Charlie’s War
In September 2004 Richard & Judy’s Executive Producer, Amanda Ross, approached Pan Macmillan: her production company, Cactus TV, wanted to launch a major writing competition, ‘How to Get Published’, on the Channel 4 show. Unpublished authors would be invited to send in the first chapter and a synopsis of their novel and would have the chance of winning a publishing contract.
Five months, 46,000 entries and a lot of reading later, the five shortlisted authors appeared live on the show and the winner was announced. But there was a surprise in store for the other four finalists.
On air Richard Madeley said, ‘The standard of the finalists is staggeringly high. All are more than worthy of a publishing contract.’ Pan Macmillan agreed and published all five.
The winning books were The Olive Readers by Christine Aziz, Tuesday’s War by David Fiddimore, Journeys in the Dead Season by Spencer Jordan, Housewife Down by Alison Penton Harper, and Gem Squash Tokoloshe by Rachel Zadok.
DAVID FIDDIMORE was born in 1944 in Yorkshire and is married with two children. He worked for five years at the Royal Veterinary College before joining HM Customs and Excise, where his work included postings to the investigation and intelligence divisions. Charlie’s War is the second in the Charlie Bassett trilogy.
Also by David Fiddimore
TUESDAY’S WAR
DAVID FIDDIMORE
Charlie’s War
PAN BOOKS
First published 2006 by Pan Books
This electronic edition published 2012 by Pan Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Basingstoke and Oxford
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com
ISBN 978-0-330-54140-4 EPUB
Copyright © David Fiddimore 2006
The right of David Fiddimore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Visit www.panmacmillan.com to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you're always first to hear about our new releases
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright page
Dedication page
Acknowledgements
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Part Two
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Three
Chapter Eleven
Part Four
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Part Five
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Epilogue
For
CHAS McDEVITT & NANCY WHISKEY,
and the generation who rode the last train
to San Fernando
Charlie can’t let this book pass without thanking the four people he consults as he commits his memoir to paper:
Marion, Andrea and Gwen,
who all live with his stories on a daily basis,
and Sarah Turner, his editor and guide. Bless you.
PART ONE
England: November 1944
One
I had three books.
One was a thrice-read Western by Zane Grey, one was an Edgar Wallace, and the third was a book of erotic poems by John Wilmot, Lord Rochester – given to me by Conners before my old aircrew split. I missed the old gang more than you could imagine. Grease, our Canadian pilot, had returned to the prairies, and the rest were up north in cushy training berths well out of the way of the war, except for Fergal, who had run away to be a priest. Part of me was glad of that. The other part damned the lot of them for being the jammy sods that they were.
I had given a bomber squadron at Bawne airfield, near Cambridge, twenty-eight trips, and when I drove away from it I took most of the clothes I had arrived in, a little Singer open four-seater I had inherited, and Piotr’s big radio. Piotr was Pete, our rear gunner. Being dead since our last trip, he wouldn’t need either for the time being. I was given two weeks off for good behaviour so I drove north to see my dad, who had evacuated to Glasgow. It wasn’t a city I fell in love with instantly: people seemed to evacuate all over it every Saturday night – mostly from bladder, bowel or stomach – and a girl I had met at St Enoch’s for ten bob put me out of action for a fortnight afterwards. It may seem stupid but I reported for duty at my new station three days before I was due. I couldn’t settle with the civvies.
I didn’t fly: I had done my trips, and was being rested, or screened in a training job. Still on a bloody squadron though. That was unusual, although not completely unknown. It figured because it was an unusual bloody squadron. From Tempsford they flew all over unfriendly Europe in some of the oldest, slowest aircraft the service could find. My job was to house-train their radio operators if they arrived on the squadrons untrained or unwilling, and sort out their kit. I was supposed to deliver W/Ops briefings before their trips if a special briefing was called for. It never was. Anyway; that was the theory of it. They say you live and learn. A lot of the buggers I’d last flown with never learned, and didn’t live that long. QED.
Frohlich walked in while Cab Calloway was singing away, ‘. . . a kiss ain’t a kiss, unless there’s a kick in it’, on Pete’s radio in the room they had given me. That was in a small farm servant’s cottage down the dirt track from Waterloo Farm, which was one of the other names for Tempsford airfield. I was sitting in the armchair with my
