Stop at a Winner

by R.F. Delderfield

'Delderfield goes to war--World War II at home in England--and the result is a typically genial but some what half-hearted nostalgia-farce-satire that falls somewhere between Evelyn Waugh and No Time for Sergeants. Pedlar Pascoe is a sweetly cloddish country giant who enlists in the R.A.F. to avoid going home to his fierce Gypsy mother. Horace Pope is a shifty Cockney whose attempts to avoid the draft have all failed. Together they are a ""drillmaster's nightmare,"" an inseparable team of ingratiating brawn and insolent brains that roams from training base to training base, running profitable ""fiddles,"" exploiting the paperwork idiocies of military bureaucracy (a ""vast uncoordinated movement surging toward a vague, unidentifiable goal""). They sell R.A.F. petrol and wood to Jellybelly Nell; they liven up the pubs; they arrange attractive transfers for a fee; they woo a by-the-book W.A.A.F.; their messhall cooking inspires ""The Tapioca Riot."" But when they somehow wind up overseas after D-Day (Pedlar's desperate solution for Horace's pregnant-girlfriend problem), Pedlar and Horace emerge as heroes--Jerries dead on all sides--and are last seen beading for America. Delderfield dedicates these picaresque gumdrops (written in 1961) to ""all the Judies and Erks who had difficulty in taking the R.A.F. seriously""; most American Delderfield fans--who'll miss the town-and-country atmospheres and the romances--will probably be only marginally charmed, only slightly amused.'

Genres: Historical Fiction

285 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1961

About the author

Ronald Frederick Delderfield was a popular English novelist and dramatist, many of whose works have been adapted for television and are still widely read.

Several of Delderfield's historical novels and series involve young men who return from war and lead lives in England that allow the author to portray the sweep of English history and delve deeply into social history from the Edwardian era to the early 1960s.

From Wikipedia

Reviews

[D. Krauss · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delderfield is one of those English constants, like Chesterton or Daphne du Maurier: you know it’s going to be a decent read even if the subject matter is a tad remote. I admit to not reading a lot of his stuff; I think the last was God Is an Englishman which was decent enough but, again, a tad remote. This, though, was right on target, made me laugh out loud at portions.

Pedlar Pascoe and Horace Pope are a pair of sad sack, Gomer Pyle, Sergeant Bilko types conscripted into the RAF at the beginning of WW2. The British could not have located two more persons incompatible with military life than them. Pascoe is a giant-sized gypsy raised on larceny, a seeming mental defective who is actually sharper than everyone else in the entire chain of command, and who uses the perceptions of his slowness to his advantage. Pope is simply larcenous, a man who finds casual cons and theft better than working for a living and he fortuitously falls in with Pascoe during their induction. Knowing he needs someone of great strength and size to protect him during his planned cons of fellow RAF members and civilians, he latches onto Pascoe and so begins a 7 year Laurel and Hardy/Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid relationship that takes them across wartime UK and Europe, inadvertently ending up heroes.

Picaresque, yes, that’s the word. This is a Henry Fielding novel as our two antiheroes fall into one situation after another, usually involving various black market schemes of varying success at the expense of RAF supplies. Criminality, in other words, but the raging incompetence of the various RAF sergeants and officers and supply depots invites it, downright demands it. And that’s the funniest part of this novel: Delderfield’s dead-on description of time honored and proven military incompetence.

Any of you who ever served in the military will be overwhelmed by deja vu and the sense that your shared experience is universal. Any of you who never did, please understand that things get done in the military primarily by a combination of inertia and accident-- the good inertia, the body-in-motion-tends-to-stay-in-motion type, so that when your youngster enters the recruiters' office, the continuous movement of wheels will ensure he comes out the other end trained and trim and ready. For what? Well, a series of incomprehensible and unnecessary events summed by such phrases as “Hurry up and wait,” “BFO (brilliant flash of the obvious),” and the now infamous SNAFU; or, our actual favorite, B.O.H.I.C.A.

Look it up.

And there will be several Pascoe and Pope’s along the way to make your kids’ lives interesting.

Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.

[Steve · Rating 2 out of 5]

A lumbering but warm-hearted Gypsy and a cockney con-artist join forces to survive the war by joining the RAF. They even manage to pull in a little cash along the way through various and sundry schemes. It's entertaining but not among Delderfield's best.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

1939-1945 England as 2 unlikely RAF enlistees survive the war as heroes. Hilarious!

[CQM · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tale of wartime dodgers that was turned into the Alfie Lynch, Sean Connery film On the Fiddle.
The friendship at the core of the story is nicely done but it's a slight little thing on the whole.

[Doug Haynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a terribly amazing book but so amazingly fun to read due to all the great British slang.

[Doug Haynes · Rating 5 out of 5]

Not a terribly amazing book but so amazingly fun to read due to all the great British slang.