Never Forget You by Jamila Gavin

  

Dodo, Gwen, Noor and Vera meet at boarding school.  Just before the outbreak of World War II.   Dodo’s parents live in Germany and are Nazi sympathisers. Gwen acts as narrator and is at school because her parents live in India. Noor is from India, daughter to a Sufi philosopher and sees fairies.  Vera is Jewish.  Her parents and younger brother have been seized by the Nazis. She lives with her aunt and uncle in Paris.    

Noor’s story is partly true.  The other characters are fictional.

Dodo dies when she becomes involved in the rescue form Dunkirk. She has been working as a spy, looking into the work of Nazi sympathisers.

Gwen tells us very little about her work but it is top secret and involves maps.      

Noor becomes a member of SOE – Special Operations Executive. She works with the Resistance in France but is captured and executed.

Vera works for the Resistance in Paris and is very involved in forging documents in order to allow Jews to escape the Nazis.

There is some romance for all four girls and an upbeat ending for Gwen and Vera.   

This is a very long read – 500 pages of blocked text. There is a short note at the end about Noor Inayat Khan     

 

Just One More Day by Jessica Blair

This was classed in my local library as a family saga. There is quite a bit of romance and in fact brother, Spitfire pilot, and sister WAAF working in intelligence, end up working on the same air base.

Jessica Blair is actually Bill Spence, born 1923. He worked in the RAF as a bomb aimer doing thirty-six operational flights in Lancasters of 44 (Rhodesia) Squadron Bomber Command. After the war he was sent to Rhodesia by the RAF. No wonder, then, that the descriptions of flying Lancasters sound convincing.

Less flattering reviews on Amazon cite a lack of character development and too much technical information. I dispute the former and would say that the latter suits our purposes very well indeed. I gave a four star review on both Amazon and Good Reads.

It lost a star because of unrealistic dialogue and because I spotted a few things the proof-reader didn’t. Neither of these two points detracts from it being a useful resource in the form of an easy read for anyone interested in what the Schellberg Cycle discusses. It gives us considerable insight into what working for the RAF was like, as part of the crew of a Lancaster or Spitfire and as young WAAF officer.     

It makes us think again about these young men - on both sides of the World War II - who were asked to put their lives at risk because of a dispute between nations.  The story however does not give a German point of view thought the British bombers take pride in being very accurate with their targets and thereby presumably do not harm too many civilians.