Frank Edwards

The Germans have stopped bombing Biggin Hill and started bombing London instead in the past few days. I suppose that is good for us, but we’d almost got used to the bombs raining down on us every day, and the poor cockneys up in the East End are not nearly so well equipped as us to deal with it. Alf and Billy are both from Bethnal Green and they heard that when the big German attack came in on September 7, the area around them was badly hit. I hope their families are alright; they haven’t heard anything from them yet.

It’s no exaggeration to write that Biggin Hill has become a living hell in the past week or so. We are being bombed every single day. George has escaped on leave for a couple of days to see his missus, but for the rest of us the bombardment has continued. There is actually very little left of the buildings on the aerodrome now and everyone working here has been moved to new billets so we’re not hit by a surprise attack while we’re asleep at night. But despite the fact that there are few buildings left and the runway is pockmarked with craters – which we all help to fill in as fast as we can – squadrons are still flying from here and trying to intercept the bombers that are coming over and blasting us to pieces.

One of Joyce’s WAAF friends was given a military medal the other day for what she did during the bombing on August 18, the same bomb attack that has left me with a bit of a limp, which Joyce says is fetching and heroic. I’m not so sure about that but anyhow, I have been too preoccupied with George in the past few days to think much either about myself or Joyce. The top brass have decided that his Hurricane squadron has been at the sharp end of this battle for long enough. Two days ago they announced that they were getting sent to Wales for a rest.

Who’d have thought that George Sherry Sheridan would save my life? I thought he would be the one most likely to die first, not me. In fact, I didn’t really think that we on the ground were on the ‘front line’ of the war until this week but now I realise that everyone here is a foot soldier in this battle. And unfortunately that means any one of us could die at any moment, not just the pilots.

George, thank goodness, is like a cat with nine lives it seems, after he escaped another close-call just yesterday when he crashed his Hurricane at the forward station of Hawkinge, which is now being described by the pilots as ‘hellfire corner.’ On the 11th, he’d shot down a Bf 109 over the sea near the Thames estuary, but then the following day he was hit by an enemy fighter with quite a few rounds of both cannon and machine gun fire over land near Folkestone at such a low altitude that his best option was to try to put the plane down.