Rudolf shielded his eyes from the bright flashes bursting, out from the front of the bomber as Egon tested the guns in short bursts while Helmut and Werner did the same, from below and above. Rudolf, turning his head away, couldn’t help but look up at the moon. The same moon he’d stared at and wondered about as a child. “That damn full moon,” Rudolf thought, turning his head to look up at it and eyeing it with contempt, “it’s going to get us killed.”
He didn’t say a word to the crew as he turned back; he just breathed heavily and surveyed the world around him, all the time trying to keep his emotions checked and stowed away out of reach. It wasn’t easy though. Earlier, he found it mournful watching the bombers ahead of him switch off their navigation lights so soon after take-off, those 25 or so minutes ago. Leaving them on just long enough so that each bomber would know where they were in the darkness to avoid a collision, but also helping them find their place in the formation. As they went out, that feeling of mournfulness grew to be one of betrayal. Egon jumped back up into his seat to watch the instruments for takeoff, sitting there as the engines throttled up, the bomber straining on its leash to be set free, waiting for Egon to give the sign. Then Rudolf freeing the brakes and pushing the throttles of each engine forward to send the bomber on its way down the runway, easing back on the yoke as the scarlet indicator makers on the runway begin to blur until flight comes.
We were all meant to be in this together, Rudolf thought, as each light had flickered out, but then it suddenly became apparent that it was every bomber for themselves. All of the crews peering out separately into the night to spot the other bombers around them, hoping all the time that they wouldn’t collide, clipping a wing and being sent spiralling down into the Channel.
Well, not all of his crew peered out there into the darkness. Werner never once looked out there, he always sat at the wireless station, unmoved, testing his radio set methodically. “So do you want us to lose the navigational beam and fly all the way to bloody Ireland? Huh? You look out for those bloody planes and I'll take care of the radio telemetry,” he’d shouted when Helmut had dared joke about it. Then Rudolf snorted, to himself, remembering the time he’d driven up to St Malo with Werner’s friend Heinz, or Hans, he could never quite remember which, and always simply called him Dolphin Boy.
What a time that was, he remembered fondly. “Werner, how’s The Dolphin?”, Rudolf asks over the intercom. Egon, clenching the gun stock laying there in the A Gun Position and rolling his eyes, he knows it’s a story he’s heard so many times before, one that never has room for him. “Still looking over that bow!”, Werner replied, laughing loudly. “Well, tell him not to jump. So, have you heard from him lately?”, Rudolf asks again. Neither of them knew, at that point, he’d been dead for 24 hours, after falling to his death - his parachute failing to upon. “I got a letter from him last weekend. He seemed in good spirits,” says Werner excitedly, “Oh, listen to this, the lucky bugger said he was going home next weekend on leave to get married! Good for…”
Before Rudolf can finish, Egon breaks in, “Coming up to the English coast, boss.” This stops the conversation, which he’d felt excluded from, dead. He still didn’t know why they hadn't asked him to come, and it still hurt him, still leaving him to wonder what he did wrong. “Sod them,” he thinks to himself, just as Rudolf breaks in over the intercom: “OK lads, this is it,” Rudolf tells them, pausing, then muttering, “God be with you,” and then the intercom falls silent. Rudolf breathing in heavily then looking down at Egon, in the moonlight, crossing himself.