The Long and the Short and the Tall: An Ordinary Airman's War

by Robert Collins

Open-hearted account of what it was like for a prairie boy to move into a wartime air force life.

134 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Robert Collins was born in Shamrock, Saskatchewan, where he lived until joining the armed forces in 1943. An award-winning journalist, he has written for a variety of magazines, and he is the author of fourteen books.

Reviews

[Michael Kerr · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars. A shy prairie boy from Shamrock, Saskatchewan, from a family where alcohol was never served and 'darn' was about as harsh as language got, signed up for the RCAF in 1943 and found himself in a very different world. Then, the discovery that he was colour-blind meant that flying was out of the question and Collins became an airplane mechanic, well out of the line of fire. This frank memoir is a coming of age tale relating the author's journey to finding his own voice and achieving a kind of independence, even within the rigid confines of military life.

[TheIron Paw · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir providing a different perspective of service life during and immediately after WWII. This is not a story about heroes and victims, but a story about the common airman of groundcrew who never saw action. It's a story of coming of age from a prairie town to London and Hamburg (post war Hamburg). Collins provides a description of basic training that was so much like mine 20 years later (same equipment, same sergeants). This is a book well worth reading from both a military history perspective and a personal growth perspective.