And for all those who served...
From the short story: "H is for Hurricane"
"Many years later, when his heart finally gave out, by good fortune (if such it could be called) he was in his garden. Felled, as if knocked off his feet by an immense hand which held him pinned to the ground, he found himself looking up at the sky. And there once again were the vapour trails, each created by a Hurricane, or a Spitfire or a Messerschmitt. And he could hear the unmistakable drone of the engines, a sound which has not been heard over the fields of Kent for over seventy years now. He knew that the trees in his garden had archived that sound, taking it deep into their cores, as if in musical accompaniment to the rings that grew inside them, patterns that were the very etchings of time itself. He watched the two competing orchestras perform their aerial symphonies until the light faded from the sky and from his eyes.
Until the old aviator had flown his final flight."
From the short story: "Tears in the Rain"
"Is he badly burned? It was a question she would never have to ask, though many others did, dreading the reply, their eyes already refocusing on a new and unwelcome future. One they had hoped to avoid. For Douglas, like his plane, would never come back. There would be no retrieval of a limp body from a field, no ambulance ride – claxons wailing – to first a hospital ("We’re not set up here to treat injures like those") and then onto a burns unit. No years of recovery and rehabilitation. But then, she often thought that Douggie had been one of the lucky ones."
"His luck finally ran out in a duel with a Focke-Wulf 190, a two second burst of gunfire that had set light to the fuel tanks. The plane had burned slowly, slowly enough to roast a man to death as if upon a spit. She tried not to think about that, the flames rising up in the cockpit like water flooding into a sinking ship, Douggie beating at the Perspex canopy, his hands becoming more and more impotent with each passing second, the flames spreading down his arms and up his legs, destroying the flight suit he was so proud of. The pyre would also have taken the blue silk scarf she’d given him and the photo of herself she knew he always carried with him. All going to ashes as if thrown upon a lighted hearth."
From the short story: "The Summer Isle"
"For the most part they hid their fear well, carrying on with the banter and the foolery when they got back, as if Death itself could be cajoled good naturedly into sparing each of them. But so few, so very few, were spared. Death would laugh with them as they stood in a circle talking about the last sortie, or the one to come, but he would still take his toll, caring not at all for rank or wealth or privilege. About whether it was fair to die so young when in some cases you hadn’t even slept with a woman."
"Many a familiar face would leave the mess never to return. They said (it was part of the lore that swirled around the base in currents and eddies of gossip) you could often tell who was going to die, that they wore their skulls too close to the skin, a death mask waiting to be revealed, that their gaze was fixed on a point in the far distance which only they could see. She had witnessed that look several times and sure enough the personal effects of those men had been bagged-up not long after by an adjutant, their names removed from the roster of available flight crews.
In spite of all this, and more, she had still fallen in love."
