White - Night Fighter over Germany : Flying Beaufighters and Mosquitoes in World War 2

Some twenty or more years ago, during one of my more serious attacks of nostalgia, I suddenly felt a desire to see some of my old pals again. People like Butch, Ben, Jamie, Bob, anybody, just to chat over old times while I could still dredge up the faded images from an ageing brain.

I found that the squadron association held a reunion each year, so I contacted the association secretary (a man, I felt, whose sense of humour had died young as a result of a severe attack of pomposity) and ordered a ticket.

Sorry, all sold out, he told me.

Ah well, it had been a good idea. But he came back at the last moment with news of a cancellation.

I found myself in a hotel room in London, packed with noise and people I didnt know. I wandered vaguely through the massed chatterers without seeing a recognisable face, and wishing I was home. Then a lady came over: I looked lost, did I want someone to chat to? It seemed that her husband had been unable to attend due to illness hence the availability of my ticket. She told me he had not been on our squadron but an auxiliary squadron, weekend flyers at the same drome. I recalled only one name from that lot, Freddy Butcher, a flight sergeant who had been on a drome with me (but a different squadron) during the war. He was known as a Pat, or a Pleasantly Amiable Twit.

After the war he had wangled a commission with the weekend flyers, and Id seen him there as a flight lieutenant. The last Id heard of him, there had been a rumour of trouble over some missing petrol, but I never learned the details of it.

The kind lady was Mrs Butcher, and I joined her group at the meal. Thanks to her the evening wasnt a complete disaster, but I didnt repeat the experience, although I continued to receive the newsletters for a while. In one of them was a comment by a Squadron Leader Butcher DFC, now manager of a prestigious branch of a well-known bank, modestly suggesting that all references to rank in the squadron association should be dropped as no longer relevant.

Squadron Leader? And DFC? Surely not! I could only recall him at the wars end as a flight sergeant, and DFCs could only be won in action and by officers NCOs were given the DFM. Did he, perhaps stretch the truth to boost his peacetime prospects at the bank? I dont know.

Butcher wasnt his real name, but even though both Freddy and his kind wife are long dead I wouldnt dream of revealing it. If the bank chose to judge a mans fitness for a job by counting the rings on his sleeve or the ribbons on his chest, that was up to them. It is not my place to comment on it. Nor have I the right to judge the behaviour of anyone mentioned in this book, alive or not. I simply record it. So where theres any chance of my causing embarrassment Ive either not given the name or Ive changed it. And in one or two cases events have also been altered sufficiently to prevent recognition.

But make no mistake, it all happened.