The rationale behind the deliberate move away from attempted precision bombing of legitimate targets (near impossible at night with little technology) towards attacking the civilian population was that killing the workers in the factories and destroying their environment was itself a form of economic warfare. It was a campaign that began with the best of intentions—to avoid the attrition of the First World War trenches—and yet it became itself a war of attrition, escalating all the time, an ever-open maw that could never have enough—manpower, technology, raw materials—all of which might possibly have been more fruitfully directed elsewhere, particularly perhaps in those last months—almost apocalyptic for Europe—when Harris’s obsession with pulverizing a dying Germany into annihilation seems more like a biblical punishment than a military strategy (although I am not one of Harris’s detractors). Hindsight is indeed a wonderful thing but unfortunately it is unavailable to view in the midst of battle.
We have been plagued by questions about the morality of the strategic bombing offensive ever since the end of the war (aided perhaps by Churchill’s diplomatic back-pedalling from responsibility for the policy) and whether our war on savagery did not, in the end, become itself savage as we attacked the very people—the old, the young, women—that civilization is supposed to defend. But the bottom line is that war is savage. For everyone. Innocent or guilty.
This is a novel, not a polemic (and I am no historian) and I have accordingly left the doubts and ambiguities for the characters and the text to voice.
And, as a final note, I’m sure that most readers will recognize that Augustus owes a debt to William Brown of Just William fame. Augustus is a poorly drawn shade of William, who remains for me one of the greatest fictional characters ever created. Richmal Crompton, I salute you.
Acknowledgements
Lt. Col. M. Keech BEM R Signals
Squadron Leader Stephen Beddoes RAF
Suzanne Keyte, Archivist, Royal Albert Hall Anne Thomson, Archivist, Newnham College, Cambridge Ian Reed, Director of the Yorkshire Air Museum, who answered my (probably annoying) questions so fully.
The Yorkshire Air Museum (www.yorkshireairmuseum.org), based at Elvington on one of the many wartime airfields, is a wonderful place for anyone interested in the Halifax, or indeed the war in general. The museum has done a wonderful job of bringing the poor old “Halibag” back to life and I must thank Phil Kemp for the delightfully informative tour he gave me of the interior of Friday 13th—sadly not the original aircraft, which was sold for scrap like all the Halifaxes that survived the war.
And thanks also, of course, to my agent, Peter Straus, and my editor, Marianne Velmans, and everyone at Transworld, particularly Larry Finlay, Alison Barrow and Martin Myers. Thank you also to Reagan Arthur at Little, Brown, Kim Witherspoon at Inkwell Management, Kristin Cochrane at Doubleday Canada and Camilla Ferrier at the Marsh Agency.
It goes without saying that all mistakes, intentional or not, are mine.
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