For me, the ultimate purpose of writing is to communicate. A book can be entertaining. It can offer an escape from reality. And it can be educational. Yet the best books do more than that. They make their readers think, reflect and maybe even change their minds about things. In all my books, I strive to both educate and inspire. If I don't have something I want to say about a topic, I don't write. Period.
John Dering Nettleton VC, 1917 - 1943
Moral Fiber is intended as a tribute to the aircrew of Bomber Command 1939 -1945. Men like John Nettleton pictured above, who died at the age of 26 leaving no wife and children behind. He earned the VC for his outstanding dedication to duty, but has since been completely forgotten, even -- or possibly especially -- in his homeland of South Africa, where a white man fighting for Britain is no longer politically correct.
Yet all the men who flew with Bomber Command lie under a shadow cast by post-war doubts about the efficacy and the morality of their mission: a strategic bombing offensive against an entire nation. As I have written elsewhere, many people are uncomfortable with the use of bombing, particularly the imprecise "area" bombing conducted by the RAF in the Second World War. It is inconvenient, therefore, to remember the roughly 55,000 men who gave their lives conducting that war.
With Moral Fibre I seek to push readers off their "high horse" of moral rectitude and challenge their smug assumptions of superiority. I want them to put themselves in the shoes of young men and young women in Britain in 1944. I do not attempt to give answers about what is right and wrong, I simply want a deeper understanding of what was involved for participants.
My principal characters are devout Christians and they each struggle in their own way to understand what God intents for them and what they owe to Him and to others. Yet, as my character Reverend Reddings reminds his daughter, all human understanding of God is incomplete. Reddings tells her: "It is hubris to think we can understand God's will and plan for us."
Yet I hope that readers can identify with the issues and the feelings that my characters encounter. I hope that by suffering through their crises and triumphs along side them, they will come to a closer understanding of their own spiritual challenges.
Riding the icy, moonlit sky— They took the war to Hitler.
Their chances of survival were
less than fifty percent. Their average age was 21.
This is the story of just one Lancaster
skipper, his crew,and the woman he loved.
It is intended as a tribute to
them all.
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Flying
Officer Kit Moran has earned his pilot’s wings, but the greatest challenges
still lie ahead: crewing up and returning to operations. Things aren’t made
easier by the fact that while still a flight engineer, he was posted LMF
(Lacking in Moral Fibre) for refusing to fly after a raid on Berlin that killed
his best friend and skipper. Nor does it help that he is in love with his dead
friend’s fiancé, who is not yet ready to become romantically involved again.
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