Living to See You

From the deserts of North Africa to the fever wards back home, this wartime love story charts the distant courtship between a young Wellington Bomber pilot and a probationer nurse. He sees action above the skies of Egypt in one of the most hazardous missions of the Desert Airforce, while she cares for patients with the dreaded diseases of the age. 
Their unfolding lives are intertwined by their letters as each struggles to survive the perils of war. For him, it is the brutal enemy attack as fighter planes swoop from a desert sky. For her, it is a different battle – against infectious diseases such as TB, diphtheria and polio in the days before antibiotics. They must both observe the rigid hierarchies of the time: whether it be Sister’s wrath on the wards or mute acceptance of the grim odds at each new desert landing ground. It is not just their story, for they are part of a wider band of comrades. The young men who started on Tiger Moths could end up as fighter pilots, on Hurricanes or Spitfires, what of their future? The probationers may have survived the Blitz, but where will the State Registered nurses find themselves, during these intense early years of the war, when as Churchill said, ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ 
Living to See You is an action-packed novel that will bring the reader closer to the hopes and fears of a generation of young people who led extraordinary wartime lives.

Bee Johnstone worked in the NHS for 35 years, the last 20 of which were spent a Consultant in Clinical Genetics in the University Hospitals of Leicester. She started writing her first novel 6 years ago upon retirement, drawing upon her experience to research and write about nursing in the 1940s.