With you, always ...

05.00. Twenty minutes until sunrise and the promise of beutiful day over Northern France.

He always took to the cockpit early, as though daring the odds of mortality: odds long since stacked against him, and empasised by the unremitting churn of hopeful youth passing through the officers' mess.

In ten minutes, the big guns would resume their soundtrack of devastation: annihilating the dawn chorus with a barrage of irregular booms, as they hurled shells thirty miles to The Front, converting their potency into huge plums of mother earth and human fragments.

But for now, the songbirds prevailed: Bunting, Yellowhammer, Partridge, and Skylark.

His mechanic, Peter, walked slowly towards him; as though to delay the inevitable.

‘Good morning, Peter,’ he called down.

‘Morning, Sir. A late-night for you too, was it?’

From the hanger where he spent the early hours in his ritual of raising the little plane from the dead, Peter had caught a glimpse of his lieutenant's return.

‘A wonderful night, Peter,' and pulling the sheepskin lapel of his flying jacket to face, he drew in her fragrance.

'So I'm with,' she had said, dabbling the scent onto his jacket.

He and she both knew the foolishness of love at such a time, but their resolve had failed, and like the song birds, for a moment something wonderful flourished in a world of the grotesque.

He had held her tight, and stared into those beautiful eyes that spoke of her fears.

‘Are you ready for me to start her-up?’ Peter asked.

‘Not just yet. Let's sit for a moment and enjoy the sunrise.’

‘Very good, Sir.’

‘In all our time together, I've never asked you, where are you from?’

‘A little town called Birstall, Sir. It's close to Ipswich. Do you know it?’

‘Indeed I do. Oakwell Hall. I believe Charlotte Bronte used it as the setting for one of her novels.’

‘She did indeed, Sir. Shirley’

The lieutenant smiled, his gloved hand caressing the battered plane, brought back from the impossible by countless nights of Peter's mastery.

‘You've never cased to amaze me, Peter.’

He reached into his jacket and removed his timepiece. ‘Look after this for me. It's yours to do as please - until I return.’

‘No, Sir, I can’t take it,’ Peter replied, disquieted by the implications.

‘Take it. If it makes it easier, consider it an order,’ and as he handed down the pocket watch, the birdsong was replaced by the first booming gun, and they set about their final encore.