We have ways of making you talk presents One Man's Window, an illustrated account of

10 weeks of war, multi April 13th to June 21st, 1942 by Dennis Barnum.

Chapter 8, Roof Away. Lying in bed I like the candle, the orange flame waving on its

white shaft illuminates the hands of the alarm clock. Twenty past four I can give my pilots

another ten minutes sleep. The smell of the candle are the leaping black shadows of this

room and the dark cavern of the dormitory state room, beyond a now part of my life, for

I've settled down to the tempo of battle here. I've even thought out my essential advice

for our survival and air combat, based on my own experience and presuming that to be

shot down, a fighter pilot must make some mistake. It came to me yesterday when watching

the midday raid. I turned to my pilots and said, you fighter pilots are lucky, the bomber

boys over Germany have to face the uncertainties of anti-aircraft fire, but you need never

be shot down. There are only two exceptions. You may get shot down if you're so heavily

outnumbered that you run out of height at airspeed, or that if you're short of fuel and

you're attacked while having to land. There's no other reason to get shot down at all, and

if you are, it's your own damned fault. I'm very much aware of the mistake I made last

time I crashed, and by the light of the fluttering candle I read about it and other recent entries

in the diary I've been keeping. Peter crashed on the cliff tops not hurt, I crashed too,

felt frightful about my broken Spitfire, had fuel left, should never have come into land,

old hands pretend to fight when out of ammo, after all, huns don't know. We learn if we

live, went out for walk in evening, wonderful smells from fields, walking back up the hill,

watched Naxar buildings growing taller and taller, swallowing up the stars, raids all

night. Better trip, surprised chiefly by bringing back

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