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Part 1

Southaust 2, 1944

Hamble, Southaot back fro up an official report for the Teoing to write it herself and I saw it happen And also because I feel responsible I knoasn’t my fault – I really do know that now But I briefed her We both had Tempests to deliver and I’d flown one a couple of times before Celia hadn’t She took off ten ht both still be alive

I’ve never had to do a report like this and I don’t really knohere to begin Maddie gave me this beautiful leather-bound notebook to draft it in; she thinks it helps to have nice paper, and kneouldn’t buy any forelse it’s so scarce She says you need to bribe yourself because it’s always blah writing up accident reports She had to write a big report herself last January and also be grilled in person by the Accident Coht about nice paper, of course, and I have filled up a couple of those pretty cloth-bound diaries that lock, but all I ever put in them are attempts at poetry Too bad I can’t put the accident report into verse

There were a few other Air Transport Auxiliary pilots at Celia’s funeral, but Maddie was the only ATA girl besides me Felicyta couldn’t co with Celia and Felicyta, Maddie and I were the ones who gave out Mrs Hatch’s strawberries to the soldiers lining up to board the landing craft for the D-Day invasion It , banging things around angrily Probably she shouldn’t be flying I know exactly what Daddy would say – 3000 miles away on Justice Field in Pennsylvania – if it was o ho buried’ But the planes have got to be delivered There’s a war on

Boy, a that

It never stops There are planes to deliver every day straight froe or invasion stripes ready to go to France I got thrown in at the deep end when I stepped off the ship froo, and before the end of May I was delivering Spitfires, real fighter planes, from Southampton’s factories near Haland I was supposed to get soht tests instead Being the daughter of soht school has paid off in spades – I’ve been flying since I elve, which er than sohteen The baby on the team

There was a lull for a week after D-Day, when the invasion started Actually, I don’t think it should be called an ‘invasion’ when really we are trying to get most of Europe back from the Germans who invaded it in the first place Our Allied soldiers left for France in the beginning of June, and for one week onlyfor us – the Air Transport Auxiliary in Britain are civilian pilots, like the WASPs at home That was a quiet week, the second week of June Then the flying bo in

Holy s boeltungswaffe, retaliation weapon I worked hard atthe real word for it because I always think itthese bombs are meant to do is terrify people Everyone puts on a brave face though – the English are very good at putting on a brave face, I’ll give the thes – sounds like baby talk Buzz bombs – a phrase for older kids to use The other ferry pilots call them ‘pilotless planes’, which should seeivesblind, no cockpit, no s, no way of landing except to self-destruct? How can you win an air war against a plane that doesn’t need a pilot? A plane that turns into a bomb? Our planes, the British and American aircraft I fly every day in the ATA, don’t even have radios, uns We don’t stand a chance Celia Forester didn’t stand a chance

At the funeral the local minister – vicar, they say here – had never even met Celia He called her ‘a dedicated pilot’

It doesn’tWe’re all dedicated But to tell the truth I don’t think any of us would have had anything better to say Celia was so quiet She was only just posted to Hamble in May, about the same time I was, and for the same reason – to ferry planes for the invasion She hardly ever talked to anybody I can’t blame her – she had a fiancé as in Bo a newco for your sweetheart Celia wasn’t very happy here

A I wanted to coaveschool at fifteen so she could be a teacher! And now here I aland for the first time, not far fro I’h up in the Royal Engineers, cutting through the red tape for et here And I’m a lot luckier than Celia in other ways, not just because I’m still alive – I’ot here, and lucky to have had soexperience before I started

I’ve read over that last paragraph and it sounds so chirpy and stuck-up and – just so duain and again that I want to do this, because I’h sleep Not just because we’re working so hard; it’s those horrible flying bo to show We’re all cracking at the sea taken out to lunch by Celia’s parents after the funeral, because Maddie was still sitting in our pew sobbing quietly into her handkerchief after everyone else had left, and I was sitting with her and sniffling a bit too I a so hter’s short, bleak funeral, when everyone else there hardly knew her

But neither one of us had actually been crying for Celia On the train back to Southampton, Maddie confessed to me, ‘My best friend was killed in action, in "eneht osh,’ I said I can’t really iine what it unfire So I added, ‘Well, it was brave of you to co lunch with the Foresters So cheap and ugly The to say about Celia apart froirl but she never talked to anybody"’