Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Book Review: "In for a Penny, In for a Pound", by Howard Hewer
I've been falling behind in my book reviews of late. I've ploughed through several books without having mentioned them here. This rather timely title -- considering that yesterday was Remembrance Day -- is the one I have most recently read.

The sub-title explains the nature of the book: "The Adventures and Misadventures of a Wireless Operator in Bomber Command". What drew me to this book was that the author seemed to have been stationed in several places where my Father had also been stationed. Indeed, during the middle part of the book there was a place name I half-recognized: Kibret. I looked up my late Father's photo albums dating from his wartime years, and sure enough, my Father had been stationed at the same camp about a year after the author of this book had been there.

That explains my interest in the book. The book itself gets off to a bumpy, slow start. It all just seems a bit awkward, the tell-tale signs seemingly of someone not used to writing. But as the author gets more into his story, the better it reads. The author, who is Canadian, talks about his experiences about training as a wireless operator in Canada as part of the RCAF, travels across the Atlantic to Britain, and details flight by flights his set of "ops" in a Wellington bomber doing runs over the industrial heart of Germany. He then volunteers to reassignment in Egypt, and then details what he went through over there.

It all makes for a good story, and I couldn't help thinking that the author's experiences are set from a peculiarly Canadian standpoint: occasional snobbishness from British officers, an affinity for the "fellow colonial" Australians, and the fact that this was a long war -- a point underlined by the fact that the author had already finished his stint over Germany and was newly arrived in Egypt when the Americans entered the war, two years after he had joined up.

I gather my Father work as part of the aircrew, and Hewer talks about the incredible job these people did in patching up Wellingtons and other craft back together from practically nothing. Thanks to this book I also now understand what the phrase "going for a Burton" means, which was a caption underneath one of the pictures in Dad's book of wartime photos. A Burton was (is?) a type of beer, so when a crew didn't return from a mission, the euphemism simply meant that they'd gone out for a last round at the pub -- but weren't coming back. Now I understood what the caption "American plane gone for a Burton" meant in Dad's photo album, the meaning behind the distant inky black smoke in the photo now clear.

It's fitting that I was reading this book over Remembrance Day. On the 11th Erika took the kids to the ceremony at the local cenotaph, and Vanessa was very upset when she was told that soldiers in the past defending this country had been killed. That evening I showed Vanessa the photo albums depicting her Grandfather as a soldier. She was much more interested in the pictures of exotic landmarks (The Pyramids, Abyssinian temples, castles and minarettes) and of a couple of local weddings than the few pictures of fellow soldiers who were friends of my Father. Still, I hope she got the idea that her family played a part in what was commemorate yesterday.

On the news that evening was a story about how well Remembrance Day poppies had sold this year. During the piece, a veteran was saying decrying how little is known by today's youth about what veterans had done in the past. The kicker for me was when he said that many children of vets didn't even know what regiment their parents were in. I don't know that for the simple fact that my Father never told me. Even with his photo albums I still don't have an entirely clear picture about where he was and when he was there. He never talked about it much.

Oh yeah, the book. ;-) A good read, and from my perspective, timely and informative, giving me a better sense of what my Father must have lived through. The book is more memoir than history, and at times I got a bit frustrated by the lack of going beyond what he already knew from his immediate experience. So you don't get a good overview of what his activities meant in the grander scheme of things overall, or which U-boat he saw getting sunk off the coast of East Africa, or of the greater role the Canadians played in the RAF. It's history from a personal perspective, which is fine if you already know the subject well, though if you weren't already familiar with the events and players of the Desert War, this book probably won't enlighten you further. Having said that, I got a much better feel as to what life was like for a serving man back then.

For a less meandering "review" than mine that I think sums up the qualities of the book, look here.