I didn’t know what to expect. It was a cloudy day and it was raining. I hadn’t eaten any breakfast due to the sickness that I’m getting every morning now. My stomach was fluttering and I just stared at the greyness around me and heard my heartbeat thumping in my ears until it made me feel as though I would explode. When I arrived at the hospital, I stood on the side of the road outside and I was sick against a wall. A nice old lady came over and asked me if I was alright and I said I was and I cleaned myself up standing in the rain and walked in to the hospital. When I arrived on the ward, I saw his face immediately; it was unblemished and I felt relieved. A nurse walked towards me and started to say something but I rushed straight over to him. His eyes flickered when he saw me, in that same way that they’d flickered the first time we met, but I realised that something was amiss.

‘Hello darling’, he said, trying to sound happy.

‘What’s wrong, George?’ I asked him straight away, looking straight at his eyes.

He held my hand tightly.

‘I’m perfectly alright,’ he said. ‘Except for the fact that my leg’s been blown to bits,’ he said, looking down the bed at where his right leg should be, and I realised what had happened, and I couldn’t tell what I felt.

I felt terrible that George had lost his leg, but relieved that he hadn’t been burned, like so many other pilots. I was relieved that he was still alive. Of course I was! But then for some stupid reason I thought about all those socks that I’d been knitting for George and the tears rolled down my face when I thought that one from each pair had been wasted.

‘It’s alright, George. You’re alive. You’re alive.’ And I hugged him tightly.

‘And we gave the buggers a bloody-good pasting, didn’t we,’ said George with tear in his eyes too.

‘You certainly did.’

He told me what had happened. They were scrambled in late morning, gained height and intercepted an enormous bomber formation of approximately 300 planes heading for London somewhere close to Canterbury (I had seen them coming in on my screen).The two Biggin Hill squadrons were the first to reach them and George told me that he peppered a Dornier with tracer into the starboard wing, hitting the engine and setting it on fire. But then as he pulled away from his attack, he was hit by cannon fire in the cockpit which tore his leg from the rudder pedal. He realised that he had to bale out. He managed to get out of the cockpit and after his parachute unfurled he used his red silk scarf to tie a tourniquet around his leg to stop the bleeding on the way down. He could tell even then that the leg was finished as it was flapping around loosely in the wind, shattered to pieces by the cannon shell. He was brought here, where they had to amputate his leg just below the knee.

I don’t know whether men with one leg can carry on with a life in the services. Perhaps George can get a job in the ops room. I heard that the RAF Benevolent Fund may be able to help – I remember reading in the Chronicle an appeal from the Benevolent Fund saying something like ‘It is only too sadly obvious that in the near future there must be heavy calls upon the Fund, to an extent not at present calculable.’ Surely this is one of those calls. Maybe they can help. There seem so many uncertainties with our child on the way. If it is a boy, will George be able to play cricket with him? I honestly know so little about what they can do with this type of injury.

But I do know one thing. My husband is a hero. The Luftwaffe was given an almighty thrashing on September 15, reversing the bad fortune the RAF had endured for more than a fortnight before, and George was at the very forefront of the defence of London and Britain. I hope that whatever happens to him in the future, people won’t forget what he did for them.

The numbers had to be confirmed by the Observer Corps in their posts and I gather that there were almost 1000 aircraft in total. This time, though, they were not on their way to bomb George at Biggin Hill and other airfields in the South-East, but heading for London instead, where they dropped thousands of bombs on the docks and surrounding areas. It makes me so furious to think that they’re dropping bombs on civilians. More than 400 people were killed in London on September 7. The only good thing about it is that for the first time in an age, Biggin Hill didn’t get bombed.

What terrified me more than anything was the sheer scale of what the Germans threw at us. When I got back to the cottage that evening, Violet was getting ready for her shift. I had been feeling ill and unsettled all day and I told her what had happened. She said that I looked pale and was I alright.

‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ I told her, ‘I’ve been feeling like this for the past week or more now. Sick and tired in the morning, a bit under the weather.’

‘That’s because you’re pregnant!’ she said triumphantly.

‘My goodness, could I be?’ I said, completely shocked. I hadn’t even thought of it. But once we had talked about it a little more I realised she was right. I am pregnant, I’m sure of it, though of course I will have to get a medical opinion just to make sure.

What a day to find out such momentous news. The first thing I thought was this: what kind of a world are George and I bringing a child into? For all I know we will be ruled by Germany by the time our child is born. In fact, after recent events, that is what seems most likely. The idea of having a baby fills me with joy but it makes me scared too – what will happen if George doesn’t make it and I’ll have a child with no father? I’ll be a mother and a wife with no husband.

Come on, George, I implored him, sat at the kitchen table after Violet had left. Lots of pilots have already died in this war, but I know that George has survived a long time and they say it’s the newer pilots who get thrown in at the deep end that have less chance of survival. What am I saying? No, I don’t want them to die in George’s place; I don’t want any of them to die. But the main thing is that I want my husband, my husband that I haven’t even had a chance to get to know properly yet, I want him to live. Stay alive, George, stay alive. Stay alive for me, stay alive for our baby; stay alive for you, so that you can enjoy being a father and a husband instead of being a bloody hero. Haven’t you already been a hero for long enough?

I wrote him a letter. I hope it reaches him safely.

Jimmy finally got his wish to meet George as well. We went into the garden after George arrived in his car and Jimmy showed us a plane that he had fashioned, with some help from his father, out of some pieces of wood with glued-together matchsticks for a propeller. He buzzed around the garden holding the plane in his right hand, soaring one moment, then diving down above the carrots, skimming the leaves with an improvised wooden undercarriage.

‘Be careful of those carrots,’ shouted out Mrs Partridge, who had also heard of George’s arrival and come straight to the house, ‘you’ll bring out the carrot flies if you brush the leaves too much.’

George laughed and Jimmy came and stood in front of him, panting a little, like a dog that’s just brought back a stick.

‘I’ve been watching you flying out of my window there,’ said Jimmy, pointing at his house.

‘How do you know it was me?’ said George.

‘Well, Mrs Sheridan told me you were a very good pilot and I think you can tell when you look up at the sky who the really good pilots are.’

‘How can you tell?’ asked George, sounding genuinely intrigued.

‘Well, I’ve seen some fighting going on between the Hurricanes and the Messerschmitts and I think that the ones that stay and fight and don’t run away look like they’ll last the longest. But once you dive away from the fight you’ve got your back to the enemy and they’ll shoot you in the back, won’t they Mr Sheridan.’

‘Well, yes, Jimmy, they will shoot you in the back if you give them the chance, just as I would with them. That’s the way it goes up there. And you’re right: good pilots always turn round and face the fight. That’s not just a good lesson for pilots, either; it’s a good lesson for life. Have courage. Be brave. Face your fears.’

I was impressed by George’s words but a little scared of whether this heroic attitude was really the best way to stay alive. Surely sometimes it is alright to run away, isn’t it?

Afterwards, we went back into the house, sat at the kitchen table and talked over a cup of tea. George told me that his squadron was being moved to Wales but that he had insisted that he wanted to stay. They’d eventually agreed. He said it was better for us. If he was in Wales he would never get to see me unless I got a transfer.

That may be true, but he said that the squadron was being moved because they need a rest. Surely George needs a rest as well. I went to scrub some potatoes and after I had got them where they had been drying in the shed, I carried on talking to him.

‘Wouldn’t it be good if you had a rest? You must be so tired after all the flying you’ve done and they must think you need it.’

George didn’t reply. I looked up from the potatoes and saw that he had fallen asleep, still sitting upright in his chair.

I sat awake afterwards, worrying about George in the dead quiet of the night, and thinking how unfair it is for us to be married now, when all this is happening. Why can’t there be peace so that we can be together without worrying about whether we will see one another again?

I told Violet about my worries this morning. ‘I’d be more worried about us,’ she said, trying to be kind, I think, but sounding blunt, ‘it wouldn’t surprise me if they got us with their bombs long before they get George with their bullets. Just think: he can shoot back, he’s in control of his destiny in his shiny new plane and his Browning machine guns. What have we got? We’ve just got to hope that the pilots and the AA guns and the balloons stop the bombers from getting through, because if they drop a bomb on us then we’re finished.’

Civilians were killed in raids in London and Portsmouth a couple of days ago and it’s made me very angry. It’s one thing to kill a soldier, quite another to murder an old lady or a child lying in their own bed. But I suppose we’re all in this war together now: men, women, children, all.

Which reminds me . . . In a solemn ceremony the other day, in recognition, I think, of the fact that Jimmy and I ‘captured’ the German pilot who baled out of his plane, I was awarded a shotgun and ammunition by the Home Guard. Jimmy was thrilled but I told him he couldn’t use it. Violet said it might be useful in case any of her soldiers get too possessive or want to try and marry her. I said to both of them that I would look after it and I hid it under the floorboard in the same place as this diary, with the mouse trap set next to it, but not too close to the trigger.

On almost every day this week something enormous has happened. Yesterday Biggin Hill was bombed, though a message got through to say that George was alright. On the 15^th hundreds of German aircraft poured in over the skies of Britain but according to the papers the Luftwaffe was crushed.

I received a letter from George telling me about him shooting down an Me 109, crash-landing at Hawkinge and surviving a further bombing there. But even this news was not as exciting as what happened to me on the 16^th. I was in the garden of the cottage pulling up potatoes when I saw something in the sky from the corner of my eye. It looked like a dandelion seed far in the distance, slowly falling to earth. I had only just noticed it when a cry came up from next-door. ‘It’s a parachutist!’ said Jimmy. ‘Let’s go and get him.’ He was jumping up and down and pointing at the seed, which the wind was pulling closer and closer to us.

‘I’m getting my air-gun,’ shouted Jimmy and ran back to the house. A few seconds later he was running through the fields behind the houses with the gun in his hand.

‘Wait!’ I said.

‘Come on!’ he called back to me, still running.

What if Jimmy pointed a gun at the pilot and the pilot shot him, or twisted the gun from his hand and whacked him over the head with it? I ran back to the house and pulled out the air-rifle that Violet and I have been using and sprinted after Jimmy, shouting his name as loudly as I could. He was far ahead of me and I could see the airman dangling from his parachute just a few hundred feet up in the sky now and falling, falling, falling.

‘Jimmy, wait for me,’ I yelled, but still the boy kept running, scrambling over a field gate and past some horses. Just before I reached the gate I lost sight of both the parachutist and Jimmy behind a hedgerow. I tried to speed up and as I reached the gate I saw Jimmy already pointing his gun as the airman fell the final few yards to the ground and his parachute sank onto the grass. The airman had fallen over and the time it took him to pull himself up was just enough for me to catch up and stand alongside Jimmy. I was completely breathless but mustered the strength to put the gun up to my shoulder and point it straight at the airman’s head.

He stood up. I felt my heart booming in my temples and my sweaty hands shaking.

‘Good afternoon,’ he said in an almost perfect English accent as he stood up slowly, bringing his right hand to his forehead in a mock-formal salute.

‘Put your hands up, mister’, shouted out Jimmy with shocking assurance.

And the German airman put his hands above his head and smiled. ‘Please don’t shoot me, young man, or you, pretty lady,’ he said to us. ‘I will do anything you say.’

I had expected to hate this man but I was surprised by how handsome he was when he smiled, shocked at how he looked the same age or younger even than George, and alarmed by my feelings of sympathy rather than rage even though, for all I knew, he may have shot George out of the sky that very day.

‘Go that way,’ I said without smiling, pointing with my gun at the gate we had just come through, and we started walking.

When we reached the gate, though, a gaggle of armed men of middle to old age were trotting down through the next field with shotguns and pitch-forks at the ready. It was the Home Guard.

‘We’ll take over from here, miss,’ said the farmer at the front of the group. I loosened my grip on the rifle I’d been pointing and for the first time realised that if the gun had been a small animal I would have crushed the life out of it.

As George came in the front door, I saw Jimmy, the boy next-door, running toward the house as well but I waved him away without George noticing. The following day, he came and asked whether that was ‘the Hurricane pilot’ who had come to see me. He was terribly disappointed that he hadn’t got to speak to him but I explained to him that married people sometimes need to spend time on their own.

‘That’s what my mother said as well,’ he replied.

‘That’s because it’s true,’ I laughed, tousling his hair.

George had to return to Biggin Hill the same day in preparation for an early start on August 11 and after he had gone and the sun briefly appeared just before it set, bathing everything in warm orange light, I wondered whether we really had met or whether I had fallen asleep on my day of leave and imagined the entire dramatic scene – thunder clouds and all.

I told Violet about it yesterday and she seemed amused, and perhaps even a little peeved. ‘So you do get to have some fun after all, even if it’s only once a month,’ she said, before going outside to take pot-shots at Adolf in the late evening sunshine. While she was shooting I looked at our vegetables and noticed with a tinge of pride that everything was growing fast and looking healthy and strong. The beans are flowering and the potato plants are tall. Soon everything will be ready to harvest and eat. I only hope that I don’t make a mess of cooking them all.

Mrs Partridge saw us in the garden and invited us both round for tea and scones with this summer’s strawberry jam whenever we were not working. Violet stifled a yawn, thanked Mrs Partridge for the invitation and said that she wasn’t sure when she would next be available. But I jumped at the opportunity and asked as well whether Mr Partridge had any luck getting some real guns for my ladies to use.

‘The men round here don’t think that us ladies should be carrying guns,’ said Mrs Partridge. ‘My husband asked the Home Guard, as they’re now known, and they said they didn’t have enough guns for themselves, let alone enough to give to womenfolk.’

‘Well, he should tell them,’ I said, getting a little cross, ‘that if German parachutists land in the fields round here and come to these houses, they’ll be able to do anything to us and we won’t be able to protect ourselves.’

But what’s that? It sounds like bombs falling close by. The radar station is being bombed!

And then, the day after his reply came, I got a message at the RDF station to say that George had baled out of his plane but that he was uninjured. Strangely enough the message mentioned that George had been brought back to Biggin Hill by ‘the newspaper journalist Alexander Rhodes.’ How funny. I wonder if they spoke about me.

It made me glad to know that George was alright, but to think of him fluttering down through the sky like a leaf from a tree made me even more frightened. It seems reassuring to think of him in his plane, protected from the bullets, but to think of him falling to earth on his own made me worry about him more. I’ve heard that many pilots have to bale out and almost all that do will be safe. But I think I believed that George was so invincible that he would not even need to jump from his plane. No: George would always be inside the cockpit, soaring majestically over the burnt-out wrecks of German planes, above the pretty patchwork of fields that make up this corner of England, his blue eyes studied in magnificent concentration. Even when I woke up in the night, sweating and fearful, I felt that George would always survive, for how could it be otherwise? But now I worry not just about death but disfigurement. I’ve heard that many pilots get terribly burnt when their planes are hit. What if that was to happen to George? I’ve been having trouble sleeping.

In the days since George survived his bale-out, the weather has been foggy and there have been few German aircraft showing up on my screen. Today’s the first day it’s been fine again. I wrote George a long letter, telling him about Jimmy, the boy next-door, Mr and Mrs Partridge, and Violet’s scandalous life with a number of army officers.

Violet has been pulling my leg a little by asking how I could have got married at 19 years old. She is 21 and says that the war is the best thing that could have happened to her. ‘It’s given me independence, excitement, romance and introduced me to more nice men that I could have dreamt of just a couple of years ago,’ she said to me. ‘And look at you, poor thing. Married already and fretting about her husband.’

‘Well, playing around is all very well,’ I said a little haughtily, ‘but I stopped being a little girl a while ago and when I met George we knew straight away that we would be married and spend the rest of our lives together. You never know, Violet, it might even happen to you one of these days. If you don’t get the clap first, that is.’

‘Why you cheeky girl,’ she said grinning and throwing a cushion at me. ‘I know you’re only jealous.’

The truth is of course that I do wish I was having some fun in my life instead of worrying the whole time, but responsibility comes with love, I think, and I’m a very different type of girl to the flighty and frivolous Violet.

He looked tired, poor thing, and I’m sure he’d lost weight, though perhaps it is just my imagination. If he wasn’t tired before, then he certainly would be after that night. My goodness! I can’t believe I wrote that. All I can think is that it’s Violet’s influence as I’m sure I wouldn’t have written such things before!

When he left, though, the tears came back again and all I could do was to think about what I’d just read in my book: ‘in every parting there is an image of death.’ I dearly don’t want to lose George and I felt terrible the next day about how tired George must be and it made me worry that he would not be able to fly properly. I felt guilty. Had my need to see my husband cost him his life? We managed to speak on the telephone later – calling from Dunkirk to Biggin Hill – and I found out that he was all right, thankfully, though he told me that the combination of the driving and the lack of sleep meant that he probably would not want to do it again unless he could get some proper leave, which looks unlikely at the moment. It therefore seems that I might not see my George for some time.

It upsets me to think that but I’m trying to remain cheerful. I read a funny thing in the newspaper today: two German air officers, whose aircraft had been brought down by RAF fighters, were taken prisoner and temporarily accommodated at an air base in England, where they were provided with the services of a batman.

On starting his duties the batman came rigidly to attention, gave the Nazi salute, and exclaimed ‘Heil Churchill!’ The paper didn’t say whether the German officers found it funny. I suspect they did not.

I’ve continued to practice shooting at Herr Hitler and I’ve been trying to get some better weapons for me and the other ladies to use – an air rifle won’t be much use if there really is an invasion.

Mr Partridge’s wife is one of the women that have been doing shooting practice in the garden. It still seems funny to see a white-haired, fragile-looking lady squinting along the barrel of a boy’s air gun. But despite her generally shy and gentle manner, Mrs Partridge has had a rather exciting life.

She was an army nurse and served in France from 1914 – 1918. She was also one of three nurses sent to man a field ambulance at the Battle of Loos ‘to see if we could save any lives,’ she said. ‘And we did, although many of those terrible cases were absolutely hopeless. What I saw there made me hate war forever. But I want to learn to shoot now all the same.’

I read in the Chronicle the other day that a milkman armed with a shotgun, and a farmer’s daughter between them captured two German airmen not far from here after they had baled out of their plane. I wonder if there will be any Germans landing hereabouts and, if there are, whether an  air gun would be enough to keep them with their hands up while little Jimmy ran for help.

And chaps can be so patronising as well. Here’s an example: I saw that women were being trained to be conductors on London buses as the male conductors could be doing something more useful. Well, I read in the paper that the conductor that was training them said this: ‘She is as good as any of the men I have ever taught in my ten years’ experience. Considering that this morning was the first time she punched a ticket she is doing very well.’ Well, honestly, how hard is it to be a bus conductor and ‘punch a ticket’?

I decided to write a letter to the journalist who wrote this story – a chap called Alexander Rhodes who writes for the Chronicle. I wonder if they’ll print it or whether he will write a letter back to me?

I’ve heard the first big masses of German aeroplanes coming over during the day and seen them on the screen. That very charming man about the same age as my father called Mr Partridge, from the Observer Corps, who mans an observation post nearby and whose wife helps in the garden, told me how to tell the different German aeroplanes apart. But I don’t think I’d like to hang around too closely to look at them – I know that we’re a target to the enemy here and we have to dive into the shelter as soon as we hear the siren. I wonder if George has shot, or been shot at, by any of the ones I heard passing nearby?

We’ve arranged to meet in the next few days. I am so excited that I feel about ten years old again!

The strange thing is that when all you can see is blips on a screen you’ve no idea what is actually going on out there. Despite being the eyes and ears of the RAF, right on the front line of where the German Air Force is attacking us, I feel strangely and almost sadly removed from it all. I want to hear the roar of engines and even the whizz of bullets. It can’t be any worse than how I imagine it to be – with enemy bullets whizzing past George and the other ‘red scarf pirates’ – on a number of sleepless nights that I’ve had in the little cottage.

I’ve seen very little of Violet in the past week as she seems to have found an attractive officer with a congenial billet to share some evenings with. Had it been a year ago I’m sure I’d be scandalised by her behaviour but now I don’t blame her for trying to have some fun while she can. Who knows what will happen in the future?

It’s been a bit wet over the past few days and the slugs have been attacking our crops in the garden. Adolf the scarecrow is unable to offer any deterrent to the slimy beasts and he is looking more and more dishevelled due to the target practice we have been using him for. I’m actually rather pleased by his pathetic appearance. His moustache is drooping in a most unmanly way.

Jimmy, the boy next door, has been giving me shooting lessons with the air rifle. It’s not entirely confidence-boosting to get lessons in anything from a twelve-year-old but my shooting has definitely improved. I can now hit Adolf with a precise head shot nine times out of ten from 50 yards. I’m moving further away over the next few days to see if I can emulate my success from 75 yards and then 100.

I have replied to George and we plan to see one another within the fortnight. I’m sure I shall cry as soon as I see him, though I know I ought not to. Jimmy keeps pestering me to take him to see a real Hurricane pilot, i.e. George, but I don’t think I want my few hours with my husband disturbed by having a twelve-year-old in tow asking questions about aerial combat, guns and engines! I shall go on my own. What I’m most afraid of, dear diary, is that we will both already have changed so much from just a few weeks ago when we last saw each other – I barely know my husband now, but perhaps he is already turning into something even more unfamiliar.