Roald Dahl : Quizz answers.

In 1939, it became clear to Dahl that something big was coming. It was World War II. Soon all the Englishmen in the territory were rounded up and transformed into temporary soldiers, responsible for containing the German population. This experience prompted Dahl to formally join the RAF (Royal Air Force) and learn to fly warplanes. Thus in November 1939 he drove cross–country to Nairobi to enlist and was awarded with the rank of Leading Aircraftman (LAC). After eight weeks of basic training and six months of advanced flying instruction, the RAF deemed him ready for battle.
Unfortunately Dahl's very first venture into combat territory resulted in his famous 1940 crash in the Libyan desert. He was flying an unfamiliar airplane (a Gladiator) and was supposed to join 80 Squadron in the Western Desert. Unfortunately the co–ordinates he was given were incorrect, and he suddenly found himself losing both daylight and fuel in the middle of nowhere. He was forced to attempt a crash landing, praying for luck that he didn't get. His undercarriage hit a boulder and the nose of the Gladiator slammed into the sand at over 75 miles an hour. Dahl's head struck the reflector–sight and fractured his skull, pushing his nose in and blinding him for days. He managed to pull himself from the burning wreckage, though, and was later rescued by three brave soldiers from the Suffolk regiment. After convalescing for months in various army hospitals, Dahl was finally deemed fit to resume flying duties again in the spring of 1941.
80 Squadron was now engaged in the tragic RAF campaign in Greece, and after rejoining them Dahl was soon thrust into the desperate routine of trying to stay alive. On his first trip up, he encountered six Ju 88's (enemy planes) and managed to shoot one of them down. The next day he shot down another over Khalkis Bay. His victory was short–lived, though, as the German Messerschmitt fighters swarmed down upon him and he barely made it back to the base alive. Over the next four days he went up twelve more times, fighting against incredible odds and miraculously making it back to base each time. On the 20th of April the Germans discovered the camp and ground–strafed it, but luckily they didn't hit any of the seven remaining aircraft. Dahl and the other man in 80 Squadron fought bravely for many more months, and their battles are described at length in Going Solo. Dahl was not fated to remain with them for long though, and when he began to get blinding headaches (from his earlier accident) he was invalided back home to Britain. His career in the RAF was over.
Thus, in 1941, Roald Dahl went home to England. He wasn't there for long, though. Through his friendship with artist Matthew Smith, he became acquainted with some very important men in the British government. Dahl was a cultivated, forceful young injured pilot who seemed able to talk about anything. It wasn't long before he was shipped off to the United States to help with the British War Effort as "assistant air attache." [see note]
One of Dahl's first duties in America was to get close to as many well–placed people as possible. Newspaper–owner Charles Marsh was one of these, and he and Dahl struck up an immediate friendship. Another duty was to help create a kind of British propaganda to keep America interested in the war and sympathetic to Britain's effort. Famous English author C.S. Forester asked Dahl to tell him his own story, so that he could write it up. Dahl thought it easier to put something on paper himself, and the result was so good that Forester decided not to change a thing. The finished story appeared anonymously in The Saturday Evening Post in August 1942 under the title "Shot Down Over Libya."
The story was introduced as a "factual report on Libyan air fighting" by an unnamed RAF pilot "at present in this country for medical reasons." Of course, the "factual" part might have been a little bit of a stretch. As mentioned previously, Dahl's crash was actually caused by lack of fuel and wrong directions, not from any enemy shooting. Much later, when this discrepancy was pointed out to him, Dahl claimed that the story had been edited and misleadingly captioned by magazine editors looking for a more dramatic tale.
As time passed and Dahl became more popular among Washington's rich and famous, he became known for the wild yarns he would spin about his RAF adventures. He even wrote a story called "Gremlin Lore" about the mythical creatures that supposedly sabotaged RAF planes. Since he was a serving officer, Dahl was required to submit everything he wrote for approval by British Information Services. The officer who read it, Sidney Bernstein, decided to pass it along to his good friend Walt Disney, who was looking for War–related features for his fledgling film company. Disney decided to turn Dahl's story into an animated feature called The Gremlins.
Problems immediately began to surface with the project. What did Gremlins look like? How could Disney copyright a name already known (and invented) by countless RAF pilots? Should the film be satirical or purely fantastic? Beyond these concerns, audience enthusiasm for the film began to wane as the War dragged on. Ultimately the project was scrapped, though Disney did put together a picture book in 1943 entitled Walt Disney: The Gremlins (A Royal Air Force Story by Flight Lieutenant Roald Dahl). This book, published by Random House in the United States and by Collins in Australia and Great Britain, is extremely rare and is considered a prize by any serious Dahl collector. It was his first book.

Dahl's wife:





Patricia Neal was born in Packard, Kentucky on January 20, 1926. Her father was a manager for the Southern Coal and Coke Company, and though the family was not sophisticated, they were comfortably well off. Neal's theatrical ambitions were evident early in her school career, and she later enjoyed a measure of success at Northwestern University. After her father's early death, Neal left to pursue life as an actress in New York. "Before she was twenty–one, she had been taken to lunch by Richard Rodgers, pursued by David O. Selznick, had turned down one Broadway role in favor of another, and had made the cover of Life" (Treglown, 111).
Patricia Neal's most scandalous claim to fame, however, was her long affair with Gary Cooper, her co–star from The Fountainhead (King Vidor, 1949). The affair with Cooper began two years earlier, in 1947, and by 1950 Cooper's wife had found out and joined the battle. On one occasion, Treglown reports, Neal received the following telegram: "I HAVE HAD JUST ABOUT ENOUGH OF YOU. YOU HAD BETTER STOP NOW OR YOU WILL BE SORRY. MRS. GARY COOPER." Eventually Mrs. Cooper got her way, but not before her husband had made Pat pregnant and persuaded her to have an abortion. Guilty and scared, Neal called off the relationship.
After this trying period, Neal won a part in The Children's Hour, a new play by Lillian Hellman. It was at one of Hellman's dinner parties in 1951 that she first met the newly relocated author Roald Dahl. He had become quite a favorite amongst the New York elite, and he loved to shock and scorn unsuspecting newcomers with his wit and sarcasm. When he found himself seated next to the beautiful (and ten years his junior) rising star Patricia Neal, his tactic was to ignore her all evening. It wasn't long, though, before the two of them were going out together on a regular basis.
Dahl was also enjoying a measure of commercial success now as well. The sixty–year–old publisher Alfred Knopf had recently discovered some of Dahl's short stories and was eager to sign him to a deal. The collection Dahl later delivered in 1953 included such tales as "Taste," "My Lady Love, My Dove," "Skin," and "Dip in the Pool." Also included were four country stories gathered under the sub–title "Claud's Dog." The resulting book was entitled Someone Like You and received some very good reviews: "At disconcertingly long intervals, the compleat short–story writer comes along... Tension is his business; give him a surprise denouement, he'll give you a story leading up to it. His name in this instance is Roald Dahl" (James Kelly, quoted in Treglown, 119).
The publicity department at Knopf soon had even more to work with: Roald Dahl and Patricia Neal were married on July 2, 1953 at Trinity Church in New York.