GHOSTS

Remembering a ferocious machine with a shark face

painted on its nose, bearing those deadly guns like vicious teeth.

Of brown and tan colours to hide it against the flat European terrain,

hunting Germans at three hundred miles an hour,

attacking anything that moved until it was dead.

The roar of engines and the detonation of bombs,

hiding the scream of the wounded in the cacophony of war.

If you shoot this warbird down, another ten will take its place.

Now Europe ripples with the memory of war, of the twin-engined

Yankee attack planes taking on the Nazis and freeing

Europe from tyranny. Peace reigns – but for how long?