by Thomas Wood
I was one of the fortunate one’s on base. I had my wife and now my home nearby and so I was able to sneak home to my wife on an evening pass.
Shortly before Christmas, I cycled my way off the base, bid a cheerio to the sentry, and headed home.
Christine was sat by the door, fire roaring, waiting for me.
She didn’t even bother to say ‘Hello’ to me.
“I went out today”, her eyes began filling with tears and she tried breathing in between little sobs.
Throwing my beret on to the table, I lurched towards her and gave her a hug.
She broke the hug and looked into my eyes, with a wry smile spread across part of her face.
“We’re having a baby” she sobbed and squeezed me tight, burying her head into my chest.
I stood, open mouthed for a moment, blinking several times, double checking I was still awake.
I began to wheeze, which turned in to a wheezy sort of laugh. Tears streaming down my face now too, we stood for an hour or two in our front room, giggling and chuckling to each other.
I was going to be a father, I couldn’t quite get my head around it, a smaller version of me, fused with my favourite person in the world, would be joining us.
I sobbed for days afterwards. In between my sobbing, the boys took me out for a drink. I had joined the group of men who had wives and girlfriends expecting.
I couldn’t believe it.
Then the due date came through.
The sixth of June 1944.
9.
Although we were hurtling towards the ground at one hundred miles an hour, the lives of many men in the back, many who were married, some expecting children of their own, I could not get the thought of my own family out of my head.
All leave was cancelled, even for those whose wives’ were expecting that very week. All communication was restricted, only that was considered of paramount importance to the upcoming mission was granted.
I wasn’t going to know before we left whether my wife was going to have a little boy or a little girl. She may have already given birth, there was no way of me knowing.
I thought of Christine, alone in our house, preparing to give birth without her husband. She would be in such pain and I wouldn’t be the first person she would see on the other side of that pain. I felt incredibly depressed at the thought, and for every second that I thought about it, my limbs seemed to get heavier.
I sighed at the prospect of other people getting to hold my child before their father held them. I longed to be there, waiting till the early hours before being told I was allowed in. I fantasised over it several times in the matter of days I had to stew over my own emotions and frustrations.
I wanted to be the first man to pick up my baby girl or little boy and cradle them for hours, talking to them, letting them know how lucky they truly were to have such a loving, caring and beautiful person like their mother.
I needed to see Christine, to tell her how proud I was of her, of how far we’d come together already and tell her how much I loved her. She needed to know that even if I wasn’t coming back, I had our future mapped out already, every little detail and that it was just this war that had paused all of that.
I always kept my letters from Christine in my inside pocket, but tonight, we had no identification, nothing that could give away who we were, where we were from or what we would go on to do. Hopefully, if all went to plan, we would be sent home in a few weeks in readiness for the next time our services were required.
I tapped my inside pocket as a gesture, a comfort to me that she was always there with me, my real co-pilot.
I would explain to my child about their father, how he was an utterly useless man, who forgot birthdays, anniversaries and barely remembered to feed himself. I just wanted an opportunity to explain to them why their father wasn’t there to greet them into the world and that he would try his best to get to see them as quickly as he could.
I dreamed about being the one to teach them to read and write, I would take hours out of my day to do it, or give up working just to spend extra time with them.
The future that I had seen in that young girl’s eyes at that dance was happening, but it was all happening in my head. It was going to occur without me.
The more I thought about my absence at the birth of my child, the more I thought about the possibility of my permanent absence. This was another thing we had been instructed not to do, but it is only natural for a man to think about the things he loves most in life in the face of death.
I knew I was in the same situation as every man in this plane, and the other two that flew by our sides, but I couldn’t feel compassion for them, I had my own feelings to worry about.
I found myself praying again, praying that I would at least do my job to the best of my ability and, if it was God’s plan, to lead me to the other side to watch my child grow up, like a normal father.
To make totally sure that God would hear my prayer, I would need to play my part. I needed to focus wholeheartedly on what I was about to do, and not place my life, or the lives of those in my plane, in jeopardy.
I needed to forget about my family.
I pushed them to the back of my mind.
10.
I wrestled with my wooden, oversized, overweight bird as it plummeted to the ground. I tried in earnest to keep the plane airborne for as long as possible, preventing gravity from taking its inevitable victim just yet.
Trees became visible as we raced past, much too quickly for my liking, they were all merged into one great blur as they zipped past my windows, threatening to bring down the whole plane with a glancing blow.
John and I sat in total silence now, struggling and sweating to bring down our craft at the correct landing site.
I could sense a few pairs of eyes behind us boring into the back of my head as they watched intently as these two men, responsible for all their lives, fought with a force of nature to stop a speeding log from killing them all.
I swore I could also hear a few prayer beads clicking in between someone’s hands, a few of the lads had had them on the training flights, as they rasped out the Lord’s Prayer or Hail Mary’s or whatever they wanted as we moved closer to hell.
Suddenly, our target appeared at our eleven o’clock, as if someone had suddenly plonked it there, John needlessly pointing it out to me as we scurried towards it.
Its tall, imposing, grey structure looked odd over the rest of the landscape. The futuristic design of the bridge somehow didn’t fit in with the rest of the aesthetics of the village, as it somehow glowed in the moonlight.
The moon lit up everything that I needed to see. I could see where we were about to pitch down for the night, still coming in way too fast.
The frame of the plane creaked like I’d never heard it before as it wrestled with the speed and the way in which I was forcing it to stay airborne much longer than it wanted to. This Horsa had been put to work, it had done well, it was my favourite one yet.
Just a few more seconds Horsey, just give me a few more.
I willed it to give me more time, as if I was on a marathon, in the last straight, ready to give up. I found myself rocking backwards and forwards trying to give it a physical helping hand, pushing closer and closer to the finishing line.
It kept going for a few seconds more.
As I grunted and strained, I felt the nervous faces behind me, darkened by the paint smeared across them, all stare at me, praying for me.
We still had the speed, but we didn’t have the height, I would start to see the individual grass blades before too long.
The river was now racing past us on the left, the glistening moonlight bouncing off it and flashing around my eyes. I tilted my head slightly so as to avoid the glare, the thing I needed the least right now was a headache, I already had one of those.
“Too fast!” I shouted like an absolute mad man, “we’re going to need the chute!”
John grunted some sort of reply, but it was t
oo late now if he was actually disagreeing with me. If we didn’t use the chute, we would plough straight into our target, which wouldn’t exactly be ideal at one hundred miles an hour.
John readied himself.
I fixed my gaze across the river now and watched as the tower loomed closer towards us, I would hold my breath from now on.
The water tower passed us, quickly.
I let the wheels of the Horsa just kiss the French countryside, trimming just the very tops of the daisies that I imagined to be there. A low, soft rumble echoed around the cabin as they slipped and slid over the cold surface.
“Stream!”
I was a machine, I had no emotions now, just doing what was necessary.
John released the chute out of the back and instantly I preferred the option of clattering into tonnes of heavy steel at speed.
The chute deployed and lifting the back end of the craft back into the air, like a child lifting a mouse up by its tail, my head was sent flying forwards as the rest of my body seemed to want to go backwards.
John didn’t need any instruction, he jettisoned the chute immediately and as we slid along the ground on our belly, there was nothing else I could do but become a passenger as we ground to a halt.
We scraped over rocks with an almighty racket and sparks began to spray up in every direction as our bodies seemed to convulse with the rocking.
I felt every bump as we crashed over the holes where the anti-glider poles should have been, I made a mental note to thank God for that one.
I let out a sigh of relief, almost followed by a torrent of vomit, which I suppressed.
After a steady hissing as we glided over the ground, silence ensued once more.
We had come to a halt. No gunfire, no shouting, no guns pointing in our faces as we sat helplessly in our beloved wreckage. Just total silence.
The invasion had begun.
End
A note from the Author
First of all, I would like to thank you from the bottom of my heart for reading this short story, and, perhaps more importantly to me, making it to the end.
If you would be so kind as to leave me a constructive and helpful review on Amazon, it would be greatly appreciated.
Alternatively, if you would like to contact me directly, the best place to do so is Twitter, so please give me a follow on @Tom_Wood95 or follow @InvaderSilent and drop me a message, or keep an eye out for future works that will slowly appear.