Without doubt, it’s been the hardest week of my entire life of 23 years. The Germans have been flooding the skies over the south east with more planes than I thought I would ever see in my lifetime if I lived to be 70. I’ve crashed one plane, survived a bombing raid and seen one of my best friends get burned beyond recognition in his Hurricane before he baled out. At the start of the summer, just a few weeks ago, I was passionate about fighting in this war; now that passion has turned into a more calculated cold-bloodedness, a kind of primitive, reptilian survival instinct. In a way I feel calmer and more determined because of this change; I have learnt to rise above the swings of emotion from day to day. Now every day is the same: a fight for life, a brutish repetition of the mantra ‘kill, or be killed’.

But then there are days like yesterday when no German planes at all came over; we remained on readiness but for the first time in an age we weren’t scrambled. The weather was the most beautiful imaginable: hot, dry and sunny with the kind of sky I imagine there is in the Greek isles in summer. It was so warm that we craved shade on the treeless aerodrome and so I lay on the grass under one wing of my Hurricane and took a nap, free of any thought, or anything, other than the sweetness of sleep. The other pilots did the same and under the starboard wing of my plane, Frank sat fiddling with his toy Hurricane, which is about the length of my forearm and equipped with remarkable pea-shooter guns.

‘Who is that for?’ I asked Frank, ‘you don’t have any children, do you?’

Frank was quiet for a moment as he often is, as though it takes him a minute or two to think of an answer.

‘It’s not for anyone but me,’ he said eventually. ‘I just like to make little things like this. It’s not for playing with really; it’s the making of it that’s important.’

‘But then what’s the point, if no-one is then going to play with it?’

‘The point is that I succeeded. I set out to do something and I did it. Couldn’t be simpler than that.’

I thought about that a little bit as I mulled over the events of the past few days. I set out to shoot down German bombers and fighters and on the 11^th I succeeded when I hit a 109 after we‘d attacked an enormous bunch of Heinkel bombers.  We were scrambled to intercept them somewhere near the Isle of Sheppey, not far from the Thames estuary. When I saw them all, I was shocked at how many aircraft there were in the sky. I looked around at our squadron: twelve planes against the massed ranks of well over a hundred bombers plus fighter escort. The squadron leader called the attack over the radio and we bounced into what looked like an enormous swarm of bees. I got a burst in on a bomber and turned away again, thinking that I’d done some real damage. However, I looked in my mirror and with an almighty shock and a surge of adrenaline, saw that there was a 109 slightly behind me and to the right at about 4 o’clock, no more than a hundred yards away. I heard my squadron leader on the radio warning me: ‘bandit on your tail, red two’. I turned hard to port and held on to the turn and I was struck by real fear, the certainty that I was about to be killed. But I knew that he couldn’t get a shot off yet and if I could hold on to the turn I would out-turn him. The ‘g’ was immense as I pulled on the stick as hard as I could, the plane fighting me and almost stalling, but I could see that I was tighter in the turn than he was and he couldn’t catch up with me. Very soon the position was beginning to reverse and I was getting onto his tail. I started shouting at my plane. ‘Come on, keep turning, keep turning,’ I was yelling at it in a fury. Then the 109 lost its nerve, jinked and started to dive. I rolled quickly out of my turn and followed it down, giving it a long burst from within 150 yards. ‘Bam, bam, bam, bam, bam,’ I yelled triumphantly as I hit it and the plane exploded in mid-air. Sweat poured down my face.

The following day I was not so lucky when, in the afternoon, I went up against a huge formation of Dorniers near Folkestone and, following an ailing plane downwards, caught some machine gun and cannon fire from a 109 which was also following me. I managed to limp back to Hawkinge but with the undercarriage failing, the engine shot through and barely touching 90mph, and far too low to bale out, I decided to bump it down on the ground. I got it as slow as I could without stalling and put it on the deck where it bumped, skidded, turned and flipped up onto its side. But I made it out of the cockpit with just a few bruises.

Not long after, Hawkinge was bombed by some Junkers 88s and I had to sprint into a shelter as the ground trembled. As I crouched in the shelter the image that ran through my mind again and again was of Henry’s Hurricane in flames just an hour or so before. I saw him bale out but it wasn’t until later that day I knew he’d made it, albeit badly burnt.