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This book car be divided into two sections one being life as a civilian and the second of an airman in the Royal Air Force. The first part deals briefly with the lead-up to war and the action taken by the Council to prepare for it. The months following the outbreak of war were comparatively quiet for the town but they were followed by the “Battle of Britain” which was fought over the town and surrounding areas. The combats overhead, the bombing of the town and other incidents are described up to late 1941. The second part covers service life from 1941 through training to overseas posting. Although, like hundreds of thousands of others, he spent long weeks on monotonous duty he was fortunate they were broken by interesting travels to various destinations - at times a veritable “Cook’s Tour”. The initial posting from the U. K. to Bahrain took 174 days of wanderings; his air evacuation from Bahrain to the Convalescent Camp in Tel Aviv was completed in a day but the return took a month including crossing the Syrian and Iraqi deserts on the same transport and route described by H.V. Morton in his book “In the Steps of the Master”; visits to Babylon, to Jerusalem and the Holy Places, to a Jewish ‘Kibbutz’, to Cairo and the Pyramids and the city of Algiers were all memorable. V. E. Day was declared whilst he was at No. 72 Staging Post, Algiers, and it was the signal for savage riots to break out which were the prelude to the bitter Algerian war of Independence against the French. With his tour of duty completed he returned to the U.K. and after a few months was “de-mobbed” and returned to his civilian life in Local Government.
