A Story of War

I pass the medical.

I had been practising holding my breath and due to bad training and a damn cold could only hold it about 50 seconds. Well, I hold the bit between my teeth, push 100 on the clock, and hold it there with distended cheeks, breathing normally through my nose meanwhile. Doc Wilkinson spots this, and fastens a clip on my nose, but I manage to get a little air past it and do 65 seconds. He then says “I reckon we can call your eyesight 6/6” and I have passed! Provided AHQ don’t object to my high pulse due to ‘cold in nose’.

Johnston, Nick Winter, Stilliard, Glover and self go out in a car in the morning, looking for shite hawks on the ‘drome, with buckshot and .410 service rifles. Nine confirmed and alot hit. I kill four myself. Air Commodore J.L. Vachell M.C. comes over and opens his mouth in the Mess. A division is going to Iraq, the armoured division is for overseas, but we stay here, eventually going to Secunderabad. 20 Squadron going to Choklala. In six months we are to have two flights of ‘Mustangs’ and one flight of ‘Vengeances’ so if I can stay out of medical trouble I ought to have some fun.

Overseas in 1943 and dead and buried by the end of the war perhaps.