W.W.ll was not, for Pilot Officer Tate, one story. It was departing and arriving over and over again. It was leaving old friends, gaining new ones and living through their deaths. It was losing command of one’s life and becoming the creature of a cause called great and necessary. It was being good at what one does, and hoping to be lucky. It was a barrier to a past that could not be revisited, while being lured to think of a future despite the odds against having one. It was loving one’s fellow warriors in ways that can never be repeated. It was, in Tate’s case, growing up and becoming an adult knowing only how to bomb and destroy and fly back to base in whatever way possible. And, in the end, it was feeling guilty for having survived. Robert Harlow’s semi-autobiographical 8th novel makes this, and more, hugely accessible.
