OF LOVE AND LOSS

NTHE early hours of Saturday, May 16, 1942 at RAF Sullom Voe in the remote Shetland Islands, a Royal Air Force Catalina flying boat of 210 Squadron took off for another gruelling 18-hour mission. A year after Hitler's invasion of Russia, 210 Squadron's job was to provide reconnaissance reports along the coast of Occupied Norway to help protect Allied convoys to Murmansk.

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Catalina AH535/J, piloted by 25-year-old Flight Lieutenant Robert Keddie, would patrol to the west of Trondheim Fjord. Having been transferred by dinghy, the mooring was slipped and the Catalina taxied towards the take-off spot. With the engines at full throttle, she threw up a waterfall of spray as she took off and was soon cruising at 100 knots.

Radio silence was enforced when they reached their patrol area off the coast of Trondheim to begin flying circuits. At 17.39 hours, the crew requested a forecast for landing back at base.

At 18.04 hours, RAF Sullom Voe called back but received no reply. The aircraft was never found and her crew were reported missing in action. Diana, née Ladner, the love of Bob Keddie's life, who was four months pregnant with their child, kept the letters, diaries, sketches and poems he'd sent over the previous two years. Hers to him were lost. But that surviving correspondence, collected in my new book, tells the poignant yet joyous tale of their love a story that is both unique and, in its example of tremendous sacrifice and loss, characteristic of their noble generation.

Born in Essex on January 14, 1917, Bob Keddie trained as an accountant before enlisting in the RAF Volunteer Reserve on October 2, 1939. In March 1940, aged 23, he joined a party of friends to see the Beggar's Opera in London.

Bob's diary, March, 1940

A girl called Diana was there. She has a fascinating face. I didn't get a chance to talk to her... oh blast, you fool, you will only get burnt. Is there no such thing as a hardened heart? Let her pass while you can... but a voice inside says she may and she might and if you don't...

Bob's diary, April

Life's a game, but a serious one, there shall be but one wife for me. Pretty certain it's Diana. I wish ten thousand times I'd never met her; she's ruined my peace of mind for what seems like eternity.