Nation and Commemoration: Creating national identities in the United States and Australia Book

'Battle Order 204' is not simply an elegy written by a proud wife recording her brave husband's daring military exploits but a wonderfully intimate biography of a brave pilot enduring military combat, an ordinary man doing extraordinary things' This testimony forms an eloquent requiem for the lives of those 55,000 aircrew in Bomber Command who didn't survive the Second World War.

From the outset the author, Christobel Mattingley, reveals a studious high achieving young man whose love of aeroplanes was founded back in childhood in Tasmania and whose unfailing sense of duty saw him volunteer for active service and took him on a seemingly inevitable journey into the face of hell and back. This is the story of an idealistic young man emerging into adulthood and suddenly propelled into a global conflict is told in linear and restrained fashion with detailed documentation illuminating a charming human personality.

We see the War through the young man's eyes and learn how pilots went through their initial training in the Royal Australian Air Force ( RAAF) with challenging classes in maths, physics, aircraft recognition, morse code, meteorology before the rigours of flying training began in Tiger Moths. In May 1943, at the age of 20, and with a total of 182 flying hours behind him he qualified as a pilot and was presented with his wings before being posted overseas, embarking on a troop ship in Adelaide and sailing for Britain via New Zealand, Cuba, New York and a fourteen day hazardous Atlantic crossing through Newfoundland fog and German submarine wolf packs. After nearly four months sailing from the other side of the world Pilot Officer David Mattingley docked in Cardiff.

All the novice pilots were then posted for further training and familiarisation flying being enrolled with three different Advanced Flying Units for further training with radar, navigation, escape from a ditched aircraft, and flying drills and exercises. They were a cosmopolitan group of fresh faced young pilots, French, Belgian, Dutch, Polish and Czechoslovak, as well as English, Scots, and Australian. Whilst training David Mattingley played the typical Aussie tourist and took every opportunity to travel as extensively as he could visiting Portsmouth to see the 'Victory' Nelson's flagship and Saxon shore forts, Madame Tussauds, the Tower of London and London Zoo, walking the Sussex Downs and Roman Roads in Cirencester, and visiting Bath, Cambridge, Newcastle, York and Edinburgh.

Finally with his training completed in April 1944 David took part in 'Crewing Up' a random intuitive crew selection process which seemed to work surprisingly well as bomber crews self selected themselves. David found his six fellow crewmen : a Flight Engineer and Co Pilot, a Navigator, a Wireless Engineer, a Bomb Aimer, a mid Gunner and Rear Gunner or 'Tail End Charlie'. Then there was more training as a crew with heavy four engined planes: Wellingtons, Halifaxes and Lancasters. Then finally active service and a posting to a Bomber Command squadron in summer 1944..

Both before and after D Day, 6th June 1944, Bomber Command suffer particularly heavy casualties with 2,600 airmen lost. New fledgling aircrews were rushed into action and so it was that Pilot Officer David Mattingley and his six fellow crew, Birdy, Boz, Drew, Cyril, Pop, and Murga, were posted to 625 Squadron at Kelstern on the Lincolnshire Wolds to start their tour of duty. By using surviving log books, squadron records and personal diaries, Christobel pieces together her husband's active flying career, and catalogues his involvement in heavy raids on Germany's industrial heartland, the Ruhr Valley and centres of military production.

As this moving story unfolds, the individual daily "battle orders" issued to 625 Squadron are interspersed in the narrative. This is an effective strategy, enabling the reader like the participants themselves, to anticipate what lay ahead on each mission, "Waiting for up to an hour until the signal came to taxi to the end of the runway. Stomachs churning, mouths dry. Shut in this cramped and claustrophobic cocoon of destruction and death, with its all-pervading oily smell, longing for a lungful of life-giving untainted air. Wondering if the op would go ahead. Hoping for a reprieve from hell."

So reading each 'battle order' is to experience afresh the fear and the tension of a flight over heavily defended Nazi Europe. Battle Order 204 concludes: "On, on, mile after Merlin-driven mile, high above France, towards Germany. Dreading what lay ahead. Two thousand and ninety-two men going through this ordeal of fire. For some it was the first time. For some it would be their last time. For some it would be their only time."

I count myself fortunate to have had the privilege of meeting both Christobel and David Mattingley while on teaching exchange in Australia in 1987. Having taught alongside David at Prince Alfred College in Adelaide I can assure fellow readers that the author has 'captured the likeness' perfectly and a nicer man you could not meet.