When Jeff Pack began clearing his parent's home after they had died, he made a startling discovery. The financier tells JANE HARRISON why he felt he had to share what he had found

IT WAS the stuff of fiction and all the more unbelievable because Joe and Margaret Pack had never said a word about their remarkable lives: how their entire courtship was conducted by airmail letters during the war, marrying only three weeks after Joe's return from Madagascar; how Joe, an RAF pilot, was shot down in Germany, escaping almost certain death thanks to the famous Resistance, The Comet Line, and knocked on his mother's door the day after she had received a 'missing, believed killed' telegram.

Mr and Mrs Pack lived most of their lives in Ealing, latterly in Fowler's Walk. Their secrets died with them, but their son decided to set the record straight after finding the 200 letters they had sent to each other.

Jeff, 62, of Queen's Gardens, Ealing, lovingly retyped all the letters and, after painstaking research, has published Love is in the Air: The wartime letters and memories of Joe Pack and Margaret Dillon.

He is not a natural writer, having always worked in finance, but felt compelled to put pen to paper after his parents had died, his mother five years ago and his father two years later.

"There was a huge amount of paperwork, and then I found this pile of letters bound together with ribbon. I had seen them before but never read them,"

Jeff says. "I could have stuck them in the loft or chucked them away but thought, 'They are 60 years old and if they decay I won't have a record'. As I started doing it, their incredible stories emerged. It started as a solution to a problem and grew into a legacy."

Jeff was able to verify much of what he had read and was astonished at his father's resilience and bravery, and the self-sacrifice of those who helped him.

Joe was a pilot on Halifax bombers (Squadron 35) and flew over enemy territory between January and June 1942, until on June 7/8, on his 18th operation, his aircraft was shot down over the Dutch/German border.

Jeff says: "He was found by the Resistance, The Comet Line, who got him through Brussels to Paris and across the south-west corner of the Pyrenees. One of his guides was a Basque smuggler. There was stuff he had written about that he had never talked about before.

"He rarely talked about the war to his family and if we asked anything he said, 'Oh, you wouldn't be interested in that'. We never pressed him. I regret not asking him more at the time."

Had he done so, Jeff would have discovered the amazing work of The Comet Line, the Resistance organisation dominated by women, many in their twenties and some in their teens, ranging from doctors to peasants, from priests to a baron and countess. It repatriated 288 airmen from the British,

American, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand air forces. Many died or were imprisoned and some received gallantry medals after the war.

Speaking of his ordeal, Joe wrote: "The masterminding of our eventual escape was due to our leader, a young Belgium girl, the now famous Andrée De Jongh. She and her father (who was later caught and shot) and her sister Suzanne laid the foundation for many British airmen to escape via The Comet Line. Andrée was awarded the George medal after the war by the British. Her own government made her a countess.We travelled from the Gare d'Austerlitz after bribing the railway officials. We occupied a compartment reserved for German officers and collaborators.

"Whenever the door was opened, the girls would talk across us and we would say oui or non. There was always a German in the corridor."

On his return Joe was reassigned to flying boats, which was when he met Margaret, a WAAF officer serving at RAF Oban.

Jeff says: "He was obviously very keen but she rejected him. He went to Madagascar and she to Cornwall. Then for some reason the letters started, and went on for two years. Their entire courtship was by airmail and when they both got home, they married only three weeks later."

Their letters are both poignant and endearing as they struggle with their feelings. In one Joe wrote: "You were so difficult to understand and you made it so obvious that you only wanted friends. You and you alone realised how much I wanted to be with you, to get to know the real you, but you would not allow it. It was the first time I had ever wanted so much from a woman since my teens."

Margaret wrote later: "I can't begin to tell you how happy it made me to hear from you again, I felt sure you must by this time be completely uncaring  Joe darling, I believe I love you very much. Do you believe me? I didn't fully realise it until you had gone away and I knew I couldn't see your funny face any more. Dear Joe, if you love me, will you tell me so? I shall be your girl. I think I am anyway, deep down inside."

Through research with organisations such as the Escape Lines Memorial Society (ELMS), Jeff found letters to his father from people who had sheltered him during his escape, and details of a meeting with Andrée De Jongh in 1967. Research from other sources, including the National Archives at Kew and RAF Escaping Society files at the Imperial War Museum, helped him fill in the gaps.

Through ELMS, Jeff and his family walked in his father's footsteps this year in the Pyrenees.

He says: "My father did the 26 miles in one night; you couldn't risk being out in the open. We took two days. There were some original helpers and escapees. It was exactly as it had been described by my father.

"It was a great feeling to see what he had written about."

He has also met one of his father's guides a number of times, Nadine Dumon, now in her eighties, who was arrested by the Gestapo.

Jeff says: "She was in a PoW camp and barely survived. A truly remarkable woman - she was only 17 when she took Dad from Brussels to Paris."

The book has been a journey of discovery, one which has totally changed Jeff's views of his parents.

"This has changed my perception of them," Jeff says.

"When you are young they are authority figures; you are not interested in them as people. Then you grow up and have your own problems and then they are old with their problems. If you aren't careful, you never actually catch up with them as human beings.

"This is a glimpse you almost never have." 

* Love is in the Air is available at Pitshanger Bookshop, in Pitshanger Lane, Ealing, or via the publishers at www.woodfieldpublishing.co.uk .