No matter what, he would not be moved.For tonight’s raid over Hamm, Robert had taken a turn as C for Cecilia’s rear gunner. As the hands of his watch crept toward one in the morning, he had felt a slash of blinding light burn into his eyes as a searchlight swept across their aircraft. They were returning from bombing the target, and were passing over the Dutch coast where the Germans had some of their most fearsome defenses. Cecilia was trapped in a cone of blazing light, and Robert could sense the flak creeping ever closer.Some two thousand feet below he could see a pair of Wellingtons likewise caught in the deadly glare. Dark puffs of smoke erupted all around them as the flak gunners zeroed in on the warplanes, and he watched in morbid fascination as fingers of glowing tracer groped toward the bellies of the aircraft. An instant later one of the Wellingtons began to glow an eerie golden red as fire bloomed all along her fuselage.Within seconds the warplane had started to fall to pieces, blazing fragments spinning toward the ground.
