Interview: Candlelight Reading
Excerpt:
Why did you choose to write your book in this era?
Hi Beatrice! This is Brodie Curtis and thank you very much for having me on today!
ANGELS and BANDITS is my second historical novel and it follows-on to THE FOUR BELLS, my debut novel which portrays events during the Great War. Protagonist Eddy Beane is the answer to a loose thread from my first book, and we follow Eddy’s story into The Battle of Britain, those heady days when Britain stood alone in 1940.
But my inspiration for ANGELS and BANDITS goes beyond a sequel and is rooted in deep respect and admiration for the Royal Air Force’s defence of unrelenting German Luftwaffe bombing attacks in August and September of 1940. For those of us who have never experienced war in our day to day lives, and hopefully never will, just imagine London in late summer 1940: The wireless reports a raid has been spotted over the Kent coast and warns all citizens to take cover. Sirens wail, ack-ack guns boom and in between come the droning sounds of bomber engines from somewhere high overhead. Explosions, death and destruction become part of daily life.
Contemporary images of RAF fighter pilots capture the mostly boyish countenances of young men who were inexperienced in life but tasked with the weighty life-saving responsibility of protecting civilians. It was up to them to intercept the German Luftwaffe and all of its daunting scale, efficiency and weaponry. It is the story of those young men and how they dug deep within themselves to accomplish the task that inspired me.
I was stirred beyond words reading Churchill’s war-time speeches and famous line: “Never, in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many to so few.” Walking by The Battle of Britain sculpture on Victoria Embankment in London, opposite the London Eye, was terrifically inspiring. A quick YouTube search turned up clips of the Spitfire in action that took my breath away. And I must admit that watching Michael Caine’s movie The Battle of Britain, for the umpteenth time, still gives me chills.
What is the most surprising thing you discovered while you were researching this era?
The RAF Fighter Pilots were a far more diverse group than I had imagined when I started researching ANGELS and BANDITS. I had imagined RAF fighter pilots as largely educated young gentlemen from mostly well-off families. Historically, that had been true, but by 1940 things were changing. Eighty percent of Fighter Command was British, ten percent from Commonwealth countries and the other ten percent from occupied Europe, with large contingents from Poland and Czechoslovakia.
A large chunk of the British pilots had come through the Volunteer Reserve created by the British government in 1936. Men through the Volunteer Reserve route were typically uneducated commoners which meant they would join their squadrons as Sergeant Pilots and could not be officers like the educated young gentlemen who joined the RAF through the traditional route.
When an RAF pilot “scrambled” with his Squadron of twelve, his focus was on the orders coming through his headset and maintaining his place in strict formation until combat began and the formation broke apart. Teamwork was critical. A common man Sergeant Pilot might be on the wing of a Flight Lieutenant Oxbridge man or Etonian and relied on for cover. Or vice versa. Class differences were irrelevant at twenty thousand feet, only flying skills, verve and courage were of consequence. Whatever their backgrounds, the RAF pilots had to fly as efficient, cohesive teams. As a Battle of Britain Spitfire pilot, Richard Hillary, mused in his auto-biography The Last Enemy: “Was there perhaps a new race of Englishmen arising out of this war, a race of men bred by the war, a harmonious synthesis of the governing class and the great rest of England; that synthesis of disparate backgrounds and upbringings to be seen at its most obvious best in R.A.F. Squadrons?” My characters in ANGELS and BANDITS are forced to achieve the harmonious synthesis that Hillary speaks of.