Angels in Blue

 

In the Second World War, the malign intent of the Luftwaffe made no distinction between service men and service women. Or between civilians and non-civilians.

 

A member of the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force was just as likely to be caught beneath an aerial blitzkrieg as an RAF pilot, or a member of one of the ground crews that serviced the planes.

 

With the exception of the nurses who travelled on RAF transport planes to evacuate the wounded from Normandy and beyond, no WAAFs flew in the war. But they had to dive for cover during an air raid just as the men did. By 1946 one hundred and eighty seven WAAFs had been killed on duty.

 

And no RAF base could have functioned without its female contingent — without these angels in blue — and their roles were as diverse as they were essential; from plotting the movements of enemy aircraft to packing parachutes, from aircraft maintenance to managing the operation of barrage balloons.

 

It is also not beyond the bounds of possibility that they helped to steady the nerves of the men around them. It is perhaps harder for a man to show fear in the presence of a woman. At no point in history were the better angels of men’s nature more needed than during the strafing attacks that RAF bases were subjected to time and again.

 

When the Messerschmitts, and the Dorniers and the Focke-Wulfs attacked RAF bases, the WAAFs were there in the front line as the bullets and the bombs came down. And they were there right to the end, to hand in or fold away their uniforms when the killing was done.  

  

“Wherever you were on the base, the sound of enemy planes was always accompanied by the same command. Battle bowlers everyone! Put them on now!”

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“But really what was the point? Or of running for cover? Especially when the raiders came.”

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“And come they did, both fighters and bombers, a host of gaunt rooks and sleek ravens, all fiercely taloned and cloaked in shields of impenetrable ebon, a descending swarm that could never be beaten away. She hated the Stukas most of all, the way they poised themselves seemingly at the highest vaults of the sky, like gargoyles on the cornerstones of a church cathedral, before falling on their prey, unleashing that terrible wail as they disgorged their cargo of spinning bombs. She wondered if the purpose of the black winged demons was solely to make that terrifying sound  – surely a note that could only have come from some pit of the damned – before the other raiders came in for the kill, to so unnerve those on the ground that they forgot to run for cover.”   

 

The Crucible from the short story collection, The Painted Sky