The Luftwaffe pilot followed me like a lamb to the end of the runway. I knew he was there, but I couldn’t see him. Suddenly Chip yelled from the rear turret, “He’s making a run for it! No, he’s diving—”

“He will hit the cliffs!” Ignacy yelled from behind the Luftwaffe plane, cutting off Chip’s voice.

While these dramatics were unfolding, I clenched my jaw and focused on the runway. I was too close to the ground to do anything tricky.

“He straightened up, he’s okay—” Chip let me know. “He’s lining up behind you again.”

Our undercarriage touched the earth and we bumped along the field. I braked, ready to get out of the way as quickly as possible so the planes behind me could land. Then Chip gave a wordless howl of terror, and all the sky in the clear canopy above my head was blotted out. I looked up and saw nothing but the hideous belly of the Junkers 88, inches away from my face.

If it landed on top of us we were dead.

Louisa:

Jane was good at keeping busy, but goodness, she hated being cooped up. Sometimes she decided she needed air at ten o’clock at night, and then we would spend a few hair-raising minutes feeling our way in the dark along the steep cobbles to the limekilns and back. Or just after dawn we’d stagger down the hill together to the harbor to watch the sun climb over the sea cliffs. We both longed to walk on the tiny beach, but it was full of the ruins of the exploded breakwater, not to mention mines and barbed wire and “dragons’ teeth” concrete blocks meant to keep out German landing craft.

So Jane jumped at the chance of an outing to choose her own library books and treat me to tea and buns in a café on the Stonehaven seafront. On that day in the first full week of February, Ellen had to go to the railway station to pick up a courier who was delivering new maps that needed a proper guardian on their journey to RAF Windyedge. The Tilly would be empty going to the station and again going home after Ellen took the courier back in the afternoon, so she gave Jane and me a lift. We sat three across the front as usual with me in the middle, and as we drove we sang something we all knew the words to because we heard it on the radio just about every day—the Joe Loss Orchestra’s “Spitfire Song.”

We were on the way home and turning off the main road by the rubble of the bus shelter when black dots began to dance on the horizon.

“Is 648 Squadron in the air?” asked Jane.

She saw them too. Not bugs; not birds. Aeroplanes.

“They were out last night,” said Ellen. “They should be tucked up in bed.”