大象传媒

To show that all was not doom and gloom, this is an incident that happened in 1942. A pilot friend of mine lived in East London with his parents. His proud mother arranged a tea party of her lady friends from the Women's Guild to show off her gallant son. After much adulation he was bored to tears and when asked if the squadron had a mascot he described how their mascot, a tortoise, had died on a bombing raid. He had a little parachute that failed to open when the aircraft was crashing and he had not survived. It was very sad but, of course in wartime, they could not replace him as tortoises were in short supply. A few days later the Squadron Commander got a telephone call late at night to say there was an urgent live animal package to be collected from Lincoln station. The C.O. duly collected the package and found the tortoise with a note saying it was to replace the mascot so sadly lost in operations and that its name was Kipper. Everyone was completely bemused by the arrival and the pilot concerned, very worried, telephoned his mother to explain it was all a joke and for goodness sake not to send any more tortoises.

The outcome was the Kipper was adopted by the Squadron and lived in the grass verges outside the hangers. He could not be seen when the grass was long so to avoid another demise his shell was drilled and a bicycle spoke with little flag put up.

I don't know how long Kipper survived as I left the Squadron but I still have a photograph of Kipper with his flag flying.

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