Free A Different World by Mary Nichols Page B

and bandits, scramble and tally-ho and how to count at least to twelve because the clock face was used to convey bearings. And they needed to measure their speed in miles not kilometres, and fuel in gallons not litres. Every day they went to classes while every day the Luftwaffe came and bombed airfields, coastal towns, shipping and important installations. It frustrated Jan and his companions until they were ready to explode. What they wanted was to get at the enemy, to defeat him and get their country back so they could go home.
    While they were learning English and going on training flights, the Luftwaffe continued trying to bring the country to its knees and losses were frightening. Aircraft were coming off the production lines in vast quantities but there weren’t enough trained pilots to fly them. When one of Jan’s compatriots broke formation during training to chase after and bring down a Dornier bomber, the Air Ministry at last agreed the Polish flyers were ready for action. On the last day of August, the eve of the first anniversary of the invasion of Poland, 303 was made operational. It was the day on which the German High Command decided to send everything it had to finish the job they had started and sent wave after wave of bombers, escorted by fighters, to put an end to the stubborn resistance of the Royal Air Force. In that it failed. But only just. It was the most momentous time of Jan’s life.
    It was one of excitement and danger, of jubilation mixed with sadness when friends were lost. There were times he was so overcome with exhaustion, he fell asleep as soon as climbed out of the cockpit and found a convenient armchair. At other times when given a few hours’ respite he and some of his fellow pilots would go to The Orchard in nearby Ruislip, where they were always made welcome and where they whiled away the time in false jollity. In between there were times of intense melancholy, when Jan thought about Rulka and their parting in the ruins of Warsaw. Was that the last time they would be together? Ever? Was she alive? How was she coping? And his parents, what had happened to them?
    The tales coming out of Poland of imprisonment and executions and hardship were horrific. If his countrymen and women were not being ill-treated by the Germans, they were being rounded up by the Soviets as ‘enemies of the people’and sent to Siberia in cattle trucks to work as slave labour. Among them were the elite of Polish society: army officers, professors, lawyers, doctors, anyone who might be a threat to the indoctrination of the people into the Soviet way of life, and that would certainly include aristocrats, his parents among them. He tried telling himself that no one really knew the truth and it was probably nothing but exaggerated gossip. He wrote to Rulka, telling her what he was doing, reminding her of the good times they had had and how he was looking forward to being with her again and how happy they would be when the war was won and they could live again in a free Poland. He couldn’t send the letter – he did not know how to – and simply folded it and put it away in a drawer with his clothes.
    He wrote to Louise too. She had kept her promise to write to him and she seemed his only contact with the outside world, a world that was not one of scrambling into kit, of flying with nerve ends tingling, of falling asleep and getting drunk. She represented tranquillity in a world gone mad. She had indeed become his anchor.
     
    ‘You don’t mind me writing to Flight Lieutenant Grabowski, do you?’ Louise asked Tony. Having finished his training, he had forty-eight hours’ leave before being posted to a squadron and his first port of call had been the Pheasant at Cottlesham. There was little privacy in the pub and they had decided to go for a walk. She was holding his arm in both hands and her head rested on his shoulder. The day was unusually warm for the time of year and she was wearing a cotton print dress