Sucking back oxygen to tame the jitters, we looped around in a tighter radius than their machines were capable of and Gordie fired a cannon, hitting the wing of one of the machines after it flew past us. It lost vertical speed rapidly, then disappeared into the clouds. Gordie gave me a triumphant thumbs up until three machines flew right up on us and opened fire.
Metal dings reverberated through the cockpit as incendiary bullets hit and sparked off my armour and wings, nearly nicking my leg and threatening to ignite my fuel. Every muscle in my body restricted, like iron cables cinching my chest to the point that my lungs couldn’t expand. Gordie peeled off. It was an escape or die situation, so with the control column jammed to the dashboard, I sent my airplane into a dive. Dropping full throttle from thirty thousand feet to one thousand in seconds caused painfully intense compression in my ears, but it was my best option to shake them. I waited until the last possible moment to increase altitude and prayed not to black out from the abrupt change in air pressure as I climbed. A violent shudder and buffeting indicated a wing stall, so I thrust the control column forward again to avoid a spin. Dizzy from the exertion, I levelled the horizon and fired another cannon. It hit one Messerschmitt in the tail, which broke off. His airplane plummeted and the pilot ditched.
Frantically scanning the air space, I searched for Gordie. When I finally spotted him, I sped to saddle up next to his left wing. Before we had a chance to fly out of range, a shell hit the armour plate behind my head. The detonation blast concussed me. After a delayed reaction to recover my wits, I stomped full left rudder and sharply tipped my wings, which regretfully caused Gordie’s airplane to be hit by the next round.
‘Damn it.’
Smoke billowed out of Gordie’s fuselage. Rapid calculations for the best way to help him, while also keeping the enemy off my tail, charged through my brain. The only option was to take down the rest of the airplanes and give Gordie a chance to limp back to the airstrip. Statistically achieving that by myself was highly improbable. But what choice did I have? I refused to abandon him. I climbed higher and looped around. Two more Macchis flew through broken cloud cover below, likely looking for me. With blind determination to save Gordie, I dropped altitude, fired my machine guns, and hit one Italian in the wing. The other one climbed. Before he disappeared into the clouds, he turned so he would be able to sneak up behind me. I slowed down and waited for him to unwittingly fly by. Once he was in front of me, I fired a direct cannon hit. Flames burst out and a projectile of shrapnel from his tail cracked the acrylic of my cockpit canopy.
Gordie glided dangerously low, just above the treetops. Smoke spewed out of every seam and rivet of his damaged rig as the last two Luftwaffe machines positioned on each of his wings. The pilots would definitely report to ground troops to pick Gordie up as a prisoner of war, so with zero sympathy, I used up the last of my ammunition to take down both airplanes. They each hit the ground with a shuddering explosion and ball of flames, which would have felt like a victory if Gordie wasn’t still going down.
‘Come on, Gordie. Keep her off the ground,’ I pleaded under my breath. He glided on no power and slowly lost more altitude. He was going to hit terrain. ‘Come on, Gordie, get out. Get out. Slide the canopy, pal.’ He was too close to the ground to deploy the parachute properly, even if he did eject, but I circled and waited on edge for a glimpse of the ballooning fabric. He didn’t bail. His airplane skidded on its belly across a farmer’s field and erupted into flames.
‘God damn it. No!’ Fraught with remorse, my throat choked for air as I climbed in altitude to race back to base.
Before I could gain top speed, a cannon blew through my left wing and jolted me nearly out of the restraint, then my cockpit filled with gritty black smoke. Blinded by the toxic fumes, my fingers searched and pulled the release lever to slide the cockpit hood. The air cleared enough to see my instruments – temperature hot, oil low, petrol extremely low. My engine sputtered from the hit and then failed, so I yanked the hand pump to inject fuel, then viciously kicked the rudder bar in an attempt to keep speed. It didn’t work. I was dead stick, no control of the airplane. The Sperry horizon indicator tilted sideways and the propellers spun ineffectively in the wind. Only two scenarios remained – go down with the fatally wounded machine or bail out. I didn’t have much choice.
I closed my eyes, said, ‘God forgive me. Have mercy on my soul,’ and crawled out of the cockpit onto the slipstream. At ten thousand feet above the ground, it required complete defiance over every natural human survival instinct to balance on the edge of the wing, but I forced myself to manoeuvre into a crouch, and then jumped.
The drone of my Spitfire engine was replaced with the intense shuddering of the air against my ears as I free-fell. The parachute released from my seat pack but, to my dismay, it suspended above me pitifully like a crumpled wad of wet paper. A strange amalgamation of utter abandonment and sheer terror waged a battle over my emotions as I plummeted through the sky towards the earth. Then, as if it had been playing a cruel joke but knew the gig needed to be up or I’d pancake, the fabric of the parachute snapped like a schooner sail catching the ocean wind. The jarring of the upward deployment nearly dislocated my shoulder joints, but the fact that my body was no longer plunging towards death was a welcome relief. The reprieve was short lived, though, as the harness straps cut across my chest and throat with crushing power. My fingers clutched desperately to fight the opposing forces of flight and gravity that strangled me as I drifted. Gasping for air was futile since I was only sucking in the suffocating black smoke of aviation carnage below. Ten metres from the ground, flames from a downed airplane ignited my parachute. It disintegrated, causing me to fall the rest of the way. I slammed into a cow pasture in the Italian countryside, hard enough to blow the seams of both my boots apart from the impact.
Sprawled out on my back, my smoke-irritated eyes blinked open. Maybe I’d been unconscious for a spell. As my head slowly cleared, I was thrilled to discover my fingers and toes responded to my mental commands to wiggle. Good news, I wasn’t paralysed or shattered. Bad news, I was surrounded by flames. I sat up to remove the parachute harness, then with extreme effort rolled to my knees and stood. Stumbling blindly in socked feet, I assumed the gagging stench of burning flesh was the enemy pilots burning up, but then realized it was my own exposed skin, scorched and already peeling away. My attempt to avoid blistering-hot scraps of metal didn’t go well and the pain became excruciating as my socks melted. I needed to make a run for it but didn’t know which way to go, until a cross wind blew the smoke all in one direction and made my decision for me. I ran through the roaring and crackling flames to where the air was clearer. Eventually, I emerged from the wreckage scene and tumbled to the tufty grass – a meadow that was reminiscent of my acreage back home on Mayne Island, or at least I imagined it was before I passed out.
A child played in the knee-high grass of the Italian field, chasing a white butterfly. His face was Japanese like Chidori’s, but his hair was blond like mine. The butterfly fluttered towards the airplane wreckage and the boy followed with his little hands raised in the air, trying to catch it. He wore a blue sweater and matching blue shoes. I yelled to warn him to stay away from the flames. He didn’t hear me, though. I wanted to get up to save him, but my body couldn’t move. I called to him one more time from where I lay before he disappeared into the wall of fire.
When I looked down at my body to determine why it wouldn’t function, my torso wasn’t actually there. Black, crusty flakes of ash were scattered where my limbs should have been. I cried out for help and a woman emerged from the flames. Her long black hair blew like raven feathers in the breeze. She was dressed all in white.