Lindsay/Ivor Cutler, 4. A Life in the Clouds

At the outbreak of World War II Ivor Cutler was not old enough to join the armed forces and was, briefly, evacuated along with his sisters and younger brother, but two years later he joined the Royal Air Force and started navigator training. A dangerous, but possibly glamorous, life as a member of Bomber Command beckoned, but it was not to be and Ivor (service number 1562357) was soon dismissed from the training course for what he later described as “dreaminess” – a potentially fatal characteristic for a navigator and his fellow crew members. He spent the rest of the war in a more mundane role in an engineering factory, living once more with his parents in Glasgow, then after the war ended he trained as a teacher and began his teaching career in Paisley.