by Ray Ollis
Wakefield Press
101 Squadron motto:
Mens agitat molem
Mind over Matter
Wakefield Press
16 Rose Street
Mile End
South Australia 5031
www.wakefieldpress.com.au
101 Nights first published 1957; this edition first published 2016
Copyright © Ray Ollis 1957;
introduction, notes and appendices
copyright © Robert Brokenmouth 2016
All rights reserved. This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced without written permission. Enquiries should be addressed to the publisher.
Cover designed by Liz Nicholson, designBITE
Ebook conversion by Clinton Ellicott, Wakefield Press
National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry
Creator: Ollis, Ray, author.
Title: 101 nights / Ray Ollis; edited by Robert Brokenmouth.
ISBN: 978 1 74305 441 3 (ebook: epub).
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Subjects: World War, 1939–1945—Aerial operations, British—Fiction.
Other Creators/Contributors: Brokenmouth, Robert, editor.
Dewey Number: A823.3
Wakefield Press thanks Coriole Vineyards for their continued support.
For
Dr Biaggini
of Adelaide University
and for
two Rays, both fathers, both taken from us far too early.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
101 Nights
Briefing
Part One—Hyde
Part Two—Chiltern
Part Three—The Jackal
Ray Ollis: A chequered career—Robert Brokenmouth
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Sam Brookes, David Champion, Craig A. Chidley, Stephen Clarke, Matt and Justine Harrop, Nick Hector, Graeme Inkster, Clive Jackson, Richard Morris, Stephen Oakley, Margaret Rose Ollis, Marjory Ollis, Jonathon Ollis, Timothy Ollis, Michael and Susan Treloar, Mandy Tzaras, David Vincent, Paul Wilkins, Andy Wright.
Stay with me, God. The night is dark,
The night is cold; my little spark
Of courage dies. The night is long;
Be with me God, and make me strong.
From A Soldier—His Prayer, by Gerald Kersh.
‘Man—the animal Man—is not a very romantic creature. He tries to laud his spirit and forgets that, in his body, he is not superior but actually inferior to most other animals. For all his dreams of mind, of homo sapiens, the articulate, rational being, Man’s body rules him.’
Ray Ollis, 101 Nights
Introduction
‘We must be rather careful in what we cast aside as unimportant and of no value. Every experience in life, whatever it may be, is of value if—and such a big “if”—rightly applied.’
Her Highness Princess Marie Louise,
My Memories of Six Reigns, Evans Brothers, 1956
‘What really struck me about 101 Nights is the references to things which did happen.’
Margaret Ollis
Upon noting that 101 Nights was written by ‘a veteran’, the first question most history buffs ask is—how much truth is there?
As Ray puts it in his ‘Briefing’, ‘some events, times and one significant code-name have been changed either for security or art.’
Ray’s log-book places him squarely in the latter part of the war, flying as a navigator with 101 Squadron. Fascinated with his new squadron, Ray places his character, a dead ringer for himself—in 101 almost from the beginning of their special operations, meticulously covering their failures and successes. 101 Nights is vivid in the way most military memoirs are not because the fiction has allowed Ray’s thinly-disguised facts to be published at a time when most first-hand accounts kept determinedly away from the real horror of war. Most first-hand memoirs focused on light-hearted antics and a somewhat jingoistic black-and-white reality, a ‘preferred truth’. Even the German accounts which appeared in England at this time were often self-serving and bombastic, also playing into the preferred memory of the war.
When Ray writes, ‘All the characters are imaginary and have no connection whatsoever with their true-life counterparts. I know of no true instance where a flyer was charged with sabotage, where a flight commander was posted from the squadron during a tour, or where a German “Special” baled out over his homeland’; fiction allows Ray to point the finger but not too precisely, thus avoiding potential legal action. Indeed, it might be more embarrassing to bring suit against the publisher …
We are forced to conclude that 101 Nights is as vivid a portrayal of one man’s experiences in Bomber Command as can be imagined. Ray has used a little creative license in order to make points; equally clearly, the ‘made-up’ events represent Ray’s experiences and impressions of the men around him.
Everyone has a different reason for writing a book, whether that book be factual or fictitious. After all, history visits and vanishes in the blink of an eye, the everyday writ large.
The genesis of Alexander McKee’s Dresden came ‘when I was with the British 2nd Army in the Rhineland and Ruhr, I heard the first whispers. Something very terrible had happened over there in the East near the war’s end, I was told, but no one could explain why it had been so much more cruel than the fate which had engulfed most of Europe, burnt with fire from heaven or tornadoed into rubble by the passage of the armies.’
When he came to write 101 Nights, Ray Ollis had lived an exciting life and, as his logbook shows, he was proud of it. Usually blunt, straightforward affairs, logbooks are often cryptic, perhaps with a few blackly humorous comments, and sometimes remarkably revealing. Many fliers treat their logbooks like a kind of ‘score-sheet’, as if flying were some grand game of cricket. To some extent it is a record of their prowess, also an expression of their self-identity.
Guy Gibson’s logbook is ‘a fascinating document … [with] many of its entries … made at a single sitting, discernible from changes of pen, ink or variable handwriting’ (Morris). This is true of most logbooks. However, Morris also concludes that ‘Gibson treated his logbook as a kind of score sheet, as much a record of accumulated experience as of his flying.’
More flamboyantly, Ray Ollis’s logbook is littered with newspaper clippings of the raids he has flown, a chunk scissored from one leaf has the result of both pages being rewritten on a following page, and there are later emendations. Ray’s 1956 London-to-Sydney flight in a Percival Proctor 3 is accompanied by newspaper cuttings and an article published in Flight magazine in 1957.
Predating the mid-1960s wave of British action-thriller and military nostalgia, 101 Nights was reprinted only once by Cassell, the same year it was published, 1957; WDL also put out a paperback edition in 1957, and there was an Italian translation; Cento e una Notte.
Ray Ollis tells of the many dramatic shifts in the long night war between Bomber Command’s offensive and the German defences. In a novel, trifling matters such as re-arranging actual events to suit the story do not detract. Indeed, because 101 Nights is a remarkably accurate depiction of a Bomber Command station at war, with the special nature of 101 Squadron thrown in, the novel is that much more compelling.
101 Nights compares favourably well with the attitudes and literary concerns predominant in novelists writing in WW2; Ray Ollis bears a curious—even eerie—kinship to the war novels (and life) of Nevil Shute. Also, at least two modern novels were clearly influenced by 101 Nights.
Ho
wever, with the exception of aviation and military buffs who appreciate 101 Nights’ strong factual, eyewitness quality, the book has been forgotten for almost sixty years. A difficult book to find today, I discovered 101 Nights in 1992 at a Red Cross sale.
I later discovered 101 Nights in the collection of several Bomber Command veterans. Here was a novel written by a veteran unable, at the time, to describe his actual experiences. Fiction allowed Ray Ollis to tell his story in a way that non-fiction would not, could not allow. While novels based on a man’s wartime experiences cannot be taken as an accurate depiction of characters or events, their impressionistic immediacy has great appeal. However, because there are so many things in 101 Nights which are described, as near as my research can tell, very accurately indeed, one is drawn to the conclusion that 101 Nights is less fiction than a sort of ‘fictionalized memoir’.
With my task with John Bede Cusack’s They Hosed Them Out (Wakefield Press, 2012) completed, I came to realise that 101 Nights could be re-examined and brought to a new audience, an audience curious about the way things were during World War 2, sophisticated enough not to be captivated by the war-as-boys-own-adventure, but to look more closely at the turmoil in the human condition such conflicts reveal.
Some detective work coupled with some research from scientist and genealogist Stephen Clarke, allowed me to track down Ray Ollis’s widow, Margaret.
Editing 101 Nights was mostly confined to spelling, harmonisation of tenses, punctuation, editing for sense and a few slight rearrangements within the text. The original edition’s transposition of several pages has also been attended to.
One of the most awkward things for someone unfamiliar with the setting of a novel is the acronyms and closed-shop terminology essential to the setting. Because 101 Nights was one of the first Bomber Command novels, on the evidence of the original edition, a few small textual inconsistencies flourished. On the ground a bomber crew had names and nicknames; in the air the crew would be referred to by their job titles to avoid confusion over the intercom; in the original edition either the author or the original editor has occasionally confused matters. For example, Hyde’s function of skipper sometimes rates a capital letter when he is addressed directly, but not when he is described by his job.
Also, Ollis mostly avoids capitalising code words such as GEE, presumably in order to express the story as simply as possible; I decided to follow his lead. A reader more familiar with Bomber Command literature will recognise terms as they now normally appear; for example, ‘window’ is more usually ‘Window’ instead of its official code name WINDOW.
The only exception involves a character who appears at the beginning of Part Two, who seems to require Very Formal Capital Letters; the author’s decision to use ‘VFCL’ is amusing and descriptive in its own right. My editing revealed far more understated humour than I recalled from my initial reading.
In compiling the biographical section, I have relied on extant sources as well as Ray’s extraordinary logbook, fragmentary memories (most of which are understandably reluctant to surface), books and references of the day as well as recent histories. Because this is a novel, I have also utilised references from popular literature of the day, and today.
Much of what Ollis obsessively wrote of himself was, at the time, unavailable to the editor; at least one of his voluminous diaries was destroyed, the rest proved inaccessible. Similarly, much information remains hidden; perhaps a later edition will enable me to provide a fuller portrait of the man; if the diaries ever surface, they would make a revealing, informative and entertaining book in their own right.
I must emphasise how significant it is that most of the information Ray provides is substantially correct; my notes are intended to amplify our understanding and to encourage the reader to dip into the many topics introduced, or even to pursue them in detail. Writing between 1954 and 1956, Ray Ollis had no vast resource of information at his fingertips; the first official history of the Strategic Bombing Offensive appeared five years after 101 Nights was published; if Ray’s memory is at fault, we forgive his humanity.
There is also a brief bibliography for intrepid newcomers to this bewildering and busy historical subject.
History is often misrepresented; when computer games are based on historical battles they inevitably alter the history they represent. Photoshopped photographs polish and edit history, and truth is concealed, not revealed. History is not tidy, bright and sharp, but blurry and indistinct, messy. History is what happened yesterday. How often have we discovered that, in discussing a minor car accident or a fight at a bar, we all see and remember things differently.
On seeing Steven Spielberg’s film Saving Private Ryan, a friend observed that the damage done by bombing to the villages depicted in the film was ‘somehow … too much’. As a general rule, the Allies did not deliberately bomb or shell small villages. There were exceptions, and there were many, many accidental bombings by both sides during WW2. But the damage depicted was real enough, as anyone who has seen photographs of Europe immediately after the war knows.
Conversely, when a combat veteran writes a novel which draws from his experience, it is important to place the book on the shelf adjacent to the military memoirs. Sixty years ago Ray Ollis wrote a fine novel which stands on its own, based on a time in his life which defined his generation.
Long may we remember them.
Robert Brokenmouth
101 NIGHTS
BRIEFING
This is the story not of the few but of the many; the true story of Bomber Command. A special security release has enabled me to base the story on the hitherto secret activities of 101 Squadron. This is not a squadron history. Some events, times and one significant code-name have been changed either for security or art.
All the characters are imaginary and have no connection whatsoever with their true-life counterparts. I know of no true instance where a flyer was charged with sabotage, where a flight commander was posted from the squadron during a tour, or where a German ‘Special’ baled out over his homeland.
Fort Smith, Kenya, Ray Ollis
PART ONE
HYDE
— 1 —
It will be strange flying with another crew. I had grown used to our shower. My new squadron is 101, based at Ludford Magna, right on top of the Wolds. They’ve got Lancasters already. I’m to navigate for a Squadron Leader Parke: he’s B Flight commander. I’ve heard that 101 are on some new special duties lark. I hope not. Special duties usually mean you stick your neck out even further.
At times I almost wish I were in that comfortable hospital with you. It gets a chap a jinx reputation being an only flying survivor …1
Nothing in Vincent Farlow’s letter to his ex-skipper showed how bewildered he felt arriving at his new squadron. Previously he had moved with his crew and they had bolstered each other. Here, he was alone.
Pausing, he looked around at the tiny village of Ludford Magna.
‘If this is great Ludford,’ he reflected, ‘then little Ludford must be non-existent.’
A forty-minute walk past the village, down a path that forded the creek, over three fields of waving grain and half a mile around the aerodrome perimeter brought him to flying control: a fortress of stone made brittle with walls of glass.
Above its observation roof was the revolving searchlight, stilled now by the embarrassing brilliance of day. Beside it, three spinning cups measured wind-speed. Their message was repeated on two dials inside control; one upstairs in the control-room itself, another in the ground floor Meteorological section.
Vincent Farlow came to the door marked ‘Met’ and frowned, undecided. His indecision did not seem to arise from nervousness. He was tall and blond and his blue eyes had a twinkle as frank as a puppy’s tail-wag; there was no trace of nervousness in him. His pause was more a serious, deliberate reckoning to decide the right move. He gave three firm raps on the word ‘Met’ and entered confidently.
His glance took in the Waafs sittin
g at two plotting tables, the met officer leaning against the teleprinter, and came to rest on a squadron leader with pilot’s wings who sat on the desk, dangling his legs and grinning at a joke he was recounting.
Vincent saluted and, because he was the only one not laughing, waited awkwardly until the squadron leader finished speaking. Then, still smiling, the met officer asked: ‘Can I help you, Flight?’
‘Yessir. I was told if I asked in flying control you could direct me to B Flight.’
The squadron leader hopped down off the table. ‘I’m going to B Flight now,’ he said. ‘Whom do you want?’
‘The Flight Commander, sir. I’m his new navigator.’
‘Well, you clot, why didn’t you say so?’ The pilot seized Vincent’s hand heartily. ‘That makes me your skipper. Parke’s the name. Really delighted to see you.’
By the time the two men reached B Flight Vincent had warmed to the idea of having Parke as his pilot. Patrick Parke looked a reassuring genealogical paradox with almost prehistoric features: broad, jutting forehead, full lips, heavy jaw and strong, prominent teeth, but with a strength of purpose and sense of humour in his manner that made him as modern as tomorrow. Here would be a jolly, roistering companion, loud and lovable; or an enemy dark-lowering and fierce as the jungles from which he seemed to have sprung.
As they entered Parke’s office seven men who had been waiting hurried to attention. Parke’s eye sought the wearer of pilot’s wings. ‘Hello, who are you chaps?’
‘A new crew, sir. My name’s Buckley.’2
‘Ah, Buckley. I expected you earlier.’ Parke moved across and sat on the corner of his desk.
Vincent watched approvingly. Here was an easy-mannered leader. Yet nothing in Parke’s manner suggested that he would brook a breath of disrespect. Here was perfect informality. Even his brusque ‘I expected you earlier’ combined unquestionable authority with a nice friendliness.