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I have long been in love with aviation. This story, in reality, was a comparison study of the British Spitfire and the German ME-109.  I love the internet and the information that is so readily available for researchers. The story is also written along the lines of the 'Twilight Zone', Rod Serling being one of my all time literary heroes.

And so, I will leave you to read... enjoy...

Vixyy Fox", "writing": "The Belmont Pisser\n\nby\n\nVixyy Fox\n\n\t\n\nIn commercial flying, they say the really good pilots don’t have any stories; there’s nothing to tell but the boredom of safe take offs and even safer landings. I would grumble something which might, or might not, include the words ‘cow poop’ (No offense meant to the Tarbh race, though you need a pretty large craft to haul… to carry them as passengers.) Obviously the captain I’m flying with is not a very good one since he hasn’t shut up since we made altitude. I can’t wait for our approach to roll around so he has to be quiet by law. God help me, but I got stuck with a merry old Royal Bull Dog and from the sounds of his accent a Bristol lad at that. Somehow I can’t picture his bulbous frame in the seat of a fighter; but that’s what he claims he was, a fighter pilot. Guff!\n\n“Excuse me, sir, but you said you flew a Buford Blueberry? Wasn’t that a transport?” \n\nI shouldn’t have goaded him I suppose, but I was pretty well fed up with his fanciful war stories. These were modern times and this was a modern aircraft with about as much pep and zeal as a rail car with wings.\n\n“You best watch your mouth, pup,” he shouts at me, turning bright red. His pushed in looking face actually wore a snarl and for a bare moment I thought perhaps he might strike me. Apparently cargo transports were quite the insult to the fighter types. \n\n“Know your place you wet behind the ears diapered little snot. Close your ears and open your mouth is all yur good for apparently ya egotistical little brass balled shit head! I flew fuk’n Belmont Pissers; the best damned aircraft in the war bar none and fuk anyone who says different!”\n\nApparently I’d touched a raw nerve with a 2000 volt magneto wire. I should have kept my yap closed, but being a Corgi I just had to have the last word. “Really? I’ve always heard the Badbladder E Type could fly rings around the Belmont Pisser. Statistics don’t lie, Captain. As I recall, the Wolf’s engineers had it balls on and the performance data collected after the war clearly shows the superiority.”\n\nGiving me the most disapproving look I’d ever seen, the old bastard flips the autopilot off and tells me to take the wheel so he can go have a squirt. “Keep your oxygen mask on while I’m gone,” he instructs me, as if I didn’t know to do that. “It’s for safety, though I suddenly find the cockpit stinking of unpolished brass green.” When he got back, he was sipping a coffee, none for me thank you very much, and he didn’t speak another word except for what was required. I had no idea silence could be so cold.\n\nWe landed in Stonenpassen right on schedule. The old boy personally took us in, and I will admit the landing was glass smooth. The wheels didn’t so much as squeal when we touched down and there we were on the ground taxing in. The crew had a three day required rest here. I was rather looking forward to sitting by the hotel’s pool by day, and maybe do a little clubbing with the stewardess’ at night. We had three onboard, and I knew at least two of them were good for it. If only things had been that easy… if only… \n\nRest? \n\nWhat’s rest when you have a war to fight?\n\n------------------------------------\n\nA small Fox with very large ears turns from the airport terminal’s window where she’d been watching the four engine silver tube with wings taxiing in to the gate. There is a large clock on the wall behind her which is slowly turning backwards and her demeanor is of one who has a secret. She holds a cigarette in one paw, the smoke of which curls up around her head.\n\n“In every occupation,” she says in a dead pan expression of seriousness, “There is the fledgling, and there is the seasoned veteran. Nowhere is this more poignant than in the cockpit of an aircraft. George Corgi, hatchling flyer of the first degree, wearing his bright new wings on the front of his crisp new uniform has found himself serving as First Officer to one Captain Henry Badcock. He has made the mistake of forgetting the very first rule of aviation; respect experience. The veteran is still alive so he obviously did something right. In the words of Colonel and His Lordship Wilber Rightwing, KIA;\n\n‘Learn from those who have survived the sky that you too will continue to live. Learn too from those who have died that you will not repeat their mistakes.’ \n\nThough he has three days off in a city that lived through the last war, it is doubtful Fist Officer Corgi, will find any rest. Inadvertently, and through an ego never before tarnished by the requirements of war, he has crossed the line that separates his every day reality from The Fur Side.\n\n----------------------------\n\nOK, so I screwed up. \n\nYes this was my first ‘for real’ commercial flight with the big boys. \n\nYes I had an inside connection that got me on board with the company and placed into training so I could sit right seat on milk runs like Stonenpassen. It’s all about building your hours so someday you’ll get to pinch the Stewardess’ bottom while going for a squirt. \n\nAs it was, Stonenpassen had been so bombed out during the war that almost the entire city was new built. That meant the airport had the latest and greatest of everything; including top notch air traffic controllers. I was warned well in advance by my peers not to joke with them over the radio and to ‘never ever’ crack wise about incoming bombers. That warning was understandable and I held to the warning, but at this point I desperately wanted to get my paws on the crew scheduler who’d let Old Pisser Badcock muscle his way in to take the flight as captain. He should have warned me off on that one too, dam it!\n\nBadcock, still grumping as if I’d stolen his favorite toy, left me with the securing and close up of the aircraft while he took off with the stewardess’ in tow; all of them Collies, and not a bad looking one among them. Apparently they knew more about his reputation than I did and were quite taken with the pug nosed old bastard. Perhaps I deserved it for being cheeky. His wasn’t the first time I’d had my tail handed to me. With a sigh I chalked it off as another lesson learned the hard way. I would catch up to them later as it was an easy guess I’d also have a long hike to the hotel as the crew bus would come only once. No bother really; a Corgi’s legs are short but they’re stout. I figured after such a long flight the tramp would be good for me. \n\nStriking out on my own, duffle in paw, I padded along until I’d built up a pretty good thirst. Well, Stonenpassen was renowned for two things. Its beer gardens were among the best in the world, and it was also the home of the largest porcelain toilet bowl factory in the world. There was true irony here. I wasn’t all that sure the two should be thought of as walking paw in paw, but why let an opportunity like beer pass you by? Spying one of the gardens, my eye was drawn to the sign above the door which bore the likeness of an old Wolf fighter aircraft. \n\n‘So be it’, I remember thinking to myself, ‘The fates have spoken.’ \n\nAs in most bars, the lights were low and the air cool with more than a hint of stale beer; perfect for dodging he day and unwinding. In my uniform I stood out from the locals like a brass nickel in a pocketful of silver. I was used to this actually and rather enjoyed it. Making my way to a quiet booth, I threw my duffel in first, sat, and then signaled for some service. The place was pretty incredible actually. Pictures of all sorts of Wolf aircraft from the war hung on the walls. Some bore the autographs of the pilots standing next to them and still others hung with individual medals below them; obviously awarded to someone who no longer had a use for them. \n\nThe waitress, a pretty young thing wearing a traditional dress, paused to light my cigarette before taking my order. I noticed it had a strange emblem on it of a heart shaped falcon. Inside of the bird’s outline was a spider impaled upon a fencing sword. It didn’t take me long to notice the barkeep watching me as he dried a huge stein. He wore an eye patch and one side of his neck, the side with the patch, was bare of fur as if it had been touched by fire.\n\n“Did you fly?” I called over to him.\n\n“Ja… Badbladers,” was his only reply. He then filled the stein and handed it to the barmaid for delivery.\n\nHow unfair the world was, I reflected as I gazed upon the fellow. Here he was most certainly almost killed, and his only reward was to linger among his memories in this bar, while His Royal Arse Henry Badcock was aloud to lord it over my cockpit.\n\nAfter that I drank in silence until I was ready to leave. Surprisingly, there was a cab waiting for me outside. The uniformed driver stood quietly curbside wearing a very old style uniform and holding up a small sign with my name on it. Perhaps, I reasoned, Badcock felt guilty about how badly he’d treated me and sent this fellow to bring me to the hotel. \n\nToo many Stonenpassen beers had gone down the old hatch while I looked at the pictures on the bar’s walls and I was simply too tired to ask any questions. As the driver opened the door for me, I simply climbed into the back seat and dozed off. \n\n----------------------------\n\n“Wake up!”\n\nThe scream was right in my ear, and my eyes popped opened. At the best of times my nervous system seemed to have a buffer zone that kept me from jerking and jumping during times of shock. ‘Nerves of steel,’ my mum would say. ‘Stupid id’jut child,’ my Da would say. Of course when the bucket of water hit me I was up and swinging. This was followed by the coarse laughter of at least five Wolfs. Damnation I would know that accent anywhere, though stranger still I understood every last word they spoke.\n\n“Look there Fritzi, Herr Brass Balls comes up like a real fighter, ja?”\n\n“Ja, Howler, mitt der vasser com’n zee fists of…”\n\nFritzi never finished whatever he’d been about to say because my right paw connected. It flattened his nose with a satisfying thud. Next my foot swept the feet out from under the one holding the bucket and he went to the floor with a jarring thump. Picking up the wooden chair at the table next to me I was about smash it over his head when there was a shout of, ‘STILLGESTANDEN!’\n\nWhere everyone else immediately snapped to rigid attention, I was left holding a chair over my head, blinking at what my mind was finally recording. The five individuals who apparently anticipated some fun at my expense were all wearing the same black and gray uniform. Two white lightning bolts decorated their collars and each bore an arm patch of a spider impaled on a fencing sword inside of an almost heart shaped outline of a falcon.\n\n“Was geht hier vor? [What goes on here?]” asked a very civil sounding voice edged in ice.\n\n“Ve are dancing, Herr Commandant,” the one named Fritzi replied a little too calmly. Had we not been interrupted, I am sure I would have bashed his brains out, so I was just a little bit stunned that he would make an excuse for me. There was a mumbled chorus of agreements.\n\n“Und vat exactly is this dance called?” the Wolf asked, looking directly at me. His uniform was exactly like all of the others except his collar was done up tight around his neck, and he wore a short tricolor ribbon culminating in what I recognized as the Wolf’s Medal of Meritorious Valor… their highest decoration from the war. There were two additional gold lightning bolts dangling below the medal, indicating he’d been awarded the decoration three times. \n\n“Die Messing Farren [The Brass Bullocks],” I muttered, not being able to come up with anything better. My mouth tasted like mud, and even I could smell the vomit on my breath.\n\n“You flew well yesterday, Lieutenant,” the Commandant replied, his face poker straight serious, “But that is no excuse for you to drink yourself to stupidity. What if we had to scramble?” He left that hang in the air for everyone’s benefit, and then, when the timing was perfect, furthered, “If this happens again, I will have you and your mess mates digging latrines for the mechanics, am I clear? You all have a responsibility to each other… it is how you will survive. Fly alone… die alone… zo… like a good Staffel, you will be punished together, no?”\n\nIn the distance there was an explosion, but no one seemed to notice. As for me; there were only the eyes of the Wolf, through which he willed me to abeyance. “Jahohl, Mein Herr,” I replied softly, setting the chair slowly to the floor.\n\n“At ease,” the Wolf gently commanded and the room loosened up considerably. To me he said, “Sit in the chair, Herr B. B. before you fall over.”\n\nAs bad as I felt, I didn’t question the order. Sure this was as odd as it could get. Sure, upon regarding myself, I found I too was wearing a black and gray uniform. Some things, I also noticed, are able to be changed and some things are not. Though I wore the uniform, I still had the build and coloring of a Corgi, perhaps a third less large than any of the Wolfs in the room. If this was meant as a joke, it was a well planed out and executed joke. Pity I felt too ill to have a good laugh over it.\n\n“Yesterday,” the Commandant began, “Our Royal friends doggedly tried once again to force us to submission.”\n\nThere was a group chuckling at this comment. I looked up at our apparent leader from where I sat with my head almost between my legs. He looked vaguely familiar; as though I had seen him before… somewhere… but my brain was not yet banging away on all of its cylinders.\n\n“I vould like to zay that we showed well for ourselves, having shot down three Pissers to the loss of only one Badblader, but the loss of anyone or any aircraft is a matter of somber reality. It is true they left with tails between their legs, but we lost Jeffry.”\n\nThere was a quiet pause as the Wolf began to slowly pace among his pilots.\n\n“As you all know,” he finally continued, “I claimed but one Pisser, while Herr B.B. shot down the other two.”\n\nTo my amazement, everyone applauded loudly. Looking up, I found the Commandant smiling at me and leading the applause. For some reason I felt I should stand, which I did, nodding to him and then sitting back down again before I fell over. Coming to me, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a handful of grass. Holding it out to me, he said softly, “Eat this and go puke behind the barracks, you will feel better.”\n\nI took it from him gratefully, after which he told the room, “They were here yesterday and that means they most assuredly will be back tomorrow to extract their revenge… but this time we will be waiting for them. Beginning at dawn, we will sally two aircraft at a time to cover the field. Conserve your fuel as much as possible. You will have drop tanks and fly to half of the internal tank. When you get to this point you will buzz the field, where upon the next two will take off. When the Royals come in it will be at treetop level… a fast pass to strafe and bomb. Those flying cover will attack which will scatter them. Those on the ground will then take off and attack. Engines will be started and idled every 30 minutes to keep them warm. Are their any questions?”\n\nNo one had any.\n\n“Goot… Get your heads straight and report to your aircraft in one hour. Go over them with your mechanic, and then ve will make flights of two. Watch for targets, hit and come back.” Looking to me, he said, “Herr Brass Balls, you vill be my wing. Now go eat your grass und puke… best to get it over with.” Placing a paw on my shoulder he told me, “I remember how it was with my first kill. You vill get past this.”\n\n----------------------------------\n\nAs I walked towards my aircraft my mind was in a steep dive, its wings stuttering and on the brink of breaking off. If this was a dream, it was the most detailed and realistic dream I had ever had. I even had flashes of my of my old philosophy teacher grinning at me and asking, ‘What is reality?’ If he’d been real I would have punched him, and darned if I didn’t think he knew that too.\n\n“Herr B.B.,” my mechanic called to me as I approached. (At least I assumed he was my mechanic, and apparently my nickname was the Royal expression: Brass Balls.) “I have your aircraft ready for you, sir.” He then snapped to attention as I walked around the craft. On both sides of the hull, in extremely large red letters, were back to back red B’s rather than the back to back cock and balls look of the d and b (from Badbladder) as painted on the other aircraft. \n\nRight below the cockpit I saw two freshly painted Royal flags. As I finished my walk around, the mechanic saluted me. “It was Herr Oberst’s orders, sir. He believes you deserve a special recognition symbol.” The little Skunk smiled at me then and said in a lower voice, “Three more kills, sir, and you become an ace; then I can paint your aircraft’s nose yellow.”\n\nThe hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood on end. I’m not sure if it was the idea that I’d actually killed someone, pilots do tend to bail out if shot down, or if it was the fact that I was falling into this dream hook line and sinker. I decided to test something. “Tell me… ahhh… how shall I address you old sport?”\n\nThe mechanic gave me a sidewise glance and a strange smile. \n\n“What is it? What’s wrong?”\n\n“Nothing, Mein Heir… except… you sounded rather ‘Royal’ for a moment. I am Sergeant Aloysius Skunk, Mien Herr… but you knew that.”\n\n“Of course I did. And why do you not fly? I can see the love of it written on you clearly.”\n\nHe looked down a bit, his eyes suddenly not meeting mine. “Because I am not a Wolf,” he replied. “Thank you for reminding me, Mein Heir.”\n\n“And what am I?” I asked. Certainly my jaw must have dropped as he made his last statement.\n\n“A Wolf, sir,” he told me as if by rote. He then got this boyish smile and glanced up at me. “A Wolf with two kills und a very good flyer. I’ve watched you, sir… you are not ham fisted like the others in your group.” Placing a paw on the aircraft, he said, “She flies for you, Mein Heir; as if you were her lover.”\n\nHe was very earnest in what he was telling me. I looked at my paws and saw a Corgi’s paws, and yet there I was in a Wolfwaffen uniform. Fishing a pack of smokes from my breast pocket, I motioned for the Sergeant to walk a distance away from the aircraft and then offered him one. Stuffing a paw into one pocket, I came out with a cigarette lighter emblazoned with the squadron’s emblem; ‘the spider on a stick’ as I wanted to call it. Shaking a cig out for him, I took one myself and held the lighter for both of us.\n\nWhen we’d both inhaled and let out a cloud of smoke, I mimicked flying through it with my paw, much to the Skunk’s amusement. “So you would like to be a pilot then?” I asked him.\n\n“Very much so,” he responded. “Perhaps later in the war I will be given a chance, ja? Right now we need to win und to do that, you need a good mechanic; that would be me.”\n\nI nodded, and then, keeping an eye open for anyone’s approach, I grilled him on the aircraft. I asked him what did he think, what did he know, how in heck you even raised and lowered the landing gear. The last thing I needed was the Commandant’s name and then I felt I could fudge my way through most anything.\n\n“Aloysius, I’m afraid I drank too much last night, and though my stomach feels better, I’m having a brain fart.”\n\n“Brain fart, sir?”\n\n“Yes… brain fart… I, for the life of me, cannot think of Herr Oberst’s name. Imagine my embarrassment should he call me on the radio and I didn’t know how to respond.” \n\nThe Skunk chuckled as if he had been expecting this question.\n\n“You find that funny?”\n\n“No, sir,” he responded, dropping the cigarette butt on the ground and grinding it under his heel, “But Herr Locke said that you had been so drunk last night you would probably forget your own name. He said nothing about his.”\n\n“How many kills does Herr Oberst have now?” I asked.\n\n“Sixty five. I dare say there is no one his equal in the air.”\n\n“I dare say,” I repeated, grinding my own cigarette under heel and letting the expression run away to nothing. Walking back to the aircraft, I inspected the name under the cockpit. It glared back at me in stark Wolf; Oberleutnant Georg Wolf. \n\n“Fuck me,” I muttered, and then from the other side of the aircraft I heard an engine roar to life, followed by several others. \n\n-----------------------------------\n\nLocke was beyond good and his patience with a rookie was incredible. We flew west over a vast countryside of farmland. As we climbed to altitude I could see the channel ahead of us, though we did not venture out so far. Taking off in the Badbladder was a bit of a trick. Damned if I didn’t almost roll right over and barrel into the ground as soon as I was airborne. The torque the huge engine and propeller exerted was incredible. \n\n“Too much throttle, Herr B.B.,” I heard over my headset just as the roll began. \n\nIn a panic I chopped power and almost nosed in while working the stick and rudder pedals like a madman to recover from the roll. Finally gaining control of the aircraft, I pointed her nose to the sky with a howl of happiness.\n\n“Where is that fighter pilot from yesterday?” asked that same voice in a chuckle. “Climb to ten and continue east at two hundred. I’ll catch up and take the lead. Stay on my tail and do not lose me.”\n\n“Ja,” I responded calmly. The word felt strange but correct all in the same moment. My mouth was obviously speaking Wolf, but my brain was still thinking Canine. Yes, they had their similarities, but…\n\n“The proper response would be ‘jahohl’, Oberleutnant, but then again I prefer calm and steady rather than exuberance when flying. In the air I am simply your lead and you are my wing man. Keep the radio chatter that simple. We are formal on the ground because the military dictates we must be. After the war, if we are both still alive, you may then address me by my first name of Dierk.”\n\nPulling my throttle back and leaning out the fuel mixture with a mind to engine temperature, I watched the altimeter wind around and around, mindful that I still had a need to see everywhere around me. It was a chore to be sure, but one that I was finding enjoyable. Even with the bulbous drop tank on it, the aircraft had such an incredible feeling of power. Touch the stick and she responded like a ballerina; so unlike the lead sled I was used to sitting right seat in, and so unlike the trainers I had spent hours and hours flying. I soon became lost in just the sensation of it… the engine noise, the glint of the sun off of the glass, the sound of the air rushing past, the sensuous feel of the stick in my paw…\n\nWith a jarring thump of disturbed air, a yellow nosed Badblader over flew me in a dive that left bare feet between my propeller and his underbelly.\n\n“Was that the stick or your penis in your paw Oberleutnant B. B.? I flew upside down above you just now trying to figure it out before diving upon you. You are quite dead, by the way.”\n\nBefore I could stop myself I had pushed the throttle forward and was diving after the other fighter; or at least I thought I was. Within seconds, we’d both punched a hole in an errant cloud and when I came out on the other side he was nowhere to be seen.\n\n“Are you behind me?” Locke asked calmly.\n\n“No, Mein Herr,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady. I was pissed to be sure. If I’d known we would be playing silly games I would have…\n\n“I have just killed you again,” he said in that deadly calm voice. “You have now paid back the two kills from yesterday. Shall I have the flags taken off of your aircraft?”\n\n“Jahohl!” I replied a little too strongly. Fucking bastard!\n\nThere was a chuckle over the radio set. “Did you just call me a ‘fucking bastard’? he asked in his deadpan voice. “I can assure you my family is quite pure in its breeding… all well documented; all Wolf.”\n\nI strained my neck looking for him, trying to remember if I had actually spoken the words. Finally I found him by holding my thumb up to the sun, causing it to eclipse. “No, sir,” I responded nosing the aircraft upwards. “I did not say that.”\n\n“Mind your engine temp, and conserve your fuel Oberleutnant. Leave the throttle at full for too long and things begin to go badly.”\n\nMentally cursing myself, I inched the throttle back to climb and away from full military power, and then jettisoned my drop tank to reduce drag. Even in the lead sled we had to watch that little bit. Easing off of the stick, I banked and began an easy spiral upwards to join my lead. Obviously climbing into a fight was not the optimum way to attack; score one for the teacher. This time, I kept my eyes bloody well on him, though he made no effort to evade me.\n\nThe rest of the patrol was pretty boring. Nothing was spotted, and pretty much all was just practice staying on Locke’s tail where I would range left and then right; always watching and looking for an enemy aircraft. I would be told later by my mess mates that this was, indeed, a rare day as none of them saw anything while in the air. If nothing else, they also told me, in cases like this when some of our own bombers were sighted they would be given a cautious fly by and if the crews were relatively new a mock dogfight might ensue so everyone could practice tracking with their guns. \n\nComing back, I was to land first as I’d taken off first and so gently ranged in having been given the ‘all clear’ flag when doing my fly by. Landing the Badbladder, I found, was not so easy. With the flaps and slots down it handled well enough at low speeds; in that there was no problem in maneuverability; but as soon as the wheels touched the earth I could sense things getting dicey. Let’s just say the feeling was similar to riding a bicycle on ice. I had to fight to keep my body from tensing as the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Where all the trainers I ever landed were gentle and would stay on a straight line ‘paws off’, the Badbladder immediately began jinking left or right on its own accord due to the narrowness of the landing gear. I kept the tail in the air as long as possible so I could use the rudder to good effect and stayed off of the brakes. When the tail finally settled, I then, very carefully, used the brakes to slow further. Being a tail dragger, I was immensely aware that too much applied brake and the airplane’s nose would flip down to bury itself in the dirt. Touch one side or the other too hard and you could also spin out in a ground loop collapsing the gear. Either accident had the same effect of putting you out of action. \n\nOpening my canopy, I taxied to my ready spot, near blind from the nose up attitude, and near choking on the exhaust fumes. This called for a lot of rudder and brake work as I occasionally slewed to the right to see what was ahead. My paws were sweating as I worked and I grumbled curses wondering if I would ever wake from this dream. Most likely I would be sitting in the booth at the beer garden with drool running down my chest. \n\nThen I saw a red fare cross the field and people began running everywhere. \n\nBefore I could even contemplate what I was doing, I’d pulled my canopy closed again and pushed the throttle forward, rolling in the only direction available; straight ahead. At that point I had no idea who or what was directly in front of me. In twenty feet my tail was back up and I could see again. Unfortunately there was a hanger taking up the area I needed to go through in order to get airborne. Mechanics and Wolfs were running out of the building and more than a few were waving their arms at me. \n\nNothing I could do at this point but pull back on the stick and pray. With the engine howling and the prop literally chewing through the air I barely cleared roof. The wind sock mounted there was not so lucky as it was instantly shredded. Eat or be eaten, I thought as yellow material sprayed outwards. \n\nAt that same moment a burst of tracer flew just over me at a diagonal.\n\nI quickly found out that reality during the high stress moments of combat slows down considerably. You haven’t time to think so much as react. That’s why your training is so crucial; you need to react in the proper manner. In my case, you could say my training was a big fat nil, but at least… well… I can’t take credit; things just happened the way they happened. \n\nReality: if I had banked to either side, the up turned wing would have been riddled. As luck would have it I pushed down on the right rudder pedal as hard as I could and the craft’s nose swung to the right just as the Royal Pisser over flew me. “Bullocks!” I swore and mashed down on the firing button. There was a mechanical stutter and the aircraft shook as my two machine guns and single cannon hammered out in blind retribution for a well done sneak attack. Apparently my rounds found the fellow’s fuel tanks as there was an enormous explosion. In the split second I had to see what happened I watched the unlucky bugger pin wheel into a large oak tree. Instinctively I banked away keeping my throttle full on to avoid flying through any debris. Black smoke poured from my exhaust as the fuel injection system did its job to perfection, pumping an overly rich mixture into the cylinders. I climbed then looking left, right, above, below, behind, over and over and over, until I saw a Pisser at tree top level screaming in towards the airstrip. He had Locke full in his sights and though the ace was already attempting to climb back up I knew the Royal pilot had him cold.\n\nWithout even considering I could be killed, I rolled and began a power induced dive equally screaming with the howl of the engine as my gages clearly red lined. Not even aiming I punched the fire button and tracers reached out at the Pisser. My cannon was first to run out of ammunition, but the machine guns continued rattling as I over flew and then banked left as tight as I could to get back on his tail. My leading edge slots fell out indicating I was very close to stalling, but I wasn’t concerned with close. I had him… he was mine… he was… \n\nTo my surprise, the fellow’s landing gear popped down as he too banked to the left, trying to reverse his direction. \n\nAs a boy and listening to every story available about flying, the one thing I knew for certain was; ‘Landing gear down in a combat situation is the same as an infantryman raising his arms and waving a white flag – surrender!’\n\nThat was when I saw Locke bearing in from my right with a vengeance. “He has surrendered Mein Herr!” I called over the radio. “He is my prisoner!”\n\nAll I heard in response was, ‘Das ist mir furzegal! Er ist ein fucking bastard ohne Ehre. [I don’t give a fuck! He is a fucking bastard with no honor.]\n\nObviously Herr Locke had forgotten his own admonition about getting angry. Leaving the throttle full on, I followed the Royal, stuffing my aircraft behind his blocking my Commandant’s shot.\n\n“Royal Dog, Royal Dog,” I called over the radio. “I accept your surrender, land immediately or be shot down.”\n\nHerr Locke followed my commands, translating them to Dog. The thought that the Royal pilot might not understand Wolf hadn’t even occurred to me.\n\nThere was a stream of expletives that colored the radio waves red, and then the pilot’s gruff voice said something about ‘bloody Hades freezing over’.\n\n“Your landing gear is down,” I called out. “You cannot gain speed to escape.”\n\nLocke, now flying to my right, kicked left rudder and fired off a volley of tracers directly across the Pissers path. He followed this with what I took as a translation of my words. \n\nToo low to bail out, the Pisser dropped speed and his canopy rolled back. A paw came out into the slip stream and waved. We were dead on to the airfield, so landing would be in and simple. Seeing that my fuel warning light was on, I checked my fuel gage I saw we were not a moment too soon; I had only about ten minutes left in the air.\n\n----------------------------------------\n\nTo say pandemonium broke out when we landed would be an understatement. No sooner had the Royal switched off his engine than he was surrounded by a multitude of pilots and mechanics. More than a few pistols were pointed at him as he climbed out of the cockpit seemingly oblivious to any of it. He had a scarf around his neck and a leather flying helmet with his goggles pulled well up onto his forehead. He was a Bull Dog to be sure, and as obstinate as they come.\n\n“I want to speak to your Commander!” he bellowed at those gathered around his craft. “I did not surrender!”\n\nMy mechanic came forward and cordially relieved the fellow of his pistol. This he handed to me as I walked up, fresh out of my own aircraft. The crowd parted when they noticed my presence as if I was some sort of ancient deity and they were the ocean. Word spread quickly of what had transpired, from those who had witnessed the miracle of clearing the hanger, the snapshot kill, and then the dive that had saved Herr Locke… but for all of this I was totally unaware except for the fellow who now stood before me.\n\nStanding at attention, he saluted me, and says, “Lieutenant Henry Badcock, 61st Royal Bull Dogs at your service, sir. There seems to have been a mistake, I did not surrender. I did not put my landing gear down… damnation they came down all on their own. You should have shot me down. I sure as shit would have punched your ticket.”\n\nFor the life of me, I didn’t understand a word he said, except for the name. It was Captain ‘The Belmont Pisser’s The Best Aircraft Ever’ Badcock; a much younger Badcock to be sure, but it was him. Either my dream had just gotten better, or it had become a true nightmare. Gor… if he ever even suspected I was flying for the Wolfs…\n\n“Aloysius,” I said to my mechanic, “What the devil is he saying?”\n\n“I think he is complaining we did not offer him a beer upon landing,” my mechanic said with a smile. “He’s doesn’t know how lucky he is that no one has shot him yet.”\n\n“He claims he never put his gear down,” one of the other pilots told me. I saw that it was the one we called Fritzi. I nodded my thanks to him for this information.\n\n“There will be no shooting,” I called out loud enough for everyone else to hear. Turning my attention to my mechanic, I then said, “Do me a favor Aloysius; be a good lad and check his landing gear handle. Tell me if it is up or down.”\n\nThe little Skunk pushed past the surprised Bull Dog and climbed up into the cockpit. “The handle is up, sir,” he said loudly after a second’s inspection, “Fuel is just over half.”\n\n“Sprecken zee Dog?” Badcock tried, and everyone around him laughed.\n\n“I speak Dog very well,” Commandant Locke said as he approached. The men separated for him as they did for me, and I suddenly found myself standing next to the tall Wolf. Returning the enemy flyer’s salute, he nodded to me and said in Dog, “This is Oberleutnant Georg Wolf, you owe him your life because I was going to kill you.” He quickly translated for everyone else present. There was a murmur amongst the troops.\n\n“I think he was saying he never put his gear down, Mein Herr,” I told Locke. “My Sergeant has confirmed his lever is in the up position.”\n\n“What a pity,” the Wolf told me. His voice was like ice and I wasn’t sure if he was angry with me or Badcock. Finally he said, “He’s your responsibility, Herr B. B. Your actions today obviously lived up to your Staffel-Spitzname so I should not be too upset with you. You are a competent wingman and as it turns out saved my hairy ass when it needed saving.” \n\nHe thought about this for a moment, or perhaps about something else… I can’t be all that sure; but when he was done thinking he told me, “Get Herr Royal Dog cleaned up and bring him to the mess hall for dinner. He shall be out guest for at least the night and then we shall send him on to be processed as a prisoner of war.”\n\nLooking to Aloysius, who was still sitting in the Pisser’s cockpit, he told him, “Paint two more flags on Herr B.B.’s aircraft. We shall give him credit where credit is due.”\n\nAs the Wolf calmly walked away, my back was pounded upon as I was loudly congratulated by the Staffel. As to poor old Badcock, he was left standing by his aircraft in total confusion. Walking up to him, I extended my paw. “Oberleutnant Georg Wolf,” I said, introducing myself. “Beer, ja?”\n\nTo his credit, old Henry shook my paw, though I could see he was still very angry. “Lieutenant Henry Badcock,” he replied, “Beer, nein… tea, ja.”\n\n--------------------------------------\n\nAll went well, considering the war time circumstances. We were all pilots, and as pilots we held ourselves to a higher code than the ‘ground pounders’; or so we thought. It was an illusion to be sure as, without a doubt, there was as much compassion and good intentions among the regulars as anywhere. In our case we had a cleaner more viable playing field called the sky. In some respects we viewed our side, and their side, much as opposing soccer teams. On the field anything went and then some; any dirty trick you could dream up was perfectly acceptable. On the ground, however, we were all ‘gentle creatures’ full of polite manners and solicitudes. Only two rules had to be followed during such events. One must never insult another’s wife, and one must never ever insult another’s aircraft.\n\nWithout a doubt, Lieutenant Henry Badcock just had to go and break that rule.\n\n“And I say the Belmont Pisser is the best aircraft ever built,” he told our group over dinner. Herr Oberst Locke translated for him, his eyes watching each of us for our responses. “The Pisser’s done right well against the Badbladder, thank you very much. I mean; I don’t know for the life of me how you chaps can stand to fly such an ugly little machine like that one.”\n\nWe had been served sausages, boiled potatoes, and sauerkraut for dinner, all to be washed down by gallons of good Stonenpassen beer. It was a special occasion for us, and so the cook had pulled out all the stops. As soon as our Commandant translated the Royal’s words, I felt a know in my stomach and knew the fabulous dinner was a wasted effort. \n\n“Herr Locke has sixty five kills,” Fritz countered, sitting up very straight and nodding to Herr Oberst. “Many of them were Pissers. Not to mention Herr B.B.’s fantastic shot which felled your brother pilot.”\n\nLocke seemed hesitant to translate this exactly, but he did, where upon Henry sallied forth with, “Gerwalt Lank was shot down just yesterday by a Pisser. His Lordship Wilber Rightwing got him right enough. He tried to turn inside the Pisser and got shot up pretty bad. He was lucky; bailed out and was captured by the ground troops.”\n\nThis caused quite a stir. Lank was the Commandant of Staffel 32 and two hundred miles to our north. This was the first we’d heard about it. He was last known to have eighty kills. There was much discussion, and then I had a thought. “Who is this Wilber Rightwing?” I asked and Locke translated.\n\nHenry pointed his fork at me and said, “That was the fellow you shot down yesterday. He insisted we split up to maximize the surprise. Bad decision that… if I had stayed on his tail I would have nailed you before you buggered him.”\n\nHenry’s bad language had a telling effect on our Commandant. Yes it was true he was known to curse a mechanics blue streak when provoked, but in fairness, he always carried himself like the Alpha Wolf he was. I could see the tightness in the corner of his mouth. Since I was the one who captured the goat and brought him to the dinner table, I would most likely receive a very telling reprimand and penalty, such as digging latrines.\n\nAfter a few more beers, Howler bangs his paw on the table and curses the rounded lines of the Pisser. “The airplane looks like a fat strudel stuffing baker’s wife,” he remarked. \n\nLocke laughed hard and then translated. \n\nBadcock counters with, “She’s got the metal of a good stiff cock and has pushed it up the Badbladder’s arse more than a few times. Now you want to talk about ugly, your aircraft has all the beauty of a proctor’s idea of truth and all the elegance of a right angle.”\n\nIt quickly went downhill from there to the point that Badcock stands, knocking over his beer and demands that we prove the superiority of the Badbladder. “Come on now… where your Wolf brass balls now? I say we match our planes from take off to twenty thousand feet… see who gets there first. The first one there begins the dogfight. No shooting until you get there either; just like an Irish duel.”\n\nThat one raised all of our eyebrows, and when asked, Badcock gives us a contemptuous look as if we’re all uneducated. We Wolfs, who match cut for cut in Schlager duels. Even my blood was boiling at this point.\n\n“You fight with a cudgel and a top hat,” he explained, his paws doing a lampoon of the fight. “First you have to knock off the other fellow’s hat before you can hit him on the head. He knocks yours off he’s free to beat you to death while you still have to knock his hat off. So I say you have to get to twenty thousand before you can fire… keep the other fellow down and it’s all yours.”\n\n“Bollocks,” I muttered, tipping back my beer and missing the rest of what Badcock said. \n\nSuddenly I found all eyes on me.\n\n“What?”\n\n“He asked where our brass balled Wolf was,” Locke told me with a strange smile. “You brought him here, Herr B.B. Are you feeling up to his challenge?” There was a chorus of voices egging me on to accept. \n\nHerr Locke leaned forward, so only I could hear him and said coldly, “Und this time kill the uncouth bastard.” \n\nThat pretty much settled it. When we were done I called for Aloysius, and instructed him to have his mechanics fix the Pisser. When he gave me a questioning look I told him, it’s a long story, but I fly against the bastard in the morning.\n\n“How exactly do you wish me to fix the craft, sir?” He asked very softly.\n\n“I expect it to be rightly and properly fixed, Sergeant. What kind of person would I be if I did not win this contest on my own merit?”\n\n“Jahohl, Mein Heir,” he said with a smile and a salute. “As you say, it will be so.”\n\n---------------------------------------------\n\nI stood with Badcock towards the rear of our aircraft watching the sun come up. The aircraft silhouettes in this early light were remarkably different. The Pisser’s lines were smooth and rounded, whereas the Badbladder’s were lean and sharp. Where the Royal’s underbelly was clean, the Wolf’s was marred with an egg shaped fuel tank which was a necessity for gaining any reasonable amount of time in the air. With a mere seventy six gallon internal capacity you learned early on to nurse every last ounce when it was possible. \n\nTaking out a pack of cigarettes, I thumbed one up for Badcock and one up for myself. He accepted it in a quiet humble sort of way, so very unlike the Bull Dog of the night before.\n\n“I know you don’t sprecken Dog,” he says to me, “But before we begin I want to apologize for last night.” He winked. “It got me a chance to fly the old Pisser at least one last time.”\n\nI looked at him, and no translation was needed. Without a doubt, the blustery exterior was nothing more than a cover for what was really underneath. I winked at him and smiled. “Is goot morning,” I managed. “Fly goot… bail out wenn schlecht. [when bad]”\n\nWe both came up with lighters in the same instant, flicking them and holding them out for the other. Closing mine with a metallic click, I leaned forward and let him light me up. He then lit his own, and we both took deep drags, letting out a cloud of smoke. \n\nThumbing my lighter over in my paw, I saw it had the squadron’s emblem engraved on one side, and the back to back letters B.B. on the other. Motioning for him to follow, I led the way to the side of my Badbladder. Pointing to the back to back B’s on its hull, I next pointed to the same initials on the lighter, and then to my chest. “Herr Brass Balls,” I told him and smiled. “Es ist mir, du dumme alte Bastard.” [It’s me you silly old Bastard.]\n\nWith that I pressed the lighter into his palm, pointing to myself and then to him. He smiled in return and pressed his own lighter into my palm. I looked at it and saw that it too had his squadron emblem on it. On the reverse side were the initials H. B.\n\n“It’s me you silly young fool,” he says in perfectly accented Wolf. “Good luck, and may God protect you, because I will shoot you down if I get a clear shot.”\n\nI looked at him for a second, and then chuckled. “You’re a cagey old fellow,” I told him softly and then shook his paw firmly. “I am glad to have met you.”\n\n“Likewise,” he told me.\n\nWhen we’d finished our cigarettes, we walked to the front of the aircraft where all but two of our pilots were waiting. Near by two engines roared to life, and a moment later two Badbladder’s taxied out for take off.\n\nHerr Locke pointed at them and said in Dog, “If you try to run Herr Badcock, they will shoot you down. The rules are exactly as you stated them to be. When I give the signal you will both take off and climb to twenty thousand feet. You cannot fire until you obtain altitude. If you shoot Herr B.B. down, you will be allowed to fly back across the channel unmolested by this Staffel. I cannot vouch for any of the others so for that you will be on your own.\n\nBadcock executed a perfect Royal salute, “Sir!”\n\nLocke motioned that I should walk with him for a moment. \n\n“I will be on the radio at all times,” he told me softly. “I think perhaps I was rash in taking this wager. We have a perfectly good captured aircraft to play with; we should use it to our advantage.”\n\n“We cannot back out now sir,” I told him.\n\n“Why not?”\n\n“Honor, Mein Herr.”\n\n“Of course,” he responded, “How could I have forgotten? Is there anything you wish me to hold for you?”\n\nReaching into my pocket, I pulled out the lighter Badcock had given me along with my cigarettes and identification papers. These I handed over without comment. It was simply something we did for each other. In this case, Herr Locke was more a father figure than a Commandant.\n\n“Goot,” he said, accepting them. “I vill give them back when you land. Do nothing stupid, ja?”\n\nJa, Mein Herr,” I responded. To say I had mixed feelings was an understatement. I now knew the pilot I was to try and kill. He was no longer just an enemy machine in the sky. Turning back to my fighter, I climbed onto the wing and into the cockpit.\n\n---------------------------------------------\n\nThe engine noise from both aircraft was strikingly different. The Badbladder had a much throatier sound than the Pisser. We were given a moment to allow for warm up and Herr Locke held up his flare pistol and made a circular motion with it. As it was, we were exactly wingtip to wingtip and at the ready. Badcock slid his canopy closed and I pulled mine down over top of me, finding the close confines of the small cockpit both familiar and comfortable.\n\nOver the radio I heard someone ask if we were ready. Henry was immediate with a gruff, ‘Ready.’ I responded in kind and a moment later a green flare illuminated over the runway. With the signal, our engines advanced. My tail came up as it had the day before, in twenty feet. I was clearly airborne first and ahead by two body lengths at the end of the runway. The morning was glorious, the sun just coming up on the horizon so that the countryside was still shrouded in shadow. I didn’t opt for max climb power, but left the engine at full take off for as long as I dared, keeping an eye on the engine temp as well as the Pisser flying behind me.\n\nClimbing through 8,000 feet I went on oxygen, securing the mask to my snout with one paw. Turing in my seat, I vaguely saw the Pisser behind and below by a good thousand feet. The one thing the Badbladder did not have was good visibility. \n\nRemembering to be cautious, I checked the fuel mixture and engine temp again. When I reached altitude, I clicked the clock’s stop watch function and saw it had taken me exactly seven minutes from take off to twenty thousand feet. It was a wonderful feeling, but presently I didn’t have time for wonderful feelings. Pushing the radio button I called out my altitude, jettisoned my drop tank, and then banked around to begin my attack. The sun coming up in the east, I noted without even thinking, was neither a hindrance nor a help. I could see Badcock just below me as I was sure he could see me. He must have been furious that I’d beaten his wonderful Pisser to altitude. Keeping the power on I dove; lining him up in my sights and thumbing off the safety at the same moment. It would be a straight on shot so I didn’t even have to adjust for tracking. It couldn’t get much easier.\n\nWith my burst, the Royal Bull Dog broke right and then came back left again in an exaggerated ‘S’ maneuver to throw off my aim. I streaked past and now it was my turn to curse as I lost valuable altitude recovering from my dive. I heard him call out twenty thousand as I pulled out and began climbing again. Our positions were now reversed. \n\nMy engine howled in protest as I kept the power on. At altitude the Badbladder’s fuel injection worked much better that the Pisser’s carburetor but now I was low Dog in the pile and for the moment I lost him in a small cloud. As I approached, he punched back out again banking well over and coming at me from broadside. I imitated the turn, pulling bodily on the stick for all I was worth. Unlike the lead sled I was used to, there was no hydraulic boost on any of the aircraft’s controls. Strictly speaking, it was the pilot’s muscle and the machines mechanical heart melded together; the one being an exact extension of the other. As in the battles of armored knights, guts and intelligence were not enough… you needed true strength to win a dogfight.\n\nThis maneuver was a mistake and I knew it from the beginning. The Pisser’s pleasingly rounded wings had much less load on them than the Badbladder’s and Badcock easily turned inside of me. The moment I saw his tracers I dove with full military power on and dropped like a brick. Even at that I caught at least five rounds through the wings. My fighter’s engine had no problem with the inverted G force maneuver. Henry’s Pisser, on the other paw, burped and stuttered momentarily as fuel floated upwards in the carburetor as he tried to follow. This allowed me a greater lead in the dive which most likely saved my life.\n\nThe airspeed indicator climbed into the red, well over four hundred and twenty knots indicated airspeed. My controls stiffened to the point of non-responsiveness and compression recovery became primary to my mind. I was now riding a shooting star and did not wish to be a crater in the ground; which would happen if the wings ripped off. Chopping the power I began pumping the rudder and ailerons to slow myself down. The altimeter was winding down like an out of control clock and by now I noted my fuel was down past half. As I looked, the fuel warning light blinked on, indicating I had only twenty minutes left. Getting back on an approach to the airfield was now mandatory but I pushed the thought away so long as Badcock was above me.\n\nWhen my speed was down to three hundred I ripped my oxygen mask off and rolled to the right, flying into a convenient cloud. My altitude was now at just under ten thousand, and I continued in a tight turn, doing three full circles before coming back to my original course and going back to full power. If I was lucky, and if Badcock had followed in the dive, this would put him directly in front of me and most likely hightailing it to the coast. We’d fueled him full up, which was all part of the wager and this was far more than enough for a dogfight and escape; which would have been on the forefront of him mind. In doing this, my mind had already figured in the possibility of landing at the Staffel next up the coast to refuel. It was something I had to do… it was honor… it was expected by my Commandant… it was…\n\n“Herr B.B.,” called our ground controller, “Return to base. Flight oversight; return to base.”\n\nI saw him not more than a mile ahead, throttle obviously pushed to his safe power limits to be sure. Just as I’d expected he was heading dead on to the coast. True to the agreement of the wager, the pilot had fought and fought well; so this was allowed and the two covering fighters were no longer there. \n\nI pushed my throttle to Emergency Power, determined to catch him. He would not be looking back and it was a dead on run with no gun deflection or windage to figure into the mix. Having nothing else to worry about, I simply hung on, riding my aircraft like a horse at full gallop.\n\n“Herr B.B.,” Locke’s voice called over the radio, “Break off and return to base.”\n\nI did not respond. Something inside me was incensed at missing the retreating Pisser. A voice inside my head told me I was Wolf! It then spit out an entire series of words that I did not understand… words with a Wolf accent. A different voice inside my head then called to me. ‘Let it go Corgi Dog… let it go!”\n\nMy indicated airspeed pressed at three eighty and froze there while my engine temperature rose to well over the red line. I smelled heat and exhaust fumes and pulled my oxygen mask back on. Badcock’s Pisser grew in my gun sights from a small dot to something where I could now make out the details.\n\n“Herr B.B. return to base! This is an order!” demanded Locke. When I did not respond, he shouted, “YOU WILL RETURN NOW! RETURN…”\n\nFlames sprouted from under my engine cowl and smoke swept into the cockpit. I would have been blinded but for my goggles. Pulling the canopy’s jettison handle on the right, I felt the wind sweep in, pulling at my harness as it attempted to pluck me from the cockpit. Three more seconds and I would fire and then chop power… two… one…\n\nStrange and terrible things happen when an engine seizes. This dramatic stoppage of force, coupled with the incredible torque of the huge spinning propeller literally tore off the front of my fighter. This ripping action, in turn, flipped what remained of the fuselage end over end over end; streaming flames from the ruptured fuel line. I did not cry out. I did not howl. There was no time to do anything… except die.\n\n---------------------------------------------\n\nI woke in the booth at the beer garden. The place was empty except for me and the barkeep. The only light that was on was a single overhead incandescent bulb inside a tin hood.\n\n“I was wondering when you would wake,” he called to me from behind the bar. “I think you drink too much, ja?”\n\n“Sure,” I managed. My mouth tasted like something dead and my eyes felt as if they had sand in them. “What time is it?”\n\n“It is three thirty of the A.M. First Officer Corgi. Perhaps you go home now, eh?”\n\n“Where is home?” I asked stupidly.\n\n“I have asked that same question many times,” the Wolf responded as he came around the bar. Sitting down across from me, he reached into his pocket and pulled out some grass. “Eat this,” he told me, “And go puke. You will feel better. When you come back I give you a large glass of tomato juice so you have something in your gut, ja?”\n\nWhen I looked skeptical, he shrugged his shoulders. “Wolfs do it, Dogs do it… it is a time honored tradition because it works. Go ahead, I vill fetch the drink.”\n\nWhat can I say? The toilet stunk like all toilets in beer gardens stink, but he was right; when I finished, I did feel better. Washing my face in cold water, I looked at myself in the mirror. Besides being one huge body ache, my uniform shirt looked like I’d slept in it, and my eyes were bright red.\n\nMaking my way back into the bar, I went back to the booth and sat across from the strange Wolf. The tomato juice was sitting on the table waiting for me. Drinking it straight down, I extended a paw and said, “My names George Corgi, what’s yours?”\n\nHe shook my paw warmly. “The war is over, you may call me Dierk.”\n\n“I was four years old when the war ended,” I told him. “It lasted six.” I don’t know why this seemed important, but it did.\n\n“Jahohl,” he said quietly, digging a pack of cigs and a lighter out of his breast pocket. “I know this.”\n\nShaking one out of the pack for me, he next thumbed the lighter open and lit me up when I was ready. As I breathed in a grateful lungful of the rich tobacco, he snapped the lighter closed again and then placing it on the table top. Taking a small leather folder out of his pocket, he placed it with the lighter and slid them both over to me. “You asked me to hold these for you. I am pleased to now return them.”\n\n“I must have been some drunk,” I muttered, picking them up and sliding them into my pants pocket, “Because I sure don’t remember doing so.”\n\nThe one eyed Wolf laughed a strange laugh. “How do you Royals say… you were really pisser?”\n\n“Pissed,” I corrected with a smile.\n\n“Amazing that one word can carry so many translations, my young friend.” \n\nThere was a car horn outside the door, and I turned to look, my attention temporarily diverted. \n\n“That would be your ride,” he told me, rising from the booth and picking up my duffle. “You are to have a goot life, ja? That is an order.”\n\n“Jahohl, Mein Heir,” I replied automatically; not even realizing I had done so.\n\n----------------------------------\n\nWhen I got to the hotel, the sun was just coming up. I was actually met in the lobby by Captain Badcock. He was down trying to have his breakfast, but at such an early hour no kitchen staff had yet arrived. Seeing me walk in, he motioned me over. \n\n“Where the bloody hell have you been?” he asked acidly.\n\n“You left me to walk,” I explained. “I stopped at a beer garden and apparently had too much to drink. It happens sometimes.”\n\n“For three days?” he asked.\n\nI blinked, his statement hitting me like a fighter’s slash attack. “I was… three days?”\n\n“We leave this afternoon,” he told me with an absolute look of disapproval.\n\n“If you vill follow me, Mein Herr,” the desk clerk told him, coming back to the desk, “I can give you coffee, but the cook vill not be in for another hour.”\n\n“Fine,” he says, turning to her. “Please make it for two as my First officer has finally decided to show up and I am sure he needs it.”\n\nWhen we were seated, old Henry takes out his pack and thumbs up a cigarette. Not bothering to offer me one, he placed it between his lips and then found my outstretched paw thumbing a lighter to flame. He leaned forward to take advantage and then spotted the emblem on its side. Two things happened: he turned quite pale and then blowing out the flame he snatched it away from me.\n\n“Where did you get this?” he asked in a near whisper.\n\n“The barkeep at the beer garden gave it to me,” I told him. “He said I’d given it to him to hold for me.” Fishing into my pocket I pulled out the small leather wallet. “He gave me this too, come to think of it. He had just one eye and looked like he’d been burned; said he’d flown Badbladders during the war.”\n\nTogether we opened the wallet and found ourselves looking at the picture of a young pilot standing in the cockpit of a Badbladder. The view was down the nose of the aircraft, and the Wolf was quite handsome. On the other side was an official looking identification paper stating the fellow’s name to be, Oberleutnant Georg Wolf.\n\nHenry reached into his pocket and took out his own lighter, placing it on the table and pushing it over to me. “Does this mean anything to you?” he asked.\n\nI picked it up and examined it closely. On one side was the outline of a strange looking falcon. Inside the outline was a spider impaled on a fencing sword. Turning it over, I saw the back to back B’s. \n\nA cold chill swept through my body. At that moment, as I looked up and met the eyes of my old adversary, the desk clerk brought us coffee.\n\nSeeing my reaction was answer enough for the old Bull Dog. “Tell me everything you remember,” he said plainly, “And do not leave out a bloody fucking thing.”\n\n By the time I was done, breakfast had come and gone. There was a quiet moment, and then Badcock told me, “I never told anyone that story… not even command. I was far too embarrassed at having let my Pisser be captured. That and if I’d told them Rightwing and I had split up, they would have had my balls for breakfast. My report was accurate through the raid on the airfield, and then I told them I had engine problems and set down in a field. That night a farmer helped me fix a fuel line that’d come loose and managed some fuel stolen fro the Wolfs. I looked for Herr Locke after the war, but the best I could do was, ‘Missing in Action’.”\n\nPushing back in his chair, he told me, “Take me to the beer garden.”\n\nActually, I was more than happy to do so, as I desperately wanted some answers of my own. When we got there, however, the only thing we found was an old bombed out ruin. \n\nAbove the door and still hanging from one mount, was the beer garden sign that had attracted me on my walk. The picture of the fighter was still on it, but it was full of bullet holes; probably from the invading allied army. The tail of the aircraft had seen flames, and for a moment I felt them washing over me again.\n\nBefore I could stop myself, I was leaning over what had once been a window puking my guts out. When I was done, I found Captain Badcock standing close with a fistful of grass. He wore a sad expression.\n\n“Go ahead,” he told me, “Eat it and puke again, it’ll settle your stomach. Wolfs do it, Dogs do it… it’s tradition because it works. It’ll help you get past knowing it’s not a game… that you’ve killed another living breathing being. My final count was fifteen.”\n\nAll that I’d experienced flowed over me then like an ocean. When I finally could speak, I asked him simply, “Why?”\n\nThe old boy just shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he replied. “It was just something we had to do. Kill or be killed, eh?”\n\n----------------------------------\n\nAs the camera pulls away, showing the two uniformed figures in front of the bombed out ruins, the small Fox’s voice is again heard:\n\nFirst Officer George Corgi has discovered the madness surrounding the age old question that has perplexed those pressed to be warriors as long as there has been war upon the face of the planet. Where there is more than one Alfa there can be no rest, and so all the games ever played in youth are bundled up and burned as sacrifice to the highest game of all; to win is to live, to lose is to die.\n\nKill or be killed is but an excuse exhorted by those who would have them fight for a cause that might or might not be so very honorable; turning a vibrant and living world into a cemetary.\n\nThat this excuse is false does not matter. To remember that it is false is important. \n\n[i]“The moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers; something to dwell on and something to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God’s earth.” Rod Serling – ‘Deaths-head Revisited’ – November 10th, 1961\n[/i]\nBecause of this… and as a reminder to the living in times of peace; occasionally we are required to take a trip; to The Fur Side.\n\nend\n\n \n\n", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "The Belmont Pisser

by

Vixyy Fox

\t

In commercial flying, they say the really good pilots don’t have any stories; there’s nothing to tell but the boredom of safe take offs and even safer landings. I would grumble something which might, or might not, include the words ‘cow poop’ (No offense meant to the Tarbh race, though you need a pretty large craft to haul… to carry them as passengers.) Obviously the captain I’m flying with is not a very good one since he hasn’t shut up since we made altitude. I can’t wait for our approach to roll around so he has to be quiet by law. God help me, but I got stuck with a merry old Royal Bull Dog and from the sounds of his accent a Bristol lad at that. Somehow I can’t picture his bulbous frame in the seat of a fighter; but that’s what he claims he was, a fighter pilot. Guff!

“Excuse me, sir, but you said you flew a Buford Blueberry? Wasn’t that a transport?”

I shouldn’t have goaded him I suppose, but I was pretty well fed up with his fanciful war stories. These were modern times and this was a modern aircraft with about as much pep and zeal as a rail car with wings.

“You best watch your mouth, pup,” he shouts at me, turning bright red. His pushed in looking face actually wore a snarl and for a bare moment I thought perhaps he might strike me. Apparently cargo transports were quite the insult to the fighter types.

“Know your place you wet behind the ears diapered little snot. Close your ears and open your mouth is all yur good for apparently ya egotistical little brass balled shit head! I flew fuk’n Belmont Pissers; the best damned aircraft in the war bar none and fuk anyone who says different!”

Apparently I’d touched a raw nerve with a 2000 volt magneto wire. I should have kept my yap closed, but being a Corgi I just had to have the last word.  “Really? I’ve always heard the Badbladder E Type could fly rings around the Belmont Pisser. Statistics don’t lie, Captain. As I recall, the Wolf’s engineers had it balls on and the performance data collected after the war clearly shows the superiority.”

Giving me the most disapproving look I’d ever seen, the old bastard flips the autopilot off and tells me to take the wheel so he can go have a squirt. “Keep your oxygen mask on while I’m gone,” he instructs me, as if I didn’t know to do that. “It’s for safety, though I suddenly find the cockpit stinking of unpolished brass green.” When he got back, he was sipping a coffee, none for me thank you very much, and he didn’t speak another word except for what was required. I had no idea silence could be so cold.

We landed in Stonenpassen right on schedule. The old boy personally took us in, and I will admit the landing was glass smooth. The wheels didn’t so much as squeal when we touched down and there we were on the ground taxing in. The crew had a three day required rest here. I was rather looking forward to sitting by the hotel’s pool by day, and maybe do a little clubbing with the stewardess’ at night. We had three onboard, and I knew at least two of them were good for it. If only things had been that easy… if only…

Rest?

What’s rest when you have a war to fight?

------------------------------------

A small Fox with very large ears turns from the airport terminal’s window where she’d been watching the four engine silver tube with wings taxiing in to the gate. There is a large clock on the wall behind her which is slowly turning backwards and her demeanor is of one who has a secret. She holds a cigarette in one paw, the smoke of which curls up around her head.

“In every occupation,” she says in a dead pan expression of seriousness, “There is the fledgling, and there is the seasoned veteran. Nowhere is this more poignant than in the cockpit of an aircraft. George Corgi, hatchling flyer of the first degree, wearing his bright new wings on the front of his crisp new uniform has found himself serving as First Officer to one Captain Henry Badcock. He has made the mistake of forgetting the very first rule of aviation; respect experience. The veteran is still alive so he obviously did something right.  In the words of Colonel and His Lordship Wilber Rightwing, KIA;

‘Learn from those who have survived the sky that you too will continue to live. Learn too from those who have died that you will not repeat their mistakes.’

Though he has three days off in a city that lived through the last war, it is doubtful Fist Officer Corgi, will find any rest. Inadvertently, and through an ego never before tarnished by the requirements of war, he has crossed the line that separates his every day reality from The Fur Side.

----------------------------

OK, so I screwed up.

Yes this was my first ‘for real’ commercial flight with the big boys.

Yes I had an inside connection that got me on board with the company and placed into training so I could sit right seat on milk runs like Stonenpassen. It’s all about building your hours so someday you’ll get to pinch the Stewardess’ bottom while going for a squirt.

As it was, Stonenpassen had been so bombed out during the war that almost the entire city was new built. That meant the airport had the latest and greatest of everything; including top notch air traffic controllers. I was warned well in advance by my peers not to joke with them over the radio and to ‘never ever’ crack wise about incoming bombers. That warning was understandable and I held to the warning, but at this point I desperately wanted to get my paws on the crew scheduler who’d let Old Pisser Badcock muscle his way in to take the flight as captain. He should have warned me off on that one too, dam it!

Badcock, still grumping as if I’d stolen his favorite toy, left me with the securing and close up of the aircraft while he took off with the stewardess’ in tow; all of them Collies, and not a bad looking one among them. Apparently they knew more about his reputation than I did and were quite taken with the pug nosed old bastard. Perhaps I deserved it for being cheeky. His wasn’t the first time I’d had my tail handed to me. With a sigh I chalked it off as another lesson learned the hard way. I would catch up to them later as it was an easy guess I’d also have a long hike to the hotel as the crew bus would come only once. No bother really; a Corgi’s legs are short but they’re stout. I figured after such a long flight the tramp would be good for me.  

Striking out on my own, duffle in paw, I padded along until I’d built up a pretty good thirst. Well, Stonenpassen was renowned for two things. Its beer gardens were among the best in the world, and it was also the home of the largest porcelain toilet bowl factory in the world. There was true irony here. I wasn’t all that sure the two should be thought of as walking paw in paw, but why let an opportunity like beer pass you by? Spying one of the gardens, my eye was drawn to the sign above the door which bore the likeness of an old Wolf fighter aircraft.

‘So be it’, I remember thinking to myself, ‘The fates have spoken.’

As in most bars, the lights were low and the air cool with more than a hint of stale beer; perfect for dodging he day and unwinding. In my uniform I stood out from the locals like a brass nickel in a pocketful of silver. I was used to this actually and rather enjoyed it. Making my way to a quiet booth, I threw my duffel in first, sat, and then signaled for some service. The place was pretty incredible actually. Pictures of all sorts of Wolf aircraft from the war hung on the walls. Some bore the autographs of the pilots standing next to them and still others hung with individual medals below them; obviously awarded to someone who no longer had a use for them.

The waitress, a pretty young thing wearing a traditional dress, paused to light my cigarette before taking my order. I noticed it had a strange emblem on it of a heart shaped falcon. Inside of the bird’s outline was a spider impaled upon a fencing sword. It didn’t take me long to notice the barkeep watching me as he dried a huge stein. He wore an eye patch and one side of his neck, the side with the patch, was bare of fur as if it had been touched by fire.

“Did you fly?” I called over to him.

“Ja… Badbladers,” was his only reply. He then filled the stein and handed it to the barmaid for delivery.

How unfair the world was, I reflected as I gazed upon the fellow. Here he was most certainly almost killed, and his only reward was to linger among his memories in this bar, while His Royal Arse Henry Badcock was aloud to lord it over my cockpit.

After that I drank in silence until I was ready to leave. Surprisingly, there was a cab waiting for me outside. The uniformed driver stood quietly curbside wearing a very old style uniform and holding up a small sign with my name on it. Perhaps, I reasoned, Badcock felt guilty about how badly he’d treated me and sent this fellow to bring me to the hotel.

Too many Stonenpassen beers had gone down the old hatch while I looked at the pictures on the bar’s walls and I was simply too tired to ask any questions. As the driver opened the door for me, I simply climbed into the back seat and dozed off.

----------------------------

“Wake up!”

The scream was right in my ear, and my eyes popped opened. At the best of times my nervous system seemed to have a buffer zone that kept me from jerking and jumping during times of shock. ‘Nerves of steel,’ my mum would say. ‘Stupid id’jut child,’ my Da would say. Of course when the bucket of water hit me I was up and swinging. This was followed by the coarse laughter of at least five Wolfs. Damnation I would know that accent anywhere, though stranger still I understood every last word they spoke.

“Look there Fritzi, Herr Brass Balls comes up like a real fighter, ja?”

“Ja, Howler, mitt der vasser com’n zee fists of…”

Fritzi never finished whatever he’d been about to say because my right paw connected. It flattened his nose with a satisfying thud. Next my foot swept the feet out from under the one holding the bucket and he went to the floor with a jarring thump. Picking up the wooden chair at the table next to me I was about smash it over his head when there was a shout of, ‘STILLGESTANDEN!’

Where everyone else immediately snapped to rigid attention, I was left holding a chair over my head, blinking at what my mind was finally recording. The five individuals who apparently anticipated some fun at my expense were all wearing the same black and gray uniform. Two white lightning bolts decorated their collars and each bore an arm patch of a spider impaled on a fencing sword inside of an almost heart shaped outline of a falcon.

“Was geht hier vor? [What goes on here?]” asked a very civil sounding voice edged in ice.

“Ve are dancing, Herr Commandant,” the one named Fritzi replied a little too calmly. Had we not been interrupted, I am sure I would have bashed his brains out, so I was just a little bit stunned that he would make an excuse for me. There was a mumbled chorus of agreements.

“Und vat exactly is this dance called?” the Wolf asked, looking directly at me. His uniform was exactly like all of the others except his collar was done up tight around his neck, and he wore a short tricolor ribbon culminating in what I recognized as the Wolf’s Medal of Meritorious Valor… their highest decoration from the war. There were two additional gold lightning bolts dangling below the medal, indicating he’d been awarded the decoration three times.

“Die Messing Farren [The Brass Bullocks],” I muttered, not being able to come up with anything better. My mouth tasted like mud, and even I could smell the vomit on my breath.

“You flew well yesterday, Lieutenant,” the Commandant replied, his face poker straight serious, “But that is no excuse for you to drink yourself to stupidity. What if we had to scramble?” He left that hang in the air for everyone’s benefit, and then, when the timing was perfect, furthered, “If this happens again, I will have you and your mess mates digging latrines for the mechanics, am I clear? You all have a responsibility to each other… it is how you will survive. Fly alone… die alone… zo… like a good Staffel, you will be punished together, no?”

In the distance there was an explosion, but no one seemed to notice. As for me; there were only the eyes of the Wolf, through which he willed me to abeyance. “Jahohl, Mein Herr,” I replied softly, setting the chair slowly to the floor.

“At ease,” the Wolf gently commanded and the room loosened up considerably. To me he said, “Sit in the chair, Herr B. B. before you fall over.”

As bad as I felt, I didn’t question the order. Sure this was as odd as it could get. Sure, upon regarding myself, I found I too was wearing a black and gray uniform. Some things, I also noticed, are able to be changed and some things are not. Though I wore the uniform, I still had the build and coloring of a Corgi, perhaps a third less large than any of the Wolfs in the room. If this was meant as a joke, it was a well planed out and executed joke. Pity I felt too ill to have a good laugh over it.

“Yesterday,” the Commandant began, “Our Royal friends doggedly tried once again to force us to submission.”

There was a group chuckling at this comment. I looked up at our apparent leader from where I sat with my head almost between my legs. He looked vaguely familiar; as though I had seen him before… somewhere… but my brain was not yet banging away on all of its cylinders.

“I vould like to zay that we showed well for ourselves, having shot down three Pissers to the loss of only one Badblader, but the loss of anyone or any aircraft is a matter of somber reality. It is true they left with tails between their legs, but we lost Jeffry.”

There was a quiet pause as the Wolf began to slowly pace among his pilots.

“As you all know,” he finally continued, “I claimed but one Pisser, while Herr B.B. shot down the other two.”

To my amazement, everyone applauded loudly. Looking up, I found the Commandant smiling at me and leading the applause. For some reason I felt I should stand, which I did, nodding to him and then sitting back down again before I fell over. Coming to me, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a handful of grass. Holding it out to me, he said softly, “Eat this and go puke behind the barracks, you will feel better.”

I took it from him gratefully, after which he told the room, “They were here yesterday and that means they most assuredly will be back tomorrow to extract their revenge… but this time we will be waiting for them. Beginning at dawn, we will sally two aircraft at a time to cover the field. Conserve your fuel as much as possible. You will have drop tanks and fly to half of the internal tank. When you get to this point you will buzz the field, where upon the next two will take off. When the Royals come in it will be at treetop level… a fast pass to strafe and bomb. Those flying cover will attack which will scatter them. Those on the ground will then take off and attack. Engines will be started and idled every 30 minutes to keep them warm. Are their any questions?”

No one had any.

“Goot… Get your heads straight and report to your aircraft in one hour. Go over them with your mechanic, and then ve will make flights of two. Watch for targets, hit and come back.” Looking to me, he said, “Herr Brass Balls, you vill be my wing. Now go eat your grass und puke… best to get it over with.” Placing a paw on my shoulder he told me, “I remember how it was with my first kill. You vill get past this.”

----------------------------------

As I walked towards my aircraft my mind was in a steep dive, its wings stuttering and on the brink of breaking off. If this was a dream, it was the most detailed and realistic dream I had ever had. I even had flashes of my of my old philosophy teacher grinning at me and asking, ‘What is reality?’ If he’d been real I would have punched him, and darned if I didn’t think he knew that too.

“Herr B.B.,” my mechanic called to me as I approached. (At least I assumed he was my mechanic, and apparently my nickname was the Royal expression: Brass Balls.) “I have your aircraft ready for you, sir.” He then snapped to attention as I walked around the craft. On both sides of the hull, in extremely large red letters, were back to back red B’s rather than the back to back cock and balls look of the d and b (from Badbladder) as painted on the other aircraft.

Right below the cockpit I saw two freshly painted Royal flags.  As I finished my walk around, the mechanic saluted me. “It was Herr Oberst’s orders, sir. He believes you deserve a special recognition symbol.” The little Skunk smiled at me then and said in a lower voice, “Three more kills, sir, and you become an ace; then I can paint your aircraft’s nose yellow.”

The hairs on the back of my neck suddenly stood on end. I’m not sure if it was the idea that I’d actually killed someone, pilots do tend to bail out if shot down, or if it was the fact that I was falling into this dream hook line and sinker. I decided to test something. “Tell me… ahhh… how shall I address you old sport?”

The mechanic gave me a sidewise glance and a strange smile.

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, Mein Heir… except… you sounded rather ‘Royal’ for a moment. I am Sergeant Aloysius Skunk, Mien Herr… but you knew that.”

“Of course I did. And why do you not fly? I can see the love of it written on you clearly.”

He looked down a bit, his eyes suddenly not meeting mine. “Because I am not a Wolf,” he replied. “Thank you for reminding me, Mein Heir.”

“And what am I?”  I asked. Certainly my jaw must have dropped as he made his last statement.

“A Wolf, sir,” he told me as if by rote. He then got this boyish smile and glanced up at me. “A Wolf with two kills und a very good flyer. I’ve watched you, sir… you are not ham fisted like the others in your group.” Placing a paw on the aircraft, he said, “She flies for you, Mein Heir; as if you were her lover.”

He was very earnest in what he was telling me. I looked at my paws and saw a Corgi’s paws, and yet there I was in a Wolfwaffen uniform. Fishing a pack of smokes from my breast pocket, I motioned for the Sergeant to walk a distance away from the aircraft and then offered him one. Stuffing a paw into one pocket, I came out with a cigarette lighter emblazoned with the squadron’s emblem; ‘the spider on a stick’ as I wanted to call it. Shaking a cig out for him, I took one myself and held the lighter for both of us.

When we’d both inhaled and let out a cloud of smoke, I mimicked flying through it with my paw, much to the Skunk’s amusement. “So you would like to be a pilot then?” I asked him.

“Very much so,” he responded. “Perhaps later in the war I will be given a chance, ja? Right now we need to win und to do that, you need a good mechanic; that would be me.”

I nodded, and then, keeping an eye open for anyone’s approach, I grilled him on the aircraft. I asked him what did he think, what did he know, how in heck you even raised and lowered the landing gear. The last thing I needed was the Commandant’s name and then I felt I could fudge my way through most anything.

“Aloysius, I’m afraid I drank too much last night, and though my stomach feels better, I’m having a brain fart.”

“Brain fart, sir?”

“Yes… brain fart… I, for the life of me, cannot think of Herr Oberst’s name. Imagine my embarrassment should he call me on the radio and I didn’t know how to respond.”

The Skunk chuckled as if he had been expecting this question.

“You find that funny?”

“No, sir,” he responded, dropping the cigarette butt on the ground and grinding it under his heel, “But Herr Locke said that you had been so drunk last night you would probably forget your own name. He said nothing about his.”

“How many kills does Herr Oberst have now?”  I asked.

“Sixty five. I dare say there is no one his equal in the air.”

“I dare say,” I repeated, grinding my own cigarette under heel and letting the expression run away to nothing. Walking back to the aircraft, I inspected the name under the cockpit. It glared back at me in stark Wolf; Oberleutnant Georg Wolf.

“Fuck me,” I muttered, and then from the other side of the aircraft I heard an engine roar to life, followed by several others.

-----------------------------------

Locke was beyond good and his patience with a rookie was incredible. We flew west over a vast countryside of farmland. As we climbed to altitude I could see the channel ahead of us, though we did not venture out so far. Taking off in the Badbladder was a bit of a trick. Damned if I didn’t almost roll right over and barrel into the ground as soon as I was airborne. The torque the huge engine and propeller exerted was incredible.

“Too much throttle, Herr B.B.,” I heard over my headset just as the roll began.

In a panic I chopped power and almost nosed in while working the stick and rudder pedals like a madman to recover from the roll. Finally gaining control of the aircraft, I pointed her nose to the sky with a howl of happiness.

“Where is that fighter pilot from yesterday?” asked that same voice in a chuckle. “Climb to ten and continue east at two hundred. I’ll catch up and take the lead. Stay on my tail and do not lose me.”

“Ja,” I responded calmly. The word felt strange but correct all in the same moment. My mouth was obviously speaking Wolf, but my brain was still thinking Canine. Yes, they had their similarities, but…

“The proper response would be ‘jahohl’, Oberleutnant, but then again I prefer calm and steady rather than exuberance when flying. In the air I am simply your lead and you are my wing man. Keep the radio chatter that simple. We are formal on the ground because the military dictates we must be. After the war, if we are both still alive, you may then address me by my first name of Dierk.”

Pulling my throttle back and leaning out the fuel mixture with a mind to engine temperature, I watched the altimeter wind around and around, mindful that I still had a need to see everywhere around me. It was a chore to be sure, but one that I was finding enjoyable. Even with the bulbous drop tank on it, the aircraft had such an incredible feeling of power. Touch the stick and she responded like a ballerina; so unlike the lead sled I was used to sitting right seat in, and so unlike the trainers I had spent hours and hours flying. I soon became lost in just the sensation of it… the engine noise, the glint of the sun off of the glass, the sound of the air rushing past, the sensuous feel of the stick in my paw…

With a jarring thump of disturbed air, a yellow nosed Badblader over flew me in a dive that left bare feet between my propeller and his underbelly.

“Was that the stick or your penis in your paw Oberleutnant B. B.? I flew upside down above you just now trying to figure it out before diving upon you. You are quite dead, by the way.”

Before I could stop myself I had pushed the throttle forward and was diving after the other fighter; or at least I thought I was.  Within seconds, we’d both punched a hole in an errant cloud and when I came out on the other side he was nowhere to be seen.

“Are you behind me?” Locke asked calmly.

“No, Mein Herr,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady. I was pissed to be sure. If I’d known we would be playing silly games I would have…

“I have just killed you again,” he said in that deadly calm voice. “You have now paid back the two kills from yesterday. Shall I have the flags taken off of your aircraft?”

“Jahohl!” I replied a little too strongly. Fucking bastard!

There was a chuckle over the radio set. “Did you just call me a ‘fucking bastard’? he asked in his deadpan voice. “I can assure you my family is quite pure in its breeding… all well documented; all Wolf.”

I strained my neck looking for him, trying to remember if I had actually spoken the words. Finally I found him by holding my thumb up to the sun, causing it to eclipse. “No, sir,” I responded nosing the aircraft upwards. “I did not say that.”

“Mind your engine temp, and conserve your fuel Oberleutnant. Leave the throttle at full for too long and things begin to go badly.”

Mentally cursing myself, I inched the throttle back to climb and away from full military power, and then jettisoned my drop tank to reduce drag. Even in the lead sled we had to watch that little bit. Easing off of the stick, I banked and began an easy spiral upwards to join my lead. Obviously climbing into a fight was not the optimum way to attack; score one for the teacher. This time, I kept my eyes bloody well on him, though he made no effort to evade me.

The rest of the patrol was pretty boring. Nothing was spotted, and pretty much all was just practice staying on Locke’s tail where I would range left and then right; always watching and looking for an enemy aircraft. I would be told later by my mess mates that this was, indeed, a rare day as none of them saw anything while in the air. If nothing else, they also told me, in cases like this when some of our own bombers were sighted they would be given a cautious fly by and if the crews were relatively new a mock dogfight might ensue so everyone could practice tracking with their guns.

Coming back, I was to land first as I’d taken off first and so gently ranged in having been given the ‘all clear’ flag when doing my fly by. Landing the Badbladder, I found, was not so easy. With the flaps and slots down it handled well enough at low speeds; in that there was no problem in maneuverability; but as soon as the wheels touched the earth I could sense things getting dicey. Let’s just say the feeling was similar to riding a bicycle on ice. I had to fight to keep my body from tensing as the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. Where all the trainers I ever landed were gentle and would stay on a straight line ‘paws off’, the Badbladder immediately began jinking left or right on its own accord due to the narrowness of the landing gear. I kept the tail in the air as long as possible so I could use the rudder to good effect and stayed off of the brakes. When the tail finally settled, I then, very carefully, used the brakes to slow further. Being a tail dragger, I was immensely aware that too much applied brake and the airplane’s nose would flip down to bury itself in the dirt. Touch one side or the other too hard and you could also spin out in a ground loop collapsing the gear. Either accident had the same effect of putting you out of action.

Opening my canopy, I taxied to my ready spot, near blind from the nose up attitude, and near choking on the exhaust fumes. This called for a lot of rudder and brake work as I occasionally slewed to the right to see what was ahead. My paws were sweating as I worked and I grumbled curses wondering if I would ever wake from this dream. Most likely I would be sitting in the booth at the beer garden with drool running down my chest.

Then I saw a red fare cross the field and people began running everywhere.

Before I could even contemplate what I was doing, I’d pulled my canopy closed again and pushed the throttle forward, rolling in the only direction available; straight ahead. At that point I had no idea who or what was directly in front of me. In twenty feet my tail was back up and I could see again. Unfortunately there was a hanger taking up the area I needed to go through in order to get airborne. Mechanics and Wolfs were running out of the building and more than a few were waving their arms at me.

Nothing I could do at this point but pull back on the stick and pray. With the engine howling and the prop literally chewing through the air I barely cleared roof. The wind sock mounted there was not so lucky as it was instantly shredded. Eat or be eaten, I thought as yellow material sprayed outwards.

At that same moment a burst of tracer flew just over me at a diagonal.

I quickly found out that reality during the high stress moments of combat slows down considerably. You haven’t time to think so much as react. That’s why your training is so crucial; you need to react in the proper manner. In my case, you could say my training was a big fat nil, but at least… well… I can’t take credit; things just happened the way they happened.

Reality: if I had banked to either side, the up turned wing would have been riddled. As luck would have it I pushed down on the right rudder pedal as hard as I could and the craft’s nose swung to the right just as the Royal Pisser over flew me. “Bullocks!”  I swore and mashed down on the firing button. There was a mechanical stutter and the aircraft shook as my two machine guns and single cannon hammered out in blind retribution for a well done sneak attack. Apparently my rounds found the fellow’s fuel tanks as there was an enormous explosion. In the split second I had to see what happened I watched the unlucky bugger pin wheel into a large oak tree. Instinctively I banked away keeping my throttle full on to avoid flying through any debris. Black smoke poured from my exhaust as the fuel injection system did its job to perfection, pumping an overly rich mixture into the cylinders. I climbed then looking left, right, above, below, behind, over and over and over, until I saw a Pisser at tree top level screaming in towards the airstrip. He had Locke full in his sights and though the ace was already attempting to climb back up I knew the Royal pilot had him cold.

Without even considering I could be killed, I rolled and began a power induced dive equally screaming with the howl of the engine as my gages clearly red lined. Not even aiming I punched the fire button and tracers reached out at the Pisser. My cannon was first to run out of ammunition, but the machine guns continued rattling as I over flew and then banked left as tight as I could to get back on his tail. My leading edge slots fell out indicating I was very close to stalling, but I wasn’t concerned with close. I had him… he was mine… he was…

To my surprise, the fellow’s landing gear popped down as he too banked to the left, trying to reverse his direction.

As a boy and listening to every story available about flying, the one thing I knew for certain was; ‘Landing gear down in a combat situation is the same as an infantryman raising his arms and waving a white flag – surrender!’

That was when I saw Locke bearing in from my right with a vengeance. “He has surrendered Mein Herr!” I called over the radio. “He is my prisoner!”

All I heard in response was, ‘Das ist mir furzegal! Er ist ein fucking bastard ohne Ehre.

Obviously Herr Locke had forgotten his own admonition about getting angry. Leaving the throttle full on, I followed the Royal, stuffing my aircraft behind his blocking my Commandant’s shot.

“Royal Dog, Royal Dog,” I called over the radio. “I accept your surrender, land immediately or be shot down.”

Herr Locke followed my commands, translating them to Dog. The thought that the Royal pilot might not understand Wolf  hadn’t even occurred to me.

There was a stream of expletives that colored the radio waves red, and then the pilot’s gruff voice said something about ‘bloody Hades freezing over’.

“Your landing gear is down,” I called out. “You cannot gain speed to escape.”

Locke, now flying to my right, kicked left rudder and fired off a volley of tracers directly across the Pissers path. He followed this with what I took as a translation of my words.

Too low to bail out, the Pisser dropped speed and his canopy rolled back. A paw came out into the slip stream and waved. We were dead on to the airfield, so landing would be in and simple. Seeing that my fuel warning light was on, I checked my fuel gage I saw we were not a moment too soon; I had only about ten minutes left in the air.

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To say pandemonium broke out when we landed would be an understatement. No sooner had the Royal switched off his engine than he was surrounded by a multitude of pilots and mechanics. More than a few pistols were pointed at him as he climbed out of the cockpit seemingly oblivious to any of it. He had a scarf around his neck and a leather flying helmet with his goggles pulled well up onto his forehead. He was a Bull Dog to be sure, and as obstinate as they come.

“I want to speak to your Commander!” he bellowed at those gathered around his craft. “I did not surrender!”

My mechanic came forward and cordially relieved the fellow of his pistol. This he handed to me as I walked up, fresh out of my own aircraft. The crowd parted when they noticed my presence as if I was some sort of ancient deity and they were the ocean. Word spread quickly of what had transpired, from those who had witnessed the miracle of clearing the hanger, the snapshot kill, and then the dive that had saved Herr Locke… but for all of this I was totally unaware except for the fellow who now stood before me.

Standing at attention, he saluted me, and says, “Lieutenant Henry Badcock, 61st Royal Bull Dogs at your service, sir. There seems to have been a mistake, I did not surrender. I did not put my landing gear down… damnation they came down all on their own. You should have shot me down. I sure as shit would have punched your ticket.”

For the life of me, I didn’t understand a word he said, except for the name. It was Captain ‘The Belmont Pisser’s The Best Aircraft Ever’ Badcock; a much younger Badcock to be sure, but it was him. Either my dream had just gotten better, or it had become a true nightmare. Gor… if he ever even suspected I was flying for the Wolfs…

“Aloysius,” I said to my mechanic, “What the devil is he saying?”

“I think he is complaining we did not offer him a beer upon landing,” my mechanic said with a smile. “He’s doesn’t know how lucky he is that no one has shot him yet.”

“He claims he never put his gear down,” one of the other pilots told me. I saw that it was the one we called Fritzi. I nodded my thanks to him for this information.

“There will be no shooting,” I called out loud enough for everyone else to hear. Turning my attention to my mechanic, I then said, “Do me a favor Aloysius; be a good lad and check his landing gear handle. Tell me if it is up or down.”

The little Skunk pushed past the surprised Bull Dog and climbed up into the cockpit. “The handle is up, sir,” he said loudly after a second’s inspection, “Fuel is just over half.”

“Sprecken zee Dog?” Badcock tried, and everyone around him laughed.

“I speak Dog very well,” Commandant Locke said as he approached. The men separated for him as they did for me, and I suddenly found myself standing next to the tall Wolf. Returning the enemy flyer’s salute, he nodded to me and said in Dog, “This is Oberleutnant Georg Wolf, you owe him your life because I was going to kill you.” He quickly translated for everyone else present. There was a murmur amongst the troops.

“I think he was saying he never put his gear down, Mein Herr,” I told Locke. “My Sergeant has confirmed his lever is in the up position.”

“What a pity,” the Wolf told me. His voice was like ice and I wasn’t sure if he was angry with me or Badcock. Finally he said, “He’s your responsibility, Herr B. B. Your actions today obviously lived up to your Staffel-Spitzname so I should not be too upset with you. You are a competent wingman and as it turns out saved my hairy ass when it needed saving.”

He thought about this for a moment, or perhaps about something else… I can’t be all that sure; but when he was done thinking he told me, “Get Herr Royal Dog cleaned up and bring him to the mess hall for dinner. He shall be out guest for at least the night and then we shall send him on to be processed as a prisoner of war.”

Looking to Aloysius, who was still sitting in the Pisser’s cockpit, he told him, “Paint two more flags on Herr B.B.’s aircraft. We shall give him credit where credit is due.”

As the Wolf calmly walked away, my back was pounded upon as I was loudly congratulated by the Staffel. As to poor old Badcock, he was left standing by his aircraft in total confusion. Walking up to him, I extended my paw. “Oberleutnant Georg Wolf,” I said, introducing myself. “Beer, ja?”

To his credit, old Henry shook my paw, though I could see he was still very angry. “Lieutenant Henry Badcock,” he replied, “Beer, nein… tea, ja.”

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All went well, considering the war time circumstances. We were all pilots, and as pilots we held ourselves to a higher code than the ‘ground pounders’; or so we thought. It was an illusion to be sure as, without a doubt, there was as much compassion and good intentions among the regulars as anywhere. In our case we had a cleaner more viable playing field called the sky. In some respects we viewed our side, and their side, much as opposing soccer teams. On the field anything went and then some; any dirty trick you could dream up was perfectly acceptable. On the ground, however, we were all ‘gentle creatures’ full of polite manners and solicitudes.  Only two rules had to be followed during such events. One must never insult another’s wife, and one must never ever insult another’s aircraft.

Without a doubt, Lieutenant Henry Badcock just had to go and break that rule.

“And I say the Belmont Pisser is the best aircraft ever built,” he told our group over dinner. Herr Oberst Locke translated for him, his eyes watching each of us for our responses. “The Pisser’s done right well against the Badbladder, thank you very much. I mean; I don’t know for the life of me how you chaps can stand to fly such an ugly little machine like that one.”

We had been served sausages, boiled potatoes, and sauerkraut for dinner, all to be washed down by gallons of good Stonenpassen beer. It was a special occasion for us, and so the cook had pulled out all the stops. As soon as our Commandant translated the Royal’s words, I felt a know in my stomach and knew the fabulous dinner was a wasted effort.

“Herr Locke has sixty five kills,” Fritz countered, sitting up very straight and nodding to Herr Oberst. “Many of them were Pissers. Not to mention Herr B.B.’s fantastic shot which felled your brother pilot.”

Locke seemed hesitant to translate this exactly, but he did, where upon Henry sallied forth with, “Gerwalt Lank was shot down just yesterday by a Pisser. His Lordship Wilber Rightwing got him right enough. He tried to turn inside the Pisser and got shot up pretty bad. He was lucky; bailed out and was captured by the ground troops.”

This caused quite a stir. Lank was the Commandant of Staffel 32 and two hundred miles to our north. This was the first we’d heard about it. He was last known to have eighty kills. There was much discussion, and then I had a thought. “Who is this Wilber Rightwing?” I asked and Locke translated.

Henry pointed his fork at me and said, “That was the fellow you shot down yesterday. He insisted we split up to maximize the surprise. Bad decision that… if I had stayed on his tail I would have nailed you before you buggered him.”

Henry’s bad language had a telling effect on our Commandant. Yes it was true he was known to curse a mechanics blue streak when provoked, but in fairness, he always carried himself like the Alpha Wolf he was. I could see the tightness in the corner of his mouth. Since I was the one who captured the goat and brought him to the dinner table, I would most likely receive a very telling reprimand and penalty, such as digging latrines.

After a few more beers, Howler bangs his paw on the table and curses the rounded lines of the Pisser. “The airplane looks like a fat strudel stuffing baker’s wife,” he remarked.

Locke laughed hard and then translated.

Badcock counters with, “She’s got the metal of a good stiff cock and has pushed it up the Badbladder’s arse more than a few times. Now you want to talk about ugly, your aircraft has all the beauty of a proctor’s idea of truth and all the elegance of a right angle.”

It quickly went downhill from there to the point that Badcock stands, knocking over his beer and demands that we prove the superiority of the Badbladder. “Come on now… where your Wolf brass balls now? I say we match our planes from take off to twenty thousand feet… see who gets there first. The first one there begins the dogfight. No shooting until you get there either; just like an Irish duel.”

That one raised all of our eyebrows, and when asked, Badcock gives us a contemptuous look as if we’re all uneducated. We Wolfs, who match cut for cut in Schlager duels. Even my blood was boiling at this point.

“You fight with a cudgel and a top hat,” he explained, his paws doing a lampoon of the fight. “First you have to knock off the other fellow’s hat before you can hit him on the head. He knocks yours off he’s free to beat you to death while you still have to knock his hat off. So I say you have to get to twenty thousand before you can fire… keep the other fellow down and it’s all yours.”

“Bollocks,” I muttered, tipping back my beer and missing the rest of what Badcock said.

Suddenly I found all eyes on me.

“What?”

“He asked where our brass balled Wolf was,” Locke told me with a strange smile. “You brought him here, Herr B.B. Are you feeling up to his challenge?” There was a chorus of voices egging me on to accept.

Herr Locke leaned forward, so only I could hear him and said coldly, “Und this time kill the uncouth bastard.”

That pretty much settled it. When we were done I called for Aloysius, and instructed him to have his mechanics fix the Pisser. When he gave me a questioning look I told him, it’s a long story, but I fly against the bastard in the morning.

“How exactly do you wish me to fix the craft, sir?” He asked very softly.

“I expect it to be rightly and properly fixed, Sergeant. What kind of person would I be if I did not win this contest on my own merit?”

“Jahohl, Mein Heir,” he said with a smile and a salute. “As you say, it will be so.”

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I stood with Badcock towards the rear of our aircraft watching the sun come up. The aircraft silhouettes in this early light were remarkably different. The Pisser’s lines were smooth and rounded, whereas the Badbladder’s were lean and sharp. Where the Royal’s underbelly was clean, the Wolf’s was marred with an egg shaped fuel tank which was a necessity for gaining any reasonable amount of time in the air. With a mere seventy six gallon internal capacity you learned early on to nurse every last ounce when it was possible.

Taking out a pack of cigarettes, I thumbed one up for Badcock and one up for myself. He accepted it in a quiet humble sort of way, so very unlike the Bull Dog of the night before.

“I know you don’t sprecken Dog,” he says to me, “But before we begin I want to apologize for last night.” He winked. “It got me a chance to fly the old Pisser at least one last time.”

I looked at him, and no translation was needed. Without a doubt, the blustery exterior was nothing more than a cover for what was really underneath. I winked at him and smiled. “Is goot morning,” I managed. “Fly goot… bail out wenn schlecht. [when bad]”

We both came up with lighters in the same instant, flicking them and holding them out for the other. Closing mine with a metallic click, I leaned forward and let him light me up. He then lit his own, and we both took deep drags, letting out a cloud of smoke.

Thumbing my lighter over in my paw, I saw it had the squadron’s emblem engraved on one side, and the back to back letters B.B. on the other. Motioning for him to follow, I led the way to the side of my Badbladder. Pointing to the back to back B’s on its hull, I next pointed to the same initials on the lighter, and then to my chest. “Herr Brass Balls,” I told him and smiled. “Es ist mir, du dumme alte Bastard.” [It’s me you silly old Bastard.]

With that I pressed the lighter into his palm, pointing to myself and then to him. He smiled in return and pressed his own lighter into my palm. I looked at it and saw that it too had his squadron emblem on it. On the reverse side were the initials H. B.

“It’s me you silly young fool,” he says in perfectly accented Wolf. “Good luck, and may God protect you, because I will shoot you down if I get a clear shot.”

I looked at him for a second, and then chuckled. “You’re a cagey old fellow,” I told him softly and then shook his paw firmly. “I am glad to have met you.”

“Likewise,” he told me.

When we’d finished our cigarettes, we walked to the front of the aircraft where all but two of our pilots were waiting. Near by two engines roared to life, and a moment later two Badbladder’s taxied out for take off.

Herr Locke pointed at them and said in Dog, “If you try to run Herr Badcock, they will shoot you down. The rules are exactly as you stated them to be. When I give the signal you will both take off and climb to twenty thousand feet. You cannot fire until you obtain altitude. If you shoot Herr B.B. down, you will be allowed to fly back across the channel unmolested by this Staffel. I cannot vouch for any of the others so for that you will be on your own.

Badcock executed a perfect Royal salute, “Sir!”

Locke motioned that I should walk with him for a moment.

“I will be on the radio at all times,” he told me softly. “I think perhaps I was rash in taking this wager. We have a perfectly good captured aircraft to play with; we should use it to our advantage.”

“We cannot back out now sir,” I told him.

“Why not?”

“Honor, Mein Herr.”

“Of course,” he responded, “How could I have forgotten? Is there anything you wish me to hold for you?”

Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out the lighter Badcock had given me along with my cigarettes and identification papers. These I handed over without comment. It was simply something we did for each other. In this case, Herr Locke was more a father figure than a Commandant.

“Goot,” he said, accepting them. “I vill give them back when you land. Do nothing stupid, ja?”

Ja, Mein Herr,” I responded. To say I had mixed feelings was an understatement. I now knew the pilot I was to try and kill. He was no longer just an enemy machine in the sky. Turning back to my fighter, I climbed onto the wing and into the cockpit.

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The engine noise from both aircraft was strikingly different. The Badbladder had a much throatier sound than the Pisser. We were given a moment to allow for warm up and Herr Locke held up his flare pistol and made a circular motion with it. As it was, we were exactly wingtip to wingtip and at the ready. Badcock slid his canopy closed and I pulled mine down over top of me, finding the close confines of the small cockpit both familiar and comfortable.

Over the radio I heard someone ask if we were ready. Henry was immediate with a gruff, ‘Ready.’ I responded in kind and a moment later a green flare illuminated over the runway. With the signal, our engines advanced. My tail came up as it had the day before, in twenty feet. I was clearly airborne first and ahead by two body lengths at the end of the runway. The morning was glorious, the sun just coming up on the horizon so that the countryside was still shrouded in shadow. I didn’t opt for max climb power, but left the engine at full take off for as long as I dared, keeping an eye on the engine temp as well as the Pisser flying behind me.

Climbing through 8,000 feet I went on oxygen, securing the mask to my snout with one paw. Turing in my seat, I vaguely saw the Pisser behind and below by a good thousand feet. The one thing the Badbladder did not have was good visibility.

Remembering to be cautious, I checked the fuel mixture and engine temp again. When I reached altitude, I clicked the clock’s stop watch function and saw it had taken me exactly seven minutes from take off to twenty thousand feet. It was a wonderful feeling, but presently I didn’t have time for wonderful feelings. Pushing the radio button I called out my altitude, jettisoned my drop tank, and then banked around to begin my attack. The sun coming up in the east, I noted without even thinking, was neither a hindrance nor a help. I could see Badcock just below me as I was sure he could see me. He must have been furious that I’d beaten his wonderful Pisser to altitude. Keeping the power on I dove; lining him up in my sights and thumbing off the safety at the same moment. It would be a straight on shot so I didn’t even have to adjust for tracking. It couldn’t get much easier.

With my burst, the Royal Bull Dog broke right and then came back left again in an exaggerated ‘S’ maneuver to throw off my aim. I streaked past and now it was my turn to curse as I lost valuable altitude recovering from my dive. I heard him call out twenty thousand as I pulled out and began climbing again. Our positions were now reversed.

My engine howled in protest as I kept the power on. At altitude the Badbladder’s fuel injection worked much better that the Pisser’s carburetor but now I was low Dog in the pile and for the moment I lost him in a small cloud. As I approached, he punched back out again banking well over and coming at me from broadside. I imitated the turn, pulling bodily on the stick for all I was worth. Unlike the lead sled I was used to, there was no hydraulic boost on any of the aircraft’s controls. Strictly speaking, it was the pilot’s muscle and the machines mechanical heart melded together; the one being an exact extension of the other. As in the battles of armored knights, guts and intelligence were not enough… you needed true strength to win a dogfight.

This maneuver was a mistake and I knew it from the beginning. The Pisser’s pleasingly rounded wings had much less load on them than the Badbladder’s and Badcock easily turned inside of me. The moment I saw his tracers I dove with full military power on and dropped like a brick. Even at that I caught at least five rounds through the wings. My fighter’s engine had no problem with the inverted G force maneuver. Henry’s Pisser, on the other paw, burped and stuttered momentarily as fuel floated upwards in the carburetor as he tried to follow. This allowed me a greater lead in the dive which most likely saved my life.

The airspeed indicator climbed into the red, well over four hundred and twenty knots indicated airspeed. My controls stiffened to the point of non-responsiveness and compression recovery became primary to my mind. I was now riding a shooting star and did not wish to be a crater in the ground; which would happen if the wings ripped off. Chopping the power I began pumping the rudder and ailerons to slow myself down. The altimeter was winding down like an out of control clock and by now I noted my fuel was down past half. As I looked, the fuel warning light blinked on, indicating I had only twenty minutes left. Getting back on an approach to the airfield was now mandatory but I pushed the thought away so long as Badcock was above me.

When my speed was down to three hundred I ripped my oxygen mask off and rolled to the right, flying into a convenient cloud. My altitude was now at just under ten thousand, and I continued in a tight turn, doing three full circles before coming back to my original course and going back to full power. If I was lucky, and if Badcock had followed in the dive, this would put him directly in front of me and most likely hightailing it to the coast. We’d fueled him full up, which was all part of the wager and this was far more than enough for a dogfight and escape; which would have been on the forefront of him mind. In doing this, my mind had already figured in the possibility of landing at the Staffel next up the coast to refuel. It was something I had to do… it was honor… it was expected by my Commandant… it was…

“Herr B.B.,” called our ground controller, “Return to base. Flight oversight; return to base.”

I saw him not more than a mile ahead, throttle obviously pushed to his safe power limits to be sure. Just as I’d expected he was heading dead on to the coast. True to the agreement of the wager, the pilot had fought and fought well; so this was allowed and the two covering fighters were no longer there.

I pushed my throttle to Emergency Power, determined to catch him. He would not be looking back and it was a dead on run with no gun deflection or windage to figure into the mix. Having nothing else to worry about, I simply hung on, riding my aircraft like a horse at full gallop.

“Herr B.B.,” Locke’s voice called over the radio, “Break off and return to base.”

I did not respond. Something inside me was incensed at missing the retreating Pisser. A voice inside my head told me I was Wolf! It then spit out an entire series of words that I did not understand… words with a Wolf accent. A different voice inside my head then called to me. ‘Let it go Corgi Dog… let it go!”

My indicated airspeed pressed at three eighty and froze there while my engine temperature rose to well over the red line. I smelled heat and exhaust fumes and pulled my oxygen mask back on. Badcock’s Pisser grew in my gun sights from a small dot to something where I could now make out the details.

“Herr B.B. return to base! This is an order!” demanded Locke. When I did not respond, he shouted, “YOU WILL RETURN NOW! RETURN…”

Flames sprouted from under my engine cowl and smoke swept into the cockpit. I would have been blinded but for my goggles. Pulling the canopy’s jettison handle on the right, I felt the wind sweep in, pulling at my harness as it attempted to pluck me from the cockpit. Three more seconds and I would fire and then chop power… two… one…

Strange and terrible things happen when an engine seizes. This dramatic stoppage of force, coupled with the incredible torque of the huge spinning propeller literally tore off the front of my fighter. This ripping action, in turn, flipped what remained of the fuselage end over end over end; streaming flames from the ruptured fuel line. I did not cry out. I did not howl. There was no time to do anything… except die.

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I woke in the booth at the beer garden. The place was empty except for me and the barkeep. The only light that was on was a single overhead incandescent bulb inside a tin hood.

“I was wondering when you would wake,” he called to me from behind the bar. “I think you drink too much, ja?”

“Sure,” I managed. My mouth tasted like something dead and my eyes felt as if they had sand in them. “What time is it?”

“It is three thirty of the A.M. First Officer Corgi. Perhaps you go home now, eh?”

“Where is home?” I asked stupidly.

“I have asked that same question many times,” the Wolf responded as he came around the bar. Sitting down across from me, he reached into his pocket and pulled out some grass. “Eat this,” he told me, “And go puke. You will feel better. When you come back I give you a large glass of tomato juice so you have something in your gut, ja?”

When I looked skeptical, he shrugged his shoulders. “Wolfs do it, Dogs do it… it is a time honored tradition because it works. Go ahead, I vill fetch the drink.”

What can I say? The toilet stunk like all toilets in beer gardens stink, but he was right; when I finished, I did feel better. Washing my face in cold water, I looked at myself in the mirror. Besides being one huge body ache, my uniform shirt looked like I’d slept in it, and my eyes were bright red.

Making my way back into the bar, I went back to the booth and sat across from the strange Wolf. The tomato juice was sitting on the table waiting for me. Drinking it straight down, I extended a paw and said, “My names George Corgi, what’s yours?”

He shook my paw warmly. “The war is over, you may call me Dierk.”

“I was four years old when the war ended,” I told him. “It lasted six.” I don’t know why this seemed important, but it did.

“Jahohl,” he said quietly, digging a pack of cigs and a lighter out of his breast pocket. “I know this.”

Shaking one out of the pack for me, he next thumbed the lighter open and lit me up when I was ready. As I breathed in a grateful lungful of the rich tobacco, he snapped the lighter closed again and then placing it on the table top. Taking a small leather folder out of his pocket, he placed it with the lighter and slid them both over to me. “You asked me to hold these for you. I am pleased to now return them.”

“I must have been some drunk,” I muttered, picking them up and sliding them into my pants pocket, “Because I sure don’t remember doing so.”

The one eyed Wolf laughed a strange laugh. “How do you Royals say… you were really pisser?”

“Pissed,” I corrected with a smile.

“Amazing that one word can carry so many translations, my young friend.”

There was a car horn outside the door, and I turned to look, my attention temporarily diverted.

“That would be your ride,” he told me, rising from the booth and picking up my duffle. “You are to have a goot life, ja? That is an order.”

“Jahohl, Mein Heir,” I replied automatically; not even realizing I had done so.

----------------------------------

When I got to the hotel, the sun was just coming up. I was actually met in the lobby by Captain Badcock. He was down trying to have his breakfast, but at such an early hour no kitchen staff had yet arrived. Seeing me walk in, he motioned me over.

“Where the bloody hell have you been?” he asked acidly.

“You left me to walk,” I explained. “I stopped at a beer garden and apparently had too much to drink. It happens sometimes.”

“For three days?” he asked.

I blinked, his statement hitting me like a fighter’s slash attack. “I was… three days?”

“We leave this afternoon,” he told me with an absolute look of disapproval.

“If you vill follow me, Mein Herr,” the desk clerk told him, coming back to the desk, “I can give you coffee, but the cook vill not be in for another hour.”

“Fine,” he says, turning to her. “Please make it for two as my First officer has finally decided to show up and I am sure he needs it.”

When we were seated, old Henry takes out his pack and thumbs up a cigarette. Not bothering to offer me one, he placed it between his lips and then found my outstretched paw thumbing a lighter to flame. He leaned forward to take advantage and then spotted the emblem on its side. Two things happened: he turned quite pale and then blowing out the flame he snatched it away from me.

“Where did you get this?” he asked in a near whisper.

“The barkeep at the beer garden gave it to me,” I told him. “He said I’d given it to him to hold for me.” Fishing into my pocket I pulled out the small leather wallet. “He gave me this too, come to think of it. He had just one eye and looked like he’d been burned; said he’d flown Badbladders during the war.”

Together we opened the wallet and found ourselves looking at the picture of a young pilot standing in the cockpit of a Badbladder. The view was down the nose of the aircraft, and the Wolf was quite handsome. On the other side was an official looking identification paper stating the fellow’s name to be, Oberleutnant Georg Wolf.

Henry reached into his pocket and took out his own lighter, placing it on the table and pushing it over to me. “Does this mean anything to you?” he asked.

I picked it up and examined it closely. On one side was the outline of a strange looking falcon. Inside the outline was a spider impaled on a fencing sword. Turning it over, I saw the back to back B’s.

A cold chill swept through my body. At that moment, as I looked up and met the eyes of my old adversary, the desk clerk brought us coffee.

Seeing my reaction was answer enough for the old Bull Dog. “Tell me everything you remember,” he said plainly, “And do not leave out a bloody fucking thing.”

 By the time I was done, breakfast had come and gone. There was a quiet moment, and then Badcock told me, “I never told anyone that story… not even command. I was far too embarrassed at having let my Pisser be captured. That and if I’d told them Rightwing and I had split up, they would have had my balls for breakfast. My report was accurate through the raid on the airfield, and then I told them I had engine problems and set down in a field. That night a farmer helped me fix a fuel line that’d come loose and managed some fuel stolen fro the Wolfs. I looked for Herr Locke after the war, but the best I could do was, ‘Missing in Action’.”

Pushing back in his chair, he told me, “Take me to the beer garden.”

Actually, I was more than happy to do so, as I desperately wanted some answers of my own. When we got there, however, the only thing we found was an old bombed out ruin.

Above the door and still hanging from one mount, was the beer garden sign that had attracted me on my walk. The picture of the fighter was still on it, but it was full of bullet holes; probably from the invading allied army. The tail of the aircraft had seen flames, and for a moment I felt them washing over me again.

Before I could stop myself, I was leaning over what had once been a window puking my guts out. When I was done, I found Captain Badcock standing close with a fistful of grass. He wore a sad expression.

“Go ahead,” he told me, “Eat it and puke again, it’ll settle your stomach. Wolfs do it, Dogs do it… it’s tradition because it works. It’ll help you get past knowing it’s not a game… that you’ve killed another living breathing being. My final count was fifteen.”

All that I’d experienced flowed over me then like an ocean. When I finally could speak, I asked him simply, “Why?”

The old boy just shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he replied. “It was just something we had to do. Kill or be killed, eh?”

----------------------------------

As the camera pulls away, showing the two uniformed figures in front of the bombed out ruins, the small Fox’s voice is again heard:

First Officer George Corgi has discovered the madness surrounding the age old question that has perplexed those pressed to be warriors as long as there has been war upon the face of the planet. Where there is more than one Alfa there can be no rest, and so all the games ever played in youth are bundled up and burned as sacrifice to the highest game of all; to win is to live, to lose is to die.

Kill or be killed is but an excuse exhorted by those who would have them fight for a cause that might or might not be so very honorable; turning a vibrant and living world into a cemetary.

That this excuse is false does not matter. To remember that it is false is important.

“The moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers; something to dwell on and something to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God’s earth.” Rod Serling – ‘Deaths-head Revisited’ – November 10th, 1961

Because of this… and as a reminder to the living in times of peace; occasionally we are required to take a trip; to The Fur Side.

end

 

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