Philly
My family was pretty unconventional for the time, I suppose, although I never realised it when I was young. Even the most eccentric childhoods seem normal when it’s all you’ve ever known.
Most of the time her Polish roots were subsumed by a wish to appear thoroughly British, although her cut-glass accent would slip and she’d even lapse into speaking her native language when she’d had a few drinks.
The one exception to following British customs was at Christmastime, when she’d insist on observing her childhood traditions.
We’d fast all day on Christmas Eve while the house filled with the wonderful smells of the twelve dishes she’d prepare for our Wigilia feast, to be eaten that night while we held our Christmas vigil.
I loved the vividly coloured barszcz with little uszka dumplings, the wild mushroom pierogi fried in butter, and the poppy seed rolls she made for dessert.
Ella and Beatrice, my Scottish friends, would beg their parents to be allowed to come and spend the evening at my house, thrilled by our exotic traditions as well as the opportunity to extend Christmas by a day.
I was sent to boarding school and left largely to my own devices during the holidays, spending my days devouring books in the local library or staying over at Ella’s.
My two brothers were older. Frank, who was ten years my senior and had a somewhat pompous and superior attitude to match, took over the running of the factory once Father left.
I was closer to Teddy, who was nearer to me in age.
And when he joined the RAF, based at Turnhouse, just outside Edinburgh, he was the one who got me interested in flying.
I think I was about fifteen when I first pulled on a pair of jodhpurs and a sheepskin jacket and climbed into a plane with Teddy for him to take me for a spin.
I was immediately hooked. It gave me a freedom I’d never known before.
He pulled back on the throttle and we soared away out over the sea, flirting with the clouds, leaving behind all the petty mundanities that existed back on solid ground.
I loved the logic of it, the laws of physics that made us airborne and kept us aloft, and from that moment on I was determined I’d learn to fly.
Mother gave me a pretty generous allowance and I spent every penny of it on lessons.
By the time I finished school, I had my pilot’s licence along with an offer to study Maths at Cambridge.
But then the war changed everything, turning our lives upside down.
It closed some doors but opened others, and so I shelved my plans to go to university and wrote a letter to a woman I’d heard about from Teddy, who was recruiting female pilots into the Air Transport Auxiliary.
I desperately wanted to do something useful, especially when I read about Germany invading Poland.
Even though my mother had turned her back on her homeland and her family there, my Polish roots ran deep within me, and I realised my pilot’s licence would probably be of more practical use than a university degree.
Teddy was doing his bit, and I wanted to help where I could as well.
Now that Britain was at war, things moved fast. Almost straight away, I was invited to attend an interview at White Waltham Airfield in Berkshire.
And so I did the logical thing and flew down for it in the Tiger Moth I’d borrowed from my flying instructor.
I pulled up on the edge of the runway alongside a parked-up Spitfire and climbed out of my plane, clutching my handbag and attempting to smooth down my hair, which was in a sorry state having been squashed into my flying helmet for the journey.
An RAF mechanic marched up to me pretty smartly and asked me what the hell I thought I was doing, arriving unannounced and unauthorised like that.
I pointed out that it was hardly unannounced, and neither was it unauthorised: I’d radioed the tower and been given permission to land, and I had an appointment to see Miss Pauline Gower.
He scowled at me. ‘Oh, you’re one of them , are you? Bloody women, thinking they can fly planes.’
‘I don’t think I can fly a plane. I can,’ I retorted. ‘As, in fact, I have just proven. Q.E.D.’
‘Queuey . . . what now?’
‘Q.E.D. Quod erat demonstrandum . It means “that which was to be demonstrated”. And now, if you would be so kind as to point me in the direction of Miss Gower’s office, I shall leave you to get on with your work, which I’m sure is of far greater importance than wasting time attempting to put a woman in what you mistakenly believe to be her place. ’
He scowled again, but waved the spanner he was carrying in the general direction of a group of Nissen huts beside the control tower before turning away and marching off towards the Spitfire, shaking his head and grumbling something that was, fortunately, largely unintelligible.
My ‘interview’ was a formality. Pauline Gower had seen me land.
‘You’re very young. But if you can handle a plane, you’re in,’ she said, after a cursory glance at my licence and a few questions about my age and my schooling.
‘Welcome to the ATA, Miss Buchanan. Our ferry pool pilots work to a schedule of thirteen days on and two days off. When can you start?’
And so, a fortnight later, I found myself based in Luton, where I was to undergo Elementary Flying Training School.
Even though I already had my licence, every ATA pilot had to go right back to the beginning and learn a new way of flying, without instruments, using maps and plotting a course within sight of the ground below.
Our job as ferry pilots would be to fly planes up and down the country to where they were needed.
Sometimes it would be a brand-new model, just off the production line, needing to be delivered to an air base.
Other times, especially later as the war heated up, we had to deliver damaged planes back to the factory to be fixed or to the scrapyard if they were beyond mending.
Every job was different, but the crates we were flying weren’t up to scratch.
Even the new planes were usually unfinished, lacking their instruments, which would be fitted by the RAF at the base.
So, because we were essentially flying blind, with only a map and compass, we had to navigate by sight along railway lines and rivers.
That meant we could only fly during the daytime and were grounded when visibility was poor.
Which was often, of course, in the British winter.
It was a frustration for me because Teddy had taught me all about using instruments, and I enjoyed the technical aspects almost as much as the sense of liberty I felt as I soared above the clouds and set my course by dead reckoning, relying only on my readings and my instinct.
My exasperation overflowed on the first day I was allowed up in a trainer.
The plane I had been assigned to was a ‘Maggie’ – a Miles Magister low-wing trainer – for a lesson with Captain Weatherly, an elderly former First World War pilot who’d been drafted in out of his retirement to teach us recruits.
He sported an impressive white moustache, streaked with yellow from the cigarettes he smoked almost non-stop, even when behind the throttle of a plane.
It was so wide that he’d twirled the ends into points that jutted out well beyond the sides of his jowly cheeks.
Captain Weatherly was renowned for taking a dim view of women being allowed anywhere near an aircraft, let alone being allowed to fly one, so I don’t think either of us faced the prospect of the lesson with much enthusiasm.
I climbed into the seat behind him and tried not to breathe in too much of his second-hand cigarette smoke as he barked a few instructions at me.
We took off and I began to relax a little, enjoying the sensation of being airborne again after days of theory classes in a poky Nissen hut.
It was a beautiful day, the sky clear and visibility good, and I could plot my course with ease, following the railway line beneath us.
I amused myself by using the points of the Captain’s moustache as an artificial horizon, flying straight and level as instructed.
My spirits lifted, and so did the plane as I eased back on the throttle, instinctively climbing higher.
Through my headset, I heard the Captain shout a command to reduce height immediately.
But I wanted to climb just a little higher, putting the Maggie through her paces.
He swivelled round in his seat, fixing me with a baleful glare.
I could see him mouthing something at me, since I was ignoring what he’d been shouting through the headset, and I knew that – in between the expletives – he was telling me to obey orders and return the aircraft to the ceiling of three hundred feet he’d specified at the outset.
His face had turned a furious dark red, but the blue of the sky above us was just too tempting and I continued my climb.
Suddenly, the plane lurched and bucked, and the controls stopped responding to my touch.
The pitch of the engine began to increase, rising to a scream, and the nose lifted higher.
Panic rose in my chest as I tried to compensate, but to no avail.
The Captain had taken back control and begun a slow roll.
Nausea rose in my throat, and I swallowed hard as we climbed up and over, making a full loop.
At the very top, as I hung there helpless, my straps cutting into my shoulders, I vowed never to disobey instructions again. I’d learned my lesson.