Chapter IV - Facts and Memories

‘Hello, Frankie dear. What a nice surprise!’ old Mrs Fitzgerald said. ‘And you’re brought Regan with you. Sit down, both of you. We’ll all have some tea.’

In a few minutes, they were all drinking tea and eating biscuits. Frankie began to speak about the project.

‘We went to the old airfield yesterday, Gran,’ she said. ‘We’re doing a project about the Second World War for our archeology club. We’re trying to find out about the fighter planes that flew from Lychford Green. We’re trying to find out about the pilots too. What do you remember about the War, Gran?’

‘I remember lots of things,’ the old lady replied. ‘The airfield was very busy then. There were lots of planes there. The pilots were all tall and good-looking. They came into my mother’s shop sometimes.’

‘Do you remember a plane crashing near the airfield?’ Frankie asked.

‘Oh, yes,’ the old lady replied. ‘The pilot died and so did some evacuees. My mother told me about it. It was very sad.’

‘What were evacuees?’ Regan asked.

‘During the War, the Germans often bombed our cities,’ Mrs Fitzgerald said. ‘So lots of children from the cities were sent to live in the countryside. They were called evacuees. Their parents wanted them to be safe from the bombs. London was bombed almost every day. Lots of children who were killed came from London. They were sent to Lychford to be safe.’

Regan and Frankie looked at each other. So it was all true! The plane had crashed onto the house by the airfield. Five people had died, nearly sixty years ago. But the four friends had seen it happen yesterday!

‘Why did the crash happen, Gran?’ Frankie asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Mrs Fitzgerald replied. ‘I was only five years old in 1940. But Florrie Skinner will remember. She’s much older than me. But she remembers everything from those days. Florrie was a WAAF during the War.’

‘A What?’ Regan asked, with a laugh.

‘She was in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force,’ the old lady said. ‘The members of that were called WAAFs. WAAF didn’t fly the planes, but they did important work. Florrie worked in the Operations Room on the airfield. That was the place where the movements of all the planes were organized.’

‘Where does she live, Gran? Can we talk to her?’ Frankie asked.

‘She lives in an old people’s home,’ Mrs Fitzgerald replied. ‘She lives there with lots of other old people. She’s not strong now, and the nurses at the home look after her. But she enjoys having visitors. I’ll take you to see her tomorrow morning. We can’t go now. It’s after two o’clock, and Florrie always sleeps in the afternoon.’

Half an hour later, Frankie, Regan, Jack and Tom were in the Vanderlindens’ sitting-room. Regan had given each of her friends a can of cola and a bag of potato crisps.

Regan’s parents were very rich. They owned a big house in Lychford. But most of the time, Mr Vanderlinden worked in other countries. This summer, he was working in Rome and his wife was there with him. Regan was living in the big house in Lychford with an eighteen-year-old blonde girl from California.

The girl was the Vanderlindens’ au pair. She was called Jennie St Clair. Her job was to look after Regan. But Jennie wasn’t clever and she didn’t work hard. She made a lot of expensive phone calls to her boyfriend in the USA, but she didn’t care about Regan. So Regan looked after herself, and she had a great time! But Regan didn’t like Jennie. When she talked to her friends about the au pair, she called her by a rude name – the Blonde Bimbo!

When they had finished their crisps, the girls told the boys about Frankie’s gran and about Florrie Skinner.

‘We’re going to visit Florrie tomorrow,’ Regan said. ‘What did you find out at the newspaper office?’

‘Well, the crash happened on the 24th of August, 1940,’ Jack said. ‘And your gran was right. The Spitfire crashed onto a little house near the airfield. Four young evacuees from London were killed.’

‘The pilot died too,’ Tom told the girls. ‘And he wasn’t an American. He was a Canadian. His name was Glen Loosthawk.’

‘Why was he in England in 1940?’ Regan asked.

‘He was studying at a university here when the war started,’ Jack said. ‘Glen joined the Royal Air Force. He was only twenty years old when his plane crashed.’

‘He was very unlucky,’ Tom went on. ‘He’d been in a battle with some German planes. His radio wasn’t working and suddenly there was a terrible storm. He crashed onto the house. A lot of fuel was stored there. The fuel exploded and everyone was killed.’

‘The crash wasn’t the pilot’s fault,’ Regan said quickly.

‘Well, Glen Loosthawk made a mistake – that’s what the newspaper said,’ Tom replied. ‘It was only Glen’s third flight in a Spitfire.’

‘It wasn’t Glen fault,’ Regan said again. ‘And he tried to save those evacuees. I saw him running towards the house.’

‘The newspaper didn’t say that,’ Tom said.

‘No, it didn’t,’ Regan said. ‘We’re the only people who saw the crash. And we only saw it two days ago!’

‘Those evacuees were the same ages as us,’ Jack said. ‘They were thirteen, twelve and eleven. There were two boys and two girls The boys were brothers, like Tom and me.’

‘That’s terrible!’ Frankie said. ‘They left their parents in London. They came to Lychford to be safe, but they were killed here. Poor kids'!’

‘And poor Glen,’ Regan said. ‘No one else will ever know the truth about him now. He was a good man. Perhaps Florrie Skinner knew him. We’ll ask her tomorrow.’

‘We’ve stil got a lot to do,’ Tom said. ‘Darryl is trying to borrow a metal detector for us. If we search the airfield with that, we’ll find all kinds of things. There must be pieces of planes in the ground. Anything that we find can be part of our project.’

‘Perhaps Darryl well arrange that flight for us too,’ Frankie said.

‘Yes. That will be great,’ Jack replied. ‘Tom and I will pur all our notes onto our computer tomorrow. You two girls can talk to the old lady at the old people’s home.’