What's in a Name?

On September 8 a local anti-aircraft battery hit the lead plane in a formation of three passing Dornier Do 17s. The plane exploded, damaging the others fatally, though one dropped its bombs on the railway line as it was coming down. In October, a friendly Hurricane made a forced landing in a field near the Homes, and before it could be removed, German dive bombers attacked the Homes directly, apparently believing they were a military camp. On October 8 a bomb scored a direct hit on Number ll, seriously damaging Number 8 as well. No one was killed or even injured, because adequate provision had been made for air raid shelter, but the ruined living spaces were terrifying testimony to the power of total war, with their collapsed roofs, smashed doors, broken glass, fallen plaster, and melancholy remains of exposed personal possessions. The attack stunned fifteen-year-old John, since it destroyed the house where his mother had been matron for twenty-five years and where he had been born and grew up.

Surrounded by war in the air and its effects on the ground, caught up in the hype of government pamphlets and movie tone newsreels about the battle of Britain, John increasingly longed to join the RAF, worrying that the war would be over before he would be old enough. One of Will Hopkins's contracts was for remodelling a school where an impetigo epidemic had broken out, and young John became infected as well. He was forced to stay at home, impatient and unshaven because of the vicious skin infection. "I know the RAF will never take me if I look like this," he complained to Peg, and he determined to shave anyway, despite doctor's orders. Soon thereafter the infection cleared up, and he was able to return to work.

But he was not happy, wanting only to be in the RAF, and he soon faced what was, by any reckoning, the major crisis of his young life. He had signed a five-year indenture with Hopkins in 1939, and it exempted him from military service. The job paid very little, but it offered security at a time of record unemployment, since Hopkins had provided it out of friendship to John's older brother, Eric. Gratitude, loyalty, duty, and self-preservation all dictated that John should serve out his apprenticeship. But his desire to fly with the RAF was overwhelming, and he could not resist it. Robing his compulsion in destiny, in Philip Larkin's phrase, John announced his intention to Hopkins. It was a long and difficult confrontation, in which his boss pointed out every disadvantage if John were to enlist. But the young apprentice held his ground. "Mr. Hop kins, I am going," he at last announced decisively. Hopkins was hurt by John's stubbornness and ingratitude, and he held the decision against John even after his untimely death, remarking darkly years later that the apprentice who had broken his indentures to go to war was also the apprentice who never came back. That is one way of understanding this story.

The difficulty of John's decision was compounded by his being under age. When he told the RAF recruiter his birth date, the man told him to try again when he turned eighteen. But after the showdown with Hopkins, he could not imagine going back and asking for a job. What would most likely happen is that Hopkins would refuse to renew his indentures, even if he could. But what John feared even more was that Hopkins might somehow relent out of kindness and actually rehire him. Under those circumstances, John was afraid he would lose his nerve to resign yet again when he turned eighteen, and then he would never see action with the RAF. Driven by the fear, guilt, and desperation known to young people in tough situations which they imagine to be entirely of their own making, John sought out another recruiter, fabricated an earlier birth date, and enlisted successfully just three days before Christmas, 1942. He was seventeen years and four months old, but he was not alone in his eagerness. According to Chaz Bowyer's informative Guns in the Sky, every air gunner in World War Two was a volunteer, and the youngest of them was Sgt. De Sales Glover, who lied about his age of fourteen years to join the USAAF, completed his training, and flew six missions over Germany before his true age was discovered and he was grounded.