Wow.
Bear with me, this may be a long and rambling post disguised
as a book review. It is rare to read a piece of fiction that can strike such a
chord with you, but every once in a while…
About a month or so ago I found a promotion for several
audiobooks, offering the chance to download one for free. I picked Code Name
Verity, the story of two young women during the middle of the Second World
War.
If this sounds familiar on this blog, it is. I read Violins
of Autumn earlier, and like that book, this one also centers on the British
Special Operations Executive and its agents, but the two books could not be
more different. Verity is the book Autumn only wishes it could
be.
Codename Verity tells the story of Julie Beaufort
Stewart and Maddie Broddart, two young women who could hardly be more
different, yet quickly become the closest of friends. Both are members of the
Royal Air Force’s Women’s Auxiliary, though both eventually find their way to
the roles they were meant for: cool, aristocratic Julie (a Scot descended from
no less than William Wallace (Braveheart)),
who can effortlessly be anyone she wants to be, is recruited into the British
SOE. Maddie, daughter of eastern European Jewsish immigrants, is one of the few
pre-war women pilots in England and is eventually allowed to join the Air
Transport Auxiliary, Brittan’s answer to the US WASP program. One fateful night
they find themselves on an ill-fated mission to occupied France.
The first half of the book is told through a diary written
by Julie as she is interrogated by the Gestapo. Her mission in France was over
before it began, bailing out of a burning plane and quickly captured by the
enemy, but even by these meager standards she has fared better than Maddie,
based on the pictures of the wrecked plane and its remaining occupant her Nazi
interrogators show her. The diary is supposedly for the Gestapo captain in
charge of her interrogation, but mostly it’s a meandering narrative about her
and Maddie met, and how their friendship grew, and perhaps most of all, how
Maddie came to fall in love with flying.
The second half of the book comes totally out of left field and
it’s an emotional roller-coaster. You’ve written off both of these girls from
the very beginning, Maddie in the plane crash and Julie marked for execution,
and with D-Day more than six months away you know there’s no cavalry coming. Yet
the plot twists come fast and furious and author Elizabeth Wein could give a
master class in suckerpunching your readers. You have forgotten that Julie is a
spy, and in a spy’s world no one is who they say they are and nothing is what it seems.
This book is a wonderful piece of genuine literature. It is
beautifully written (and if you get the audiobook, which I highly recommend,
beautifully narrated). I’ve heard it said that even the most articulate
American sounds crass by English standards, and this book kind of makes me
think whoever said it might be on to something. Though Wein is American by
birth, it should come as no surprise that she’s spent much of her life in
England, Scotland, and other places with significant British influence.
It should come as even less of a surprise that Wein is a
pilot herself. I don’t think any non-pilot could have truly captured the love
Maddie has for flight, or how magical, beautiful, exhilarating, and sometimes
terrifying it can be.
I have thought much about flying lately. I’ve had a few
chances to go this year, only as a passenger, but better than not being up
there at all. I met a young airline pilot at a party earlier this year and
realized how much I missed being surrounded by peers who share my passion. I
also recently rented How to Train Your Dragon, and found it odd that it
captures just how magical the notion of human flight is so much better than
most of the aviation movies I’ve seen. I also now understand the people who saw
Avatar and became very depressed because Pandora is not a real place, I feel
the same about Toothless. As an animal lover and an aviator I would love a pet
that combines the loyalty of a dog, the playfulness of a cat, and the maneuvering
characteristics and firepower of a F-35 J
About a month ago I was manning a recruiting booth for the
Coast Guard Auxiliary’s Aviation program at a local Women Can Fly event, and I
thought of Maddie as I saw these young girls stream in and out of the building.
You could quickly tell who had just been up for a ride, see it in their faces.
One girl and her father came up to talk to me, she couldn’t have been more than
a freshman in high school, and said she wanted to be a pilot in the Coast Guard
when she graduated from college. It is heartening to see how far we have come;
yet disheartening to see how long it has taken. Women have been pilots for
almost as long as there have been pilots, yet they still make up less than ten
percent of the pilot population. They even today, in 2014, face outright sexism
that would not be tolerated in virtually any other arena. People seem to think
there is some magical quality one needs to be a pilot, and while they’re wrong
about the specifics, they’re not wrong in general. It’s a quality that
transcends race, sex, creed, or religion: It’s love. Love of flying.
“But it ain't all
buttons and charts, little albatross. You know what the first rule of flying
is? Well, I suppose you do, since you already know what I'm about to say.”
“I do. But I like to
hear you say it”
“Love. You can learn
all the math in the 'Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love,
she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her
in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens.
Makes her a home.”
(-Malcom Reynolds and
River Tam, Serenity)
I’ve flown with men who have flown in places I have only read
about in the history books: Guadalcanal; The Chosin Reservoir; Hanoi. I have
flown with men who have flown counter-narcotics in Central America in a
4-engine piston plane, where 100 feet above the ground was considered “too high”.
I have flown with men who have flown rescue aircraft into superstorms so others
may live. Yet probably the best pilot I have ever flown with was a young woman,
just a few years older and a few hundred hours more experienced than me. She
was one of my instructors at school, and it was her passion for flying that
showed through in every aspect of everything she did. That passion was
relentless, and it made her relentless. When she wasn’t flying (6 days a week
weather permitting), she was in the maintenance hanger, soaking up every bit of
knowledge about each of the different types of aircraft we flew. She was very demanding,
of herself and her students, and that meant sometimes she was a royal pain to
fly with and learn from, but I never learned more, or was a better pilot, than
when I was flying with her. Yet despite all her professionalism and just
generally being a hard-ass, there was no hiding her exuberance that came from
flying, like her giddiness when we (flying a light piston twin) received ATC
instruction to reduce speed to follow a Citation private jet on approach (“Dude!
We just got told to slow down to follow a jet!”)
My point in this rambling mess is that aviation should be
the most, not the least, inclusive community in the world. We have all looked
up at the sky, at the birds, and wondered what it’s like in their world. Those
of us who know have been granted a special privilege, and we should extend a
welcome invitation to all who want to join us.
Also, Codename Verity was
a very good book and you should go read it J
-Mike, out.
