African Sky by Tony Park Page B

think of Africa?’ she asked.
    â€˜I loved it, and that’s the truth. I didn’t exactly complain when theysent me back here. Anyway, I did initial training all over again, except in Bulawayo this time. Same boring stuff as back home – square bashing, saluting, polishing your kit. Eventually, I got to fly. We did elementary flight training on DH-82s – Tiger Moths – at Cranborne, near Salisbury.’
    â€˜It must be wonderful to fly. Did you enjoy it?’
    â€˜Back then I did. I thought I was going all right, but the instructors didn’t recommend me for fighter training in the end. I went on to Ox Boxes – Oxfords – at Guinea Fowl air base, near Gwelo.’ Like Bulawayo, the small town on the high plains of central Rhodesia had been transformed into a massive military encampment. ‘I couldn’t complain. I was getting paid to fly and it seemed at the time that Bomber Command was the only outfit giving Jerry any stick. We were taking a pasting in the Pacific, North Africa and Hitler had just invaded Russia. A lot of us training to fly bombers reckoned that fighters had had their day after the battle of Britain, and that it was us who would win the war.’
    â€˜Bomber Command is winning the war, if you believe the newsreels at the cinema and the Bulawayo Chronicle ,’ she said.
    He laughed. ‘Sure. If you believe that, I’ve a bridge to sell you in Sydney.’
    â€˜It’s not all going well, then, over there?’
    He wondered how much to tell her. ‘I don’t talk about it a lot, back at base. The trainees’ll learn the hard way, when they get to England. Even if you do tell blokes what it’s really like, most of them either don’t believe you or they think you’re just trying to scare them.’
    â€˜I’d like to know.’
    â€˜You’re good at asking questions.’
    â€˜I was studying to be an advocate – a lawyer – before I got married. But we’re talking about you now.’
    â€˜A lawyer! Bloody hell. Well, since you ask, it’s . . .’ He couldn’t think where to start.
    She sat silently.
    â€˜From here, or Canada or Australia, where they also train flight crew,they send you to what’s called an Operational Training Unit – an OTU. They give you a bomber – twin engine, usually – and you think you’ve hit the big-time. You’re ready to go bomb the Führer, Goering, the lot of them, and win the war single-handed. Sometimes the OTUs get drafted into going on real raids, into Germany, when there’s a big push on, but mostly it’s just training missions, navigation exercises and practice bombing with smoke bombs. Occasionally, they’d send us on a nickel raid – that’s dropping leaflets on occupied cities.’
    â€˜Sounds like a good way to get crews used to the real thing.’
    â€˜What they don’t tell you, but you find out pretty soon the hard way, is that the loss rate in the training units is almost as bad as in the operational squadrons. About one in four aircraft, a quarter of all crews, are lost during training.’
    â€˜Twenty-five per cent casualties, before they even get to bomb Germany?’ Her blue eyes were wide with surprise.
    He nodded. ‘Four kites – twenty–four blokes – didn’t come back from training missions while I was converting to Wellingtons. That mightn’t sound a lot, but this is happening every day. There were crashes on take-off or landing, and some got lost and never came back. I suppose they ditched in the North Sea.’
    â€˜Are things better in the operational squadrons, in terms of losses?’
    â€˜Worse. There are still accidents, but now you’re flying into flack and night-fighters. The odds are against you from the start. During my first tour, on Wellingtons, we took a hundred per cent casualties. Obviously not all of us died, but