So this is what you get by being a war veteran in this country. For four years I flew airplanes for the US Army air corps in the European Theater of World War II. I laid my life on the line time and time again and was even shot down once over the coast of France just prior to the D-Day invasion. Where am I now? What has my grateful country done with me? I sit in a shitty convalescent home, dying of emphysema and congestive heart failure, an oxygen canula permanently planted in my nose, my breath so short I can't even get out of bed to go to the bathroom without assistance.

My days are numbered and I know it. One more common cold that quickly turns to bronchitis and pneumonia or one more urinary tract infection from the damn catheter they have stuck up my works will undoubtedly be the death of me. I'd be surprised to make it another month and I've gotten to the point where I almost look forward to the coming oblivion. I have little to do these days but lie in bed, concentrate on drawing my next breath since each one is an effort, and think of the long life I've lived. I look at the pictures on the walls around my side of the room. Pictures of my daughter, who visits me perhaps once a month. Pictures of my grandchildren, who never visit me at all. But the one that draws my attention the most is the picture, taken in 1943, of myself at twenty-four. I have all of my hair in that picture, my blue eyes are bright and full of fire. I'm wearing my flight-suit and standing next to a P-51 Mustang on an airfield in England. Pinned to the bottom of this picture is the Distinguished Flying Cross that I earned on June 6, 1944, perversely, for getting shot down behind enemy lines, which never struck me as very distinguished flying but that's the government for you.

I remember that day well. Now and days I probably couldn't name what particular day or month it is if you held a gun to my head. Often as not I can't remember what I had for breakfast by lunchtime. Sometimes I even have to grapple for the name of my late wife or my daughter. But I remember June 6, 1944.

Just before dawn that day I strapped into my Mustang, which was loaded with two five hundred pound bombs and a full load of 20mm cannon shells. The P-51 was primarily a long-range, air to air fighter but lately, the Germans had had very few airplanes left for us to fight, so decimated was the Luftwaffe. The air wing that I was a part of had been pulled off of escort duty for heavy bombers and reassigned to bombing duties. My wingman and I roared into the sky from our airfield just outside of Southampton England and headed southeast across the English Channel towards the Normandy coast of France. I was bone-tired, a state I'd been in since the previous week. Though this was my first mission of the day, I'd flown four missions the previous day and was operating on less than five hours of sleep.

We were tasked to bomb and strafe the German defensive positions near the invasion beaches. Our current target was an array of heavy guns four miles inland from the beach that was code-named Omaha. Flying conditions were not the best. It was no longer raining, as it had been for the last three days, but it was windy and overcast, with a ceiling of only about four thousand feet. As the sky began to brighten with the rising of the sun, we could see the surface of the channel below us was dotted with whitecaps whipped up by the icy, northern wind.

As we approached the Normandy coast, flying just below the ceiling, we saw the armada of ships tasked for the invasion. It remains one of the most impressive things I've ever seen. Ships of all shapes and sizes stretched from horizon to horizon, moving in on the coast. The battleships were out in front. As soon as the sun was fully up, I knew, they would begin pounding the coast with their guns in order to soften up the beaches for the landing craft that would follow. I made a mental note to be sure and climb high enough after coming off target. Running into one of those shells in flight would most definitely be counter-productive.

We roared over the line of ships and made landfall less than three minutes later. A few explosions of flak burst around us as we crossed the beaches and the low hills surrounding them. None of them were close enough to cause concern. It was just light enough to make out features on the ground. We found our navigational references after a bit of searching and turned to the northeast, paralleling the coastline about five miles inland. Occasional flak shells would streak into the sky and burst but the shots seemed perfunctory on the part of the German gunners, done more for forms sake than anything else.

Finally our target came into view. A sandbagged emplacement of fixed heavy artillery guns, part of Rommel's defensive array of Normandy. The anti-aircraft fire picked up as we lined up and dove down on the guns, centering them in our sights, the flak bursting with increasing frequency and now punctuated by the red tracers of smaller caliber weapons. I dove through this, waiting for the proper release altitude, taking it on faith that none of the shells that sought me out had my name on them. None of them did. I released my bombs, feeling the double thump of their separation followed by the increased responsiveness of the Mustang as a thousand pounds of weight and drag were suddenly jettisoned from the aircraft.

I pulled up and banked hard to the left, looking over my shoulder just in time to see my two bombs explode harmlessly about fifty yards away from the target. My wingman's bombs, though a little closer to the mark, didn't do much better. He at least managed to knock over a few of the sandbags and maybe kill a kraut or two with flying shrapnel but the guns were obviously still in operation as he pulled out. A mission wasted, I thought, though it was not unusual to miss. These days they have laser-guided bombs that probably could have been placed right down the gun barrels themselves but we were forced to rely on eyesight and ballistics to place our ordinance on target; an imperfect science at best.

"Looks like we missed the fuckers, Mike," I told my wingman as we leveled out and moved away from the anti-aircraft fire.

"Yep," Mike, not the most verbal of people in the world agreed.

"Let's circle around and hit 'em with the twenties," I suggested. "Maybe we'll blow up their shells and take 'em out that way. If nothin' else, we can kill some of the gunners."

"'Kay," was his reply.

We circled around and dove back down on the target. I lined it up in my gunsight and started firing. The tracers arced out of the wings, reaching towards the emplacement, seeking it out. I manipulated the stick and rudder, adjusting the fire, trying to place it right in the middle of the sandbags.

Suddenly the impossible happened. A string of tracers from the ground turned towards me and stretched a line across the nose of my plane. There was a series of loud popping noises and my propeller exploded, fragments of it slamming into the windshield in front of me. I immediately pulled up and banked to the right, clearing the area but the damage was done. My engine began to whine with the high-pitched sound of mechanical torment. Oily black smoke began pouring from the cowling, obscuring my vision. I was hit! The plane climbed for a moment as speed was converted to altitude but a stall was coming quickly.

"Mike, I'm hit!" I told my wingman as I turned the plane inland and leveled it the best I could. My altitude was dropping fast and I knew I had to get out as quick as possible.

"How bad?" Mike asked, trailing behind and above me.

"I gonna have to bail," I told him. "And right quick. Mark my position."

"You got it," Mike told me

I looked below, trying to peer through the smoke pouring from the engine. I passed over a road and continued on, gliding now over a green pasture dotted with trees and a small stream. I could see horses and cows grazing unconcernedly underneath. These days they have rocket powered ejection seats that blast a pilot free of a crippled aircraft. We had no such things back in '44. I released my harness and popped the canopy loose, hearing it slam into the aircraft's tail as the slipstream tossed it behind me. My lungs were immediately filled with smoke from the engine; my eyes started to burn. I pulled myself up and pushed off with all of my strength, not wanting to suffer the fate of the canopy and collide with the tail, which would chop me in half if it hit me.

I sprung free of the airplane and my body was slammed backward by the rushing wind, spinning me over the tail with less than a foot to spare. Knowing I was less than two thousand feet above the ground, I pulled the ripcord immediately. It seemed an eternity but the parachute finally blossomed to life, jerking me to an abrupt, teeth jarring halt in mid-air. As I began floating gently to earth my plane continued onward, passing over a farmhouse and a large grazing field before smashing into a grove of trees and exploding.

I floated down over a field of cows, landing in squelchy mud and standing water with a thump. Above me, Mike circled once, dipping his wings to indicate that he'd marked my position, and then he roared off towards the coast, heading home.

I was now alone except for the cows, who continued to graze impassively. The Germans would be after me soon. And though the word was that they treated prisoners in accordance with the Geneva Convention, I had no desire to sit out the rest of the war in a POW camp in Germany. I stripped off my parachute and my helmet, tossing them to the ground. I picked up my survival pack and checked to see that my .45 was still strapped to me. I began moving towards a farmhouse and a barn in the distance. With any luck I could hide somewhere for awhile. If the forthcoming invasion were successful, the front line would pass over me, leaving me safely on the proper side.

In retrospect I realize that going for the farmhouse was not a very smart thing to do. If I'd been a German infantry soldier, and I'd spotted a parachute from a downed airman in a field, the first place I would have looked would have been the nearest farmhouse and barn. Luckily for me, the Germans would soon have other things going on to occupy their attention.

Halfway there a small figure rushed out of the farmhouse and began heading towards me. I could tell immediately that it was a female dressed in a long dress. Her hair was dark and her skin seemed pale but aside from that I could make out no details. I dropped my hand to the butt of my .45 as she approached, not knowing what to expect from her. This was my first trip behind enemy lines; the first time I'd logged a take-off without a corresponding landing.

When she finally reached me I saw that she was a young girl of about sixteen. Her face was smooth and unlined, very pretty. Her body was proportioned nicely with the curves and firmness of teenaged youth. Her blue dress was tattered and torn in places, obviously well worn. Her eyes however, a deep brown in color, had the thousand-yard stare of the career infantryman. This girl, I could see, had been through a lot.

She looked me up and down for a moment, appraising me. Finally she spoke. "Par-lay voo fron-say?" she asked hopefully.

I didn't speak French but I did understand that particular phrase. "No," I said, shaking my head.

She frowned. "Specken de doitch?" she asked next.

Again I shook my head. "English?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"Great," I muttered.

"Ameri-can?" she asked next, looking at my uniform.

"Oui," I told her.

She smiled hopefully. "In-vay-she-on?"

I nodded. "Oui."

She smiled widely, looking towards the heavens. "Mer-say!" she said gratefully, though she didn't seem to be speaking to me.

When she turned her gaze towards me again it was full of concern. She shot off something in rapid-fire French, not a word of which I understood, but her tone was commanding. She beckoned me to follow her. She started off across the field, heading away from the farmhouse and the barn. I followed behind, wondering where she was taking me.

About two hundred yards beyond the farmhouse was a grove of trees. She led me into them, finally stopping next to a tall oak that had to be at least a hundred years old. Wooden steps had been nailed into the trunk of the massive tree. My eyes followed the steps upward, spying a wooden tree-fort about thirty feet up in the branches. She gestured for me to climb upward.

I looked at her, puzzled, not realizing yet that she was trying to hide me. Finally, in frustration, she muttered something in French that sounded suspiciously like profanity and started up herself. I watched her climb upward and found that as she ascended, I was able to look straight up her dress. She wore no underwear I quickly saw. Her legs were shapely in the manner of youth but her crotch was that of a woman, covered with coarse black hair. I knew I should look away, she was after all, just a girl, but I couldn't force my eyes away from this alluring sight. I hadn't had sex in more than a month, all of the stories of Americans and English girls boffing at every opportunity turning out to be mostly a myth. Despite the circumstances I felt myself stiffening a little as I imagined what was under all of that hair.

She reached the top and pulled herself onto the platform of the tree-fort. She peered down at me and spoke in French again, her tone impatient. She gestured that I should climb upward. I stared at her, wondering if it was wise to go up there when a sharp concussion from behind battered me. The tree shook under the force of it, the sound making me jump. It was followed immediately by others, both loud and faint, both jarring and not. The pre-invasion bombardment of the beaches had begun.

That decided me. As the tree rocked with the nearer of the concussions, I placed my hands and feet on the wooden steps and started pulling myself upward. A minute later I was sitting within the confines of the plywood walls, staring at my savior. She smiled nervously at me, saying something that I couldn't understand and pointing out the small opening in the plywood.

I nodded my understanding, though I didn't understand her.

"In-vay-she-on?" she asked, as the tree rocked with another concussion.

I nodded. "Invasion," I confirmed, and then whispered softly to myself, "I hope it works."

As the concussions of the bombardment continued to pick up, sometimes violently, we studied each other. I found myself attracted to my companion, as grown men tend to be to teen-aged girls. Forbidden fruit they are, deemed unacceptable companions for sexual congress in our society. That was what made them powerfully attractive. I suppose if our society had a taboo about screwing twenty-five year old fat women we would all be lusting after them. She spoke the occasional French or German phrase to me, most of which I didn't understand. I tried to answer her in English, most of which she clearly didn't understand.

"Your ma-ma?" I finally asked her. "And pa-pa?"

She shook her head sadly, drawing her fingers across her throat and saying, with hatred, "Doitch!"