SYNOPSIS - The Breighton Twins. 12 CHAPTERS. BOOK COMPLETED
Balloon Command closed down when the events of the second world war changed to the offensive. Basher who had been a Balloon Operator remustered to Teleprinting and was finally sent to Breighton 78 Squadron belonging to Bomber Command 4 group, stationed near York, England.
Within days of being introduced to her new job in signals she met up with a telephonist who came from the same part of London, whose personality was similar and who looked vaguely alike. The first two weeks of their friendship Basher discovered that her new mate was on a charge for being drunk and disorderly in the city of York, was confined to camp for two weeks. The two girls bonded over coffee in the NAAFI each evening for an hours break from the spud bashing that June had to do in the cookhouse. Their working shifts were together, but both came under the scrutiny and dislike of the Warrant Officer in charge of their section. He bullied them both, they were blamed for everything that went wrong. He did finally feign friendliness during an evening shift and listened with great mirth to June's dirty jokes, going hysterical when she told him she'd have his guts for garters!
His life's experience was limited, being a country boy, but didn't stop him turning the tables on June by charging her with insubordination to a senior NCO - despite his hysterics at the time! June was not amused and makes that abundantly clear.
Basher found her job both interesting and yet infinitely sad. The knowledge that she was responsible for the first handling of classified information about the amount of bombs in any given aircraft. Details of the targets i.e. August/17th 1944 Brest Shipping in Port area 18/19 Sterkrade (Essen) Synthentic oil plant. 25th Pas-De-Calais Flying Bomb site. Information on weather conditions. The rendezvous with other squadrons. After the raids came the sending of more than thirty telegrams to loved one's telling them their sons and husbands had been either killed or presumed missing. The unofficial telegrams that Basher kept in her top pocket advising loved one's of the arrival on leave of a member of aircrew, and memorising the aircraft they would be flying in. Then the heart-stopping experience of watching from her office window as each aircraft touched down, and realising that the particular telegram would not be going, and as on one occasion, the wheels touch the tarmac but have to fly another circuit because they had overshot the runway. Seconds later a massive explosion, the aircraft couldn't make it - and neither did the crew - a telegram went, but this time telling the wife her husband wouldn't be meeting her at Kings Cross that day, because he'd been killed over his own airfield.
Basher wrote a script so that both girls could enter an audition for a camp concert. This proves to be hilarious. But the Warrant Officer was not amused to find that two of his staff had to be released from time to time for rehearsals, and gives them both a hard time. Finally the producer, who happened to be a pilot and an officer, over-rode him. The majority of the cast in the show were aircrew. Just as the show was beginning to shape up, the majority of the cast plus the producer all go missing presumed killed on a raid, much to the delight of Warrant Officer Pratt! However six months later Basher thinks she's seen a ghost when the Pilot/Producer walks into her signals section explaining that the French Resistance helped his escape!
The many intricacies of life beset the two friends who are named by many as the Breighton Twins. Basher is engaged but when she's sent to Heslington Hall - Bomber Command 4 Group headquarters for two weeks on loan, she meets an airman at a dance at Heslington Hall who is also on loan. He seems keen on Basher and invites her for a week-end near to where he is stationed. The perfect gentleman at all times, he books her into the YWCA in the city, and they both look forward to an enjoyable week-end. What he has omitted to tell her, is that there is another WAAF keen on him, who not only books into the same YWCA but shares a room with Basher!
At the eleventh hour they unravel the truth. Both girls have a date with the same airman! Basher being the earlier of the two. It turns into a week-end of tears, frustration and mild violence on the part of the other WAAF. Basher intends ending her engagement because of her high moral code, but this causes a terrible argument with her father. The girl who shared her room in the YWCA wins her man, her advantage is she works with him.
Finally June meets a soldier early in 1945, and marries within months of meeting him. She becomes pregnant purposely in order to leave the forces planning to join him. He is a regular soldier and at that stage the war looked like imminently coming to an end. Basher is intimidated by her father who organises her wedding without her knowledge, telling her when all the plans are laid. She is too frightened to call it all off, so much has gone into the planning. Food coupons and clothing coupons have been borrowed in order to ensure the best for his daughter, but Basher simply cannot hurt him, despite her misgivings about her feelings toward her fiancee, and her anger at her father for interfering in her life.
She finally leaves RAF Breighton at the beginning of August 1945.
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