Dahl solo in the war

Press, 21 February 1987, Page 23

Dahl solo in the war

Mb. fly MMtf MM by Gtyn Strange) * Roald Dahl’s first autobiographical book, entitled “Boy”, dealt with his schooldays. This, second in what one hopes will be a long series, describes incidents in his young manhood when he first went out into the world and very soon afterwards became a fighter pilot in the Second World War — “going solo” in more ways than one. Apart from the fact that the pages are illustrated with photographs that Dahl took at the time, there is a certain photographic quality to what he writes. Arriving in Dar-es-Salaam in 1938, for example, his first view of the place through the porthole of his ship was imprinted on his memory as if through a lens aperture onto a film. Later, when one of his eyes opens a fraction after weeks of blindness, the first thing he sees, his nurse’s embroidered badge, is likewise recorded forever on his mind. These camera-like episodes are striking examples of what seems to have happened frequently to him at this stage of his life. Sent to East Africa to work for the Shell Oil Company, then going to war in exotic locations, many of the people he met and many of the things that he saw and did were so striking that he probably could not have forgotten* them even if he had wanted'to. . >.> He met people like the totally bald Empire-builder called U.N. Savory who had three wigs, to indicate various stages of hair-growth and sprinkled Epsom Salts on his shoulders to look like dandruff. He saw a woman released alive and unscathed from the jaws of a lion that was carrying her off to its lair. Then, when war broke out, he was suddenly made into a temporary army officer and at the age of 23 had the responsibility of arresting all German civilians in Dar-es-Salaam. As soon as possibe he enlisted as a pilot. Eventually, with his six-feet, sixinch frame imperfectly crammed into the cockpit, he set off to join his squadron in the desert Given wrong directions, he crash lands and spends several months in hospital. By the

time he finally catdies up with Squadron 80, it is reduced to .45 Hurricane fighters and fiye Blenheim bombers, and is expected to defend the Allied fortes in Greece, against about a thousand enemy aircraft. Just how lucky we are to read this, or Indeed any other book by Roald Dahl, becomes clear as we follow his progress. Thrown into action In an aircraft he scarcely knows how to fly, bereft of any knowledge of the tactics of aerial warfare, and endangered further by the" amazing incompetence of his superior officers, it is a wonder he survived. Yet his account is far from bitter. The excitement of battie, the beauty of Greece, the confidence and naivety of youth, the comedy and pathos of war are all recorded in such wonderful detail that bitterness doesn't get a chance to develop; Such adventures etch themselves forever on the memory, but it takes consummate writing skill such as Dahl possesses to describe them in ■sb appealing a fashion. In his hands, real life becomes as exciting and unpredictable as any fictional fantasy’s