Black
Just Black
No Red, Yellow, Green, or anything as interesting.
Just Black
No picture, just letters.
“You just gonna sit there, or you gonna paint” Sarge yells toward me, not even bothering to lift his head from the scratch game he’s got going with some of the boys from the 509th.
What’s there to paint? It’s just lettering. Boring lettering.
Reaching into the front pocket of my overalls, I pull out a pencil as I approach the shiny unpainted metallic side of the B-29.
I lean in to block the sun from my work.
With deliberate slow strokes, my pencil traces the outline of precise letters on the side of the plane.
E
N
O
Read MoreI love these men!
The entire regiment bows toward me in one machine-like motion as I approach.
They are bowing deeper than usual.
Out of respect for these men, I bow past my mid section, so that my head is almost down below my knee line.
Major Hata, my go-to man and confidant, stands at attention between me and the rest of the men.
“Hata-san” I call out. “Let us be the Emperor’s arms.”
Read MoreNext 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.
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