What an amazing volumn of posts. Fantastic! I have an hours drive to Raleigh ahead right now and the same on return so I'll re-read everything and respond to it tonight. Particularly the new story.
For the time being, let me post this little story. I got to thinking that during BoB there was a lot of nasty stuff raining down everywhere for sure and there was a lot of stuff going up that had to come down somewhere as well. I wondered how many poor civilians got caught in this crossfire?
I also got shot down again last night. Is anyone sober the least bit surprised? Whose idea was it to crank the AI up anyway? Bader did I see you raise your hand? Ok, I admit it is more fun that way. Anyway I got to wondering about what it was like back at the mess when someone didn't show up to close out his tab. So here is the result. I can see you guys cringing already. Read it anyway.
Hurrah for the Next Man Who Dies!
Farmer Beamon had just stopped his team of draft horses at the end of a long, dusty furrow. Wiping the almost equally deep furrows of his dripping brow with an old soiled cloth he turned to gaze hopefully up at the sky. The old farmer thought to himself that it looked like it might “make down” or rain just a drop. As he scanned the darkening skies collecting over his small English holding there was a tremendous crack like Judgement Day itself was upon him.
The startled horses began shrieking in fright and straining to break free. Beamon had his hands full as something dark trailing a long line of fire and black smoke fell from the low clouds above him and began making a beeline toward his little newly ploughed field. The farmer was sure it was a German fighter plane. Looking over his shoulder one moment and forward the next the poor farmer did his best to control his terrified beasts.
There was another loud crack and the horses were away leaving farmer Beamon tangled in the wreck of his ruined plough. At that precise moment a lovely Spitfire fell from the clouds directly behind the struggling German craft and the RAF pilot began firing his guns. Most of the .303 shells fell upon the stricken enemy fighter but a few stitched a long winding path right across the farmer’s field to catch the fleeing draft horses in mid stride. It was not a pretty sight.
Before the startled farmer’s eyes the poor horses rolled in their traces and fell in a clod-tossing tumble of pawing hooves, twisted reins and torsos, mangled bodies and heart breaking screams of terror and pain. The befuddled farmer, whose only worry seconds ago was how much rain would fall, now had his attention ripped from the horrible spectacle of his dead and dying horses. As the German fighter screamed right over his head there was another blast that knocked the poor old man right to the ground.
The Axis fighter, a 109, dropped lower and lower and finally it ploughed across the perfectly lined columns of English soil that farmer Beamon and his recently deceased Clydesdales had spent the whole morning cutting. There was a horrendous crumpling, scraping, grinding sound as the shark-like fighter bounced from one row to the next, leaped into the air, fell back, and then spun round and skidded tail first to a halt in a spray of earth, metal parts, smoke, and huge clods of moist clay.
The triumphant Spitfire roared over head, passed through the column of rising smoke and flew on reaching the other end of the field where it climbed up in a steep banking turn to the right to cross the field once more. This time the Spit with one wing low flew directly over the crash site where the downed German plane was now beginning to blaze. The dazed farmer was able to drag himself to his feet and with his bleeding nose filled with the caustic stench of burning rubber, oil and petrol he immediately begin running toward the crash site. Although Farmer Beamon was a strong and healthy 60 year-old man it was difficult going across newly tilled earth. As his size 12 brogans bit deep into the soft soil with each running step he looked ahead where he could see that the enemy pilot was just now crawling out of the choking smoke that was billowing up from his destroyed fighter. The apparently injured man paused on the sod covered, twisted wing for a brief moment then began desperately crawling away from the hot flames that were beginning to lick across the wreckage. He did not crawl very far.
Mortally wounded, Major Kurt Taube was just able to drag himself through the dark, clinging, newly tilled earth to a place of limited safety just beyond the searing heat and suffocating smoke of his burning plane. His face pillowed on a deep row of soil he had only moments in which to grow accustomed to the taste of the gritty, fragrant soil of England, a soil in which he would forever remain. Suddenly a swirling darkness drew the final veil of relief down forever upon all his fear, anger, and pain. A curtain that fell upon all his tomorrows.
Taube never heard Farmer Beamon’ s footsteps draw near or felt the rough hands that tried to drag him to safety and to administer useless first aid. Major Kurt Taube was gone forever, only his selfless deeds (there were many) and the memories of his friends and loved-ones remained. He could not even blink to chase away the Blue Bottle already drinking from the damp corner of his drying eye.
There would be another empty chair tonight at the pilot’s mess. Kurt’s friends and fellow pilots would, just as he had done so many times, drink mightily to the health of a lost pilot. They would raise their glasses time after time, then sing ribald, macabre, songs that were supposedly sung for the lost comrade, but in fact were just a thinly disguised way for the singers themselves to cope with being painfully reminded of their own youthful mortality.
Sadly, it will be almost exactly the same for the triumphant RAF pilot, who will fall, in a nearby field struck down by the withering fire from the cannons of Kurt’s avenging wingman. These are but two of the many who will fall today. Tonight, there will be much remembering, toasts and singing across both England and France. The survivors will sing tonight and tomorrow night and every night until there is an end to this war or there is no one left to sing.
Raise your glass gentlemen and drink the health of those who will not return tonight and to those whom we will grieve tomorrow.
Somewhere in the back of the smoke filled English pub or the French beer hall the refrain begins, softly at first then much louder.
"So stand by your glasses steady. This world is a world of lies. Here’s to the dead already- Hurrah for the next man who dies!"
WW1/2 Ballad
------------------ "Blessed are they who expect nothing. For they will not be disappointed." - Edmund Qwenn, "The Trouble with Harry"
