those people unaware of my name but I’d like to bet they would fail to recognise me if they saw me again.
In fact, looking back at the affair, the only thing which stood out unequivocal and substantial was my great white-bound digit which had hovered constantly over the scene, almost taking on a personality and significance of its own. I am sure that is what the family remembered best about me because of the way the mother’s letter began.
“Dear Vet with the bandaged finger …”
CHAPTER 8
M Y STINT IN L ONDON was nearing its end. Our breaking-in weeks were nearly over and we waited for news of posting to Initial Training Wing.
The air was thick with rumours. We were going to Aberystwyth in Wales; too far away for me, I wanted the north. Then we were going to Newquay in Cornwall; worse still. I was aware that the impending birth of AC2 Herriot’s child did not influence the general war strategy but I still wanted to be as near to Helen as possible at the time.
The whole London phase is blurred in my memory. Possibly because everything was so new and different that the impressions could not be fully absorbed, and also perhaps because I was tired most of the time. I think we were all tired. Few of us were used to being jerked from slumber at 6 a.m. every morning and spending the day in continual physical activity. If we weren’t being drilled we were being marched to meals, to classes, to talks. I had lived in a motor car for a few years and the rediscovery of my legs was painful.
There were times, too, when I wondered what it was all about. Like all the other young men I had imagined that after a few brisk preliminaries I would be sitting in an aeroplane, learning to fly, but it turned out that this was so far in the future that it was hardly mentioned. At the ITW we would spend months learning navigation, principles of flight, morse and many other things.
I was thankful for one blessing. I had passed the mathematics exam. I have always counted on my fingers and still do and I had been so nervous about this that I went to classes with the ATC in Darrowby before my call-up, dredging from my schooldays horrific calculations about trains passing each other at different speeds and water running in and out of bath tubs. But I had managed to scrape through and felt ready to face anything.
There were some unexpected shocks in London. I didn’t anticipate spending days mucking out some of the dirtiest piggeries I had ever seen. Somebody must have had the idea of converting all the RAF waste food into pork and bacon and of course there was plenty of labour at hand. I had a strong feeling of unreality as, with other aspiring pilots, I threw muck and swill around hour after hour.
My disenchantment was happily blotted from my mind the day we received news of the posting. It seemed too good to be true—I was going to Scarborough. I had been there and I knew it was a beautiful seaside resort, but that wasn’t why I was so delighted. It was because it was in Yorkshire.
As we marched out of the station into the streets of Scarborough I could hardly believe I was back in my home county. But if there had been any doubt in my mind it would have been immediately resolved by my first breath of the crisp, tangy air. Even in winter there had been no “feel” to the soft London air and I half closed my eyes as I followed the tingle all the way down to my lungs.
Mind you, it was cold. Yorkshire is a cold place and I could remember the sensation almost of shock at the start of my first winter in Darrowby.
It was after the first snow and I followed the clanging ploughs up the Dale, bumping along between high white mounds till I reached old Mr. Stokill’s gate. With my fingers on the handle I looked through the glass at the new world beneath me. The white blanket rolled down the hillside and lapped over the roofs of the dwelling and out-buildings of the little farm. Beyond, it smoothed out and concealed the familiar features,
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