Fly Boy

PUFFIN CANADA

FLY BOY

ERIC WALTERS
is the highly acclaimed and bestselling author of sixty-five novels for children and young adults. His novels have won the Silver Birch Award and the Red Maple Award, as well as numerous other prizes, including the White Pine, Snow Willow, Tiny Torgi, Ruth Schwartz, and IODE Violet Downey Book Awards, and have received honours from the Canadian Library Association Book Awards, the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, and UNESCO’s international award for Literature in Service of Tolerance. Eric is the founder of The Creation of Hope (
www.creationofhope.com
), an organization that provides care, support, and hope for orphans in Kenya. He has donated royalties from many of his novels to promote humanitarian causes.

To find out more about Eric and his novels, or to arrange for him to speak at your school, visit his website at
www.ericwalters.net
.

ALSO BY ERIC WALTERS

FROM PENGUIN CANADA

The Bully Boys

The Hydrofoil Mystery

Trapped in Ice

Camp X

Royal Ransom

Run

Camp 30

Elixir

Shattered

Camp X: Fool’s Gold

Sketches

The Pole

The Falls

Voyageur

Black and White

Wounded

Camp X: Shell Shocked

Camp X:Trouble in Paradise

PUFFIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

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First published 2011

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  10 (WEB)

Copyright © Eric Walters, 2011

Foreword copyright © Philip Gray, 2011

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publisher’s note:This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental
.

Manufactured in Canada.

LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

Walters, Eric, 1957–

Fly boy / Eric Walters.

ISBN 978-0-14-318027-2

I. Title.

PS8595. A598F59 2011     jC813’.54     C2010-906196-9

Visit the Penguin Group (Canada) website at
www.penguin.ca

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FOR THOSE GALLANT MEN AND WOMEN—

MANY OF WHOM ARE NOW GONE—

WHO GAVE OF THEMSELVES TO SAVE DEMOCRACY

FOREWORD

The action within this story takes place at a time when the powers of good and evil stood face to face, eyeball to eyeball, each side convinced that victory in World War Two was within its grasp. The aircrews on both sides were pawns in a sinister game, their leaders locked in a power struggle to the death. Unconditional surrender was the only acceptable solution for either side.

We in Bomber Command were well aware that every time we left the deck, some of us would live, some would die. While the majority of us were around the age of twenty-one, sadly fifty percent of us never lived to see twenty-two. As
Fly Boy
makes clear, experience and skill may have helped in our legendary struggle for survival, but these were not the only factors contributing to success. Most of it came down to Lady Luck.

The air war in World War Two knew no end, no hesitation. Each and every day, by daylight and by darkness, we flew our heavy bombers forth from the runways. Flying by night, we’d get the wild idea that we were the only ones out there—until we neared the target. Suddenly the dangers would come into full view. There would be bombs going down, varying calibres of anti-aircraft fire coming back up, spoofs exploding, bombers colliding, fighter flares erupting, factories on fire,
tracer bullets slicing every which way, unfortunate Lancasters being bombed from above, aircraft—theirs and ours—going down in flames, and the inevitable swarm of searchlights probing everywhere, never resting until they found a victim.

To me it was the nearest thing to hell on earth that I had ever seen. And yet, as operations continued, we found ourselves actually becoming accustomed to the outrage—accepting the explosions, the carnage, the noise, and the smells as routine. Most frightening of all, we were becoming really good at our jobs.

But while the results we achieved were impressive, the price we paid was horrendous. On one occasion, as I secured myself into the pilot’s seat of a Lancaster bomber, I remember thinking,
Am I really the same shy little boy from the northeast of Scotland who, just the day before yesterday, was racing barefoot across a farmer’s field, knees skinned, pants ripped, trying to catch a rabbit? What is this war doing to me?

Read along with
Fly Boy
and feel what we felt, see what we saw, live what we lived. Eric has perfectly captured the spirit of the war days, when the future of the world was in the balance and we had no choice but to go forward.

Flight Lieutenant Philip Gray, AEA

186 and 622 Squadrons

Bomber Command

Philip Gray’s riveting account of his days in Bomber Command can be found in his book
Ghosts of Targets Past
(Grub Books), which is available at bookstores, through
Amazon.ca
, or by contacting the author directly at philip.
[email protected]
to receive a personalized copy.

I stared out of the train window and watched as the countryside passed by. It looked so calm and prosperous and peaceful. But why shouldn’t it? The war was half a continent and a full ocean away in either direction.

Chip slumped into a seat across from mine.“I found this in the club car,” he said. He had a newspaper in his hands. “It’s yesterday’s
Toronto Daily Star
.”

“What are the headlines?”

He held up the front page. Under the date—September 2, 1943—the large black type read
ALLIES SLICE THROUGH SICILY
! and beneath that was a photograph of a Tiger tank rolling past a destroyed building.

“We’ve been gaining ground, especially since the Americans entered the war, but the Germans still have a lot of fight in them,” Chip said.

“A lot less fight than if they hadn’t tried to take on Russia as well,” I said.“It’s just a matter of time, now, until we invade France and start taking it back.”

“Yeah, and with our luck, it will probably all be over before we’re even old enough to enlist.”

“Hard to say,” I muttered.

“Don’t get me wrong,” he went on. “Of course I want the
war to be over, to beat the Nazis … but still, I don’t want to miss my chance to be part of it.”

“You’re preaching to the choir, buddy,” I said.

“Just think—we only have to put up with one more year of boarding school before we can enlist together next summer, when we both turn eighteen … like we promised we would.”

This was getting harder. Chip had been my best friend forever, and I couldn’t help feeling like a bit of a rat. I took a deep breath.

“What if I told you that I can’t keep that promise?”

“What are you talking about?” Chip looked puzzled.

“You’re the only person I know who wants to enlist even more than I do. Is it your mother? I know it’s hard on her, what with your father and all.”

My father was a Spitfire pilot, and he’d been shot down and taken prisoner. It was terrible knowing he was a prisoner of war, but at least we knew he was safe, and the monthly letters we received confirmed that.

“My mother’s not so crazy about the idea either,” Chip admitted. “But you know, Robbie, you will be eighteen, an
adult
, so really, if you want to enlist, she can’t stop you.”

“It’s not that she’ll stop me,” I said. “Actually, she’ll be far too late to even try to stop me.”

“What are you babbling on about?”

We were less than thirty minutes out of Toronto now. I’d put it off as long as I could—but that just made it harder now.

“What if I told you … I won’t have to wait a year to be part of the fighting?” I asked.

“I’d tell you to quit kidding around.”

Even if I told him, he wasn’t going to believe me. I reached
into my pocket and pulled out the papers and handed them to him.

“What are these?”

“My enlistment papers.”

“Your
what
?” he yelled.

Heads all around the car turned toward us.

“Keep your voice down,” I hissed at him. “Those are my enlistment papers. I joined the Royal Canadian Air Force.”

“That’s not possible. You’re not old enough!”

“Keep your voice
down
,” I said again.

“Oh … sorry.”

“You’re holding the proof in your hands. Remember last month when I went down to Toronto to see my sick great-aunt?”

“I remember. I thought it was kind of odd. You don’t even like her very much.”

“I don’t, but I needed an excuse to get away.”

“So you didn’t visit your great aunt?”

“Of course I did, but that wasn’t the only reason I went to Toronto. I went down to enlist.”

“If you wanted to enlist, you could have just gone down to Kingston. It’s so much closer to home,” Chip said.

“That’s
why
I didn’t. I wanted to go someplace where I was less likely to bump into anybody who knew me,” I explained. “Besides, I had other business to take care of.”

“But I don’t get it. Even if they didn’t know you, they would still know from your ID that you’re only seventeen and not eligible to enlist.”

“
I’m
only seventeen, but not my brother.”

“Your brother is eleven years old, so how would that help?” he asked.

“Not my
younger
brother, my
older
brother.”

“You don’t have an older brother!” Chip exclaimed. “You’ve got one brother and two sisters, and you’re the oldest kid in your family.”

“I am the oldest, but I wasn’t the firstborn. My parents’ first child, David James McWilliams, was born a year earlier than me. He only lived a few days, but he was born and baptized, and I used those papers to enlist.”