In October 1940, on the way to his first day on active service, Roald got lost over the Libyan desert at night, crash-landing his Gloster Gladiator and suffering head injuries so severe that the RAF doctors thought he would never fly again. The crash itself would be the subject of his first piece of published writing, “Shot Down over Libya” (1942), and was an event to which he returned several times, most notably in “Missing: Believed Killed” (1944), “A Piece of Cake” (1942–6), “Lucky Break” (1977), and Going Solo (1986). 80 Squadron’s accident report notes that “Pilot Officer Dahl was ferrying an aircraft from No. 102 Maintenance Unit to this unit, but unfortunately not being used to flying aircraft over the desert he made a forced landing two miles west of Mersah Matruh. He made an unsuccessful forced landing and the aircraft burst into flames. The pilot was badly burned and he was conveyed to an Army Field Ambulance station.”50 Roald’s own accounts of the incident, however, often differed markedly from this record. Sometimes the plane did not crash, but was instead “shot down” by a German fighter. Initially these fictions were necessitated by the needs of Allied wartime propaganda. But the mythology persisted.
That crash was undoubtedly the key event in Roald’s life. For the first time he tasted mortality. Blinded and trapped in his burning aircraft, he contemplated what seemed to be a certain death. “All I wanted was to go gently off to sleep and to hell with the flames,”51 he wrote. But some sort of life force, a “tendency to remain conscious”52 made him extricate his burning body from its parachute straps, push open the cockpit canopy, and drop out on to the sand beneath. Then the Gladiator’s machine guns started to explode and bullets ricocheted around him. “All I wanted was to get away from the tremendous heat and rest in peace,” he explained later. “The world about me was divided sharply down the middle into two halves. Both these halves were pitch black, but one was scorching hot and the other was not.”53
Perhaps the most revealing piece of mythmaking associated with the crash involved another airman entirely. Douglas McDonald had flown with Roald from Fouka in a separate airplane and put his Gladiator down safely on the sand, close by the wreckage of Roald’s plane. McDonald comforted his injured comrade through the long cold desert night, while they waited for rescue forces to locate them. It was, as Roald later told his daughter Ophelia, the worst moment of his life.54 Roald, who liked to appear impregnable to the world, found himself supremely vulnerable, being nursed by another pilot and one, moreover, who had not crashed his plane. So, despite the fact that in the earliest versions of the crash McDonald is present in the narrative, he largely disappears from later accounts. Most tellingly, Roald fails to mention him in the first letter he wrote to his mother after the accident. Even for her, perhaps particularly for her, he needed to maintain that façade of strength. Yet, writing to Douglas McDonald’s widow, Barbara, in 1953, eighteen months after her husband’s death in a plane crash in the foothills of Mount Kilimanjaro, Roald shone a different light on the situation.
April 24th
9 East 62nd Street,
New York City
Dear Mrs. McDonald
It was really very good of you to write to me like you did. I should have written to you first about Douglas, had I known where you were, because I heard the awful news from ‘Mug’ in Nairobi some weeks ago.* It shook me more than almost anything that has happened for a long time, because, although I hadn’t seen him since the war, I always felt a strong personal bond—and also a very deep gratitude—to him.
I expect he’s told you a little of what happened that evening in the desert when we both came down, and I crashed. But I doubt he explained how really marvellous he was to me, and looked after me and tried to comfort me, and stayed with me out there during a very cold night, and kept me warm. Well, he did. And I shall always remember it most vividly, even some of the things he said (because I was quite conscious) and most of all how, when he ran over and found me not dead, he did a sort of dance of joy in the sand and it was all very wonderful, because after all we were not very far away from the Italians and he had a great many other things to think about.
I’ll never forget it. I tried to write a little of it in that story ‘A Piece of Cake’. Of course you know that the ‘Peter’ there is Douglas. That appeared originally in the Saturday Evening Post and was read by 12 million people.
I hope you are not too sad about it all any longer, and I’m glad that you have a daughter to comfort you.
I’m staying out here for a while now, writing stories for the ‘New Yorker’ magazine, and possibly a novel. If I come home soon, I’ll call you up.
Yours sincerely,
Roald Dahl55
That letter to Mrs. McDonald is a reminder that the “fictionalised” version of events in Roald’s life is sometimes closer to the truth than the front he maintained in his letters home to his family, which was generally one of the confident entertainer, the provider of gifts, the stoic, unflappable pater familias.
That image was certainly a long way from the reality of his situation in hospital in Alexandria. There, Roald lay concussed and sightless, uncertain of time or surroundings for many days. He told his mother that he was blind for a week, but later admitted that he was not able to see for “much, much longer,” altering the truth, “so as not to alarm her.”56 As he lay in his hospital bed, he also learned that Oakwood, the family house in Bexley, had been virtually destroyed by German bombers and that the tent in Ismailia where his air-force kit—including camera and photographs—was stored had been destroyed in an air raid. It must have seemed to him as if one part of his life was over and an entirely new one had begun.
He left hospital after almost three months to convalesce in Alexandria at the spacious villa of a wealthy English couple, Major Bobby Peel and his wife Dorothy. For several weeks, he tired easily and suffered from severe and prolonged headaches, yet his letters make light of his lack of energy, describing instead how he slept on silk and linen sheets, listened to Beethoven, Brahms and Elgar on the gramophone, and was pampered by Dorothy Peel. As always, in his letters, he focused on the positive.
Roald often claimed that this “monumental bash on the head” had changed his personality in some way and therefore turned him into a writer. Whether or not he actually underwent a psychological change as a result of the trauma is impossible to tell—he certainly believed he emerged from the accident a different person—but it undoubtedly gave him something powerful to write about. The comic chronicler of Dog Samka’s adventures in downtown Dar es Salaam was now working on a much broader canvas.
Roald’s first big decision when he was discharged from hospital was whether to be invalided home, or to stay in Egypt and try to recover sufficiently for him to fly again. He opted for the latter, returning to 80 Squadron to fight in Greece in April 1941. Roald arrived when the Allied forces were already in full retreat. The squadron had been stationed at Elevsis to defend Athens, but the odds against them were enormous: approximately 800 German and 300 Italian planes against a motley force of 192 British and Greek machines—or, as one of Roald’s fellow pilots described it, “all the wops in the world and half the Jerries, versus two men, a boy and a flying hearse.”57 Defeat was inevitable and Roald witnessed the death of many of his comrades including his friend David Coke. He evoked that fatalism in his early short story “Katina.” “The mountains were invisible behind the rain, but I knew they were around us on every side,” he wrote. “I had a feeling they were laughing at us, laughing at the smallness of our numbers and at the hopeless courage of our pilots.”58
Yet there was another side to these grim encounters. “It was truly the most breathless and exhilarating time I have ever had in my life,” Roald would later write in Going Solo. These were also the sentiments he echoed in the brief description of the combat he gave to his family in letters or indeed in telegrams, where the telegraph operator almost always got his name wrong, signing him Ron or Ronald. He flew briefly again in combat over Palestine, before the headaches and blackouts returned and he was pronounced unfit to fly, returning home to England in late summer 1941. “They never recede with time,” he wrote years later of his experiences in battle. “They were so vivid and violent that they remain etched on the memory like something that happened last month.”59
Roald’s pilot log book covering his ten days of aerial combat over Greece in April 1941. It details his three confirmed “kills” as well as the destruction of all the RAF planes there by ground strafing. “No fighters left in Greece,” was his grim conclusion.
Dated September 21st 1940
NLT DAHL
WOODLANDS FARM
AYLESBURY
PROCEEDING TO FIGHTER SQUADRON IN WESTERN DESERT IMMEDIATELY.
ADDRESS R.A.F. CAIRO.
YOU WON’T HEAR MUCH FROM ME SO DON’T WORRY.
LOVE
RONALD DAHL
TELEGRAM TO ASTA
Dated October 14th 1940
NLT ASTA DAHL
WOODLANDS FARM
QUAINTON
MANY HAPPY RETURNS AND LOVE
CRASHED IN DESERT TWO WEEKS AGO.
CAUGHT FIRE BUT ONLY CONCUSSION BROKEN NOSE.
ABSOLUTELY OKAY SOON. ADDRESS FOR
FEW WEEKS ANGLO SWISS HOSPITAL ALEXANDRIA
DON’T EXPECT ANY LETTERS
LOVE TO ALL
ROALD DAHL
TELEGRAM
Dated November ? 1940
NLT DAHL
WAYSIDE EDGE
LUDGERSHALL
BRILL
GOOD PROGRESS SITTING UP READING WRITING.
ANY TIME NOW HOPE LEAVE HOSPITAL FOR CONVALESCENCE
IN TWO OR THREE WEEKS
TWO MONTHS BEFORE FLYING. POOR OAKWOOD.
LOVE
ROALD DAHL
November 20th 1940
2nd/5th Gen. Hospital
Middle East Command
Egypt
The air raids here don’t worry us. The Italians are very bad bomb aimers.
This address is the same as the one you have, but we’re now not allowed to use the previous name or mention the town
Dear Mama
At last I’m allowed to write, but I’m told that it’s got to be a short letter. Yesterday I received eight letters from you and one from Alf and one from Else and one from Asta, dating back from July right up to the last one you wrote in October from the cellar at Oakwood, when Mrs. Creasey arrived in the middle. They’d been all over Egypt and the desert before finally turning up, and are the first I’ve had for two months.
I hope you’re well settled now at Wayside Cottage and that it’s quite safe there. You seem to have had the hell of a time at Oakwood. I expect you’ve written to tell me what’s happened to the house and the pictures and furniture. Did you take the best pictures out of their frame and cart them off. I hope so.
I sent you a telegram yesterday saying that I’d got up for 2 hours and had a bath—so you’ll see I’m making good progress. I arrived here about eight and a half weeks ago, and was lying on my back for 7 weeks doing nothing, then got up gradually, and now I am walking about a bit. When I came in I was a bit of a mess. My eyes didn’t open for a week (although I was always quite conscious). They thought I had a fractured base (skull), but I think the X-ray showed I didn’t. My nose was bashed in, but they’ve got the most marvellous Harley Street specialists out here who’ve joined up for the war as Majors, and the ear, nose and throat man pulled my nose out of the back of my head, and shaped it and now it looks just as before except that it’s a little bent about. That was of course under a general anaesthetic.
My eyes still ache if I read or write much, but they say that they think they’ll go back to normal again, and that I’ll be fit for flying in about 3 months. In between I still have about 6 or more weeks’ sick leave here in Alex when I get out, doing nothing in a marvellous sunny climate, just like an English summer, except that the sun shines every day. We stay with rich people in Alex, who volunteer to take in convalescent officers. But for any letters or telegrams written about 3 weeks from now send to
c/o Barclays Bank Mess
97 Avenue Prince Ibrahim,
Sporting
Alexandria
That’ll always get me at once.
I suppose you want to know how I crashed. Well I’m not allowed to give you any details of what I was doing or how it happened. But it occurred in the night, not very far from the Italian front lines. The plane was on fire and it hit the ground. I was just sufficiently conscious to crawl out in time, having undone my straps, and roll on the ground to put out the fire on my overalls which were alight. I wasn’t burnt much but was bleeding rather badly from the head. Anyway I lay there and waited for the ammunition which was left in my guns to go off. One after the other, well over 1000 rounds exploded and the bullets whistled about seeming to hit everything but me.
I’ve never fainted yet, and I think it was this tendency to remain conscious which saved me from being roasted. Anyway luckily one of our forward patrols saw the blaze, and after some time arrived and picked me up and after much ado I arrived at Mersah Matruh (you’ll see it on the map—on the coast, east of Libya). There I heard a doctor say, ‘Oh he’s an Italian is he.’ (My white flying overalls weren’t very recognisable.) I told him not to be a B.F. and he gave me some morphine.
In about 24 hours’ time I arrived where I am now, living in great luxury with lots of very nice English nursing sisters to look after me. I was in a private room for some time, but now I’m in a big ward with some other blokes, which is more fun. The good ladies of Alex come and visit us and bring us flowers and one Danish one Mrs. Ludwickson has lent me a wireless. The Norwegian colony, consisting of 2 judges who sit on the Mixed Tribunal here, rallied round right from the outset and have been very kind. I believe you’ve heard from Mrs. Dahl, Judge Dahl’s wife, who you used to know at school in Norway. I’ve been told I’ve got to stop now.
By the way, if there’s ever any money due to me, please always cable it to my a/c with Barclays Bank (D.C. & O) Cairo. If there’s any difficulty about getting it out of the country, telegraph me and I’ll arrange it with the Shell Co. here. I’ve got an income tax reclaim form here to sign, but can’t get a suitable witness till I get up.
Lots of love to everyone
Roald
Thank Alf for her offer of a birthday present, but tell her it’s no good. I’ll have it after the war. Don’t bother about Xmas presents.
December 6th 1940
P/O R. Dahl
2nd/5th = Gen. Hospital
(The same hospital)
Dear Mama
I’ve just been told that all troops are allowed to send home a one page letter free which if posted by tomorrow evening will be guaranteed to arrive by Christmas. So here it is.
Merry Christmas to you all.
I’ve just received your telegram saying that you’ve sent me a parcel to R.A.F. Cairo. Many thanks—and I’ll make sure of getting it this time.
I haven’t written to you since my one and only letter some weeks ago, chiefly because the doctors said that it wasn’t good for me. As a matter of fact I’ve been progressing very slowly. As I told you in my telegram I did start getting up, but they soon popped me back to bed again because I got some terrific headaches. A week ago I was moved back into this private room, and I have just completed a whole long 7 days lying flat on my back in semi darkness doing absolutely nothing—not even allowed to lift a finger to wash myself. Well, that’s over, and I’m getting up today (it’s 8 o’clock in the evening actually) and writing this and incidentally feeling fine. Tomorrow I think they are going to give me intravenous saline and pituitary injections and make me drink gallons of water—it’s another stunt to get rid of the headaches. You needn’t be alarmed—there’s nothing very wrong with me; I’ve merely had an extremely serious concussion, they say I certainly can’t fly for about 6 months, and last week were going to invalid me home on the next convoy. But somehow I didn’t want to—once invalided home, I knew I’d never get to flying again, and who wants to be invalided home anyway. When I go I want to go normally.
Anyway instead I shall be going up to a big new hospital in Cairo as soon as I’m up and about (which won’t now be more than about 2 weeks. I’m not pulling your leg) and from there I’ll go straight to Kenya for a long sick leave of some months—3 or 4 months I should say, my brain apparently must have a complete rest, so I’ll probably find some friends with a farm in the Highlands and stay there, and perhaps travel about a bit. By the way, I forgot to tell you that all my belongings, plus my white suitcase were blown up in my tent in the desert some time ago. The only things we found were my cigarette case and gold watch (still going). So I’ve got to start all over again. The only other things I’ve got are my cameras, which luckily I’d left behind. I don’t mind much because I am only too thankful that I wasn’t in the tent at the time.
A photo of Roald in 1941, taken on his way to fly in Palestine after he had been evacuated out of Greece. In reference to the plane crash the previous year when he had suffered severe head injuries, he told his mother: “I’m enclosing another awful photograph of me—just to show you that I’ve still got a nose.”
I don’t think my eyes are affected but I’m not allowed to do any reading yet (11 weeks in bed so far) but I’ve got my little wireless beside my bed. At the moment they are playing Brahms Second Symphony from Jerusalem and it’s very good too. Will notify you by telegram of all my movements.
Happy Christmas and best love to all
Roald (My nose is bent!!)
January 10th 1941
R. Dahl
Pilot officer
8 Rue des Ptolomées
Alexandria
Egypt
Dear Else
This is meant to be a sort of pre-wedding letter, saying good luck and all that sort of thing, although you may well be Mrs. John before it reaches you. You must have bought a lovely trousseau by the sound of it, although I hope you didn’t waste any money on pyjamas; but I suppose they’re necessary these days in case you have to go into an air raid shelter.
Lucky John’s not a fighter pilot or you’d find he wanted to sleep in his parachute, and they’re so cumbersome. Anyway I hope you have a decent honeymoon, and tell John he’s a lucky bugger. I’m arranging for a wedding present but it’ll take some time to reach you I’m afraid—something gold (oo-er!).
‘What do you think it is, Asta?’
‘Dunno, Vaseline I should think.’
‘Silly you are to say that.’
By the way, Thank you, and Asta for your letters. Yes, living my life of luxury, I’m making goodish progress. I never get up till 10.30, and when I feel tired or have a bit of a head I go to bed before dinner. The old brain seems a bit sluggish still. Whereas before I used to play quite a moderate game of bridge, I find that at the moment I can’t remember a single card or even formulate a simple plan for playing a hand. That however, is all only a matter of time so long as I’m careful.
I’ve started to play a tiny bit of golf. There are two lovely courses here with very good grass greens. (What a change from Dar es Salaam.) I drive down with Bobby Peel late in the afternoon and we play a leisurely 6 or 7 holes. Bobby and Teddy between them have 5 cars, 2 Cadillacs, 2 Fiats and a Rolls, so there’s never much difficulty about transport.
Mrs. Peel weighs me regularly and contentedly watches me putting on the two odd stone which I’ve lost. I get masses of invitations from the good people of Alex, but I very seldom go anywhere except an occasional tea, although most of them have beautiful daughters. By the way, whilst I was up in hospital in Cairo I am told by Rhoda Hill, one of the sisters at the Anglo-Swiss that a young Naval fellow called to see me, saying that he knew the family at home; but he left no name or where I could find him. He must certainly have been Ian Patterson, so I shall try to get hold of him by making enquiries with the Navy.
My chief joy still is the gramophone. I play it all day. At this very moment I’m playing the last movement of Franck’s D Minor Symphony. Before that I had on Dvorak’s Fourth (not the New World) and as Cesar Franck is just coming to an end I must get up and put on something else. Excuse me –
That’s fine, Beethoven’s Trio in B flat—the Arch-Duke. You’d be surprised—I could now tell immediately any of Beethoven’s nine symphonies if you played me a few bars of one of them, or for that matter any of Brahms, Elgar, Franck, Dvorak, Mendelssohn, etc. I know practically all of them backwards. And although I still couldn’t hum or whistle a single bar of any of them in tune, I can ‘think’ through a symphony with the greatest of ease. But you people who know about music must I think get something extra out of it. For it means nothing to me whether a thing’s in B flat or C sharp; I fail to appreciate a subtle change of key or skilful orchestration; and although I can follow a score for a few seconds, I get left miles behind as soon as it speeds up. In spite of all this, I think I enjoy it more than many.
I remember, years ago hearing Ellen say that Ashley got a funny feeling down his spine whenever he heard Wagner, and what nonsense I thought it must be. But it’s not—I get tickles in the tummy—but not from Wagner, except bits. I get exactly the same sensation from reading Matthew Arnold’s Scholar Gypsy as from listening to Beethoven’s Pastoral.
Maybe it’s nonsense, but anyway I’ve filled up another three pages and if I stop in about a minute or so I shall just be in time to turn over Beethoven’s record.
Give my love to Mama, Alf, Asta, Ellen Ashley, Louis, Meriel, John and Leslie.
My squadron is the famous fighter squadron in Albania; if I can get fit quickly, I’ll be there soon.
Lots of love
Roald
TELEGRAM
FEBRUARY 10TH 1941
DAHL
WAYSIDE COTTAGE
LUDGERSHALL
BUCKS
LISTEN IN TO WIRELESS ON THIRTEENTH FEBRUARY. CHECK UP IN PAPER
MIDDLE EAST BROADCAST BECAUSE I MAY CALL YOU.
LOTS OF LOVE
RONALD DAHL
POST OFFICE TELEGRAM
FROM A.H.E. C3 SANSORAGINE
DATED MARCH 6TH 1941
TO
DAHL
WAYSIDE COTTAGE
LUDGERSHALL
BUCKS
MESSAGE
STARTING FLYING AGAIN NOW
ADDRESS AS LAST SEPTEMBER
VERY FIT
LOTS OF LOVE
ROALD DAHL
March 7th 1941
Officers’ Mess
Royal Air Force
Ismailia
Dear Mama
It’s simply ages since I had a letter from England—although I expect you are writing quite often. I suppose the trouble is that I keep jumping around from place to place. Whenever I leave one spot I always hopefully leave my next address with them for forwarding letters, but all in vain. I don’t suppose you are getting many of mine either.
Well, as I telegraphed to you 3 days ago, here I am once more in Ismailia, getting the hang of flying once more after having been off it for over 5 months. I expect I’ll be here altogether about another 4 weeks before rejoining my squadron which is incidentally the hell of a long way away—feeling the cold. Incidentally I’m now flying a more modern type of fighter thank goodness; I don’t suppose I can mention its name, but it’s the same kind as Douglas Bader uses.
It’s very pleasant down here; warm and sunny each and every day, and once more our working dress is just khaki shirt and shorts.
Whilst I was at Heliopolis I tried in vain to find Leslie Pears, whom Alf had told me was coming out here to work for the Air Ministry. Then suddenly about 3 weeks ago she came up to me in the bar of the Metropolitan Hotel in Cairo one evening when I was tucking back a few quiet whiskeys with a fellow called Peter Fisher. She said aren’t you Roald and I said Yes, who the hell are you, and promptly dropped a glass full of whisky and soda all over her feet and stockings. Well, after that we got on quite well; last Saturday she had a day off so I drove her down to Alexandria in my car to see Dorothy Peel and family and also incidentally to see Alex. We drove through the hell of a sandstorm the whole way but luckily on the way back the sand went although the wind persisted. Anyway we thought you might like a photo taken on the road, so we took the enclosed awful things when we stopped for me to have a pi. There was so much wind blowing that we could hardly stand up. I like Leslie because she’s the first woman I’ve met since I left home to whom I can swear or say what I bloody well like without her turning a hair—trained by Alf I should imagine, and well trained at that.
Well I’m afraid I haven’t got any news for you—I haven’t heard that Else’s been married yet; has she? I got quite a lot of news about you all from Leslie, but not enough. I wish they wouldn’t lose your letters in the post.
Lots of love to all
Roald
P.S. Tell Asta she’s not allowed to marry until I come home.
[pencilled note—no date]
Handed in 12th
Many happy returns.
No letters for ages.
Rejoining Squad. imm;
northwards. A grandfather knew their language.
Love
Ron
April 12th
Officers’ Mess
Royal Air Force
Ismailia
Dear Mama
A very short note to say that I’m going north across the sea almost at once to join my squadron. I telegraphed this to you today and told you where to send my letters. You may not hear much from me for quite a long while so don’t worry.
Here are a few photos—we went on a trip in my car last weekend and took them.
Lots of love to all
Roald
TELEGRAM
POST OFFICE
R. PEEL TO MRS. DAHL
TELEGRAM ENVELOPE
DATED APRIL 29TH 1941
TO
NLT DAHL
WAYSIDE COTTAGE
LUDGERSHALL
AYLESBURY
POST OFFICE TELEGRAM
OFFICE OF ORIGIN &
SERVICE INSTRUCTIONS
ALEXANDRIA
MESSAGE
RONALD BACK SAFE LOOKING VERY WELL
STAYING WITH US
RECEIVED YOUR LETTERS OF MARCH 5TH
SEND LOVE
PEEL
The wreck of a Hurricane destroyed by German ground strafing at Argos. Roald had flown this very plane the day before.
May 6th 1941
80 Squadron
H.Q.M.E.
Cairo
Dear Mama
Thanks for your telegrams—we had great fun in Greece although I must admit I was pleased to get away safely. Once more I lost everything I had including my best camera, and arrived one evening at the Peels’ house here looking like a tramp with nothing but my flying suit and a pair of khaki shorts. They reclothed me—I had a bath and borrowed a razor to shave off my beard after which I felt normal once more. Incidentally I got three German aircraft confirmed and 2 unconfirmed.
Roald washing himself at the tented camp in Elevsis, Greece. When he returned there after the Battle of Athens, he would write: “As I made my way slowly across the grass I suddenly realized that the whole of my body and all my clothes were dripping with sweat. Then I found that my hand was shaking so much I couldn’t put the flame to the end of the cigarette.”
Lots of love to all
Roald
May 15th 1941
Alexandria
80 Squadron
R.A.F.
H.Q.M.E.
Cairo
Dear Mama
I’ve just finished my rest leave having had a lovely time staying with Dorothy and Bobby Peel and today I’m off to the place where the squadron is reassembling. It’s not the Western Desert this time—it’s very near the place we had our first big celebration after leaving Iraq about 9 months ago—you may remember. As I told you—once more I’ve lost all my kit, everything I had. I got no compensation the first time and this time I’ve so far got £12 which doesn’t go very far—in fact I hope my income tax reclaims come along soon.
Well, I don’t know what news I can give you. We really had the hell of a time in Greece. It wasn’t much fun taking on half the German Air Force with literally a handful of fighters. My machine was shot up quite a bit but I always managed to get back. The difficulty was to choose a time to land when the German fighters weren’t ground straffing our aerodrome. Later on we hopped from place to place trying to cover the evacuation hiding our planes in olive groves and covering them with olive branches in a fairly fruitless endeavour to stop them being spotted by one or other of the Germans or aircraft overhead.
Anyway I don’t think anything as bad as that will happen again.
Lots of love to all
Roald
June 20th
80 Squadron
R.A.F.
H.Q.M.E.
Dear Mama
I had to have my photo taken the other day for an RAF pass. Here’s a copy. Sorry about this note, but at present we’re operating from a very obscure place, and such things as writing paper are difficult to come by. I shot down another JU88 and a French Potez last week over the Fleet, who as you will have heard over the wireless are operating up here.
It’s pretty hot, but there’s lots of every kind of fruit about—I expect you envy us there. But what a lot of flying. For the first 3 weeks we never stopped—you see there weren’t many of us. Ground straffing, escorting, intercepting, etc. etc. Some days we did 7 hours a day which is a lot out here, where you sweat like a pig from the moment you get into the cockpit to the moment you get out. I’m writing this in a fig grove. Have a fig—there are lots here. Hope you are all O.K. Not getting any letters.
Lots of love
Roald
June 28th 1941
80 Squadron
R.A.F. H.Q.M.E.
Cairo
Egypt
Dear Mama,
I’ve suddenly received three of your letters dated 4th January, 15th January and 4th April! also one from Asta 4th January and one from Else 27th March for all of which many thanks. They give the first details I’ve had about the wedding which seems to have been marvellous. It’ll obviously be a laud week in the history of Ludgershall and in time to come the locals will say ‘It was in the year that Else and John were married . . . etc.’
Hope you never got your Lemoine 1927 Champagne – it’s the worst year for champagne on record and is worth nothing, whereas the 1929 which Alf bought is one of the best. Still I don’t suppose you can pick and choose.
. . . We’ve been doing some pretty intensive flying just lately – you may have heard about it a little on the wireless. Sometimes I’ve been doing as much as 7 hours a day, which is a lot in a fighter. Anyway my head didn’t take it any too well, and for the last 3 days I’ve been off flying. I may have to have another medical board to see if I’m really fit to fly out here. They may even send me to England, which wouldn’t be a bad thing, would it? It’s a pity in a way though, because I’ve just got going. I’ve got five confirmed, four Germans and one French, and quite a few unconfirmed – and lots on the ground from groundstraffing landing grounds. We’ve lost 4 pilots killed in the Squadron in the last 2 weeks, shot down by the French. Otherwise this country is great fun and definitely flowing with milk and honey.
I sprained my ankle in the blackout yesterday!
The Germans are bombing us a bit, but they won’t come over by daylight.
The sun shines all day and we are just by the sea – wish we got time to bathe.
Lots of love to all
Roald
P.S. Cheerful news: over 30% of our Habbaniya Training course have been killed or are missing here – it may be more now. Alec Leuchars was missing but walked out of a prison camp in Abyssinia when we captured it! He had baled out O.K.
Joke for the girls:
say quickly
Man walks into Pub.
‘Give me a fucking beer fucking quick before the fucking trouble starts.’
Landlord pulls a beer and hands it over—Man drinks it.
‘Give me another fucking beer fucking quick before the fucking trouble starts.’
Imperturbable landlord pulls another beer and hands it over.
Man drinks it.
‘Give me another fucking beer fucking quick before the fucking trouble starts.’
Landlord starts to pull another beer, looks up and says, ‘’Ere, wot d’you mean, before the fucking trouble starts?’
‘Well, it’s sure to fucking well start soon because I haven’t got any fucking money.’
[written on the back and underlined]
Private
Alf—Else or Asta
POST OFFICE TELEGRAM ENVELOPE
DATE JULY 21ST 1941
ADDRESSED
DAHL
WAYSIDE COTTAGE
LUDGERSHALL
BUCKS
TELEGRAM
OFFICE OF ORIGIN
ALEXANDRIA
MESSAGE
COMING HOME VERY SOON BY SEA. VERY FIT. SYRIAN WAR FUN. CABLE BY RETURN ANY PARTICULAR MATERIALS OR ANYTHING YOU WANT. ALSO SIZES SILK STOCKINGS ALL SIX OF YOU. EVERYTHING HERE.
ADDRESS CABLE CARE PEEL ALEXANDRIA.
LOVE
RONALD DAHL
POST OFFICE TELEGRAM ENVELOPE
DATE AUGUST 27TH 1941
TO:
MRS DAHL,
WAYSIDE COTTAGE
LUDGERSHALL
BUCKS
MESSAGE
RONALD IS VERY WELL AND CHEERFUL AND
SENDS LOVE TO ALL.
The airstrip at Ramat David in Palestine, 1941. Roald was the first pilot to land there. It was a hastily prepared grass airstrip rolled out in a cornfield by residents of the nearby kibbutz.