Next to me, Pokey’s eyes are locked on the sky, his jaw agape at the site of more than a thousand bombers overhead.
“I’d hate bein’ on th’ other end o’ that!” Pokey yells in order to be heard above the din.
I smile, pushing my whole tense body ever harder against the soft mud.
“Bombs a fall’n!” Pokey mumbles to himself, his eyes still locked on the bombers.
My head lifts away from the mud, small bits of its brown soft drops dripping from the right side of my helmet. In the sky, I can see hundreds, maybe thousands, of small black dots falling gently toward the earth.
The Germans are only a few hundred yards away, yet those bombs look like they're falling right above us.
Read MoreSoon after seeing the bombs fall, I can hear explosions and then feel them rocking the earth beneath my foot.
They are bombing the docks!
Dad couldn’t have made it there yet.
Having already released their bombs over the harbor, a squadron of four Ju-88’s buzz over the house. Their machine guns remain silent.
That’s not how we flew in Ethiopia. We fired our machine guns at the people on the ground.
As my gaze retraces the planes’ route back to the harbor, I am surprised by the color of the smoke rising above the buildings. Instead of the normally acrid black of a bomb’s post explosion flame and smoke, the rising clouds are a mustard, yellowish-green color mixed with the black. The yellowish smoke billows forth in all directions, as if occupying available space, rather than simply rising into the sky.
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