Infuriated by this affront to his beloved city, Alf had signed up to join the Royal Air Force. Little did he realise that it would be a full twenty months before he would begin his training. One reason was that there was no shortage of young men applying to become fighter pilots; it was in maintaining the supply of planes, not those who could fly them, where the RAF felt its most pressing need. Moreover, the authorities did not regard a man in a reserved occupation to be high on the call-up list: veterinary surgeons were needed at home to contribute towards the well-being of British agriculture and the all-important food production line. To further add to the problems he faced endeavouring to serve his country, that old bugbear came back to haunt him – mathematics.

He had to pass some fundamental mathematics exams before he would be accepted, and he attended night school in Thirsk to brush up on his slender knowledge of the subject. After a number of failures, he finally gained the necessary grades and was therefore clear to go when his call-up papers arrived.

He described that day in November 1942, as he left Thirsk to begin his training, as the ‘blackest day of my life’. Driving away from 23 Kirkgate, and seeing his pregnant wife waving tearfully from the window, was a scene he would never forget.

Alf’s time in the Royal Air Force was not particularly eventful, and he was only there for just over a year before being invalided out but, ironically, there is a mass of information about that disappointing part of his life. He and Joan wrote to each other almost every day while he was serving, and she kept literally hundreds of the letters that passed between them.

On his very first day away from Joan, he wrote to her:

My Darling Joan,

I have just a few minutes before lights out to write this and I’m feeling very tired after a day of tremendous activity. I feel heaps better than I did this morning; I thought it was the cold that made me feel so rotten, but it wasn’t. It was leaving my little wife that did it. Honestly, Joan, I’ve never felt so completely lousy in my life and believe me, it has been a lesson to me; I’ll never leave my little wife again. It’s funny, I haven’t known you so very long and yet you have become my whole life to me and when I left Thirsk I felt I was leaving a part of myself behind.

He was certainly at a low ebb – but no more so than Joan. Like many other young wives, she was terrified that her husband might be killed while on active service, not a happy thought for a young woman carrying her first child. She knew that she would only see him very rarely, and it certainly didn’t help that his pay was to be a paltry three shillings per day – a big step down from the £4–5 per week he had earned in the practice. He sent as much as he could afford but it amounted to very little. With her parents having none to spare and her husband almost penniless, Joan was supported by a wartime benefit and maternity allowance amounting to about £2 10s per week.

The multitude of letters that passed between Alf and Joan carried a similar theme – Alf, despite the pain of being away from his wife, displayed a determination to do well in the RAF, while Joan wished desperately that he could return home. It was a very sad young woman who waited expectantly each morning for the letter from her husband that would help to lift her spirits.

Alf’s first month was spent at Regent’s Park in London where he was examined, inoculated and trained in preparation for his assignment to an initial training wing. He drilled and marched for hours in all weathers. He attended courses on maths, navigation and meteorology which were followed by test papers. To his surprise, he passed the basic maths exam quite easily.

The standard required was not very high which, of course, suited Alf very well but it was a stern test for those who had had little education; for these men, the sitting of examinations was a frightening experience. Later, when he moved to Scarborough, he was amazed to observe the effect this had on some of his fellow trainees. Men came out in boils, some hardly slept and there were long queues for the lavatories just before the exams.

Alf was older than most of the other men, with the experience of many years of exams behind him and, at the ripe old age of twenty-six, he was looked upon by his comrades as something of a father figure, with many of his mates approaching him for advice.

In one letter home, he gives an indication of the intellectual level of some of the new recruits. When visiting Westminster Abbey, one young airman saw a floor-plate with the words, ‘Here lies an Officer and a Gentleman.’ The young man remarked, ‘Queer idea, burying two guys in one grave.’

Many others, however, were well educated – with doctors, teachers and accountants amongst those who made his group of fellow trainees a true cross-section of society.

While at Regent’s Park, he had one of his teeth pulled out; the RAF was very keen on keeping the men’s teeth in good order, as any problems could cause great pain while they were in the air, affecting their concentration. This particular dentist, however, was of doubtful assistance, yanking out the wrong tooth with a huge pair of forceps that bore a strong resemblance to those used on heavy draught horses. Alf had had few problems with his teeth before he joined up; his service days changed all that.

Not knowing where he would be posted for his initial training, Alf applied for a posting to Scarborough on the Yorkshire coast. This was granted and, on 19 December 1942, he moved there, attached to No 10 Initial Training Wing, No 4 Squadron, No 2 Flight. His spirits soared; he would be a mere forty miles away from Joan in Thirsk.

Alf was in Scarborough for five months and it was here that he spent his happiest times in the RAF. He trained very hard and soon became extremely fit, with long runs along the beach and up the sea cliffs, endless marching, drilling and gymnastics, all turning him into a lean, ten-stone machine. The men were billeted in the Grand Hotel where the windows were nailed open to allow the freezing north-east wind to roar around the dormitories. Far from succumbing to terminal pneumonia, he suffered few coughs and sneezes under this hard regime and felt fitter than he had ever been in his life.

As well as the physical training, he studied navigation, morse code, armaments, hygiene and law, in addition to being taught to understand about engines and to develop basic mechanical skills. Alf passed the exams easily and began to feel that he was acquitting himself well. He looked forward to the next step in his training; he wanted to climb into an aeroplane and get into the air.

Alf’s most enjoyable times at Scarborough, however, were when he visited Joan in Thirsk and this is a part of my father’s life that I find intriguing. He was always a man who played everything by the book; the idea of breaking the law in any way was unthinkable. Throughout his years as a veterinary surgeon he never pocketed a single penny away from the eyes of the Inland Revenue, nor did he smuggle as much as a thimbleful of wine through customs during his holidays abroad. As far as the law was concerned he was a total conformist yet, during the months of January and February 1943, he went absent without leave several times to visit his wife.

He must have been desperate to see her as the consequences, had he been found out, could have been very serious. The need to see Joan was heightened by the strange fact that he experienced odd pains in his stomach as the birth of his first child approached. His letters to Joan at this time refer to these weird pains.

He ‘deserted’ for the third time on 13 February 1943, to visit her on the day that I was born. As he later wrote in Vets Might Fly, he received a severe shock on seeing his son for the first time. He was used to gazing upon new-born animals – usually most attractive and appealing little creatures – but the sight of a freshly-minted human being presented a vastly different picture. His surprise was greeted with waspish indignation by the midwife, Nurse Bell, who promptly showed him another equally grotesque little form in the next room. It was only then that he felt a little calmer.