Fighter Boys and Bomber Boys: Saving Britain 1940–1945

by Patrick Bishop

  By now 61 Squadron, with whom George had flown most of his operations, was firmly in the front line of the Battle of Berlin. All together, it dispatched 242 Lancasters on twenty raids on the Big City. By the middle of February, as Bomber Command was heading for defeat, George wrote that he was ‘very tired, cold, hungry, thirsty and deafened.’ He had just returned from a huge raid on the night of 15/16 in which forty-three aircraft were lost. ‘When I think back to what happened over there last night I am sure that this morning we are living on borrowed time!’

  George was now flying so often that there was little time for writing letters. As the flow of correspondence slackened Joan started to become alarmed. ‘I’m terribly worried about George,’ she wrote home on 11 March 1944. ‘He’s never left it as long as this ever between letters & it’s now over a week since I heard. I’m sure something must be up. So sure in fact that I sent him a telegram but so far haven’t heard a word back. I don’t know what to do next. Maybe I’m worrying needlessly but there’s something strange going on I’m sure.’ Her concern prompted both her mother and father to send letters of their own to Coningsby, asking if anything was the matter.

  The following day George wrote to say he had received the telegram and two letters. ‘I am very sorry to have caused you so much anxiety but there was nothing I could do about it. We have flown day and night in all weathers on all sorts of missions during the past few weeks and had barely enough sleep quite often, let alone spare time. I am afraid a satisfactory explanation would entail telling more than I am permitted to talk about – I ain’t trying to be all mysterious like, it’s a fact.’

  The war and his determination to fulfil his part of it had pushed all other thoughts aside. His doubts melted in the heat of the fight and his criticisms of the RAF were forgotten. He told her proudly how he and his comrades had been honoured with one of the photographs showing spot-on bombing that Harris signed and awarded as a prize to successful crews. The squadron had been switched temporarily to French targets. The moonlit night before, they had taken part in a smallish raid directed at four factories and George’s crew were expecting another aiming point photograph. ‘I believe we are earning our keep,’ he wrote with satisfaction. He was trying not to think about the leave that would soon fall due. ‘It looks like the twenty-fourth more or less for certain. I am so fed up with haggling that I do not really care if we go on leave or not.’

  That was the last letter. Six days later George and his crew were part of a force of 846 aircraft that took off for Frankfurt. The marking was accurate and the city suffered heavily. Some 420 civilians were killed and 55,500 bombed out. The damage to Bomber Command was light. Only twenty-two aircraft were lost, 2.6 per cent of the force. It was some time before it was discovered how George met his death. After taking off from Coningsby at 19.17 hours on 18 March nothing more was heard of the aircraft or crew. An investigation by the Missing Research and Enquiry Service discovered that their Lancaster had been hit by anti-aircraft fire and crashed into the outskirts of Biegwald Forest near Frankfurt. All on board died but only George and Jack Green were allotted identifiable graves. They were buried first at the Frankfurt Main Cemetery by the German authorities. After the war their bodies were moved to the Bad Tölz British Military Cemetery.

  George was not as resigned about his lack of progress with Joan as his last letters suggest. A few days before he was killed he telephoned Mr Kirby to say that he thought he might be able to make it back for Joan’s birthday which was on 20 March. He had some important news. ‘[He] said that he was going to ask me to marry him though things hadn’t got to that stage,’ Joan recalled. She was at home when the telegram came. She thought at first that it was yet another disappointing communication from George announcing that his leave had been cancelled. Jack and Margaret Hull telephoned and came to Shirley at the weekend and the families grieved together for their lost sons.

  It was only later that Joan came to really appreciate the magnitude of the loss. ‘Reading those letters it stands out a mile … he never really had a chance to press his case.’ When his effects were collected a wedding ring was found in one of his pockets.10

  The bomber stations were emotional incubators. There was no attempt to integrate wives and families into the social structure of the base. Spouses were seen as a nuisance and a distraction. Shortly after Harris took over he banned all wives from a forty-mile radius of their husbands’ bases. The order came through when Guy Gibson had just taken over 106 Squadron at Coningsby. Only those airmen who already lived out were exempted. There were only four in the squadron. Gibson, who was married himself, approved. ‘This was the best news I had heard for a long time. You cannot fight a war and live at home.’11

  Yet on the stations, men and women lived and served side by side in a proximity that would have seemed unimaginable to the generation who had fought the previous war. Romances were inevitable. Some were uncomplicated boy-meets-girl stories. Others were not. Fidelity, it has been said, is the second casualty of war. Frances Scott was one of only three WAAF officers on a Cambridgeshire bomber station. Their presence was resented by some of the older male officers but appreciated by everyone else. In their brief time at the base, she felt they had ‘showed we could offer companionship and sympathy as well as friendliness, and perhaps a deeper relationship to a chosen few.’12 The bomber crews were unlike any men she had encountered before. ‘Most of the men who flew looked older than they were. It seemed as though they suddenly changed from adolescents to mature men, missing the carefree years of the early twenties.’

  In December 1943 she was setting off with a group to a dance at a neighbouring station when they were joined by a twenty-eight-year-old wing commander called Clive with a DFC ribbon on his tunic. He ‘spent most of the evening talking and dancing with me, brought me back in his car and – we fell in love.’ They spent Christmas at the base. The celebrations started with a dance in the mess on Christmas Eve. Regulations forbade the WAAFs to wear civilian clothes. They tried to brighten up their severe ‘best blue’ uniforms with silk stockings and the lightest footwear they could get away with. Clive was a ‘looker’ and knew it. He had a ‘generous supply of black hair, giving a rakish air. His face was long with high forehead, beneath which deep set, dark blue eyes looked out on a world which offered him danger, disillusionment, love. His mouth was firm and he had a dark moustache …’

  Clive was president of the mess committee and one of the hosts of the evening but he often ‘left his guests for longer than he should. We ate and drank and laughed and found each other.’ When everyone had departed they ended the evening in front of the dying fire, wrapped chastely in each other’s arms. The following day there was a service in the station church, a simple wooden hut. Afterwards the officers served Christmas dinner to non-commissioned men and women before retiring to their own mess for a buffet lunch. Somebody produced some mistletoe and one of the officers urged Clive to give Frances a kiss. This remark ‘though made in fun, had an unintentional effect on some of those present who put the proverbial “2 and 2” together and tongues wagged, male tongues and malicious tongues for Clive was not popular at that time on the squadron.’

  That night there was a dinner in the mess which went on until the early hours. Clive took her back to the little sitting room which served as the WAAF officers’ mess. It was out of bounds to male visitors after 11 p.m. but they ignored the rules, sitting on the floor by the fire and drinking wine. Clive seemed subdued. It turned out he was on ops the following day. As a senior commander he was not expected to go on every trip but that did not reduce the agony of anticipation. “‘I suppose you think wing commanders with DFCs don’t know fear?”’ he asked her bitterly. He appeared thoughtful and on the point of saying something important. ‘He seemed to want to talk, to get at something in his life that puzzled him, and it put a shadow across his face. “If only there was something more to come back to,” he said, “something to hold on to like so many of the [others] have.”’ />
  Frances’s spirits rose. She began to hope that there could be more between them than an awkward infatuation. She decided to reveal her feelings. She had known him for just forty-eight hours but already felt she loved him, and told him so. Clive’s tender expression turned ‘to a gloom bordering on anger’. Frances immediately regretted her boldness and tried to reassure him. She understood his reticence. He was afraid of starting an affair that would only end in pain and grief, if he was killed.

  Clive seemed suddenly relieved. “‘Yes,” he said, “yes that’s it,” as if struggling for a reason and glad I had provided it for him. “I shall hurt you if I love you any more and you must not get hurt.” But I knew that this wasn’t his reason. I was aware of the streak of selfishness, and I knew, as surely as I knew that dawn would come, that I would get hurt, but I let it go at that for it didn’t seem to matter.’

  In fact it was several days before Clive flew again. They went out for supper one evening to a riverside hotel, the Pike and Eel, at St Ives, Cambridgeshire, where there was good food and wine. Two of Clive’s RAF acquaintances from the neighbouring station were there when they walked in, together with their wives. ‘Clive spoke to them and introduced me casually and seemed very on edge. They were politely interested and no doubt found ample gossip in our relationship once our backs were turned.’

  Frances believed that their liaison aroused particular comment because she was a junior WAAF and he was an important man. She worried that she had got a reputation for ‘cold-shouldering any officer beneath the rank of squadron leader,’ which was, she felt, ‘a malicious untruth.’ One night she complained to Clive about the injustice of it. “‘Just because I go about with a wing commander …” I stormed, “I am classed as a ‘ring-chaser’ and flirt of the highest order, and yet, if you were a pilot officer, people wouldn’t notice us, it makes me livid, why is it?” “They’re jealous, my sweet, I expect,” he answered absentmindedly, but I knew that this was not the real reason.’

  On the morning of 30 January 1944 Frances woke to find the base humming with activity. Ops were on that night. Clive came to see her in the office where she worked as assistant to the station adjutant. He was an altered man. He stayed only long enough to ensure that she would look after Jasper, his golden retriever, while he was away.

  Later, as the orange winter sun sank in the west and the rumble of the engines vibrated through the station she watched Clive and his crew climb into their Lancaster, ‘their figures awkward and bulging with the weight of their flying kit.’ She got a lift to a vantage point near the runway and watched them take off before going back to sleep. She was woken at 1 a.m. by a phone call telling her the squadron was back. She dressed and ran to the interrogation hut where ‘a familiar scene greeted us – a cheery scene, brightly lit, it breathed good news at once. We always knew when they had all returned safely; the CO, MO, and the Padre would smile benignly at us; but if they were awaiting some news they would probably scowl absentmindedly … the first crew had arrived, tired, grubby-faced and dishevelled, but with a ready smile for us, who brought them what they most longed for at that moment, tea and cigarettes.’

  Clive was some time showing up. Jasper started barking before he reached the door. Frances ‘felt a pang of envy as I watched him snuggle close to his master and receive an affectionate caress, which doubtless I would have had under different circumstances.’ Clive managed to exchange a few words with her when he slipped into the kitchen where she was making more tea. She saw him the following day at lunch. He had some news. He had just been given command of a squadron based at a neighbouring station. The reason for his promotion, he explained, was that its CO had failed to return the previous night. He ‘announced this horrifying news with about as much emotion as if he’d been telling me that cabbages grew in the kitchen garden.’ That night he took her to a New Year’s Eve dance at his new station. After midnight chimed and ‘Auld Lang Syne’ had been sung, Clive grabbed her arm to lead her away to a quieter spot. Suddenly, they came face to face with a couple whose faces were familiar. It was one of the couples they had run into at the Pike and Eel just before Christmas. ‘How they must have been waiting for this opportunity and how quickly they came to the point. He wore that “it’s for your own good” expression on his face, and she was smugly silent. “Hallo Buck, Happy New Year,” called Clive, as completely happy and carefree as I had ever known him. I felt wonderfully pleased with life and we had promised each other that a separation of five miles would do nothing to stop our relationship.

  “‘Same to you,” answered Buck … “What a pity your wife isn’t here, Clive, we four could have had some fun together,” he said turning to his wife and regarding me as if I were the direct descendant of a slug.’ Clive looked panic-stricken. The ‘expression on his face was terrible; he looked like a caged animal looking around frantically for some escape as he mumbled excuses for his wife’s absence.’

  That explained everything. Frances’s first reaction was to walk away but she found herself being steered outside and into Clive’s car. They drove for a while in silence. There were tears in his eyes. Then they parked up and he began a long rambling speech, half a defence of his actions and half a declaration of love. He had been married to his wife for only three years but they had already drifted apart. Frances, to her surprise, found herself looking for reasons to believe him. She should, she knew, stop it now, painful though that might be. On the other hand, she reasoned, if she did so, ‘he’ll soon find someone else.’ She told him, somewhat to his surprise, that she would accept the situation and ‘be to you what I’ve been in the past, something for you to hold on to, to live for, and to come back to until we can see another way out.’

  Clive had a few days to settle business on the base before he moved up the road. The story was now in the open. Frances went to his leaving lunch which was supposed to be a stag affair, and endured some knowing banter from the CO. She drove with him to the new station, a pre-war base with well-built roads, laid-out gardens and brick buildings with hot water and central heating.

  He left her at the WAAF office while he talked to the station commander. When he returned his mood had darkened. Both of them realized that the story was over.

  The coming days were bound to be different; things would not be the same again, no matter how hard we tried. For one thing we would not be bumping into each other several times a day in the casual way we had … I would not know if Clive was flying and I wouldn’t be able to see him when he came back … Clive’s entire position had changed. He had become what was often termed ‘A Little Tin God’ … everything he did and said would be criticized and heard by the whole station. His private life would surely come into the limelight too, especially if there was something like an ‘affair’ attached to it. This would be unearthed, examined and enlarged by all who indulged in … gossip.

  Frances decided to go to London for a few days to see her parents. Clive phoned the day after she returned and that evening they went to the pictures. Afterwards he drove her back to her quarters and he sat by the fire while she cooked an omelette on the electric stove. The girls she shared with were absent. Mary, the senior officer, was on leave and Leslie was unlikely to bother them when she returned. But the warm domestic scene was interrupted when Leslie did show her face. She disapproved of liaisons with married men. Frances was unrepentant, telling her, ‘I’ve fallen in love with him and at the moment I don’t give a damn if he has ten wives.’ Now Leslie had come to deliver a warning. She had been talking to the CO and he had asked what time the WAAF officers ejected their male visitors from their quarters. She replied that they were always out by 11 p.m., as the rules dictated. The CO seemed unconvinced. He hinted that he might spring a surprise visit on the girls one night, to check that the regulations were being obeyed.

  It seemed to Frances like a bad omen. The next day, however, her doubts evaporated when Clive called to remind her of a mess party in a nearby aerodrome to which they had both been invi
ted. They spent a ‘very happy if somewhat boisterous evening.’ She danced with a few old admirers but noticed how quickly they slipped away afterwards as soon as Clive appeared to take her off to the buffet or for a drink. She glimpsed, for a moment ‘how lonely and miserable I would be without him.’

  Almost immediately the premonition became real. The morning after the dance she was summoned to the CO’s office. She was told that she was to leave the base immediately for a new post at Bomber Command HQ in High Wycombe. There was no attempt to disguise the reasons for the order. It was her relationship with Clive. News of it had ‘reached the ears of senior WAAF officers who considered it “undesirable”.’ She would be allowed to say goodbye to Clive. After that she was not to communicate with him in any way. The CO claimed to have tried to stop the posting. But, in the circumstances, he told her, he felt it was probably for the best. At least it would give Clive a chance to mend his marriage. The last meeting was too painful for Frances to record. The next six months for her were the unhappiest time of her four years in the WAAF. She ‘missed Clive unbearably, and the busy, warm atmosphere of life on a bomber station.’ At HQ she ‘worked mainly with women and social life was almost nil.’ Eventually the misery came to an end. She was posted to RAF Scampton where she met the man who was to become her husband. When love and war collided, the interests of the RAF were always going to prevail. And in the spring of 1944, Bomber Command was as busy as it had ever been.