I will.

I asked her if she knew where Nick and Jamie are going, and she gave me a funny look.

‘Careless talk costs lives,’ she said.

I do know things I shouldn’t know. I know a lot about what Uncle Roger is doing, because Aunt Edie tells me. She’s not supposed to know either. I am a little uncomfortable about it sometimes, but I think they see it as keeping me Ready for Action – Roger always asks for me when he needs to be taxied anywhere. Felicyta thinks it is very funny that this highly important person wants to be piloted by a lowly Third Officer, and a girl too! He is building pontoons in France at the moment, as the Allies fight their way inland. The next big push will be to cross the Seine. Then Paris.

It is a week since Celia’s accident. I have submitted my report. I didn’t draft it on these pretty gold-edged pages after all, because I didn’t have this notebook with me when I wrote it. The day after her funeral I was stuck at RAF Maidsend for a whole day due to lousy weather, and I couldn’t go home because there was a top-priority Tempest (of course) that I had to ferry away for repair as soon as the visibility was good enough to take off. It felt a bit ironic, and spooky, to spend the day writing about Celia’s accident and then take off strapped into a broken Tempest. The plane had a big hole punched in the windshield. It was perfectly flyable, but WOW was it ever windy! Even with goggles on my face I felt like I had frostbite by the time I landed – absolutely frozen. It’s true I was going 225 mph at 3500 feet, but you’d never know it was August. It’s been such a cold summer.

You have to fly that high to get across Kent, because you have to be higher than the barrage balloons they have got tethered there to try to catch the flying bombs.

I can’t get over how beautiful the barrage balloons are. I can’t even talk about it to anyone – they all think I am crazy. But when you’re in the air, and the sky above you is a sea of grey mist and the land below you is all green, the silver balloons float in between like a school of shining silver whales, bobbing a little in the wind. They are as big as buses, and me and every other pilot has a healthy fear of them because their tethering cables are all loaded with explosives to try to snarl up enemy aircraft. But they are just magical from above, great big silver bubbles filling the sky.

Incredible. It is just incredible that you can notice something like this when your face is so cold you can’t feel it any more, and you know perfectly well you are surrounded by death and the only way to stay alive is to endure the howling wind and stay on course. And still the sky is beautiful.

August 7, 1944

Ladies’ Sitting Room, Prestwick Aerodrome, Scotland

I am waiting for Uncle Roger to get out of his meeting. I have decided it is a good idea to always take this notebook with me in case I get stuck somewhere again, like last week at Maidsend, so I have something to do. We had a heck of a time getting here – we had to fly through a hailstorm which came out of nowhere. It sounded like we had our heads in a bucket that was being pelted with rocks. I don’t know when I’ve ever been so frightened while flying.

Roger seemed to be all unconcerned. He was in the back, in the middle of a cigarette, with his legs up on the second pilot’s seat – the aircraft is a Proctor, not very big. Along with the hail came a bit of wind shear bumping us around, which made him accidentally kick me. I snapped angrily, ‘Could you please put your feet down.’

It’s amazing what a short, sharp command, instantly obeyed, does for your morale. I was absolutely not going to let him know how worried I was! He didn’t stretch out his legs again for the rest of the flight.

After we landed, and I was taxiing off the runway, I said, ‘Sorry about the bumpy ride.’ When I switched off the engine, he reached over my shoulder and shook my hand.

‘You’re a damned fine pilot, Rosie,’ he said. ‘A real credit to your father. For a moment there I thought we were being hit by machine-gun fire!’

I took a deep breath and let myself clench my fists at last, just to get the tension out of them. Daddy never let me hold tight to the control column; he used to make me use one finger just to practise the ‘light touch’. I do it automatically now, but it sure does feel good to squeeze your hands shut after a flight like that. ‘Is that what machine-gun fire sounds like?’ I asked.

‘Pretty much! Didn’t you notice me looking around wildly for the Messerschmitt that was firing on us? I thought we’d had it! Ready to go down fighting though –’

He held up his other hand. He’d got out his pistol. Here was me thinking he hadn’t been worried.

‘Gee whiz, Uncle Roger, it was just bad weather!’

‘And that’s what kills most ATA pilots, right? You kept your head and got us down safely. I always say there’s no other pilot I’d rather have in control of my plane. Except your dad, of course!’ He laughed, unstrapped his harness and put away his pistol. ‘Ready to take me to France some day soon?’

I unlatched the door. ‘Uncle Roger, if you can engineer getting me to fly you to France, you really are a Royal Engineer. They haven’t let any ATA pilots go to France yet. And when they do, it’ll be the men.’

Roger gave his characteristic ‘harrumph’ of disgust. ‘There were American women on the beaches of Normandy four days after D-Day. Army Nurse Corps – plucky girls, carrying all their own gear just like the lads. And our British ladies began to arrive only a few days later. They’re at the front now, or just behind it. I know you’re “civilian pilots”, but at least in a plane you can scarper on home when you’ve dropped me off!’

‘You’re preaching to the choir, Uncle Roger!’ I hauled myself out on to the wing and reached back in so he could pass me our bags. ‘If you pull the strings, I’m ready to go.’

I don’t really believe he can pull those strings. But it gives me a warm, excited feeling in the pit of my stomach that he thinks he can, and might actually try.

August 14, 1944

Hamble, Southampton, Hampshire

Doodlebug Bride / Bomb Alley

(Poems by Rose Justice. Not yet written. I just like the titles.)

Maddie had her two days off for her wedding, but I did not, so it was kind of a marathon for me to get to Scotland. I managed to squeeze it in as a series of ferry flights up and took the train back with Maddie. Everyone was as nice as could be, bending over backwards to make sure I got the right delivery chits that would take me all the way to Aberdeen and let me stay there overnight. Mostly they were doing it for Maddie. Thank heavens the weather also cooperated. It has been terrible all summer; even the Brits say it’s not usually this bad. Great cover for the flying bombs, but no visibility for living pilots, and the ground-to-air gunners can’t see what they’re shooting at.

It was thick overcast as usual the day after the wedding when Maddie and I came back on the train together – poor thing, she and Jamie only had one night together. Maddie was in Scotland for two nights, but the night before the wedding doesn’t really count because she and Jamie were still in separate rooms then!

She is marrying into another world. Jamie is the son of an earl and his family lives in an honest-to-goodness Highland castle. Her name has changed from Maddie Brodatt to the Honourable Mrs Beaufort-Stuart! There are a lot of Beaufort-Stuarts – Jamie is one of six children, though the war is thinning them out. Ugh. His oldest brother was killed in Normandy in June and his younger sister was killed last year. She is the one who was Maddie’s best friend. It was through her that Maddie met Jamie.