“Ted and Tommy”

Book excerpt: Halt! Who goes there? Three times, with gun in hand, the old home guard fellow demanded an answer. I said I wanted to join the air force. I can remember him saying, Are you sure you want to? I suppose he felt a bit fatherlyyou know: here was another young girl going into that terrible place! August 1939 and war clouds looming, May Cameron, Tommy, approached the Balloon Station near Birmingham, England, harbouring ideas of becoming an air ace. On the other side of the world in Sydney, Australia, Ted accompanied a workmate to night classes conducted by the Empire Air Training Scheme, half-expecting that if he were accepted into the air force, his previous job would have him typecast for ground crew. In the end, neither Tommy nor Ted got quite what they bargained for. But they did find each other and so took the first steps on another very different adventure. This is the story of Ted and Tommy, of their formative years, of their coming together in wartime Britain; Ted the Australian flying officer or something of 466 Squadron, and Tommy the Scottish lass in the control tower; and of the struggle they later came to share with fellow ex-servicemen to regain their lives and to raise a family in the changing circumstances of postwar Australia. This then is hagiographya love storythe story of my parents, Ted and Tommy Eagleton, lest we forget!