We were billeted in boarding-houses along the front. I had never quite believed in the legend of seaside boarding-houses, but within two days I was convinced. There it all was, the heavy smell of Brussels sprouts, the aspidistras, the slut of a maid with a hole in her black stockings and a filthy thumb-nail in the soup, the communal table in the dining-room which just didn’t face the sea, the two meals a day served punctually at one o’clock and seven-thirty.

We found that Nigel Bicknell, Bill Aitken, and Dick Holdsworth had been billeted in the same boarding-house. The way in which they took the war deserves to be mentioned.

Nigel was a year or two older than I. He had been editor of the Granta, the University magazine at Cambridge. From Nigel’s behaviour, referred to a little later, it will be seen that the attitude of Cambridge to the war was the same as ours. He had had a tentative job on the Daily Express, and by the outbreak of the war he had laid the foundations of a career. For him as for Michael Judd, the war was a confounded nuisance.

Bill Aitken was older. He had the Beaverbrook forehead and directness of approach. He was director of several companies, married, and with considerably more to lose by joining the R.A.F. as a pilot officer than any of us. The immediate pettiness of our regulations and our momentary inactivity brought from him none of the petulant outbursts in which most of us indulged, nor did he display the same absorption with himself and what he was to get out of it.

Dick Holdsworth had much the same attitude. He was to me that nothing short of miraculous combination, a First in Law and a rowing Blue. He too was several years older than most of us and considerably better orientated: his good-natured compliance with the most child-like rules and determined eagerness to gain everything possible from the Course ensured him the respect of our instructors. But the others were mostly of my age and it was with no very good grace that we submitted to a fortnight’s pep course.

We went for no more route marches, but drilled vigorously on the pier; we had no lectures on flying but several on deportment; we were told to get our hair cut and told of the importance of forming threes for the proper handling of an aircraft; but of the sporting celebrities we were told nothing and saw little, until after much pleading a boxing tournament was arranged. Noel and David both acquitted themselves well, David hitting Len Harvey harder and more often than the champion expected. We applauded with suitable enthusiasm, and marched back to the pier for more drill.

At the end of a fortnight our postings to flying training schools came through and our period of inactivity was over. Dick Holdsworth, Noel, Peter Howes, and I were to report at a small village on the north-east coast of Scotland. None of us had ever heard of it, but none of us cared: as long as we flew it was immaterial to us where. As we were likely to be together for some months to come, I was relieved to be going with people whom I both knew and liked. Noel, with his pleasantly ugly face, had been sent down from Oxford over a slight matter of breaking up his college and intended reading for the Bar. With an Armenian father and a French mother he was by nature cosmopolitan, intelligent, and a brilliant linguist, but an English education had discovered that he was an athlete, and his University triumphs had been of brawn rather than brain. Of this he was very well aware and somewhat bewildered by it. These warring elements in his make-up made him a most amusing companion and a very good friend. Peter Howes, lanky and of cadaverous good looks, had been reading for a science degree. With a permanently harassed expression on his face he could be a good talker, and was never so happy as when, lying back smoking his pipe, he could expound his theories on sex (of which he knew very little), on literature (of which he knew more), and on mathematics (of which he knew a great deal). He was to prove an invaluable asset in our Wings Exam.

Peter, Noel, and I drove up together. We arrived in the late afternoon of a raw, cold November day. When we had reported to the Station Adjutant, Peter drove us down to the little greystone house in the neighbouring village that was to be our home for many months. Our landlady, a somewhat bewildered old body, showed us with pride the room in which we were to sleep.