World War II
During World War II, he tried to join the RAF again; it is said he got so far as to be assigned to his old squadron before the authorities caught up with him. Instead, he joined the Air Transport Auxiliary that transported aircraft to England. On January 3, 1941 he wrote his sister Lucia discussing his upcoming eye surgery:
... and in less than a week now, I get the eye sliced up. And I know it'll be a success. Pray for me at 4pm on the tenth, will you. So here's hoping that when they take the bandages off on about the 20th, my eye will function… Ah just ain't got the dough for the hospital on the tenth. If can't get it - well, then no operation as can't ask the doctor to actually fork out money for me in addition. So, sister, please see what you can do in addition to the usual ten-spot, will you please? And let me have it by Wednesday.” a group of Chinese saw me today and want to take lessons from me and will even pay for a ship as soon as the eye is okay. Private flying, govt. jobs, city and state jobs - all waiting.
Read more about this topic: Frederic Ives Lord
Famous quotes containing the words war ii, world and/or war:
“I realized how for all of us who came of age in the late sixties and early seventies the war was a defining experience. You went or you didn’t, but the fact of it and the decisions it forced us to make marked us for the rest of our lives, just as the depression and World War II had marked my parents.”
—Linda Grant (b. 1949)
“The world has not to be put in order: the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)
“Stiller ... took part in the Spanish Civil War ... It is not clear what impelled him to this military gesture. Probably many factors were combined—a rather romantic Communism, such as was common among bourgeois intellectuals at that time.”
—Max Frisch (1911–1991)