Description

L FOR LANC

In June 1941 a Wellington bomber flying from RAF Syerston in Nottinghamshire collided in mid-air with an Oxford trainer, killing all on board. Among the eight dead was a relative of the author, and while researching a book about the incident he met a former WAAF who had been stationed at Syerston in 1942. She was extremely helpful in providing background to life on a wartime bomber station, and shortly before her death, gave him a boxful of documents, including a number of anonymously written short stories about life in a Lancaster squadron, telling him that ‘they were his to do what he wanted with’.

Although set on a bomber station during the darkest days of the war, these stories focus not on heroic derring-do in the flak-torn skies over Germany, but on day-to-day life. From the poignant tragedy of ‘The Committee Of Adjustment’ to the satire of ‘A Different Angle’, and the chilling ‘The End Of The Tour’ to the dark introspection of ‘Ubendum Wemendum’, this short but powerful collection of stories convers life on a wartime bomber station as experienced by the ordinary men and women, aircrew, groundcrew and ‘desk-flyers’ who lived it.