Over 55,000 young Bomber Command airmen made the ultimate sacrifice; thousands more survived one of the bloodiest and most controversial campaigns of the Second World War, but never spoke about their experiences. Above Us The Stars tells the story of one of those men, Flt Sgt Jack Clyde. Jane Gulliford Lowes didn’t want this to be a ‘crew train, crew fly, crew struggle day-by-day’ type memoir. Rather, she explains the social history of north-east England, putting the spotlight on Jack’s family in the Durham mining town of Seaham Harbour and the German civilians at the sharp end of the RAF bombing campaign. Drawing on his log books, family testimony, and the notebooks from wireless school, Gulliford Lowes tells the story of the 20-year-old wireless operator, and provides an intimate account of the lives of a Halifax bomber crew, and the horrors faced by both the crews in the air and civilians on the ground.
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