The Wood

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Bertie Hass dosed his eyes, braced himself for the limb-wrenching jerk when his parachute billowed out, tried to will it to open. The cold night air rushed by him, tore at his heavy clothing. It won't open, Bertie, A jeering whisper inside his head. You know it won't. Didn't that clairvoyant in Stuttgart tell you it would happen like this?

Falling, faster and faster. And faster. Now he was preparing himself for the crunching impact when he hit the ground far below. He could see it in the faint moonlight reinforced by the flames from his crashed plane and the inferno of a city way beyond the horizon. The night was burning like hell itself, and there was only one place he was going. Down. Mission accomplished, Herr Commandant, the city is destroyed, razed to the ground. Pride, overwhelming satisfaction. You always lost men on raids, it was inevitable. Soldiers, airmen were of necessity a dispensable commodity in war. Secretly, selfishly, you hoped it would not be your turn, always somebody else's.

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