F e a t u r e s
I wanted to follow a crew from arrival on a squadron as ‘new boys’, through a number of ops and see them develop into an experienced crew. That way I could show how combat changes people. Slowly I developed the idea of putting together a fictitious crew and making the stories I’d gathered together happen to them.
I researched a real WWII bomber station, RAF Metheringham, an easy choice because it was near my home and has a small museum with lots of information in it. It was also a wartime only station and gave an excellent insight into the very primitive conditions most bomber crews lived under. That made the squadron selection easy too because only 106 Sqn flew operationally from Metheringham and they flew Lancasters. Through the museum I made contact with a number of people who were at Metheringham during the war and I spoke to them all about what it was like and who the Station characters were.
Living in parallel I’d decided that it would be a good idea to view each mission flown, through the eyes of a different member of the crew. That way I could bring out each of their roles while also developing their characters. On one mission I could follow the Bomb Aimer and show how he sets up his bombsight, how the bombs are armed etc. Next I could follow the Flight Engineer and explain fuel and other systems and show how he supported the Pilot. By doing this I could
weave a lot of information, which anyone interested in Lancasters, or WWII flying, would find fascinating, into the plot, while not making it too heavy a read for those not so interested in the detail. And either way, wouldn’t be a distraction from the story. Armed with a lot of information I started to write.
We would spend thirty days in the deserts of the Middle East and then return to the UK for four to six weeks before going out again. While we were out there I would write as much as I could and when we got back to the UK I would give the book to members of the Lincoln Aircrew Association who flew Lancasters and they would proof- read it for me to make sure I’d got everything correct. Despite my best efforts and our AWACs Pilot being the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight Lancaster Pilot at the time, I made a lot of errors which the old boys were quick to put right.
Strangely, I found the actual writing relatively easy. I’d done a lot of flying in many types of aircraft and found I could easily describe it. I also found it therapeutic, as it took me away from the stress of my own flying, while being distantly connected. As we flew ops over Afghanistan for over a year I got to see, in a limited way, how people and crews are changed by their experiences and I fed this into the book too.
Catch 22 The hardest thing about the whole experience was getting the book published. It doesn’t matter how good your book is, if you haven’t been published before you will have a hard time getting a publisher to take you on and you will end up in a ‘Catch 22’ situation, “We won’t publish you because you haven’t been published before”. That’s why it’s been six years between me finishing the book and it being published. If it wasn’t for me promising myself that I wouldn’t let the old boys stories be forgotten, I would have given up long ago. I suspect that happens to a lot of books but so farDemons in the Dark has not only kept the old boys stories alive but has also raised over £1,000 for Help for Heroes, and that can’t be bad.
Demons in the Dark by Tom Atkins can be purchased fromWaterstones and WH Smiths or via the internet.
www.raf-ff.org.uk
Spring 2010
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