A moment in war

John Colville's poignant glimpse of bombers preparing for take-off

Colville spent most of WW2 working for Churchill in Downing Street. With great reluctance, Churchill allowed him to briefly enlist in the RAF as a pilot. His diary for November 1943 includes this moving comment on the sadness of war as he watched Lancasters and Halifaxes preparing for that night's raid on Berlin:

'I stood outside a hangar and watched one three-ton lorry after another debouch a hundred or more young men, who walked silently and unsmiling to their allotted aircraft. Accustomed as I had already become to the gaiety and laughter of fighter pilots, I was distressed by the tense bearing and drawn faces of the bomber crews. At that time, late in November 1943, some eighty per cent were failing to complete unscathed their tours of thirty operations. Of courage they had plenty, but there was nothing but lip-biting gloom registered on those faces.’

Colville The Fringes of Power Vol II, p. 72.

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