Free New Heavens by Boris Senior Page B

delicacy, and it could be compared only to a dainty female of great beauty and sensitivity.
    Because of its very long nose and narrow undercarriage, landing was not easy, for it necessitated a curving turn in the last phase of the approach. Otherwise, it was difficult to see the runway. This curving turn had to be maintained until just before touchdown, not an easy maneuver at that stage of the flight. The Spitfire had an elliptical wing, which was also unique. Ground attack roles were a different matter. Though it was used more often for those missions toward the end of the war in Europe, it suffered greatly, like other water-cooled engine fighters, from anti-aircraft fire if hit anywhere under the belly where the unprotected Glycol coolant flowed.
    One of the more irksome features was the inability to open the canopy at any speed above 120 miles per hour. My first flight was alarming, for I hadn’t noted this feature in the pilot’s manual, and while coming in for my first landing at Fayid, I tried to open the canopy on the approach. All my efforts were to no avail leaving me close to panic with the feeling that I was trapped in the cockpit. I should, of course, have paid more attention to the instructions before that first flight.
    After Fayid I had the choice of either waiting in Cairo for a posting to a squadron or, in the meantime, ferrying Corsair fighters from Egypt to India. Though I was interested in flying this gull-wing radial-engine navy fighter, with somehesitation because of my interest in seeing India, I chose the former option. I feared that a vacancy might come in a squadron, and I might miss it.
    In the end, my hunch proved to be right, for soon I got a posting to 250 (Sudan) Squadron of the Desert Air Force in Italy. As it was a Royal Air Force squadron, I was to be seconded from the South African Air Force to the RAF. Within a few days I flew to Bari in southern Italy.
ITALY
    Bari was my first stop in Italy, and for me, it was a disappointing first view of Europe. In late September 1944, at the onset of a freezing winter, the rains created mud and filth everywhere. The towns under the Allied occupation looked gray and suffering with their shuttered windows and bolted doors. Many of the buildings were crumbling from the persistent rain.
    The cities were sad reflections of what they had once been. They were crowded with aimless groups of poorly clad men and women in wooden clogs. The dimly lit shops offered little, while the women engaged in the never-ending barter of eggs for military issue cigarettes.
    Only in the largest cities was there some nightlife, with officers and other ranks defying military orders and fraternizing with the local Italian population. Some of the cabarets I later visited in Rome were of an unexpectedly high standard with the acrobats and dancers bravely trying to preserve their artistic level and their dignity amid thedrunkenness and the groping. The servicemen were looking for sex but were often also seeking tenderness, sentimentality, and romance. The opera was crowded. There were jarring cheers and applause bursting from the masses in uniform at the appearance of a comely singer. A raucous disclaim of talent. The nightclubs were awash with cheap asti spumante white wine, and the performers tried to put on a good front in the atmosphere of darkness, tobacco smoke, and drunkenness.
    In Italy I found the American servicemen very different from the British. Usually, Allied troops got on well, but once in Rome during a night’s frivolity in a large nightclub, a drunken American infantry major rushed from table to table, scowling threateningly as he asked all the RAF pilots if they had been flying a P-47 Thunderbolt in operations anywhere near the front line on the Adriatic side of Italy. I soon discovered that he was searching for fighter-bombers with markings different from those of the United States, which had mistakenly attacked his unit, killing some of his comrades.