Elys Field

The sound of the air raid siren faded as it echoed off the mountains to the east and eventually just mixed in with the sound of the ocean waves against the cliff to the west. It was never for us though, we were just close enough to the flight path they took every time they headed in to bomb the cities that as our radar picked them up, we had to bunker down and wait for it to pass, unable to do anything.

Who were we? Well, we were the Mechanics for the 66th National Air Regiment, the Phantoms, stationed out of Elys Field. Now we were but a passing note on the maps of those who remembered the start of the war. Now we were a memorial, graveyard, some even went so far as to call us a scrap field. Scavengers they called us in the hangars of other squadrons. Others weren't so polite and just called us a waste, a waste of funding, drain on resources but we still did our duty. It had been the middle of the night when under stealth a bombing raid had hit the hangers, officer barracks, mess hall. It had been a first strike. A way to show their superiority before the war started but it had been enough to take our field basically out of the game.

You would have thought they would have restationed us, but no. Admiral Mors had come down and ordered us to turn the field just south of the air strip, in between it and the hangers, into a cemetery. Several had protested. That wasn't our job! We didn't want to handle those bodies, friends or not. In fact, the fact that we knew them, had ate with them, been responsible for their lives while they were in the sky had made it so much worse. But, after the first of our unit had been dismissed something changed in us and we did it. Under the supervision of Admiral Mors himself we dug the holes, we carried each coffin across the field and ceremoniously lowered it into their final resting spot. We wondered each time why the coffins felt so heavy when most of them should have been empty or holding just pieces from the bombing.

It was when our lowering lines on the 12 one broke that we saw what we were burying. Inside each coffin was a full flight suit, helmet connected and all, filled with what remains could be found. We were even more careful after that. These weren't just empty caskets these were our charges, and just like we took care of their aircraft we'd take care of their final resting place. In the end fifty pilots were laid to rest and we thought our grim duty was done. It was then Admiral Mors came to us again.

We had tried to make some rough tombstones as we were going, a few crosses and a star of David but none of them looked great out there. It was Mors who ordered our next action, take and repair the propeller off each plane in the hanger and use it as a grave marker. Fixing the propellers took days but as each one was finished, we would all stop and walk it out to the field and place it above the captain’s grave, his Co-Pilots grave just below his in the field.

Finally, our grim task was done we all thought the night after the last propeller was in place. We sat among the wreckage of the planes we had once been responsible for keeping in the air, now all without props, over half leaned on sides or resting on the ground without landing gear. Others had shattered cockpit glass still in the seats. We poured out drinks, for each of the friends we had lost and were telling stories realizing just how damn lucky they had all been. We talked about the various states of disrepair the Phantoms always seemed to come back in, bullet holes through pieces of equipment that would have taken any other pilot out of the sky, but until this tragedy we'd had a perfect record.

In the morning again we were met by Admiral Mors, well met is being way to polite. He threw the door open with our officers and got us all out of bed and into the makeshift hangers that definitely weren't up last night. Green tents had been built over the planes sometime between us, finally retiring for the night around 0200 and being so ceremoniously dragged out of bed at 0630.

The next two weeks were like they had a real squadron to support, fixing frames, replacing electronics, testing engines. Without any of them putting in parts requisitions they would wake up every couple days to crates and fuel tankers waiting for them to keep working. The only thing that would never come in were the propellers which sat still in the field as a reminder of what had happened.

Something changed, it pulled me out of my memories, still buckled down in the doorway of the enlisted barracks, well only barracks. The tempo of the siren had changed, much more urgent. Were they coming this way? None of the enemy had flown over us since the first bombing, at least none we had seen or heard. But there was no mistaking it the man who was winding the siren was doing it much faster than it usually needed to be for just a fly by.

Was it the tents? They weren't real camo and the coming and going hadn't been done in secret, but the cemetery should have been just as obvious. We were no longer a real threat or target even if we were fixing the planes, that just had to be to keep us busy, right?

Then one of the guys up the stairs yelled something. He had been looking through the window with binoculars trying to see the enemy most likely. Then he yelled again. "What's he saying?" I asked hoping someone would answer.

"The graves, the graves." One of the airframe guys said sounding just as confused.

I don't know who, but someone handed me a small spyglass, why they had it that I'll never know. I looked between the tents and took a few attempts to focus it on the one or two graves I could see, and something was moving. Then a gloved hand, I couldn't see who's through all the stuff in the way, reached down and into the dirt before pulling up another gloved hand. I shook my head in shock and had to refocus the spyglass. I watched as a flight suit pulled itself free of the grave, a lieutenant insignia on his shoulder.

I continued to watch the one pair of graves I could plainly see as the Lieutenant helped pull free the suit from the grave in front of his. That had been where Lieutenant Hector Logan and his First officer First Lieutenant Peter Haris or by call signs Hector and Paris had been buried. I watched as they stepped up to the propellor, pulling it out of the ground and started walking towards the tents.

"Over there!" someone yelled practically in my ear. I had to look out from the spy glass to see where they were pointing and there were other pairs of pilots coming into sight around the tents. We all watched as one pair attached their propellor to the front of the plane before getting up into the cockpit and pulling the cockpit slide closed. We all listened as one by one engines spun up, some of the tents blowing away.

One by one planes pulled out of their tents and slowly lined up two by two on the taxi way before quickly starting to take off and forming up on each other in perfect formation. We were all standing outside now, the siren sound had stopped, the enlisted in charge of it probably to stunned to keep going. We all jumped as a commanding voice spoke up from behind us in the doorway. "It wasn't always Elys Field." Admiral Mors said, lighting a cigarette. "Long ago they had a longer name for this place.

"Elysium."