Wings of War Read Free Page B

keeping the machine stable and gently climbing—one hundred feet, two hundred, three hundred, four hundred. At about five hundred feet, I level off and risk a look around.
    The world is spread out forever beneath a magical blue sky. The patchwork of fields, the grid of roads and tracks, the railroad with its scattered grain elevators disappearing toward the horizon, and the farmhouses nestled in their windbreaks of trees make me think of the imaginary landscape I used to create for my toy soldiers. But this is real. The roar of the engine, the whistling of the wind in the wire struts, the cold air tugging at my cheeks and making my eyes water—all are as real as the feel of Abby’s saddle under me as I ride around the farm. I’m flying.
    I laugh out loud and begin to play. I speed up and slow down. I climb and dive, turn, slide left and right, tilt my wings to look down at the ground beneath me. At first I wobble all over the place and almost stall acouple of times—Bertha is very sensitive to any movement of the controls—but I force myself to remember Horst’s advice and picture the three axes running through me. I imagine my body rotating around those axes as I manipulate the controls—yaw, pitch and roll. It’s hard, but I gradually feel more comfortable. I do everything gently, moving the controls tiny fractions and correcting as soon as I feel apprehensive. Horst was right—without him in the cockpit, Bertha is much lighter, faster and more responsive. I resist the temptation to see how fast she can go or how high she can climb. The last thing I want is to rip one of her wings off or plummet to the ground in a stall.
    I wonder if lads my age are flying like this over the battlefields in Europe. Dad was right when he said the fighting wouldn’t be over by Christmas, and aeroplanes
have
proved important—one spotted the German army’s swing away from Paris in September of last year, making the miraculous victory in the Battle of the Marne possible, and only yesterday the newspapers were full of Lieutenant Warneford’s magnificent achievement in bringing down a Zeppelin by dropping bombs on top of it. I pretend that I’m spotting the German army preparing for an attack, dropping bombs on grey-clad soldiers and shooting down an enemy plane. What I don’t do is remember oneimportant thing—I’m actually travelling over the ground at forty miles an hour.
    When I eventually settle into level flight and look down, I recognize nothing. I strain to look back over my shoulder, but there is no sign of Horst’s farm. I’ve no watch and have lost track of time. I could be many miles from home. I’m completely lost.
    No need to panic, I think. All I have to do is turn around and head back the way I came. I took off to the north, so if I head south, I’ll be fine. Very carefully, I execute a wide turn and fly in what I am sure is the right direction, scanning the ground for a familiar landmark.
    As time passes, I become more and more nervous. It seems as if I’ve been flying for hours. All around me are fields, tracks and farmhouses, but none of them is the one I’m looking for. What if my maneuvers have gotten me completely turned around? What if I’m flying east or west, or even north? How much fuel does Bertha carry? Not much. How long have I been flying? Too long.
    “Don’t panic,” I say out loud. “You can work this out. This is Saskatchewan. The roads and tracks between the fields run either north to south or east to west. If I align myself with them, then at least I’ll be flying toward one of the cardinal points of the compass.”
    I look down. I’m flying diagonally across the square fields. Slowly I turn until I’m flying along a road. Nowwhere’s the sun? Above me and slightly ahead. That’s good. It’s early afternoon, so I’m heading south. But how far have I drifted? The breeze is pushing me from the west, and if I’m now flying south, that means I’ve been flying diagonally to the