Reviewed by Rama Gaind.
By Marianne van Velzen, Allen & Unwin, $29.99.
It’s the essential story in this book that makes for engaging reading. It explores the story of the Number 18 Squadron in World War II that comprised Australian and Dutch fighters brought together to fight the one enemy.
It’s the unknown story of a unique RAAF squadron, its men and its mission to halt the Japanese advance in the Pacific.
Described as a ‘cracking page-turner’, this historical fiction has been carried out with assurance. It is a remarkably challenging genre since it intersects real historic events over a narrative that provides convincing imagery. It’s done in such a way that the fiction appears to be as honest as the real history with which it’s meshed.
It’s a composite story of the exploits of a number of Dutch East Indies bomber pilots who escaped Java just as the Japanese were invading in early 1942.
Bomber Boys is the little-known, remarkable story of more than 100 Dutch airmen, stranded in Australia with no country to return to, who were joined by a contingent of Australians to make up the RAAF’s No. 18 (Netherlands East Indies) Squadron. Formed in Canberra in April 1942, the squadron flew operational coastal patrols before eventually being relocated to the secret MacDonald Airfield, north of Pine Creek in the Northern Territory, and eventually Batchelor, near Darwin.
Marianne met them on Anzac Day in 2003 and was inspired by their “strange and special friendship”. It took her 13 years to finally write their story and get it published. As three of the men said they did not want their names connected with some of the things they had told her, the dilemma was confounding.
She creatively got around it by creating two characters and “letting them take us through that part of history, using true stories and following the actual timeline”. They “relive those men’s loves, their fights, their fears and their efforts to keep Australia’s northern coastline safe. Most of them have sadly left us now”.
However, this is more than a story about the 900 bombing raids, reconnaissance missions and attacks on Japanese shipping that the squadron flew in its three years of existence under Australian control. “At its heart, is a powerful and compelling story of a group of very different men, thrown together for a common purpose, and the strange and sometimes difficult friendships they formed.”
