Read Online A Medal for Leroy by Michael Morpurgo - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Michael Morpurgo
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nineteen when the Second World War began in September 1939. He joined up at once as so many young men did, and was soon a pilot in the RAF. He was out in France with his squadron when he met this French girl. He wrote us long letters about her. Both of them got out of France just in time, just before the fall of Dunkirk. He brought her to see us. Christine she was called. You call her Maman. He was very proud of her, so very fond of her, and once we’d got to know her so were we, and so was Jasper.
The wedding soon after was a quiet affair, in a Registry Office in Folkestone – just Mary, me, the two of them – and Jasper. Roy insisted that Jasper had to be there. I remember he had a bit of an argument with the man in the Registry Office about that, but Roy was in his Flight Lieutenant’s RAF uniform. He was a Spitfire pilot, and he looked like it, and that helped, helped a lot. Jasper was allowed in, and sat beside me all the way through the wedding. Actually, he slept through most of it.
We were living through the Battle of Britain that summer of 1940. The skies above us were the battlefield. We’d see the German fighters and bombers coming over in their hundreds, watched the dogfights, hoped and prayed every day that Roy was all right.
He was stationed not far away at RAF Manston; so for a while Christine came to live with us here in his old room, and worked as a waitress in the town. When the phone rang that day in September 1940, I answered it. The call was from Manston. It was Roy’s Wing Commander. He asked if I was Roy’s wife. I said that Roy’s wife lived with us, but that she wasn’t in.
“Are you his mother then?” he asked.
I shouldn’t have said it, but I did. “Yes,” I told him.
“Then perhaps you could break the news, perhaps you could tell his wife… be better coming from you perhaps.”
“Tell her what?” I said.
“That Roy was killed this morning. We don’t know exactly what happened yet. An engine failure on his Spitfire, we think, on take-off it was. He crashed. I am so sorry. He was a fine man, and a brave flying officer, the bravest of the brave. Everyone here thought the world of him here. We shall miss him more than we can say.”
ary and I, we told your Maman together when she came home from work that evening, told her as gently as we could. She sat there unable to speak, unable even to cry. We made her cocoa and put her to bed. She lay curled up on her bed for about a week, refusing all the food we offered her. She just lay there, rocking herself. There was no comforting her. I came in to see her one morning and she was sitting up looking out to sea, with Jasper beside her on the bed – he’d hardly left her side the whole time. Jasper might have been old and slow by now, but he still knew where he was most needed.
“I don’t want Roy to have been burnt, to have died in flames,” she said, without turning round. “I want him to have gone down out there, out at sea. Is that how it happened? Tell me that’s how it happened.”
“Yes,” I told her. “Out in the Channel it was.”
I told Mary what she’d said, and she agreed that it could only hurt her more if Christine knew the truth about how he had been killed. Ever since we heard the news about Roy I had longed to tell her the whole truth about Leroy, to put my arms around her and tell her that I was Roy’s mother, to share my grief, share hers. I couldn’t do it even then, but as I sat beside her, I did say that I had lost a dear, dear friend in the First World War, and had never forgotten him. And I did say that Roy may have been our adopted son, but that we had never thought of him as that. To us, I said, he had always been simply our son, and always would be. It was a kind of truth, at least.
Well, Michael, the rest you know, or can guess. Like me, all those years before, your Maman discovered she would be having a baby. We wanted her to stay on and live with us. We begged her not to go to
The wedding soon after was a quiet affair, in a Registry Office in Folkestone – just Mary, me, the two of them – and Jasper. Roy insisted that Jasper had to be there. I remember he had a bit of an argument with the man in the Registry Office about that, but Roy was in his Flight Lieutenant’s RAF uniform. He was a Spitfire pilot, and he looked like it, and that helped, helped a lot. Jasper was allowed in, and sat beside me all the way through the wedding. Actually, he slept through most of it.
We were living through the Battle of Britain that summer of 1940. The skies above us were the battlefield. We’d see the German fighters and bombers coming over in their hundreds, watched the dogfights, hoped and prayed every day that Roy was all right.
He was stationed not far away at RAF Manston; so for a while Christine came to live with us here in his old room, and worked as a waitress in the town. When the phone rang that day in September 1940, I answered it. The call was from Manston. It was Roy’s Wing Commander. He asked if I was Roy’s wife. I said that Roy’s wife lived with us, but that she wasn’t in.
“Are you his mother then?” he asked.
I shouldn’t have said it, but I did. “Yes,” I told him.
“Then perhaps you could break the news, perhaps you could tell his wife… be better coming from you perhaps.”
“Tell her what?” I said.
“That Roy was killed this morning. We don’t know exactly what happened yet. An engine failure on his Spitfire, we think, on take-off it was. He crashed. I am so sorry. He was a fine man, and a brave flying officer, the bravest of the brave. Everyone here thought the world of him here. We shall miss him more than we can say.”
ary and I, we told your Maman together when she came home from work that evening, told her as gently as we could. She sat there unable to speak, unable even to cry. We made her cocoa and put her to bed. She lay curled up on her bed for about a week, refusing all the food we offered her. She just lay there, rocking herself. There was no comforting her. I came in to see her one morning and she was sitting up looking out to sea, with Jasper beside her on the bed – he’d hardly left her side the whole time. Jasper might have been old and slow by now, but he still knew where he was most needed.
“I don’t want Roy to have been burnt, to have died in flames,” she said, without turning round. “I want him to have gone down out there, out at sea. Is that how it happened? Tell me that’s how it happened.”
“Yes,” I told her. “Out in the Channel it was.”
I told Mary what she’d said, and she agreed that it could only hurt her more if Christine knew the truth about how he had been killed. Ever since we heard the news about Roy I had longed to tell her the whole truth about Leroy, to put my arms around her and tell her that I was Roy’s mother, to share my grief, share hers. I couldn’t do it even then, but as I sat beside her, I did say that I had lost a dear, dear friend in the First World War, and had never forgotten him. And I did say that Roy may have been our adopted son, but that we had never thought of him as that. To us, I said, he had always been simply our son, and always would be. It was a kind of truth, at least.
Well, Michael, the rest you know, or can guess. Like me, all those years before, your Maman discovered she would be having a baby. We wanted her to stay on and live with us. We begged her not to go to
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