Love from Boy Read online

  Lots of love to all

  Roald

  November 4th 1939

  Saturday

  The Shell Company

  of East Africa Limited

  P.O. Box 343

  Dar es Salaam

  Dear Mama

  . . . Things are moving: on Tuesday or Wednesday next—7th or 8th Nov., I’m packing a suitcase and flying to Nairobi for a ‘medical’ for the R.A.F. If I pass, which I think I certainly should, I shall be drafted into a flying course somewhere in Kenya and no doubt will have learnt to fly after about 6 months. Then as far as I can see there’s a good chance of going to Egypt . . .

  You needn’t get alarmed about this flying business out here—it’s just very good fun, and anyway the chances of getting sent to any scene of action for at any rate 9 months or a year are pretty remote. I hope the war will be over by then. When I fly over to Nairobi on Tuesday I shall first go due west to Dodoma (it’ll be on the map), and after my ‘medical’, and assuming I pass it, I hope to fly down here again for a few days to clear things up i.e. sell my car & wireless and pay my bills (which are pretty well up-to-date) resign from clubs and 101 other things. Unless you have already sent my lovely cake and the ham, perhaps you’d better wait a week or 2 until I can give you a proper address; but until further notice please continue to send my letters to Dar es Salaam. If I get a semi-permanent address in Kenya soon I may cable you just saying ‘Address . . . so & so . . .’.

  I’m certainly looking forward to getting into a decent climate (4000ft) after being down here on the coast for a year without a holiday.

  Everything here is still very normal; I’ve been playing a lot of soccer and hockey, and doing quite a bit of Golf organising, and life is altogether quite pleasant. Tonight I’m going to a Dance at the Dar Club with the Chief Secretary of Tanganyika, who is at the moment acting Governor, as the Governor has gone to Kenya for a conference. I suppose I’ll get drunk,—Saturday night.

  We’ve got 2 hens in our garden now, and they make the hell of a noise at 5.30am. I bought them in the native bazaar for one shilling each. But they won’t lay because there is no cockerel. David and I refuse to buy because we do not countenance immorality on our property. I came home from soccer yesterday evening and found the bloody hens perched on the edge of the sofa in the sitting room. If they’d shat on my wireless they wouldn’t be alive now. I think we’ll have to kill them soon as they encourage snakes. I don’t think there’s any more news, I’ll write and let you know what I’m doing next week—from Nairobi, I expect.

  Why don’t you sell the car, now that you get so little petrol—or do you think you’ll get a better price for it later on.

  Poor Louis seems to be having a tough time—there’s little use for artists in wartime. I’m going to send him some native wood carvings for Xmas if I can get them shipped.

  Lots of love to all

  Roald

  November 14th

  Tuesday

  P.O. Box 1221

  Nairobi

  Dear Mama

  I believe I missed the mail, but that was because I was on my way to Nairobi, where you will see I now am. I didn’t come up by plane because there wasn’t one going, so I got on our little coastal tanker last Thursday morning and had a lovely trip to Mombasa, arriving there on Friday morning. We didn’t call anywhere on the way, but just went through Zanzibar harbour to let them know who we were. I slept on the deck and also distinguished myself by catching a large barracuda (fish) from the back of the boat for the evening meal. Got on the train at Mombasa on Friday evening at 4pm, had dinner, went to bed and woke up to find we were chugging along through the plains of Kenya about 4000 feet up. Looking out of the window while having my breakfast I saw literally hundreds of buck and antelope of all sorts, a herd of zebra, ostriches, buffalo and best of all four enormous giraffes and a baby giraffe so close you could almost lean out of the carriage window and touch them. The country was nothing to look at just a bare brown grassy plain with a few leafless trees, but once I caught a glimpse of Mt. Kilimanjaro in the background, and very fine it looked, with its pointed snow covered peak.

  Anyway, arrived at Nairobi station at about 9.30am and George Rybot was there to meet me. We drove to the office which is a magnificent building. All the rooms are parquet floored and panelled, and everyone is connected to everyone else with these Dictograph things by which you can talk to anyone you like. At 11 o’clock I was up at the aerodrome having the stiffest medical test I’ve ever had in my life. I held my breath for 2 minutes; blew a column of mercury up a tube till I thought I was going to burst; lifted trays up to eye level without letting the long wobbly things balancing on them topple over—(you stand a fountain pen or an unsharpened pencil on a piece of wood and try to lift it up high and put it down again with one hand). The most incredible instruments were produced for testing eyesight and all sorts of nervous reactions, and I weighed 14.00 stone and measured 6ft 5¼ inches.

  Roald, shortly after he began his RAF flying training in Nairobi, 1939. Of the sixteen people with whom he did his initial training, only three survived the war.

  Ultimately I passed with flying colours and was classed as 100% fit to fly. The result is that I must report at the aerodrome (R.A.F. headquarters) at Nairobi on the 24th November—10 days’ time, when together with a few other blokes I will be made an aircraftman on the princely salary of Shs 5/- per day, and be put through an 8 weeks flying course. After that, if one has shown an ability to fly, we are sent to some God-forsaken place in Egypt called --------, where still more flying experience is gained, and finally in about 4 to 6 months from now to join the R.A.F. Middle East Command in Cairo. Now I don’t know what you think about all that, but personally I think it all sounds fairly exciting and interesting and a bloody sight better than joining the army out here and marching about in the heat from one place to another and doing nothing special. Further more one learns to fly free, which is a very great commercial asset in these days. It would certainly cost one about £1000 to obtain a ‘B’ licence. So much for what I’m going to do, but I’ll let you know more about it later; but I’m certainly looking forward to 8 weeks in Nairobi . . .

  Lots of love to all

  Roald

  Roald with two other trainee pilots in Nairobi, 1939. He was taller than most pilots and his head stuck over the wind shield of his Tiger Moth so he had to duck down every few seconds to take a breath. His love affair, however, with this new element was immediate. “I’ve never enjoyed myself so much,” he told his mother.

  CHAPTER 4

  —

  “Thoroughly good for the soul”

  1939–1940

  It was undoubtedly Roald’s experiences as a wartime flyer that finally made him into a writer. Right from the beginning, swooping over the Kenyan bush, the sense of being alone and free in an unfamiliar element stimulated his sense of the mystical. The sky became an alternative world: a place of tranquility and gentle beauty that could be magical, transformative, even redemptive. Most of his early adult stories are profoundly connected to this spiritual dimension of flying, and it is a feature of much of his children’s fiction. In his final book, The Minpins, a small boy rides on the back of a swan, flying “in a magical world of silence, swooping and gliding over the dark world below, where all the earthly people were fast asleep in their beds.”47 Similarly, in James and the Giant Peach, the child protagonist stands at night on the surface of the giant fruit as it flies across the Atlantic. Contemplating the heavens, James is filled with a similar sense of wonder: “The peach was a soft, stealthy traveller, making no noise at all as it floated along. And several times during that long silent night ride high up over the middle of the ocean in moonlight, James and his friends saw things that no-one had seen before.”48

  His training began in the idyllic surroundings of Nairobi in Kenya. Soon he was flying over the bush and exploring the Rif
t Valley. He delighted in the RAF lifestyle and was thrilled to have left the humid world of sundowners and expatriate life on the coast behind him. The final stages of his training however took place in the remote desert air base of Habbaniya in Iraq, some sixty miles from Baghdad. Its many buildings included churches, a cinema, a dental hospital, a swimming pool, and a mineral water factory. Writing to his mother, Dahl praised the good food, including fresh fish from the River Tigris, and the central heating in the billets, but later he would recall it as “an abominable, unhealthy, desolate place . . . a vast assemblage of hangars and Nissen huts and brick bungalows set slap in the middle of a boiling desert on the banks of the muddy Euphrates river miles from anywhere.”49 Roald was one of the top trainees on his training course and also one of the few who occasionally ventured out, visiting Baghdad to play poker and haggle in the marketplace for gifts, and driving to see the ruins of Babylon.

  Roald with his friend Alec “Filthy” Leuchars while completing his flying training at RAF Habbaniya in Iraq, 1940. Roald would later describe Habbaniya as possessing “the worst climate in the world,” where the trainees lived “only for the day we will be leaving.”

  All the while, he continued to worry about the welfare of his mother and sisters. The “phoney war” that followed the declaration of war in September 1939 had continued through the winter, and despite Roald’s attempts to persuade his mother to move to Tenby, Sofie Magdalene had stubbornly refused to budge. Bexley lay close to two potential bombing targets: Woolwich Arsenal and the Vickers Armament works in nearby Crayford. Roald knew that Oakwood, the family house, would almost certainly be hit by any German air raid. He was also concerned that his mother’s status as an alien might make life difficult for her—particularly when Norway was invaded by the Germans in April 1940. But from 4,500 miles away he was powerless to do anything but cajole, hector, and browbeat.

  His chronicles of the dusty tedium of life at Habbaniya make vivid reading, as does his description of what happened when the Euphrates flooded and the entire station had to be rebuilt three miles away as a tented encampment atop a sand mound. The scorpions, sand vipers, and incessant sandstorms brought out the stoic in his personality and made him reflect on the good things of life. He had little inkling that far greater travails lay ahead for him.

  [November 1939]

  P.O. Box 1071

  Nairobi

  Dear Mama

  . . . Well, I drove up from Dar es Salaam on Tuesday Wed and Thursday. And it really was marvellous fun . . .

  . . . Left Korogwe at 8am Wednesday (by the way Dar to Korogwe was 300 miles) and had the most lovely journey right up into the mountains. The road climbed to about 7000 feet, marvellous scenery; but after I’d gone about 100 miles it started to rain like hell, and miles away from anywhere the car decided it couldn’t get through the muddy road. It slithered from side to side and ultimately finished up in the undergrowth. After what seemed hours some wandering natives came along & helped to get it out, none the worse for wear.

  At 3pm I sighted Kilimanjaro looking simply marvellous with its huge snowcapped peak, and 2 hours later I arrived at Moshi, which is a town literally at the foot of Kilimanjaro—marvellous place, with air just like that of the mountains in Norway. I stayed at the Lion Cub Hotel and left again next morning for Arusha. This bit was one of the most interesting parts of the trip because I came into the Masai country. You probably know all about these natives which are quite untamable and still walk about with paint and mud on their faces and hair and bows & arrows and spears. They are great fellows for hunting lion, and very few of the men stand under 6 foot 2˝. I stopped and talked—as best I could because they don’t speak Swahili—to some of them on the road. One had the most lovely bow and arrows I’ve ever seen. It was so tight I couldn’t stretch it more than 2 or 3 inches, but at my request, and for a cigarette, he shot an arrow into a small tree literally 60 or 70 yards away. He said he killed a lion last month. Arrived at Arusha at about mid-day, and went straight on to Nairobi where I arrived at about 6.30pm. Saw lots of game on or just beside the road all along the way. Giraffe, rhino, zebra, antelope and thousands of lovely little buck. I took some photos, including one of Giraffe & will send them by next letter.

  The next day—Friday, I reported at the R.A.F., and immediately became an aircraftman, we’ve been issued with uniforms—blue & 2 khaki, socks, boots, shirts, towels—everything. I live in a barrack with 18 other fellows, who seem very pleasant indeed, and we start flying on Monday, and attend a lot of classes about flying, Morse code and all that sort of thing.

  I can’t tell you much more yet because these letters are carefully censored and it would probably only be crossed out any way, but it looks as though it’s going to be very good fun. No more nonsense with boys doing everything for you; you wash your own knives & forks & mugs which you own, call everyone sir, and in short lead a life which I think will make me extremely fit and be thoroughly good for the soul . . .

  Now it’s Monday—I couldn’t get this off yesterday. Great fun today—did my first flying with extremely pleasant instructor . . .

  Must go and polish my kit now.

  Lots of love to all

  Roald

  December 4th 1939

  Monday

  P.O. Box 1071

  Nairobi

  Kenya

  Dear Mama

  . . . I’m having a lovely time; have never enjoyed myself so much. I’ve been sworn in to the R.A.F. proper and am definitely in it now until the end of the war. My rank—a Leading Aircraftman, with every opportunity of becoming a pilot officer in a few months if I don’t make a B.F. [Bloody Fool] of myself . . . The flying is grand and our instructors are extremely pleasant and proficient. With any luck I’ll be flying solo by the end of this week.

  These details are rather meagre, but I can’t say any more. We never wear ordinary clothes, except for games. My dinner jacket and tails and nearly all my clothes are stowed away in a camphorwood chest (moth proof) which I had made before I left Dar. If we go out before 4.30pm (Wednesday is a half day) we wear a Khaki RAF uniform. After 4.30pm wherever we are, be it walking, talking in a club or dancing in a hotel we must wear the RAF blue uniform with a little blue cap on the side of the head—you know it.

  . . . I don’t think there’s any more news. Hope everyone’s O.K.—for all we know I might be in England before 1940 finishes, but that’s a bit optimistic. Thank goodness the bombing hasn’t started yet, but when it does, you’ve all got to shoot away to Wales without wasting any time.

  By the way, will you please send my next income instalment (if any!) to my account Barclays Bank Nairobi. I must go to bed—it’s only 9 o’clock, but late nights just don’t work with this life.

  Lots of love to all

  Roald

  Herewith some photos of my trip from Dar to Nairobi, see backsides for comments.

  December 11th 1939

  P.O. Box 1071

  Nairobi

  Dear Mama

  . . . You needn’t address my letters Aircraftman . . . and anyway that’s the wrong title because I’m a Leading Aircraftman now! The flying’s going fine, it really is great fun. I can just about manage a plane for elementary things such as taking off, cruising around, climbing turning and landing. The landing part of it was jolly difficult, largely I think because there’s always such a hell of a wind blowing across the aerodrome. It’s in a great flat plain, and you’ve only got to look over the fence a bit and you see all sorts of things wandering around—wildebeest, zebra, buck etc. Also the fact that one is 5½ thousand feet up before one starts doesn’t help matters. We’re starting to fly at 6.15am now in order to avoid the wind.

  . . . I’m trying to write this letter in the Naafi* when there are about 100 aircraftmen drinking and making merry, playing the piano and singing some very beautiful songs, and it’s not very easy, so I think I’d better stop.


  Anyway, I want to drink and sing too.

  Lots of love to all

  Roald

  December 18th 1939

  P.O. Box 1071

  Nairobi

  Dear Mama

  . . . Well, everything here is also going very smoothly. I did my first solo flight some days ago and now go up alone for longish periods every day. I’ve just learnt to loop the loop and spin and the next thing we’ve got to do is flying upside down, which isn’t quite so funny. But it’s all marvellous fun. Nairobi looks very small and funny from the air; it’s in the middle of a huge plain on which you can see all sorts of weird animals roaming, and if it’s not too cloudy you can see Mt. Kilimanjaro on one side and Mt. Kenya on the other—a marvellous sight. The peaks of both are covered in snow the whole time—even out here.

  I’m afraid there’s absolutely no news—this is just to say that I’m still here and everything’s fine and it’s bloody cold at 5.30am in the mornings and dammed hot at midday and I’m tired and I’m going to bed although it’s only 8.30. Never in my life have I continually gone to bed so early and got up so early as we do these days; I’m sure it’s very good for one . . .

  Sorry this is such a short letter.

  Lots of love to all

  Roald

  I’m writing to Bestemama tomorrow.

  January 6th 1940

  Saturday

  P.O. Box 1071

  Nairobi

  Dear Mama

  I’m afraid that I haven’t written to you for years—not since my Xmas telegram—if you call that writing.