I have no idea where this came from. Actually, that’s a lie. I was thinking about the RAF Tornado crew shot down over Kuwait and somehow, this came about. Why this story exactly…that’s where I have no idea.

Anyway, regardless of the thoughts behind this story it does all belong to me, so leave it alone!

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Routine

Even now, and despite all the changes that the war has brought, he is a creature of habit. He gets up in the morning, he dresses, and he goes for breakfast. He enjoys this meal most of all; he is not too exhausted to bring the fork to his mouth and return it to the plate, and there are no spare places at the table to be casually explained away. It is usually sausage and egg - sometimes there is bacon and there is always toast - but regardless of content it is always a feast to his sleep-clouded eyes.

After all, it could be the last thing he ever eats.

Afternoons are spent in the mess, playing cards or writing letters to his loved ones while his ears listen for the inevitable siren. The order to scramble arrives sooner or later; then he’s up and sprinting to his plane, adrenaline coursing through his veins as his heart pounds in his chest. When he first arrived at the station he longed for nothing more than to hear that wonderful, dreadful wail. He was young and eager to get up there, eager to do his part in bringing an end to this madness which had consumed the whole world. Now that he has aged a hundred years in one summer the sound freezes his blood and he must force his legs to carry him in a direction they do not wish to go. Although no-one speaks of it, he understands that the siren and his treacherous body parts are combining to take him one step closer to death every day. It will all end soon, one way or another. It must; he has already privately acknowledged that the odds are not good.

There is no life outside this station, or so it seems. His leafy corner of England is for the most part absurdly quiet, but every day the newspapers bring more stories of death and destruction and fire raining down from the sky.  Perhaps there is nothing left to save; perhaps there is no longer anyone to fight and die for.

Meanwhile his past is rapidly fading, overwhelmed by the mind-numbing terror of his present. He does not remember the boy he was before all this started, and he does not know this man he has become. He longs for the return of the innocence of his youth but knows that it will never be. He has lived too much, but not enough. It will never be enough.

The future does not exist; the thought in his mind most mornings is that perhaps he will not have a life beyond this bright new day. He cannot, will not allow himself to think of that which may yet prove to be nothing more than a figment of his imagination.

And today? Today he does not live; he survives. He is a product of his environment. He is trapped in drudgery with only, it seems, one terrible means of escape. An endless cycle of sirens and stand-downs, of dogfights and dark dreams.

He can only ever remember fragments of his time in the sky. His thoughts are blocked out of  his head and his heart as soon as the wheels bump down onto the concrete runway he now considers home. It is an almost involuntary response to the horror he has witnessed, and one that he has begun to welcome.

For all that, he knows his experience is similar every day. There will be the comforting whirr of the engines, the rhythmic beat of bullets against metal, the brightness of the fires engulfing the aircraft at his side, the black boldness of his opponent’s Swastika. He will squeeze the trigger automatically and watch the parachute unfurl as his enemy floats to the ground with surprising grace.

Then he will return to the safety of home, to sit and watch and wait again. It has been this way for months now, day after day after endless day. In this, the most uncertain of times, to live means nothing more than to repeat the most certain of behaviours. It is a strangely comforting thought, and one he would laugh about were he not so terribly afraid.

Sometimes while they wait they talk of those who did not return. Regardless of the unfortunate soul’s identity, they say the same thing. So Lofty’s bought it, eh? Damn shame.  Nice chap, and a bloody good pilot too. And most of them think the same thing too. Please God,  don’t let it be me next time. Then they avert their eyes from the empty chair, ignore the abandoned hand of poker and try not to think of the telegram some poor sod is soon to receive.

He, however, has given up praying. He has stared death in the face more than once in this strange new life of his and has accepted that his destiny is no longer in his own hands. He does not know when the end will come but he does know this:

As his aircraft is plummeting towards the corn-filled field a mile below and the red-hot flames are licking at his skin, as his burst eardrums mean that he can no longer hear his own screams and the pain which has engulfed him becomes too much to bear, as he readies himself for the plunge into everlasting darkness that only death brings and takes a final look at this glorious world through the red veil that has descended over his eyes …

…he will long for the return of routine.