Fighters in exile

The roar of engines sputtering to life shook the still air. All heads turned to view the massive bi-plane reach up and touch the blue sky— marbled here and there with starkly white clouds. The plane flew across land and sea, leaving its small hangar behind in a trail of dense black smoke, which stretched for miles behind it, like a pen drawing upon God's mighty heavens. The vast beaches of Normandy were soon passed, as were the scarred fields of Verdun. Men, fighting an endless strife, existed amidst the inky clouds of gunfire and the noxious haze of gas.

Two men— men from different countries, different backgrounds and different armies— rode in the cramped cockpit, the wind howling about their mask-covered faces. If not for the thick goggles worn upon their heads— making them indistinguishable from each other— they would have surely been blinded by the whipping gusts which blasted every bit of exposed skin on their faces, turning noses and cheeks raw from the awful gusts. Piercing cloud after cloud, the plane and its occupants were misted by the cold moisture contained within, bringing at once relief, then new pain to their chapped faces.

Andrew Fosbery, a British lieutenant, flew the twin-winged bi-plane over the warring armies of Germany, Belgium, France, England and America. Rob Carson, an Army intelligence officer from Texas, rode behind the Brit, taking in the awe-inspiring views from atop the misty clouds. Countryside ran for miles around, disturbed irreparably by years of senseless fighting between the European nations arrayed below for all to see. While officers sat in cushy offices sipping tea and coffee, men gave life and readily took it upon the forsaken battlefields.

A town, unpronounceable to the Texan native, lay directly beneath them, crushed to dust by the German war machine which churned and roared across the once-beautiful wine-lands and orchards. Their target rested a few miles more inland, upon a hill unmarked on any map, for it was newly built. A bunker— or so the two officers were told— was recently constructed and covered over with freshly tilled earth, effectively hiding it from all view, both from heaven above and from the shattered plains below. This bunker would soon house one gun, though one quite massive gun, which if unleashed upon the unsuspecting Belgian force— pressing though the pockmarked village— would cry havoc for them. Many young lives would abruptly end in its wake, throwing the ever-present war machine forward through Belgium, France, and even across the Channel.

Many such bunkers would be rooted in the scarred lands from here to Normandy, each bringing death and destruction to the Ally forces. Fortunately for the oblivious Belgian infantry, the Germans were only now piecing together their death machine; it would take a few days before it would become operational— days in which the allied armies would see the aerial shots taken by none other than Carson himself, with a Kodak requisitioned straight from the factory. Fosbery, feeling very sure of himself, descended from cloud cover so as to give his companion a clear shot of the enemy fortifications.

All at once, gunfire ripped through the craft— holes riddling the exterior— causing the mighty bird of prey to abruptly plummet downward into the muddy fields beneath, destined to be buried beneath their murky depths.

Submerged deep into the muddy field, the plane was not immediately searched by the soldiers nearby, who decided amongst themselves to wait until the ground dried up somewhat— lest they suffer a similar fate to the pilots, no doubt killed in the violent crash. Retiring to their normal duties, the soldiers went about their jobs, readying the bunker for the installation of the waiting gun. Unbeknownst to them, beneath the muddy field, two bodies stirred, and, fighting for their lives, breached the top layer of mud.

A helmeted head poked up from the ground, the man beneath it steadied himself with the exposed tail fin, and gasped for breath. He was covered from head-to-toe in thick mud. Feeling a stir beneath him, he reached his arm down and caught his companion by his coat, pulling him upwards into the semi-fresh air above. Catching his breath, the first man pointed over to a nearby farmhouse— the roof partially caved in and the walls riddled with bullet holes. The two men waded forward, the sounds of their movement somewhat masked by the loud orders shouted at the bunker, a hundred yards further away.