"O God of battles! Steel my soldiers' hearts" (Henry V)

.....The fonts I’ve been using are getting boring so I’m being adventuress and  now for this posting I’m using Verdana and it looks very nice.  I’ve been very bored in another way; I am housebound and I cannot go anywhere by myself. Haven’t yet tried out the car.  I will, though; as soon as I can get down there.  I’ve been asked to describe my events in WWII and since VJ Day is coming on September 2, I’ll describe one of many leading to my DFC award.  I do have a log book, but we were forbidden to put them there; only facts about the mission such as the number of hours involved and possibly our destination.  I did fly 60 combat missions and for that I received 11 Air Medals & perhaps one DFC; I don’t know if that qualified for one of my two DFCs; I’d like to think so.

…..On one disastrous mission our plane was loaded with a full tank of fuel and armaments such as depth charges and sleeves of 50 caliber machine gun bullets.  We were halfway down the runway before taking flight when a right front tire blew and the plane skidded and careened about a 100 yards before stopping with the right side of the aircraft tilted on its side.  We all quickly abandoned it before it blew up with the exception of Gordon who was stuck in the nose turret.  I could not leave him there to die alone, and so I rushed back into the plane, and forced open the door to his turret.  And since the plane had not blown up as yet, we decided that we, too, had better leave, and so we did.  Luckily the plane never blew up, and our crew was given a week’s leave to London.  I am fairly certain that I left two or three ladies to carry my offspring, and so now there may be some 60 year olds who are carrying around the Ross genes.

However, I am sure that this was not one of the events for which I received the Distinguished Flying Cross.