My dearest Hedda,
I hope this finds you well. I am writing this to you from somewhere in Europe. My unit got here a few hours ago. There are sixteen of us, including me and three other radar operators. We flew over in a Dakota, all our kit strapped to the floor in the middle and us along the sides, with ten more planes carrying other units. It was quite an experience, I can tell you!
I paused, wondering what to write next, and – although I hadn’t told Hedda exactly where I was – how much of my letter would make it past the censor.
It was sixteen long months since I’d left Fiskersay and Hedda. After my posting at Stenigot, I’d been sent to another station in Sussex, then to Renscombe Down near Swanage for battle training before going back to Yatesbury for a refresher course. Finally, at the beginning of June, D-Day – the subject of much rumour and speculation – had arrived. I’d been back at Stenigot by then, and was on watch when the invasion started; we’d all rushed outside to watch the Lancasters flying over in mass formation. When I got back to my billet no one had slept a wink, huddling by the wireless set for news, and after that, in the aftermath of Operation Overlord, things had really begun to move. Only a few days later, I’d found out I was joining Air Ministry Experimental Station (AMES) Unit 118 in preparation for an imminent posting to Europe, and now here I was with the rest of my unit, which included a laconic Welshman called Owen Prosser and another Canadian, Stan Barbeau, both of whom I’d quickly become friends with, sitting in a tent at the edge of one of the runways at Melsbroek airport, just east of Brussels. The airport had been used as a Luftwaffe bomber base and had been liberated from the Germans at the beginning of September. It was a vast sprawl of runways and structures with a collection of buildings at one edge that looked oddly out of place: shops and houses, and something that was like a cross between a hotel and a castle. Apparently, the Germans had built a fake village here, including the chateau-hotel, to try and disguise the airfield and protect it from air attacks.
It still felt as if I’d only left Fiskersay yesterday. The place and its people were always at the back of my mind, and in idle moments I returned to them like a loose tooth I couldn’t stop worrying. I’d never felt homesick for a place before, but Fiskersay was different, somehow. I missed its wide-open spaces; the roar of the wind over the hills; the sea crashing against the cliffs below Svarta Ness and tumbling onto the beach at Odda’s Bay.
And most of all, I missed Hedda and Eirik. I longed to see Hedda again – to hold her, to kiss her. I knew, now, that what I’d had with Rose was only a pale imitation of the real thing, and the man who’d gone out with a different girl every week before that felt like someone in another existence. There was only Hedda now, and I would wait for her for as long as it took.
Thank you for your last letter, I continued. I read and re-read it every day, hearing your voice as if you were right here beside me.
It’s great to hear Eirik’s doing so well at school with his new teacher, although I suppose she’s not that new now, is she? And I’m glad Elizabeth and Donald are well. Remember me to them, won’t you?
Right now, I am sitting in a tent. Looks like we’re going to be roughing it for a while, but we’ll be moving on soon and hopefully we’ll have decent billets by the time winter arrives. What’s the weather like in Fiskersay? Have the storms started yet? I remember them so well – trying to stay on my feet when I had to leave my hut at the station and the way the rain would blow at you sideways! That was really something! Anyway, I think we will be OK here. Our C.O., Barnes, whom everyone calls ‘Barney’, seems to be a decent sort of fellow and so are the other chaps in the unit. We’re all determined to do our bit to send Jerry packing.
I must go, grub’s up. I will write again very soon, my darling.
All my love,
Bill xxx
I folded the letter and put it in the inside pocket of my jacket for safe keeping until I could post it. Only then did it hit me that, because I could no longer tell Hedda where I was, she wouldn’t be able to reply. I felt a sharp pang of disappointment and sadness. Her letters, with their bits of news about Fiskersay and the odd note from Eirik, had kept me going through the gruelling preparations for my posting to Europe. They’d made me feel as if she was still with me.
All you have to do is keep your head down and get through this war, I told myself. The tide’s turning – we’ve got Jerry on the run. Surely it can’t go on for much longer.
Right now, though, that day still felt as if it was a long way off.