Coming from George this was mildly hypocritical. His letters vibrate with emotion. The correspondence began after he and his friend Philip Kitto, known to everyone as Mac, travelled back with Joan when she returned to her WRNS base, HMS Cabbala at Lowton near Warrington after her brother’s funeral. The journey was fun and lifted some of the gloom imposed by John’s death. His loss seemed particularly pointless. His aircraft had been diverted from his home base at Wigsley to another airfield after a training exercise and crashed on landing. The Kirbys were a tight-knit, dutiful English middle-class family. Mr Kirby was in charge of the Air Raid Precautions area. His wife was a hardworking Red Cross nurse. The death cast a shadow over the family’s happiness which never quite cleared.
Being with her brother’s best friends cheered her up. ‘What do you think? – George and Mac came right the way up here with me,’ she wrote home. ‘I was terribly pleased because instead of the horrible journey I anticipated, it was very pleasant. You would have laughed to see us; we were sitting around a desolated refreshment room on one of the platforms with my sandwiches and three cups of tea trying to work out how to get through the barrier without paying.’8
On 8 July the long pursuit began. He was, he wrote to her, waiting for his new crew to finish off their training and for once had some time on his hands. ‘With a bit of luck and a cunning tongue, I may be able to pop up and see you for a weekend – that is if you get any time to yourself during Saturdays and Sundays.’ George was completing his training at Bruntingthorpe in Leicestershire, not so very far from Warrington. But this apparently simple ambition turned out to be maddeningly difficult to achieve.
As George schemed to make a rendezvous, Joan was getting acquainted with a new and exotic species of servicemen; the Americans. One Sunday in the middle of July, dressed up in her new uniform she ‘went to an American Red X dance in Warrington. The dance itself was awful – it was an afternoon affair but we got taken to tea at the American Club and had “Coke” which John used to talk about so much.’ At the end of the month the prospect of leave was once again dangled tantalizingly in front of George, and then whipped away. ‘Well it happened again,’ he wrote to her. ‘I don’t know what you are thinking about all this but I would have given a week’s pay not to have had to send that telegram on Friday evening. I felt sure I would get that “48” this weekend. All Friday morning I talked to the rest of the navigators about asking for a “48” until they could think of nothing else. The course leader was approached and he saw the OC of our flight. The decision was rather vague. “Perhaps, eh. We’ll see.” At 10 a.m. that morning we found ourselves building a road with picks and shovels under the impression that if we did enough we might get it. Needless to say nobody really believed it. That’s a common instance of official craftiness.’9
While George fumed, Joan was making the most of the rich social opportunities available to an attractive young woman in a country crammed with men in uniform who were starved of female company. Returning by train from a leave spent at the family home in Oxhey near Watford she and her friend Jan ‘met some Americans – I’ve got a date with a Captain McClees on Friday – wrote me a complicated phone number and got me a table and carried my bag and said “please ring me up tomorrow as I can’t ring you.” … I might go – be fun for a few weeks – he’s a doctor so he should be alright, but he’s married!’
Joan did indeed go out with the captain, three times in a row. ‘He takes me out to dinner etc. & is quite nice,’ she wrote to her family on 17 August. ‘Unfortunately he’s going south this week but wants to see me on my leave in four weeks’ time & all kinds of things. I came back … laden up with cigarettes etc., it’s really quite amusing.’
Nearly two months after their first encounter, George and Joan had still not managed to meet. ‘I hope we can see something of each other within the next few weeks,’ he wrote plaintively. ‘I am eager to see this winsome Wren in uniform.’ When he did finally get some leave he went to London to see his family but was able to keep his memories of Joan fresh by visiting her parents at ‘Shirley’, the Kirbys’ house. ‘I went to see your folks on Friday evening,’ he wrote. ‘Mac came along too. Your Dad met us at Carpenters Park around five thirty and we walked to Shirley.’ They then set off to the Load of Hay, the local pub which was to lodge in George’s mind as a symbol of the cosy Englishness that comforted and sustained him. There, he was ‘as usual beaten in two darts matches’ and settled down to drink pints for the rest of the evening.
George had something far more significant to report but modestly left the news to well down the page. ‘Did I tell you that I did my first ops trip last week? Well I did! We made a good job of it apparently. As you can guess we had our doubts at the beginning but soon we were on our way and I was too busy to think about anything but navigation.’ This appears to be a reference to a raid on a long-range gun battery at Boulogne on 8/9 September 1943 in which crews from Operational Training Units took part. It was a relatively easy debut. Little damage was done to the emplacements but no aircraft were lost.
By now Joan was finding the novelty of Americans was wearing off. She wrote home to complain about a dance at the American Red Cross in Warrington. ‘Jan went out with a Yank. I had one as well but didn’t fancy going out with him. They bore me. All they talk about is themselves non-stop with just enough breaks now and then to say “gee I like your legs” or “how far is your camp from here honey?” Makes you sick!’
Towards the end of October, George finally managed to be reunited with the girl who had haunted his thoughts for nearly four months. Joan wrote to her parents with the news. ‘On Saturday afternoon I was waiting at the local bus stop about 1.15 p.m. for a bus to the station when a Warrington bus stopped at the other side of the road and who should get out but George! Evidently he and his bomb aimer – Ray [Stones] – had mizzled off from camp Friday night and come up to Manchester where Ray lives. He had taken a 100–1 chance & come to Lowton to see if he could see me. By tremendous luck I had just ignored a lorry as being too dirty and was still in the queue with Jill. We went to Chester and had a very nice time … it’s a lovely old town full of old-fashioned tea places etc. We had a look round for a present for Jan, then had tea, then went to the pictures, then went to a lovely hotel called “The Blossoms” for dinner.’
Joan had arranged to go to Liverpool that Sunday to visit a ship but put it off in order to meet George in Manchester. ‘He was terribly pleased to see me and marched me off to “the most palatial place in town” viz the Midland Hotel where you pay 2/6 to wipe your feet. We were safely ensconced in a corner of the lounge with a silver teapot when Jan drifted in. Her date had let her down so she made for the Midland and us. George rang up Ray who was out to tell [his mother to tell him] to come down town … the boy’s train went at 5.30 p.m. so we went to the station and met said bomb-aimer there – a very nice boy indeed – and saw them off midst great giggles & kisses and promises of “be up next weekend.” Jan and I killed ourselves laughing and then went and had a lavish dinner at the Queen’s. The coffee was 2/- a cup so we left it & went down to the YM[CA] for a cuppa tea!! We laughed all the more then – Queen’s to the YM!’
George, by now, was completely smitten. ‘You may not believe this but the last two days were the best I’ve spent ever,’ he wrote on his return. Even desolate Wigsley, which lay under a thick autumn mist seemed ‘easier to endure now’. The mood did not last long. Less than a week later he was missing her badly and taking out his frustration on Bomber Command. ‘I hate the RAF, this camp in particular. I hate the job we do, not for myself but for those who are lost in the gamble.’
By the middle of November his crew were making their final preparations before starting their full operational tour. ‘Tonight is a special occasion,’ he wrote to Joan on the thirteenth. ‘It’s the first night for eight in a row that we can get to bed at a reasonable hour. We’ve flown twenty-five hours in three days! Both night and day. We ought to be on a squadron in a fe
w days, then you can really sing “Silver Wings in the Moonlight”, say a prayer or two and get worried.’ The weather had got even worse. He was writing the letter ‘huddled over the radio in the mess waiting to be told to get airborne. It’s hellish cold, there’s about five hundred bods, about a square foot of glowing coals and there’s more heat from my cigarette than from the fire at this range.’
The approach of operations coincided with the news that Joan would soon be moving on from Warrington, a thought that filled George with anxiety. ‘One of the chief reasons for my being completely cheesed is the realization in my more pessimistic moods what with going from the Manchester area after Christmas and our leaves never coinciding we are unlikely to be seeing each other at all again – grim isn’t it, or don’t you think so?’
Death was edging closer all the time. The names of those he had trained with in Canada were starting to appear on the casualty lists. ‘Do you remember my raving about John Beebe, one of the Winnipeg and Harrogate boys?’ he asked her. ‘He is posted as ‘missing’ on his thirteenth ‘op’. Two more went the same way last week. God! How right you are on the world’s unnecessary suffering.’
George finally reached 207 Squadron in mid-December, 1943. The Battle of Berlin was at its height. Like many, he found that after all the training it came as something of a relief to finally be fighting and the anxiety was overcome by the professional satisfaction of doing what he set out to do. ‘Strike One!’ he wrote exultantly to Joan. ‘Hull opens his offensive on Germany. Last night bombers of considerable strength Bombed Berlin – you can surely guess the rest!’ His squadron had been part of a force of 483 Lancasters which struck the capital on the night of 16/17 December. Little industrial damage was done. Most of the bombs hit houses and railways, killing more than 700 people.
It had been a hard night. The bomber stream flew straight, without diversions, and night-fighters harried them all the way to Berlin and over the target area. Twenty-five Lancasters were lost. When they returned they found heavy cloud smothering many of the bases. Another twenty-nine Lancasters either crashed or were abandoned by their crews. Nearly 150 men were killed in the confusion. Altogether 283 men died on the raid, a casualty rate of 9.3 per cent. George’s squadron had got off lightly. Only one aircraft belonging to 207 Squadron was shot down, the victim of a night-fighter. Two of the crew were killed and five subsequently reported to be prisoners of war.
Ten days later the good mood had worn off. By now he had three squadron operations under his belt, one to Frankfurt and another trip to Berlin on the night of 23/24 December. Two days after Christmas he wrote that the holiday had been ‘a mixture of work and play, Noel over Unter Den Linden … we were so damned tired on our return after close on thirty-six hours without sleep that we were fit for nothing.’ He felt curiously dispassionate about the raids. ‘I cannot say that I have much emotion. I appreciate their extreme danger but also their necessity. It has a cancelling-out effect. Physically they call for all you have. On return I feel wretchedly tired and depressed and to sleep through a glorious morning when I should like to be walking through the countryside in the crisp, clean air depresses me further.’
George surveyed the coming year in a mood of cold realism. He had grown very close to the Kirby family during his visits to ‘Shirley’ and ‘The Load’. He had put Mr Kirby’s name on his ‘death form’ as someone who was to be informed in the event of bad news. Later he changed his mind and took it off, reckoning that ‘it would be unfair to ask him to be subjected to what might amount to a great shock … he’s had enough already.’ He now accepted that his feelings for Joan were not, at least for the moment, reciprocated. She was, he told her semi-facetiously, the third woman in his life, coming after his ‘kite’, A-Able, and his mother. Joan was the ‘girl from whom I draw inspiration to give battle against those who violate peace and God’s wish to succour humble mankind. If fate deems me unfortunate in unrequited love then that is [fate’s] will.’
The chances of their meeting again were about to become even more remote. At the end of January Joan learned where she was to be posted next. She was going to a Fleet Air Arm base at Machrihanish on the Mull of Kintyre and ‘one of the loneliest parts of the Scottish coast you’d ever find.’ This was unwelcome for a number of reasons as she explained in a letter to her family. She would be unable to get home for the weekends as she had at Warrington and only one of the friends she had made at HMS Cabbala was coming with her. Worst of all it meant ‘leaving all my boyfriends, viz Bob and Dennis (my sailor) and getting further away from George.’
Joan was in great demand. Bob was the American who had bought her lobster at the Midland Hotel in Manchester. She had received, she reported ‘a proposal … last Monday night!!! Of course I’d never marry him but it wasn’t altogether a shock. The poor lad will be so miserable at me going so far away from him but I think it’s a good thing as I didn’t love him a scrap. Poor Dennis too will be disappointed, he’s out on a trip on his corvette now but should be in port again next Friday.’ And then there was Flight Sergeant Hull. ‘Won’t George be disappointed? Poor thing, every time we make any arrangements they are always upset. It seems like fate, doesn’t it?’
George felt the same way. ‘I am sure you feel quite bad enough without me adding to your unhappiness,’ he wrote on 27 January 1944 from London where he spent his leave with his family as well as making his regular visit to the Kirbys. ‘It seems like a plot to prevent us meeting, apart from the stolen weekend in Manchester – for which I thank God for giving me such an opportunity. We have consistently crossed each other’s tracks but never coincide. Perhaps if I ask to be transferred to the Far East our chances would improve. Cheerio pet, keep that chin up. We won’t always be unhappy.’
When his leave was up his mother and father saw him off at King’s Cross. George found the parting upsetting. ‘Nothing tries me so much as the pseudo cheerfulness that we all present to each other during those last few hours: Dad talks hurriedly about “when you come home again” and Mother’s organization and preparation would be just the thing for a Polar Expedition. Then in the last few minutes remaining we say goodbye with lightness that certainly finds no echo in our hearts. Mother stands bravely at the gate striving to hide those tears … King’s Cross … a long, boring journey, and the familiar face of a Station Policeman who assumes the role of jailer for another six weeks of uncertainty.’
Joan’s worries about Machrihanish did not last long. On the ferry to the Mull of Kintyre she was ‘entertained by two sub-lieutenants – one a radio officer at Campbeltown who wanted me to meet him tonight but I wasn’t having any.’ The other, a Fleet Air Arm pilot called Bill was ‘just her dream man’. He reminded her of her brother John, who had always been the ideal she sought, ‘tall and a bit thin with a thin face and sandy-coloured hair, not really good looking but ooooo! He’s terribly cynical on top because he was shot up over Salerno and they won’t let him fly at sea any more but underneath he’s grand.’
Clearly Joan was concerned about the effect that the guilelessly reported news of her busy social life would have at home. She sent a letter bursting with frank pleasure at the joy of being an optimistic and pretty young woman enjoying every minute of the new freedom that the war had brought in its wake. ‘Really and truly I am fed up as hell. Bill is flying most nights so I can’t even see him, but we had a lovely time last week. We walked our shoes off almost going up the hills and among the heather!! Happy days – I’m not a flirt Dad, you can’t help liking them, they’re such good fun and so crazy. I love them all a little.’
She had just received George’s latest letter, telling of his visit to the Kirbys. ‘He does like coming up to Shirley doesn’t he – it’s his second home almost, The Load being the third. I wish I could come home for a day or two. I’d love to stroll up to The Load this evening.’ Mrs Kirby had clearly been intrigued by the elbowing of Bob. ‘How did I convey to Bob that I didn’t love him mummy? Well I just told him!! I told him I lik
ed him an awful lot but I didn’t love him the way he loved me – I couldn’t marry him! He talked a bit about “love coming later” but I know different by now and I wasn’t having any! I feel terribly sorry for him as he’s going through hell I know but callous though it seems I can’t do anything about it. He’ll just have to go away and forget me. It’s been done before.’
Whether or not he knew about the new developments in Joan’s romantic life, George’s pursuit remained as dogged as ever. He sent a plaintive letter from Coningsby. ‘It does seem that Fate takes a hand in all our plans but my reaction is to fight her,’ he wrote. ‘I could get a great deal fonder of you if I saw you more often – I remember that weekend in Manchester all too vividly – and perhaps it would not be fair. Not fair to me because it disturbs my peace of mind, unfair to you because what little interest you may have in me might be one day a grief to you equal almost to that which you have lately suffered. I don’t want to labour the question of danger in this job like a little tin hero but I do want you to know that what I said … about the girl who inspires me still holds. What I really mean is that when I think of you I want to hold on to life with both hands and get out of the War somehow and live in certainty – a dangerous idea when it is for people like you that I will fight this to the end.’
Joan appears to have given a cautious response to this declaration for in his next letter he accepted that it would better to take things more slowly. ‘Thank you for the many sweet things you talk about in your letter,’ he wrote. ‘I appreciate your feelings and reluctantly agree with them. I had already made my mind up before I wrote that letter I would not trespass on your feelings to the extent of making a major issue of it. It is, as you suggest, a strange thing that our correspondence during the last months has developed an understanding. It’s such a limited medium for thoughts, things could hardly go beyond the present stage. I doubt whether writing less often would have much effect. For my part I should miss your frequent letters more than anyone else.’ He now seemed resigned to the unlikelihood of their meeting in the near future. ‘Since … only a miracle of chance could bring us together we simply must mark it down to the debit side of the War …’
Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940–1945 Page 86