How Does a Cathedral Mean?

Notre Dame Paris, 2013

I've been thinking a good deal about Notre Dame burning in Paris. I know I am not alone. My first of many visits to the most visited monument in Paris (yes, more than the Eiffel Tower) was in 1982; our Armistice Centenary Tour visited Notre Dame ten months ago. I will never forget or ever be able to fully express in words what walking into an 850-year-old Gothic cathedral feels like. It still feels that way. 

To the thousands who participated in building it, what did all the splendor mean? To a world secularizing at warp speed, what does a centuries-old stone church mean? I explore some of these questions in chapter 27 of my WWII historical fiction book The Resistance (available at bondbooks.net). My protagonist downed B-17 pilot and his French Resistance escort are forced to hide from the encircling SS manhunt on the precipitous tiles of a Medieval house directly across the street from another French Gothic structure, Bayeux Cathedral. Here's what happened:

27

HEIGHT OF TERROR

T

he alarm now wailed in Evans’ head, unrelenting, inescapable. Then, abruptly, it was no longer internal.

From the street came the roar of engines, tires thrumming on the cobblestones, brakes screeching to a halt, doors slamming, jackboots clonking on the pavement. Crisp knocking on a door. Silence. Fists beating a door. Shouting in German. Rifle butts pounding on a door five stories below.

“Maybe it is another door,” hissed Andre, his face ashen. “Perhaps for someone else?”

Hasty footfalls came from the stairs, then rapid knocking on the door of Andre’s studio.

Through the keyhole came a breathless voice. “They are coming! Waffen SS!”

“For us? Are you certain?”

“Absolutely. At the door of the shop.”

“How much time?”

“Three minutes. No more,” and he was gone.

Aimée grabbed Evans’ arm. “We must hide you!” He drew in breath sharply. His shoulder was not fully healed yet.

“Forget me,” said Evans. “Hide Ruben.”

“It is you they are searching for,” said Aimée, her green eyes wide and imploring. “You are an American flyer. If they find you, they will arrest all of us, including Ruben.”

She turned to Andre. “Is there anywhere?”

“The roof.” With a sweep of his arm, he cleared the workbench. “Out the window. Climb along the gable. Do not fall. Hide behind the chimney. Be sure they do not see you.”

“I want to go home.” There was a quaver in Ruben’s voice; he tugged at Aimée’s hand.

“Evans, you must hurry,” said Aimée, leaning toward him as if to give him farewell kisses on the cheeks.

“No!” said Andre. “You must hide as well. I will take the boy down. He is my cousin. It will look normal with the boy. They are not searching for a little boy.”

Aimée began to protest.

“There is no time. Go now! Hide with the American. We will stall them.”

Swallowing the lump in his throat, Evans followed Aimée out the window and onto the steep, slate roof. He tried not to look down. The hard cobblestones, he knew they were far below.

Scrambling behind the chimney, Evans drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. He’d flown bombing missions high over enemy-occupied Europe, antiaircraft riddling his Fort, Fw190 fighters swooping in for the kill. Why more raw fear at this?

He heard the SS captain barking orders at his men in German, the harsh commands echoing across the street below and bouncing back at them off the west façade of the cathedral. Dropping bombs from 20,000 feet on munitions factory buildings, dangerous as it was, was detached, impersonal, done with machines. This was close, human, intimate, and—he feared—soon to be face-to-face.

Aimée and Evans pressed against the brickwork of the chimney. It wasn’t much cover, but it was all they had. A soldier glancing up from the street at just the right angle, and they would be seen. They pressed closer together, hard against the ridge and the chimney. Evans heard and felt Aimée’s heart pounding next to him, and the clutching staccato of her breath. Or was it his own?

“All we can do is wait,” whispered Evans, his voice barely audible.

Aimée’s face was pale. “And pray.” She mouthed the words. “I could not bear it if anything happened to my little brother.”

He nodded, trying to slow down the hammering of his heart. Directly across the narrow street loomed the massive cathedral. Evans studied the intricate medieval statuary adorning the west façade. The resurrection of the dead, souls rising from tombs, some to heaven, more to hell. Clearly the stonemason was more interested in the howling torments of the damned in hell.

A spasm fluttered in Evans’ left hamstring muscle. He tried to ignore it. The spasm hardened, constricting and contracting, tightening into an iron fist. If only he could change positions. The pain was excruciating. He tried to relax, but it was impossible, not while clinging to a precipitous roof on a medieval house far above the street. Teeth clenched, a tremor ran through his body.

“What is the matter, Evans?” whispered Aimée.

He swallowed hard and attempted to control the quavering he knew would be in his voice if he spoke.

“Are you ill?”

 “Cramp,” he managed to mouth, “in my leg.”

“I am sorry for you,” she whispered. “Perhaps, pressure directly on the muscle?”

He nodded. Holding on for dear life, how was he going to apply direct pressure to the back of his thigh?

“Think of something else,” she suggested. She bobbed her head at the cathedral façade. “Think of that.”

He looked again at the medieval stonework; the muscle in his leg felt like hard stone. The writhing condemned in the Last Judgment scene looked like he felt at the moment. Evans studied the north portal. It began to make sense. The mason had chiseled stony vignettes from the Passion of Christ. There was the Last Supper, the betrayal, Jesus praying to his father in the garden; and there was the kiss of Judas, the arrest, torture, carrying the cross, brutal crucifixion.

Evans shuddered. The war, the SS bursting into homes, arrests, torture, senseless killing, reprisals, ambush, spies, double agents, secret radio transmissions—being shot down, bailing out, hunted, others in grave danger because of him. How would all that look in stone relief? 

He scanned back through the stone vignettes, the knot in his hamstring subsiding. Why had they done it, carved those scenes in stone, built the entire structure, all in stone?

It suddenly occurred to Evans that from this angle, cowering high atop the roof of a medieval house, he and Aimée were seeing parts of the cathedral others never saw. Statues so high up, so out of sight from passersby, they were impossible to be seen from the pavement. Slowly, he scanned the facade, higher and higher it continued. People had lived in the shadow of Bayeux’s cathedral for nearly 1000 years, and how many hundreds of intricately carved statuary had never been seen by anyone? Yet humble stonecutters had tap-tapped away for years, decades, generations, each successive mason doing his part to create this magnificent place, whether his work would ever be seen by anyone or not. What was so important that centuries of workers would do it?

As Evans mused, the sun began to set and a golden glow radiated from the façade of the ancient edifice. Even if it had been safe to speak aloud, what was on display at that instant was so spectacular, wonder alone would have hushed them.

What had the voice on the BBC broadcast said only a short while ago? “When Christ died, he died for you individually just as much as if you’d been the only man in the world.” Evans wasn’t at all sure what it meant; Sunday School had been long ago; he needed to think more deeply about it. But whatever it did mean, it made him feel that there had to be something bigger, far more important than his own troubles.

Jolted abruptly back to the peril of the moment, Evans and Aimée heard the harsh barking of the SS captain apparently reentering the street below. They could not see anything, but his words echoed from the gulf between the house and the façade of the cathedral.

“Please, God, not Ruben,” whispered Aimée.

Evans nodded in agreement. He wanted to see what was going on five stories below, in the street. He felt so helpless. What good was a flyer without his weapon, his plane? If only he could do something to stop the Germans.

“When will they leave?”

Evans shook his head. He had no idea. How long would they have to hide? All night?

The yelling continued, guttural, harsh, brutal. There was nothing to do but wait. Oddly, as they waited, involuntarily crammed together behind the chimney, high atop the medieval house, they began to feel detached from the commotion, as if their vantage point made them safe, at least for the instant.

“If I tell you something,” whispered Evans, “can you promise not to tell anyone else?”

Aimée looked wary. “Oui, bien sur.”

Evans cleared his throat, loosening the scarf at his neck. “I-I am not a big fan of heights.”

Aimée looked wide-eyed at him, and then her lips twitched slightly, as if she were restraining herself; it was hardly the time for humor.

“You are a pilot. You fly the mighty B-17, the Flying Fortress. The high-altitude bomber of your Army Air Corps. Are you telling me that you are afraid of heights?”

Evans nodded. “Always have been. Never liked climbing trees. Never slept in the top bunk. I told my younger brother it was the best mattress. Until one day he figured it out. I had to pay him off with marbles to keep quiet. And then we got older, but he still remembered.”

“It is courageous to do this.”

“What, to tell you?”

“I suppose. But I think it is courageous to fly high-altitude bomber airplanes when you are afraid of heights, in defiance of your fears.”

“Courageous? Maybe, or maybe just dull-witted.”

Aimée smiled. “You being dull-witted this morning at the checkpoint, it was merely a ruse de guerre.”

Evans nodded. “I get a hitch in my innards just hearing the words high-altitude. I really should have volunteered to do something closer to the ground.”

“Then you would not be here.” Aimée said it as a matter of fact.

Evans stole a glance at her.

“Ruse de guerre,” she said. “Comprenez-vous?”

Evans swallowed, avoiding her gaze, her green eyes that looked right through you. Ruse de guerre, he understood. Deception of war. Everyone in wartime engaged in it—generals, prime ministers, spies, deep-cover agents. And so was he.

It was nearly dark. The yelling abruptly stopped. For an instant there was silence in the invisible gulf below them.  Suddenly, vehicle engines roared to life, and the SS sped north down the Rue de Bienvenu.

Read all of The Resistance by Douglas Bond

HISTORICAL DEMENTIA AND BARBARISM, by Douglas Bond

The high cultural pricetag on forgetfulness

I hope you never have to experience the blank expression of a loved one who no longer knows you, has no memory of who you are. My father-in-law died a few months ago from Alzheimer’s, a disease that tragically robs an individual of their ability to remember. As yet, there is no cure. But there is a cure for the particular kind of collective memory loss from which we as Americans are suffering—the loss of memory of our history. We resent reminders of our memory lapses. It’s easier simply to revise history so that it accords with, rather than challenges, our new ideas.

We’re inclined to roll our eyes when we hear the maxim, “Those who will not learn from history are bound to repeat it.” Yet, when forgotten, that same history relentlessly demonstrates that we inevitably repeat the most horrific parts of it. “One of the most dangerous errors,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism.”

THE CURE FOR BARBARISM

Allow me to propose an antidote to this dangerous error caused by our memory loss. The cure begins by pausing and stepping out of the frenzy and tyranny of the here-and-now. Only then can we begin to learn the lessons of history.

Winter is coming on. Curl up with a cup of tea, a favorite sweater—and a good book on WWI or WWII. Immerse yourself in the prodigious and difficult deeds accomplished to preserve freedom and that rare thing: civilization.

Another excellent way to do that is with the new documentary film The Girl Who Wore Freedom. It tells the story of five-year-oldDanielle Patrix who fell asleep June 5, 1944 in enemy-occupied Normandy and awoke the next morning to the thrilling sounds of liberation—and to kindness from American troops. The Allied forces had landed to free her at last from the jack-booted heel of the National Socialist (Nazis) German Wehrmacht.

The well-crafted story unfolds as Danielle Patrix tells of the profound gratitude that her people in Normandy feel to this day for the sacrifices our Allied soldiers made—for many, the ultimate sacrifice—spilling their blood on the beaches of Normandy so she and her people could be free from tyranny. “Freedom is not free,” one of the eyewitnesses of liberation declares. “We have to keep the memory alive.” Every generation must remember the cost of freedom, that it is, as Lewis put it, “attained with difficulty and easily lost.”

Title character Danielle Patrix, the girl who wore freedom, is determined to keep that memory alive. In a 1945 photograph, Danielle wears a dress her mother made her from an American parachute, gratefully colored in red, white, and blue, and decorated with stars and stripes. Alas, some careless Americans, forgetful of the past, have a historical dementia so complete, they tear down those stars and stripes and set it on fire. But not Danielle who wore freedom, not her friends in Normandy who remember.

MEMORY AND GRATITUDE

Patriotically cliché as it sounds to some, it’s all true. Though some parts of France have the reputation of being less than friendly toward Americans, there are few places on the planet where Americans are so welcomed and appreciated as Normandy. I was reminded once again of their gratitude last June while leading a historical tour that included Normandy; I’ve observed this many times since the first tour I led there twenty years ago. “We have to thank them—forever,” said an appreciative French woman of the Allies who gave all to free her country from oppression.

Why is it so important that we avoid the dangerous error and remember our history? “We need an intimate knowledge of the past,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “not because the past has anything magic about it, but to remind us that the basic assumptions have been quite different in different periods.” Lewis urges us to avoid the mere “temporary fashion” of current ideas and goes on to argue that being perpetual students of our history will in some measure make us “immune from the great cataract of nonsense that pours from the press and the microphone of [our] own age.”

Teen age 2/Lt C. S. Lewis fought and was wounded in WWI, and he became “the voice of faith” for his Broadcast Talks on BBC radio in WWII. I’m convinced that if Lewis were alive today he might very well agree that The Girl Who Wore Freedom is an important way of learning from history, keeping memory alive, and holding off barbarism.

Douglas Bond is a leader of historical tours and author of a number of successful books, including War in the Wasteland, set in 2/Lt C. S. Lewis’ WWI platoon, and his latest book The Resistance, set in WWII Normandy. Learn more at bondbooks.net

The Best Writers Seek Perspective From Other Writers--Inkblots

WWII French Resistance, downed B-17 flyer, SOE agent

Chit-chatted together, glad to be in the clean air of the Scriptorium, breath of fresh air from the BC smoke clogging lungs and breathing passageways throughout the region.

Inkblots this evening was an enactment of the importance of having other serious writers listen and critique what we are writing. I am a firm believer that every good writer needs this and will take pains to seek it out. That's what we did this evening. It cerainly helped me.

Rachel leads off with more cheese. Do we have a working title for this yarn? I gain weight listening to Rachel read this work in progress. I do hope when it is published (and the sooner the better) that Rachel Ng will immediately do an author-read audio book. This is evocative of a bustling kitchen in a high-cuisine restaurant in Russia. "I'm not a man for paperwork." Love this evasion. Makorov in hand. Can we hear rounds being chambered? Bob commented that to his ear there seemed to be too many adjectives in the opening paragraph. We had Rachel reread it. I liked it, but we do have to be careful of over modifying. Concrete nouns and active verbs, the stock and store of good writers. You might try dividing the compound complex sentence into two sentences. Rachel wanted to overwhelm the senses with the opening paragraph.

Alisa had a tough editor who she asked to help her with racial perspective that Alisa did not have, She will read The Emblem, set at the Brick Tavern, the oldest bar in Washington State. She warns us that there are many things going on in this scene. Too much? She warned us that there is swearing and they had prostitutes in Roslyn, Washington in 1930s mining frontier town. Not interested in the indulgences she might have to offer him. He had a wife and several kids back in Seattle. Be specific. How many kids, boys or girls? He recollects some specific thing about them. The son's illness is an important detail. They're beyond my pay. Could you say this in a more colloquial fashion? Doctor tests, they costs money, don't they? At the front of the Brick. Weather-worn miner who should not have come up from the underground today. Can you expand the tactile and sensory context? What does it smell like in the bar? Sound like? Is there music, oddly grinding out its merry tune while the brawl is underway? Slamming a beer mug onto the Douglas fir countertop. Alisa went to the pioneer picnic and learned that negroes in 1930 went to a different tavern. A friend thinks she needs to include backstory from the 1880s strike. We talked about ways to do this without losing the flow of the story. Create a narrator character who loves telling stories, and his good at it. Then flashback from their retelling of the past events.

French Cousins, John reads from his children's stories for his grandkids who have French cousins, his daughter having married a French pastor. This is a grandfather's labor of love, charming, nostalgic, a delightful read. Creative non-fiction genre. Very handsome indeed. Can you give this more specific visual substance so the reader can conclude that they're very handsome indeed. It seems like you jump from the south of France to Switzerland too quickly. Is it possible to create episodes in both so you don't have to describe France then switch to Switzerland. And honk her horn, is active voice, whereas, the horn would honk, is passive voice. Your writing will be more vigorous if you primarily write in active voice. Good description of cathedral and night sky. I feel like I'm hearing some late attribution; be sure the reader knows who is speaking early on in what they are saying; otherwise, the attribution is less helpful. Best way to do this is to break quotations early with a mid-sentence attribution. Amsterdam, a small town? This reads like a warm children's travel adventure. John does a good job of writing from the perspective of the children.

Bob reads from the second book in his Sinbad series. Last reading his protagonist is in India for the tenth anniversary of his coronation. This is a bridge chapter, the next having more adventure and potential danger. Bob writes from first person, Sinbad. Bob addresses the dear reader. Is there a better way to do this? Or is this Bob's voice and method, like CS Lewis does in Narnia, oral story telling genre? Bob claims to be lazy and that's why he likes writing journey stories. The yarn can unfold as it unfolds. I'm looking forward to this book in print. Read The Crescent and the Cross for the first installment. Adventures on the high seas await!

I read chapter nine of The Resistance (working title). I'm working on chapter twenty three now and feel like I have good forward momentum, though always far too many interruptions (cows on the loose, guests arriving, my not-so-latent ADHD, you name it). Chapter nine is a shift from French Resistance Normandy, downed flyers trying to stay one step ahead of the Waffen SS hunting them down, to 1 Dorset Square London where 1000s of SOE agents trained to go behind enemy lines and work alongside the French Resistance. I enjoyed creating this chapter. Maybe I should post it for a sneek preview.

Deep discounts on my next Oxford Creative Writing Master Class spring and summer 2019. Space is very limited. You will not regret going. But don't take my word for it. "I loved every minute of it! I learned more about writing and history than I ever could have expected. You gave me literary tools which I am already using and will continue to use. It was a wonderful tour, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity!" (Cheyanne). Check it out at bondbooks.net
 

What to do when getting trounsed, pummeled, beaten to a pulp by your manuscript? INKBLOTS

That's me on the left getting hammered by my writing

Inkblots joke of the evening: "I prefer steak jokes, but they're a medium that's rarely well done." Thank you Patrick. Pass the HP sauce. This evening in the Scriptorium we have six writers, five regulars and one of my Oxford Creative Writing Master Class authors, here for a writing retreat at our lodgings for the week. John brought a bottle of Writer's Block red blend, which I'm really nervous about drinking. What if it's contaminated and I get it? We chatted and bantered longer than usual, in part, because we haven't been together for a while.

BIRTHING A FINAL CHAPTER
Rachel is the designated reader for John since some people commented on John's oral reading sounding like Eeyore was at the mic. John's last chapter where his protagonist is giving birth. Rachel had commented on John's deficiencies in writing a birthing scene when he had never been in the room when any of his kids were born (John was fathering in an era when fathers were banned from birthing rooms, so was Bob). Write what you know, and if you don't know it, research, research, research until you do. "Let me give you a quick check," is, to my ear, overwriting for how a doctor or labor and delivery nurse would speak during hard contractions. "Let's check." Seems like it might be more realistic. Or let me check. She called, she rubbed my back but these were two different females. Clarify pronouns. My heart began to quicken. My heart beat faster. Be concise; four words are better than five, almost always. You have the new mother quoting a Bible verse. Is that consistent with her character and new experience as a young Christian? Can the nurse quote the verse or someone else? The doctor would not hold up a needle and thread for the mother to see, especially a first time mom; doctors try to conceal needles from patients. Patrick felt like this was a significant improvement over the previous versions of this final chapter. Some repetition of words, panting, for example. More description of what a new born baby looks like and the effect it has on the mother. I remember being there and participating in the birth of all six of my children, and the overwhelming emotion, speechless, but felt I must speak, tears of wonder, joy expressed in that mysterious inner swelling that makes you feel you will burst. Anxiety about the baby being healthy? And vigilance in case something happens to the baby.

ALTRUISM AND THE EROSION OF THE GOSPEL
Patrick is up next. He feels overwhelmed at the moment with what to do next, how to get to the next place with his writing. He feels that culturally the church is tending to reduce the gospel down to an altruistic abstraction. So he has written speculative fiction that confronts and exposes social disorder that results from the socializing of the gospel. And now Patrick is working on a short non-fiction book that concisely lays out his concerns about the social gospel trending in the church. This chapter is on legalism, overly zealous emphasis on obedience especially with minute details of obedience. Altruism promises that true and authentic Christianity will fall off the road on either side of the ditch. He is more concerned with conservatives who don't but should have answers, than with liberal progressive Christianity, so called.

Two things I would suggest with this book idea. Until you are a recognized authority (I'm not saying this as an insult but as a simple fact about most of us and most people in the church) you need to demonstrate that you know what those who are recognized as authorities, dead and alive, have written and spoken about on this topic. Give your reader confidence in your research. The second thing I would urge you to consider is to take a less theoretical approach. Take Jesus' approach, which is to illustrate with a specific story example, a case study, or a practical demonstration in a role played story, then interpret in your non-fiction prose. Another method which I would recommend in this piece, is for you to use yourself as an example of these two errors. How have you found them in yourself?

Lastly I wonder about some of the verbiage Patrick used in this excerpt. Is it more obedience not less? Isn't the dialectic here that their minute obedience is externally motivated by pride and a mistaken sense that they can win God's favor by good works, but their hearts are not right. Jesus is exposing that their hearts are not right, not that they need more obedience. They needed true and right obedience, not merely external conformity to a code of law. Hence his "whitewashed tombs metaphor." They don't need "more obedience, not less," more whitewash on the tomb. They need regeneration, quickening, a transformed heart, good works that spring from gratitude and love. Any other kind is "filthy rags" in God's sight. They don't need more self-righteousness, more filthy rags. The hottest spots in hell will be for the "righteous," so called, the ones Jesus did not come to save. He came to seek and to save the lost, those who have despaired in their righteousness, their efforts, their "obedience," their good works. True biblical good works, sanctification, obedience, is of another kind altogether. Just adding more of the old kind, the legalistic self-righteousness kind, only furthers condemnation. Clarify terms like grace, obedience, good works. This is where the literature will help you and citing it will help your potential reader immensely.

FANTASY BOOKSHOP
Avrie, visiting from Houston, is reading a short story (a portion thereof), for middle grade readers. Setting in an eccentric bookshop. Characters are not human; they're characters from the books on the shelves in the bookshop. Contemporary fantasy genre. Not zombies though. Strange Tales. I like how you don't need much attribution, and it is clear to the listener reader who is speaking. Very fluid dialogue. I also like how the books and bookshelves seem to be reacting to the humans and jump into laps. Paper cuts are intentional, given by books that are too full of themselves, like textbooks. Authors are dangerous. We don't need the authors. They're a bad lot most of them.

Love the names, Alias, Read,  Novelette, Peter Strange... Gluten free café. Board of characters will be furious. How does the bookstore smell? One of the charms of bookshops is their smell, old leather, paper, a bit of dust, a pinch of binding glue. You get the idea. Can you describe what your characters look like? How do the characters exist? The characters are like actors that authors hire to be in their books, but the characters actually influence the story more than the author knows. It's all reversed. The characters employ the authors. Bob observed that this story is platonic, in the sense that the characters are derived from virtues or vices maybe. Its a very intriguing and though it is not clear to us where you are going, we are drawn in, fascinated, and want to hear more.

IRON SHARPENING IRON
Then 'Blots did what 'Blots often does, revert to an excurses that sort of took over (and lasted well past 10:pm), but was stimulating, relevant, and left us all chewing, swallowing, and digesting the evening spent together.

MY MANUSCRIPT BEATING ME TO A PULP
I didn't bother reading from my WW II French Resistance yarn. It would have been unkind. I care about my fellow 'Blots too much to inflict it on them. The characters are dominating the ring. I feel like I'm wrestling wholly on the defensive, cornered, against the ropes. Writing this book right now is like sparring, gloves-off MMA fashion, and I'm getting pounded, head spinning, vision clouding over, on the verge of plummeting face down, never to rise again. Jeering and mocking me from its corner, the manuscript and it's thugs have clearly won the opening rounds, and I'm swollen-eyed and bloodied. And that's all before a glass of Writer's Block red blend. So what do I do? I go back to the gym and work on my fitness, more jumping rope, more cardio, more strength fitness, and do my level best to master that left punch to the jaw. I'm going to beat this thing, show it who's boss, lay it flat on the mat--a grandiose-sounding triumph, of which there is not a shred of evidence at the moment. I'll post another chapter on this blog. That way you can weep with he who weeps. And then unsubscribe and follow a living author who still has a pulse.

Sneak preview of my forthcoming WWII historical fiction set in French Resistance Normandy

French Resistance fighter's false identity card WWII

Opening chapter from my WWII historical fiction in progress. Memorial Day seemed like a good day to post this draft of chapter one. 

1

Bombs Away

R

iley Straight flexed his gloved fingers on the controls of his B-17. His breath quickened, condensation trickling around the edges of his flight mask, then freezing. He glanced from the instrument panel of his Flying Fortress, then out the cockpit window.

“Approaching target.” The steady, good-humored voice of Riley’s navigator, 2/Lt. Charles Dudley, came through the interphone.

“Here comes the wrath o’ God, Jerry,” said Riley through the interphone so all his crew could hear.

“Maybe this’ll be a milk run after all.” Riley heard Freddy Ferguson his copilot’s voice crackling in the interphone in his headset.

He glanced at his copilot. “Fred, you’re new at this?”

The RAF only flew their bombing missions at night. But not the American Army Air Corps. Riley leaned forward, peering left and right out the cockpit windows. He had to admit, the view was better by day.

Far below, bordered by hedgerows, lay fields of wheat, rolling meadows, and pastures with specks of white—sheep or were they French beef cattle? At this altitude it was too hard to tell. His Fort chattered through a turbulent cloud hillock, then broke clear again.

The aerial tidiness of the pastoral scene below—it was part of the allure of flight for Riley. He swallowed hard, doing his best to ignore the clutching at his insides. Part of the allure and the curse. If only there had been some way to get the scenery and the thrill of flying, but without the dizzying nausea that always went with it. No amount of self-berating had solved it. If he couldn’t be rid of it, at least he’d become expert at hiding it—so he hoped.

“Rollout!” the squadron orderly had barked at 0430 that morning. “All pilots, briefing in twenty. Maximum effort!”

Twenty minutes later, Riley’s squadron leader had given the order: “Mr. Straight, you’re flying tail-end Charlie.” It seemed like forever ago. But here he was flying, “Coffin corner,” as flyers called it. Last bomber in the formation, the one the Luftwaffe went after first.

“Keep it tight, Mr. Straight,” bomb group commander Mills had said into the radio just after takeoff.

Riley never forgot his first time in the pilot’s seat, flying in tight formation, sitting left seat, his hands on the controls. The other B-17s were so close, he felt he could reach out and touch their wings. And some of the other pilots in the squadron were still teenagers. Unlike so many, he’d lived to turn twenty, leave his teens behind him; his birthday was just last week. Flying in tight formation and all it took was a split second of distraction, a slight deviation in course or speed.

Flying so close—Riley felt the inexorable compulsion to get clear. At speeds of 310 miles per hour, it demanded nerves of steel to fly tight. Scattered formation, just what the Luftwaffe was waiting for, and German fighters would dive in like wolves on straggling caribou.

Hence, his group commander’s reminder that morning: “Keep it tight, Mr. Straight.”

Another bank of cloud passed underneath, gray and heavy. Riley held steady as his Fort lurched in the turbulence. Visibility restored, the rural scene far below gave way to a drab industrial landscape, stark concrete blocks with gaping chimneys belching smoke heavenward. Their target, a French automobile factory, now a German munitions factory. And heavily guarded with antiaircraft guns—German guns.  

“Milk run?” Riley raised an eyebrow at his copilot.  

Glancing from the instrument panel out the window, Riley watched the first antiaircraft batteries springing to life. Bursts of white flame erupted far below. But there was no exploding sound, not audible above the rumble of four Wright R1820-97 air-cooled 1,380 horsepower engines. He didn’t know why, but rehearsing his bomber’s powerplant specifications calmed him, reassured him.

He braced himself. It was coming. When he could hear the Flak explode above his engines, it meant trouble.

“German 88s,” he murmured. Riley knew the damage Hitler’s high-velocity, antiaircraft cannons could inflict on his fortress. Twenty-pound shells fired in rapid succession, calibrated with German precision for their flying altitude, didn’t even have to make a direct hit to cripple a Flying Fortress.

Riley gripped the half-round steering control of his Fort till his fingers hurt. Bursting in grim black clouds on all sides of the squadron, Flak could send deadly shards of shrapnel ripping into the fuselage, wings, fuel and oxygen lines of his bomber—and through the flesh and bone of his crew. He had counted over one hundred holes in his plane after his last mission. In spite of their Flak vests, his tail gunner and flight engineer had both been strafed by molten shrapnel from the 88s. By the time his bombardier had released their load, and his navigator had calibrated their return course, the two men were bleeding profusely from their wounds. When Riley finally landed his crippled Fort on the runway and taxied to a halt, his tail gunner and flight engineer had bled out. They were dead.

That was last week’s mission. Because he and part of his crew had survived, here they were again over France, but with a new tail gunner and flight engineer, the latter just promoted from ground maintenance.

 “Two minutes to target,” drawled Riley’s navigator, Charles Dudley. Charles was from West Virginia, born and reared. For his perpetual grin, the squadron called him Chuckles for short. Even his voice through the interphone, engines roaring, Flak exploding, sounded like he was grinning, on the verge of a good chuckle.

“Keep it tight,” Riley told himself. He knew that any change in altitude or speed at this instant and 6,000 pounds of high explosives would entirely miss the factory, destroying, instead, the nearby village.

A black cloud of exploding Flak erupted with a roar at nine o’clock. Riley felt and heard it rattling against the fuselage of his Fort. The muscles in his abdomen tightened. He hated Flak. It was so random, exploding and sending molten shrapnel scattering throughout the bomb group. You couldn’t shoot back at Flak. It just seemed to erupt out of nowhere. He knew how it worked: German antiaircraft gunners on the ground calculated the squadron’s altitude and speed, then calibrated their 88s and let fly. Evasive action, irregular alterations in course, was all any pilot could do. But flying 310 miles an hour in tight formation with a squadron of B-17s meant evasive action had to be coordinated precisely—or else.

Another burst of black smoke, his B-17 lurching with the explosive impact; more molten shrapnel pummeled Riley’s bomber. Germans were good at trigonometry. Their calculations were getting better.

“That was close!” yelled the chin gunner.

“Danged Flak, tore off my headset!” shouted the tail gunner in the interphone.

“Tore off whose head?” The new flight engineer’s voice sounded near panic.

“Hardy-har. Not my head,” said the tail gunner. “My headset.”

Riley heard Freddy his copilot checking with each member of the crew. “Waste gunners? Ball turret gunner? Bombardier?” If they didn’t respond, they’d either been hit by Flak or their oxygen line had been severed. Or it could be something as simple as condensation freezing and clogging the line. Either way, without oxygen at this altitude, a man would pass out in minutes, and his 0.50 caliber Browning machine gun would be silent when the Luftwaffe closed in for the kill.

All ten crewmen reported in. No one had been hit—this time.

“Eyes peeled.” Speaking to all his crew by interphone, Riley forced his voice to be steady, confident, unafraid sounding. “Guns ready.”

He knew that every man, from tail gunner to chin gunner, was already scouring the sky for German fighters, finger on the trigger, ready for action. The fighters would come, sooner or later, usually sooner. If only they could deliver their bomb load first. 

Riley glanced at the altimeter: 20,000 feet, bombing range. More black clouds of exploding Flak. More clattering and rending of shrapnel against the aluminum fuselage of his Fort.

“Approaching target.” From the navigation table, Chuckles voice was pleasant and steady, then he added, as he often did, “‘How they are destroyed in a moment, swept away utterly by terrors.’”

Riley gripped the steering controls as another burst of Flak made the bomber shutter. He hoped Chuckles’ Bible verse was for the Jerries and not for them. More Flak.

Forget the Flak, concentrate, he told himself. There was no dodging Flak. And B-17s could take more beating than any other aircraft in the Army Air Corps. Riley knew he had one job, keep his bomber on course, precise course. Begin his bombing run too early and he exposed his Fort and crew to more Flak; begin too late and they’d miss their target. Three-and-a-half tons of high explosive could land on the nearby village.

The thought of killing innocent women and children, grandmothers and grandfathers—the Nazi brutes did it intentionally every day—but it was something about this air war Riley hated even more than the Germans.

“Bearing one-four-seven degrees.”

“Roger that, bombardier,” replied Riley in the interphone.

Nothing else mattered. Every target they hit slowed the German advance. Every bomber the Germans downed slowed the Allied advance.

“Thirty seconds to target.”

“Roger that, bombardier.” Riley was determined to hit their target. It troubled him that some of the workers in that factory might be conscripted labor, local French pressed against their will into building the German war machine. Some he’d heard were French Resistance saboteurs working in those factories—men and women—doing their bit to frustrate German manufacturing.

“O God, not at this target,” he murmured.  

Suddenly, Flak burst red at ten o’clock and a dense black cloud engulfed the cockpit windows. Blinded for an instant, Riley felt the shrapnel tearing at his Fort, and fourteen tons of airplane and armament lurching with the force of the explosion.

“I’m sorry, Sir.” It was the voice of the more taciturn of his two waist gunners. “I’m hit, Sir.”

“We’ll get you patched up.” Riley tried to sound more confident than he felt.

“Number two engine’s in flames!” shouted the flight engineer. “Cut fuel selector!”

Riley flipped the number two engine fuel selector switch to the off position. He flipped it again. No response.

“She’s still burning!” yelled the flight engineer.

Fire would spread. Riley knew if they didn’t drop their bomb load they would go down in an apocalyptic inferno.

“We’re nearly over the target.” Ralph Coleman his bombardier knew the same. “Ten seconds.”

“Level.” Ralph’s voice came steady and ominous through the interphone.

“Roger, that.” Fighting with the controls, Riley did his best to feather his three good engines to compensate for the lost one. He studied his instrument panel: altitude, speed—any deviation would throw off the gyro of his bombardier’s Norden Bombsight—and they’d miss their target and do collateral damage to civilian population. Hold steady, and he knew that Ralph could drop their bombs into a pickle barrel from this altitude. If the pilot held her steady. Wrestling with the controls, Riley clenched his teeth till his jaw hurt. His injured Fort had a maniacal mind of its own.

Suddenly, the antiaircraft 88s fell silent, no firing flares from antiaircraft guns, no erupting clouds of Flak, no strafing shrapnel—it could only mean one thing.

Fighters. Germans weren’t about to shoot down their own fighter planes with their own antiaircraft cannons. German fighters—they’d dive in for the kill any second.

With the numbing realization, as the bomb bay opened, Riley felt a blast of freezing air rending its way through the cockpit. He glanced back at his bombardier; Ralph’s eyes were steady on his bombsites. 

“Bombs away!”

I will let you in on another piece of the puzzle: This book will be a companion to War in the Wasteland set in WWI. Give me your comments and thoughts on the excerpt. Follow progress at bondbooks.net and subscribe to my blog to get more sneak previews of The Resistance [working title].

Wait Makes Weight: Implication or Explication in Creative Writing--Inkblots

Weary French Resistance fighter WWII

Inkblots on this warm, blue sky, green pasture evening, five die-hards this evening, including Hannah, for the first time, and we hope not the last, daughter of long-time Blotter, Dave. Rachel (who has been before but not read yet) joined us again this evening because she says she needs culture (I hope we don't disappoint over much).

John leads off--after grumbling about me making him re-rewrite the ending including all the sights, sounds, and, yes, smells of new life, baby in arms, in wonder that she could have ever considered taking this precious life--he leads off with a rereading of the last chapter, after multiple rewrites, where the protagonist in Saving Grace is delivering her baby, Grace. "I blurted," all in first-person point of view. How do you transition in the book when your protagonist is not the point of view? Remind me. I think you will improve this chapter enormously by going back through sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph looking for ways you can save the most weighty words and ideas for last. "Wait makes weight," as John Phillip Souza put it.

Rachel, the only mom in the room who has delivered a baby, felt that John had gotten most things accurately (thanks to John's careful research from his and my friend Michael, family practice doc who has delivered many babies over many years of practice). This is a redemptive story, where a girl gets pregnant, considers abortion, but through the loving kindness of many, she comes to this final chapter, through devious and anguished ways, to the point of delivering this baby, all alone. Rachel points out that the reader should be aware and affected by her loneliness in such a life-defining moment, delivering her baby, without a husband. The conclusion: she is now repentant; all is not easy and well, but she is doing the right thing. Dave pointed out that she would not be left alone for two hours during birthing.

A discussion of child birthing followed, only one mother in the room, but several fathers of multiple children who had been there at numerous births. We discussed implying rather than baldly stating something, for example, the young mother realizing that this was a living human being, a baby she had been planning to kill. How best to convey this without baldly stating it? We talked about the roles of doula.

Dave puts us back in context (after three years!), second civil war in America, futuristic story, the president of each division of the not-united states, are half brothers. Genetic engineering assassins, with cloning and other futuristic phenomenon. Each new metamorphosis increases the malevolence. Stephen, ten hours had flown by, try another verb maybe as time flying is somewhat cliché. Alexis is drugged in the elevator. Robert and Stephen are half brothers. Can you make more clear which of the brothers is the dominant perspective? Robert flexes his hands, but is Stephen seeing this and interpreting the meaning of it, or is it being felt by Robert? This sounds like a script for the screen. That's not a criticism, necessarily. Maybe it is vivid, visual. Do you have a virtuous character or one who is becoming so? I'm curious who is the protagonist, in the sense of good guy or woman? Is anyone confronted with the ethics of what is going on, morally outraged by the genetic engineering. It seems to me that Alexis is the character who is the redemptive one. That becomes more clear as Dave read on. I felt like there were some inconsistencies in some of her responses (Jerk).

John commented that he can't see anything, room, relationship of space. Include smells, sights, sounds, all senses banging. figure out ways to make the contrivance work, is it after hours so he isn't seen carrying Alexis over his shoulder, entering by service elevator. Make it work.

Hannah is twenty-one, Dave's eldest daughter, going to read a short passage, the first time she has ever read her writing out loud in front of others. Scotland, 1718. A good deal of detailed description of place and context. It seemed to me that you shifted from your female character to Jamie's perspective. Hannah explained that this is a shorter version of a longer passage. I applaud Hannah for having a healthy writer instinct to cut unnecessary words and give us the shorter version. One of the first things I do when self editing is to look for words that do not have work to do and kill them.

And now I must take my own medicine. I read chapter one of The Resistance (working title), B-17 pilot over occupied France in WW II. Some very helpful Inkblots critique, as usual. Shorten opening chapter (which I had been bothered by myself), and introduce nervous humor, different men trying to cope with the stress of air combat. Sample reading coming soon here on the blog...