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Once they had to lift her out of the plane after landing because she was shaking so badly she couldn’t climb down herself.

Maddie’s Wellington joyrides were not exactly clandestine, but they weren’t exactly cricket either. She was counted among the S.O.B. – Souls On Board – when the lads took off, but she certainly wasn’t authorised to be there chivvying along the novice bombing crews as they practised low flying over the high moors. So various off-and on-duty concerned people came pelting out of offices and the men’s and ladies’ tea huts, coatless and white-faced, when they saw Maddie’s RAF mates chair-lifting her in their arms across the runway.

A WAAF friend of hers called Joan and the guilty squadron leader reached her first.

‘What’s wrong? What happened? Is she hurt?’

Maddie was not hurt. She was already badgering the Wellington crew who carried her to put her down. ‘Get off, everyone will see, the girls will never let me forget it –’

‘What happened?’

Maddie struggled to her feet and stood shivering on the concrete. ‘We got fired on,’ she said, and looked away, burning with shame at how much it had taken out of her.

‘Fired on!’ barked the squadron leader. This was in the spring of 1940 – the war was still in Europe. It was before the disastrous May when the Allies fled retreating to the French beaches, before the siege that was the Battle of Britain, before the thunder and flame-filled nights of the Blitz. In the spring of 1940 our skies were alert, and armed, and uneasy. But they were still safe.

‘Yes, fired on,’ echoed the Wellington pilot in fury. He was white as a sheet too. ‘By those idiots manning the anti-aircraft guns at the Cattercup barrage balloons. By our own gunners. Who the hell’s training them? Bloody daft trigger-happy morons! Wasting ammo and scaring the blue bleeding daylights out of everybody! Any school lad can spot the difference between a flying cigar and a flying pencil!’

(We call our jolly Wellingtons ‘flying cigars’ and we call your nasty Dorniers ‘flying pencils’. Have fun translating, Miss E.)