The Battle of Britain Five Months That Changed History, May—October 1940 by James Holland (z-lib.org).epub

mainly conversational) loose ends lying around, which might be fun to pick
up?’ She had taken up his offer and he had duly become smitten. This
beginning of their friendship had also coincided with his first solo flight
with his Auxiliary squadron, 609 (West Riding) Squadron. The two
experiences, he told her, ‘have succeeded in raising the beat of my pulse
(permanently I believe) by several strokes a minute’.
Their friendship had soon flourished. She enjoyed his company and
loved him dearly, but they had not become lovers. In any case, he had
barely seen her since the beginning of the war because he had been
stationed at Drem near Edinburgh. He had written her reams of letters, but
now that his squadron had been moved south, to Northolt, in northwest
London, he was excited by the prospect of seeing more of her.
These past ten days, the pilots had been allowed into town as often as
they liked in the evening, because although 609 Squadron had moved south
on 19 May, it had yet to fly an operational patrol. Now, however, on 30
May, 609 Squadron was finally called to stand by for a patrol over Dunkirk.
It had been a long time in coming, but it was time for 609’s pilots to enter
the fray. They hoped they were ready.
John Dundas’s younger brother, Cocky, was also over Dunkirk again that
day. The two were close – brothers amongst three sisters. Brought up in
rural north Yorkshire, theirs had been a comfortable, idyllic upbringing in
which sport and country pursuits had been an accepted way of life. Cocky
certainly looked up to his older brother, first joining him at Stowe school
and then hoping to follow him to Christ Church, Oxford. John had
graduated with a first in modern history and an award that had sent him for
a year to the Sorbonne in Paris and then to Heidelberg, but during this time
abroad he had lived far too wildly and racked up excessive bills so that their
father told Cocky he could only afford for him to go to Oxford on condition
he won a scholarship. This he did, but to Trinity rather than Christ Church.
In the end, however, his parents were worried that Cocky might prove as
profligate as his brother and so encouraged him not to take up the place.
Bowing to the wishes of his mother and father, Cocky instead became
articled at a solicitor’s firm, a job he loathed.
Meanwhile, John had joined 609 Squadron and Cocky had wanted to fly
too. He had always been fascinated by war as a boy, although it was more
because of the excitement of flying rather than the possible coming of war