Air-Force Dialogue
Wings Over Olympus. By T. H. Wisdom. (Allen and Unwin. 9s.)
Two more books, both by serving officers, on the everlastingly interesting subject of the R.A.F. in action. The first is by a fighter- pilot of the front rank—experiences of the Battle of France and the Battle of Britain included. The French part—the least hackneyed— is the most interesting, though there are always some thrillingly fine moments about the Battle of Britain sections—" Hullo, Opps. How many are there this time? 150 plus." (Meaning how many are coming up against the defending squadrons. More than a hundred and fifty raiders.) "God. Why must there be wars! I wonder if all the boys feel as frightened as I do. . . ."
Wings Over Olympus gives an idea from the R.A.F. point of view of the campaigns in the Libyan desert and in Greece. There is magic in the place-names mentioned, "I motored off to Sunium Bay to look at Poseidon's Temple." . . . "8o Squadron had a flight of Gladiators at Eleusis." . . . But there is much too much of the "Prince Peter, an old friend of mine of the Monte Carlo Rally days. . ."; and all the nicknames of the squadron are always printed in inverted commas, "Tommy" and " Jo " and "the Count" and "Mick." If they had taken their place in squadron life as Tommy and Jo and so forth, why not refer to them so straight- forwardly? The author had two good points—he did on several
occasions himself go flying with the boys on operational raids; au he got to know that a lonely R.A.F. squadron—in tents, in tit . sand, among the mountains, where you will (and the more isolate( the more amusing) can develop an intensive squadron rife of i own. There wa:- obviously plenty of fun going—as well as plenn of work—in isolated squadrons of the Middle Eastern Command Which brings one round to the question of R.A.F. dialogue it general, as expressing the thoughts and outlook of the very brl liant characters—the cream of the cream of our young adventurom manhood—who are making world-history at the minute.
Wing Commander Gleed makes an honest attempt to do it a series of expletives. Hells and damns and bloodies figure in ever sentence of his reported conversations and of his soliloquies. B like patriotism on another occasion, the hells and the damns not enough. It would be possible (though unlikely) to report long R.A.F. dialogue without one of them ; but they are the mere commonplaces, common to the dialogue in all service messes.
What is it that makes the best R.A.F. dialogue so unique, crisp, and clear-cut, and to the point?—in the best sense " witty" meaning the most said in the shortest possible time? One cu a few phrases from the reports of returning bomber crews (most!' already reported in the Air Ministry's fine Bomber Command)-, "screeching round the sky," "the moon was absolutely wizard, "a little spot of light flak" (with an accompanying photograph d the sky torn asunder with a hail of flaming metal); a remark mad to me twenty years ago by a fighter-pilot who had just that morn ing shot three opponents down in flames (in days when there 'wen no parachutes) "they weren't very good really—it seemed a sham to take their money "; a remark recently in Russia when our fighter boys were told that they were entitled to r,000 roubles for ead German aircraft that they had shot down, "No, no, we can't accep it!—it would spoil our amateur status. . . I" These examples, entirely authentic and spontaneous, seem a me to contain in them something of RA.F. (operational air-crew brevity and point—the elusive, but very well worth recapturing
accent of these supreme realists of our generation. H. G.
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