Wednesday, 9th April 21:02 BDST: - Dinard-Pleurtuit Airfield, France

Egon’s eyes narrow slightly, smoke wafting by them and then stinging them with its touch, as he closes his magazine. He fiddles to find the edge of the next page, wishing he hadn’t decided to cut his nails earlier, before finally finding the page’s edge and pulling the magazine apart to reveal an image of a swarthy, semi-clad, Indian man and a white woman in a bikini looking quite contentedly back at him. It’s a feature on something called ‘yoga’. He looks at them both, bemused, his head tilting to the side, casting his eyes up and down, this brown man and this white woman, then looking at her eyes, and then her smile, which ends at the corner of her full lips.

He draws the magazine in close, pulling her face towards him and pulls on the cigarette again, trapped there in between his fingers, which also holds his copy of Signal. Dragging it out from his grip to hold the cigarette firmly in his mouth, and squinting once more, as he tilts his head back to shield his eyes from the smoke that rises to drift upwards, up above him over the door of the cubicle, stopping only when it reaches the ceiling of the latrines. 

At this moment he is at peace and time to his own thoughts, the flimsy white wooden doors in front of him shielding him from the world outside. The sounds of life beyond them, the unseen figures no longer existing on his side of the door.

A groaning comes from the adjoining cubicle, and Egon rolls his eyes, sighing as he looks up towards the ceiling, the groan growing in his ears, clearly it’s the sound of a man now straining against the choices of his diet. The bass notes of escaping air and splashing water follow, ending with a contented sigh of a man freed from his burden. 

“Shit!” The voice shouts from the other cubicle.

Egon’s eyes roll once again, as he recognises Helmut’s voice. There’s banging on the wall. “Hey, pal there’s no bloody paper over here, do you have any?”, Helmut shouts, banging again as he follows up once more with “Hey, you there!” 

“Use your bloody sleeve!”, Egon shouts, Helmut’s face forming into a smile as he too recognises this voice, replying, “Oh, you’d want me to disrespect the uniform of the Luftwaffe, you swine!” Both men laugh, the cigarette balancing precariously in Egon’s lips as they clamp closed on it, but his laughter stops abruptly as he looks down again at the magazine, two massive bombs strung under a bomber filling its front cover. “Here, use this!” Egon shouts, throwing the magazine to Helmut under the cubicle wall.