Harry Doe started keeping a diary in January 1944. It was going to be a monumental year and the 21-year-old Canadian wanted a record for posterity.
Harry’s elder brother, Robert, had enlisted in the navy, but there was only one branch of service for Harry—the Royal Canadian Air Force. His father had been a pilot in the First World War, and Doe had grown up obsessed with aircraft. As an adolescent, he had been a talented model-maker and won several competitions with his creations. He joined the air force in 1941 at the age of 18 as a mechanic and the following year he was sent to Edmonton, Alberta, for aircrew training. After completing the technical training school, Doe started air observer’s school and in August 1943 he was commissioned as pilot observer and awarded his navigation wings.
Soon afterward, Doe shipped out to Britain for first posting to the Advanced Flying Unit, Royal Air Force Wigtown, in the southwest of Scotland. He arrived at the start of 1944. It was cold and wet, but Doe didn’t care. He was leading the life he had dreamed about for years. At the front of his diary Doe penned a brief poem:
If I should die
and you bury me
And send my things
across the sea,
One favor, ere
you let me be
Please burn this
ruddy diary.
Doe spent the first fortnight of 1944 flying, sleeping and drinking. It was a good life, but one that didn’t leave much time to commit his innermost thoughts to his diary. Rather than record his emotions, Doe simply noted his activities. On January 10 he took the train south to his new station, RAF Chipping Warden, which was in Oxfordshire, 75 miles northwest of London. Shortly afterward, at a mess dinner, Doe hit it off with a fellow Canadian named Harold Sherman Peabody, or Al, as he preferred.
In fact, Peabody, whom Doe described in
