Free The Dust That Falls from Dreams by Louis De Bernières

managed to land right at the sea’s edge, on the beach. Thank God it was low tide. The other fellow and I managed to drag it up the beach with the aid ofstalwart fishermen who had been innocently beachcombing, and we telephoned through to Squadron HQ. Whilst waiting for the ack emma we got royally treated by the inhabitants of a bistro. I’ve never had such a good steak. I can tell that being a half-French birdman is going to be a huge bonus out here. I will have simpering girls draped off both arms, and have to check that there aren’t any in my shoes in the mornings, as we did with scorpions out on the NWF. The weather leaves most of our flying days completely dud, so…more time for the fair maidens of France!
    Anyway, to the point. If you fly over France, you see beneath you a country of the most magnificent beauty. Where else are there towns like Fleurs, or Poitiers, or Abbeville? Where else are there lovely long avenues of poplars and infinitely long Roman roads? And rivers with such lovely curves? And elegant chateaux that were never made for war? And women who think you must be mentally deficient if you are not in love with them? Where everyone drinks wine and sings, but nobody’s drunk?
    The point is
, maman
, that I love France with all my heart and soul. She is my mother, as you are, and England is my father, as Father was. One loves one’s parents equally, if differently, and I love France as I love you, with a sort of passionate aching tenderness
.
    Not far from here there is a strip, neither very long nor wide, where this exquisite land has been reduced to a hideous bog of brown mud, pitted with interconnecting shell holes full of filthy water, where there are no trees unbroken and no church or farm or house intact. It is already a vast graveyard of the unburied. The gunfire is relentless and maddening. The front is an obscenity
, maman,
and this was inflicted on France by a madman who overran two neutral countries in order to get to it and bring about this wreckage. Only when it is covered with snow is purity restored to this land, and even then the trenches cut through it like cracks in glass
.
    At Westminster we had to learn reams of heroic poetry. It was beaten into us, did you but know it, but there’s a verse I remember, by Lord Macauley, I believe, which goes:
‘To every man upon this earth
    Death cometh soon or late:
    And how can man die better
    Than facing fearful odds
,
    For the ashes of his fathers
,
    And the temples of his gods?’
    Well, that’s how I feel. Airmen don’t live long, as you probably know. I may be lucky, or I may have the worst of luck and be maimed rather than killed. But if I am killed, I would like you to be fearsomely proud as you show my photograph to your visitors, and say, ‘That was my son
, mort pour la France.’
    Ton fils dévoué,
    Daniel P
.

14
Rosie
    B oxing Day of 1914 began very wet, and Rosie was awakened by the sound of rain on the windowpanes. Her face was cold, but her body was warm from being tucked under the covers. The coal fire, which had been banked up the night before, had burned itself out, and was giving very little heat. It was still dark outside, and she lay in bed thinking about Ashbridge in France. He would almost certainly be outside in the trenches, and she wondered how one could possibly cope with being there in weather like this. Rosie remembered that it was St Stephen’s Day, and that he had been the first Christian martyr. She got dressed in bed.
    The house was quiet now that all the male servants had gone. When she went downstairs the Christmas tree seemed lifeless with its candles unlit, and the presents gone from beneath it. She was the first of the family to be up, although she could hear Cookie and Millicent clattering in the kitchen. She sat in the drawing room watching the world become light outside, and felt helpless.
    That morning she conscientiously wrote her thank-you letters, and then put on her coat and a sou’wester and