Yesterday, he’d picked one off, a Dornier. He’d fired at it repeatedly, trying to kill the gunner first, as you should. He’d strafed the aircraft and with sweet satisfaction he’d watched as it spiralled towards the ground, caught in the earth’s inexorable pull. There was nothing like it, he thought, nothing as satisfying as killing your enemies. He thought the crew had stayed in the Dornier, he had not seen any of them escaping. Perhaps he had shot them all. That was a small justice. The only good German was a dead German. And one way or another he’d killed four in one attack. The day was bright, and so cold that there was no need to climb to any sort of height before the frozen air gripped him. But cold was the least of his worries. The squadron was flying day and night, supposedly protecting the city of London from the German bombs that continued to fall, relentlessly. Sometimes he and his men did all right, sometimes not. Men were lost almost daily, good Polish men. Somehow, today, he was alive.
