The poppy orchard - Mary Withall

It is 1938 and Stephen Beaton gains his pilot's wings while completing his medical studies at Glasgow University. To his dismay, however, the RAF wants him not as a fighter pilot, but as a doctor. When his childhood sweetheart, Ellen McDougal, arrives from Australia to take up a research post in veterinary surgery, the pair barely renew their friendship before Stephen is posted to Manston Air Base in Kent, where his attention is engaged by the delectable nurse Grace Dobie.

Everything changes when Manston falls victim to an attack by Hitler's bombers. Suddenly Stephen is dealing with wounded and badly burned pilots, in need of instant treatment and ground-breaking skin grafts. With Ellen in Prestwick and Stephen absorbed in his work, it seems that the relationship between the two is doomed to failure . . .