p e r s p e k t i v a

An Austrian soldier walks into a ruined church on the Isonzo Front, 1916.

Wing Commander Roger Morewood, pictured as a young pilot in the 1940s, was one of the surviving Battle of Britain airman. He died aged 98 years in 2014.

via reddit

In 1931,at age 21 (!!) Bader crashed after attempting some aerobatics too low to the ground, and he had to be rushed to hospital, and the plane crash pulverized the bones in his legs. 

Bader woke up in the hospital to find that one of his legs had to be amputated. Several days later, his other leg was removed. Now a double amputee, Bader was told he could never do anything he loved again. Rugby, dancing, flying, let alone walking. Yet that didn’t stop him. When his legs healed enough to allow for prosthetics, he told the men building them that he needed to get them done quickly, as he “would need them to take someone out dancing later that week”. They laughed at him, as no one had ever walked without a cane, or even regained full mobility with TWO prosthetic legs. 

Bader, basically saying ‘fuck you i can do what i want’, then went on to never EVER use the cane. A few months after the initial fitting, he took his sweetheart, Thelma Edwards, dancing in his own, specially modified car. 

Eventually he got a job doing desk work at Shell, as the RAF gave him as Medical Discharge, due to the loss of both legs (one above and one below the knee). He was unhappy with this, as he LOVED flying, and knew he could fly the planes if there were only some minor modifications. But the RAF didn’t want, or need, less than 100% physically fit men in these interwar years. Yet Bader kept petitioning the RAF commanders to let him fly, and they eventually agreed reluctantly, if Bader could only prove to them he was physically fit.

To the RAF’s surprise, he passed the tests with flying colours, and basically demanded a plane. Then WWII started, and the RAF needed experienced, trained, officers.

During the Battle of Britain, he pioneered some innovative new flying tactics (called the Big Wing), and  Bader was given command after command. He was eventually given command of a motley unit of Canadians who had lost most of their numbers and supplies in the Battle of France. He pulled them together into an effective fighting force, and was commonly seen wandering around with his distinctive rolling gait, yelling at the supply distributors, and with a massive cigar in his lips.

Though, while on one of his flights over Nazi-occupied France, he got shot down. The way the plane went down however, if he didn’t have detachable legs he would have been unable to bail and would have died. 

Then Bader was captured by Germans and sent to a hospital, where he received a new prosthetic leg from a German official (who found him hilarious, a pilot with no legs!)

Bader escaped the hospital but was recaptured due to his distinctive gait and relative slowness of walking pace (just wait this is a pretty common theme from here on out). 

He was then transferred to Stalag Luft III (a POW camp lead by the Luftwaffe (German version of RAF)), where he was involved with, and had so many escape attempts the Germans threatened to take his legs away.

After a final, most nearly successful escape, Bader was transferred to the Colditz Castle, six hundred and fifty kilometers from non-Nazi occupied land. With walls two meters thick, and which sat on a cliff seventy-five meters above the River Mulde, this castle was escape-proof. 

For officers deemed an escape risk, Like Bader, this castle was the last stop. It held the worst of the escape prone POWs. Several other POWs in the castle had ridiculous plans to escape, ranging from paragliding, to using contortion and gymnastics. Yet Bader, with his instantly recognizable gait and lack of legs, would only be a hindrance at best, and would ensure they would all be recaptured, and killed as spies at worst. So Bader spent the rest of his time in Colditz, from Aug 1942-April 1945, when the castle was liberated by the US Army. 

Bader was given many awards and distinctions, yet after the war he left the RAF (for good this time) and went on to work at Shell again, this time flying around the world in his own plane with his wife.

More than that he became an activist and a hero for disabled people. 

Before, if someone had lost both of their legs, they would have been told, like Bader, that they would have no options but to walk with a cane, or be wheelchair bound, and live a drastically limited life to what they lived before. 

After Bader, when kids asked if they could ever walk again, their nurses and doctors would point at Bader and say “Well, if he can, there is no reason why you cannot”.

He was eventually knighted, not for his leadership in war, or his medals, but due to his massive work in propelling disabled activism and repelling the stigmas around the ‘limitations’ of disabled people.

(There is a great biography of his life by Paul Brickhill, called Reach for the Sky, and he is pretty great. I did a book report on it in grade 11 and it is very, very interesting, if you are interested at all in WWII, or stuff like that!)

TL;DR - Man looses both legs in a plane accident at 21, told he could never walk again. Through sheer stubbornness and ‘Fuck You.’ energy, he becomes a pilot and the squadron leader/group leader of many different units in WWII, before becoming POW in the most inescapable POW camp–due to proclivity to escape–until the end of the War. 1976, was knighted for his work on behalf of disabled people, and being a disabled activist.

In all aspects, when Lacroix thought of it, the embrace of Jan around him was incredibly protective, and ever so soft as not to hurt him with the claws that Lacroix just knew had already killed a man or two before. And for this reason that he was first terrified of the creature for, he now felt like nothing in the world could reach him, for the monster’s embrace felt like the embrace of a stronger, taller lover with inherently masculine features to it.

He almost blushed at the thought. He did not know exactly where it came from; perhaps the sole, intrusive thought of resting his head on the creature’s chest and feel a delightful heaviness upon dozing off in his arms, much like he would do with a boy after lovemaking. He never had such thoughts before; the act caught him by surprise, and after a moment of embarrassment he thought no more of it as he focused on swimming.

But he was reminded of that when the tall amphibian man signed his response to the other, after a lingering touch on Lacroix’s side. The soldier’s suit was still dripping with water, but the answer made him smile, and then made him feel for the other; yes, he too was lonely, and Lacroix simply signed an answer very clear in its intent:

“I am lonely too. I knew no lover’s embrace that was as warm as yours.”

            The creature’s eyes regarded the man and they were heavy with knowledge. It was hard to say whether they were merely the years or eons spent on Earth or if they were really just imrpessions from the last half an hour. Those eyes were sage, however, intelligent, as ever when he came close to the other, their cold anger faded away into something much more approachable, much more understandable.

               The two shared feelings and from feelings, there was only a slight step towards a thought. When the other became embarrassed to have come across an idea so daring in his head, the creature felt contented at least. He saw in the other what he longed to see there, though it only began as an image that was not even meant to exist -- ah, the proximity of it however. How they swam together, how they held each other. The unifying aspect was missing but in all other effects it felt almost the same like making love.

              His eyes did follow out of the water, wandering over the man he missed so dearly, though it’s been moments since he slipped from his hold. He tilted his head ever so slightly at the most precious of confessions and felt himself warm up even more. One could have sworn to have caught a sight of a smile, too, on lips that were barely capable of it. Yet it came and went in a flash, as human smiles at times do, and it was wonder left to the soul to doubt.

Jan inspired to Lacroix a thousand different feelings. When he was away from him, it was as if a piece of him was missing. That friend he needed to talk to, that friend he needed for so long. Soon, he covered the pages of a sketchbook with portraits of the creature depicted as a glorious sea god, sometimes inspired by Roman statues and Greek depictions.

And upon being in the tank, he was inspired by one miracle; the fact that a creature so deadly, so dangerous, with claws & teeth so sharp was touching him with such tenderness, without once wearying his skin or grazing it with the sharp blades that were the end of his fingers. Who could have believed he was capable of that softness?

And soon he showed him the ways of swimming as a duo, like he sometimes did with other marines; he intertwined his arm with Jan’s, and they swam up into the water. Slowly, for the fast creature that the ‘sea god’ was, but swimming still, swimming closely, almost intimately. It lasted ten or fifteen minutes before they separated, slowly returning to the floor of the larger pool.

A long embrace indeed. And Lacroix smiled then, the smile of a child, that was; the smile of the young man he was before the army happened at all. Hurrying to his swimming partner, he signed enthusiastically: “What did you think, what did you think?”

As it if it were what mattered most; for it was indeed. Nothing mattered more to a lonely man than the presence of his sole friend.

           The creature, in his own way, took the soldier on a voyage. As confined as the space was there, the pool was still bigger than the tank he was used to by now, and before all, he had Armand with him, who latched onto him in such a way that made him feel like they were one almost. The way they were meant to be. He was like a child in size, but his soul had a nuance of colour that much greater for he had lived through a life already.

            The water was clear and the way the sun penetrated the surface with such ease made the creature a little wary. He was after all from the depths and only ever came to the surface at dawn or at dusk, or throughout the darkness of the night. He was however too happy to be out there again, swimming fast as he could, and then slower still for he had the other with him. And they danced, too. Sometimes... He was reminded of the sound of music long gone that Armand would at times put on, as they swam in figures and proximity.

           And his hands were ever so gentle. So careful about the way his claws threaded, so caring as they grasped on the other a little stronger when he went on to speed up their swimming. Sometimes he would even tap against the fabric of the other’s swimsuit. He knew he wouldn’t be heard but perhaps that was what made the confessions come out despite all, in the end. They were not confessions so much as little fragments of one soul communicating kinship to another, anyway. Armand didn’t need to hear them, for he could already feel them in his very heart, or would soon enough.

when his boy was being bullied by his comrades in an old-fashioned Parisian school after one of them had discovered a rather obscene picture of a well-built man in his room’s locker. Only then did the fourteen-year-old discover that he was much more of an aggressive man than a pacifist, and the bullying turned to fighting that left his nose and his lips bleeding, soon to be replaced by bruises. He thought that all that ruthless fighting would keep his bullies away, but nothing would decide them to do otherwise than place their violent misunderstandings of themselves on the younger, blond pupil who repressed his passions heavily.

« You can’t have him yet, » the god said upon hearing the demi-god’s question,

when the demi-god felt his heart flooded with jealousy upon watching his boy from a distance, attempting to kiss rather clumsily a young, gentle carpenter that he had met on the outskirts of Aix-en-Provence, and that the both of them laughed with innocent happiness, holding each other and burying their faces in each other’s neck, taking in their respective scents with closed eyes and blissful breathing.

« You can’t have him yet, » the god said upon hearing the demi-god’s question,

when the boy who had grown a young man appeared in a cadet officer’s uniform at his older brother’s funeral, listening to the priest with his head lowered and doubts of religion in his mind. Later, his sister-in-law helped him to get up after he had collapsed on the ground (« it is because of the heat, » he said, with a single tear dripping from the corner of his eye) when they lowered the coffin into the ground, draped in his country’s flag and under the gazes of a dozen soldiers holding their caps in their hands.

« You can’t have him yet, » the god said upon hearing the demi-god’s question,

when the lieutenant in his late twenties was taken from the same weakness as in his youth, collapsing on the frontline right when the enemy was firing back. The senior officers, then, said that it was his fault that his men had died, and degraded him to a lower rank. He could no longer play piano, he found out, because his hands were shaking ever since, and that his elbows always fell back loudly on the keyboard as he buried his face in his hands, baring his teeth in unspoken emotion.

« You may have him when he will need you the most, » the god finally said upon hearing the demi-god’s question,

right before the demi-god was captured by human hands and sent crawling on the ground, just enough time to be chained up. It was only when he woke up that he found the dimly lit face of a tired officer watching him with newly found curiosity, pressing his fingertips against the glass in silence, and the officer only said:

« And to say that they call you a monster and me a coward. »

The majestuous gaze watched him still. He had been waiting for him.

At first, when Lacroix heard about how the creature simply refused to interact with anyone else than him, he laughed. It was amusing to him indeed, especially when seeing the bewildered faces of the scientists, who were rather upset about it. But then, he thought that if he were the only one to be able to do anything with the creature, then he would not be sent back to the frontline before a long time, and a wave of relief washed over him. Then, at last, he felt fondness, fondness in the bottom of his heart for the friend he had made and who was so genuine in his affection. A friend he could trust and think of when his mood reached new lows, even when they were away from each other.

Slowly he learned the creature’s language - very slowly, but he came upon a few words. Hello, goodbye, friend.

But nothing amazed him more when he was able to stand in the water and see Jan for himself, without glass separating them. He looked majestuous, to say the least. He was beautiful, graceful, almost godlike. His touches, despite his quick movements, were soft and almost comforting; and Lacroix soon stepped up to tap a “hello” back into Jan’s hand, even though he had not understood everything from what he told him first.

“Today,” he signed slowly, “we swim together. No scientist. You and me only.”

And he slowly touched Jan’s hand and ran his fingers along them. Careful not to scare him away, he stepped even closer and slowly wrapped his arms around the much taller creature, like he did with the tank when it was time to say goodbye - but here, it was a real embrace, and a genuine, heartfelt one.

          A sort of pact was formed without the soldier ever knowing. A sort of pact based on co-existence and the necessity for him in the other’s life, as well as the creature knowing well of the horrid things that went on happening while his human spent time in the laboratory, safe and even happy most of the time. The creature knew well that perhaps in the beginning he would be merely an excuse to the other, but he’d hoped to see the fondness grow into something more real, more vital than gratitude. Their each personality had its own dynamic and together they clashed and danced, and together they grew, even in the span of a few days.

             The human even learnt his language, bits of it, yes, but the little understanding and openness he had to begin with was enough to the creature of the sea. And the words as short as they were meant a whole world to him, even if followed with entire verses upon verses of signs. He was the only one who could do that, greet him that way. Once more, when the scientists tried to imitate him, the creature only ever gave them a brief look and then lost interest.

            While interest and curiosity tinged with tenderness was all that he had for the other as he had joined him in the tank. Oh, all the stolen touches; how silly of him to feel so contented to at least brush his hand on the firmness of the other’s body, even through the fabric, how vulnerable to stop before him just to gaze into his eyes, finding them once more beyond a glass. He had never doubted this was Armand here with him, but when he tapped into his hand, a wave of joy washed over him the more powerful for it.

             Swim together. Nothing would please him more in his restraint, nothing would make the gloom greenness of the day better, if not the company of Armand Lacroix right by his side. It was him who encouraged more touching that time and the creature found it pleasant, comforting, darling. Though the embrace itself surprised him at the end.

Lacroix had not the slightest idea of what could happen in the other’s mind. He did not even know exactly what kind of creature he could be, even less an ancient god. He simply considered that there were indeed other animals as intelligent as Man could be, and that was it. As a good Catholic, the young man did not conceive God wearing that shape, and perhaps was it better for him if he was ignorant of the facts that fate existed, and that the seemingly unknowing creature in front of him knew more about him, in fact, than himself did.

But what made him a fundamentally good man was that he would behave the same way in either case, and he did. He showed himself playful sometimes, and immensely pleased by, firstly, having some company, and then, teaching him something that he felt was useful. He found himself growing tender for the other’s facial expressions, his attempts at a smile, the small backflips he would make in the water when he felt the need to move or to show his enthusiasm, or the way he was so focused on reproducing the movements, in a clumsy but endearing way.

And, at the end of the day, when he was sure that Jan had acquired enough vocabulary to understand, Lacroix gestured with certain emotion: “You are the friend I have been waiting for”. Overwhelming loneliness of a traumatised soldier who felt that the only fair judgement he would ever get would be from another species’ society. And then, he said goodbye, and wrapped his arms around the tank only to meet the cold hardness of the glass, but still pretended to embrace the other, smiling at him in weighing silence.

Only few time was needed, at the sight of their progress, for the scientists to accept to open the tank for Lacroix. He was light-hearted at the idea to return in his favourite element, water, and precautious in dressing up in the tight-fitting black suit and checking if his oxygen mask was working correctly. Not once did he think of the possibility that Jan could harm him, even if the other soldiers kept talking about it. Such a possibility that he feared days ago now looked incredibly distant to him.

And, sitted on the edge of the tank, he finally let himself drop in the water, and the bubbles came out from his mask rather quickly as he touched the ground with his feet. It was no surprise for the creature, although he had been warned rather late - a few minutes before, only. Lacroix wondered a moment if the monster would recognise him despite having his face half-hidden, then thought nothing of it and kept walking in slow motions, pushing the water out of his way.

             The creature had been waiting all his time, all his life for a single sentence, for a single word of the meaning to flow from the other to him. The friend he has been waiting for. Ah, he had no idea, but his soul somehow did anyway, it amused him, for though the human has been caught up unable to see beyond the earthly, beyond that which was known to him, somehow he felt the same way the creature did, though unable to tell precisely why just yet. 

             He did not sign back, for he was tired of all the new movements of the day but he did move towards the glass to tap on it gently, a melody almost, one that only ceased when the other had wrapped his arms around it. For a moment, he was met with confusion, for such a gesture, especially over the glass, felt to him undecipherable, but then at last he moved in as close as he could, resting his hand where the other’s chest was. Smiling. There was little more he could do.

            Otherwise, time went slow in the laboratory, especially when the other was out. Some of the scientists attempted to take up the lessons that the soldier had left behind, yet the creature rarely even looked at them, let alone communicated. A couple of times they tried to make him do so by force, yet that only turned into a more determined stubborness. It was Armand that he always signed a hello to. Hello, good to see you, friend. He followed it by tapping it on glass, too, teaching at least some of it to the other in the process.

Surprisingly, Lacroix proved himself to be a great teacher. When he seemed to understand that Jan’s enthusiastic tapping fit one word or another, he tapped it as well and then congratulated him on every progress he made. (The words of congratulations and affection were the very first he had taught Jan that were in a separate book, civilian language).

He loved to teach him the positive emotions. He did not need the words for violence just yet, except the very necessary military ones that would allow the creature to obey orders; for the rest, he felt free to teach what the words for family, friendship and love were. He felt cheesier, of course, than what a soldier ought to be, but he felt cheerful about teaching beautiful concepts to the fishman, to make him think of something else than the small, dark tank.

“Trust,” he gestured at last, to end the session, pointing at his head then joining his hands together in front of his stomach. “When you believe that an individual will do you no harm.”

         It should be noted, that the military orders came to the other easier than the abstract concepts being taught to him subsequently, or even the words of kindness before. He could easily understand the meaning behind something when it tied to an immediate action. He easily comprehended that he was supposed to stay or move a certain way. He knew what it meant to back away or come forth upon being beckoned closer. However...

          Words of approval only reached him halfway through the lesson. Upon seeing them repeated again and again with everything he got right, he realised that they had to do with that and though he did not understand directly, from then on he was on an almost anxious lookout for them, as they showed whether or not the other was pleased with his performance. 

             To think that he, after all these years, would so attentively be learning the language of a civillisation much younger than himself, and with a prospect of shorter life as a whole, too -- what will all the warfare and enmity! To think that he would drink up this feeble knowledge like it was the essence of life just because the man who walked his dreams since the dawn of time came to him, with his hands forming a bowl, and his lips whispering “Drink.” But he did. He did more than just place his lips there so eagerly, he made his entire body available, with all his might, with ever fiber of his being, he soaked up what he could from what the other was trying to teach him.

            Once more, emotions of love and affection were ones he felt well within himself but it took him a while to figure out that they were what the other was touching upon. And again, he was overjoyed to find out that the other did. He could see it in his eyes, the grey fear of hitting a wall -- of finding something about the creature that shows that he is not all that he thought. That he is incapable in some way or another. But as they talked only of the beautiful concepts, he was not met with resistance, only the humblest sort of understanding, only the most tentative attempts at feeling at once what the other sought to convey.

Early 1918, the importance of aerial photography –’At the front officers in bombing squadrons find that photography is one of the most important branches of their work. In fact, next to bombing, it is their most important work. Furthermore, commanders look more and more for photographs to prove the value of bombing squadrons.

A squadron may go out, drop their bombs with excellent results, and do a considerable amount of destruction, but if on returning they have no photographic record of the destruction done, they can hardly be expected to receive credit for what they did. Obviously, it is to the interest of the pilots and observers concerned to perfect themselves in aerial photography.

Now, the camera is the best observer there can be. If handled properly, it will bring back records of such detailed nature as no observer, no matter how well trained, can; and furthermore the records will be accurate. The human observer is bound to be affected by external conditions; he will be on the lookout for enemy aircraft, and he will probably be, to say the least, somewhat flustered by antiaircraft fire. Needless to say, he cannot be expected to see the many details which the camera records.’

The scientists did not miss the occasion to tell Lacroix how unresponsive the creature was, and then, he just had the feeling that Jan was indeed doing it on purpose. He shrugged it all off; it was none of his concern, after all, if the scientists did not get what they wanted. He was only there for the missions they would give him, and if the creature had a good relationship with him, it was all for the better.

‘Maybe he would be kinder with you if you did not hit him all the time,’ he suggested, which led to a swift demand from the lead researcher for the soldier to leave the room.

The creature looked almost overjoyed to see the officer again, though, and even started tapping against the glass again, which relieved Lacroix from the bothersome thought that he may have been ill and that, with lack of knowledge, the scientists would have done nothing to heal him. It was just his will of sorts that prevented him from answering to the other men; pettiness, Lacroix would call it.

So he just tried to tap the only ‘word’ he knew in the other’s foreign language, or had the feeling he knew. Friend, it said. He tapped it thrice. Friend, friend, friend. You, he pointed, and me, he pointed. He smiled then, like a child pulled out from his loneliness by a young playful boy.

The rest of the day was spent by two activities only. The first one was, of course, to feed and take care of the creature at the appropriate hours; the rest of the time was spent on trying to teach him the basic signs of the military language they had prepared for Marines who had to speak underwater while undergoing a mic failure. Most of the words covered their needs, and if the creature proved good at it, they would go onto something more complex. Perhaps.

         Friend, friend, friend, got lost in the repetition. It was not something the creature was used to and as such was found not understanding, though he hurried to reply in kind. Only when the soldier gestured between him and himself did he gather the meaning. Them. What they were. There was more feeling to this word, unlike friend. There was chance, there was happiness for fate, and there was gratitude for every moment spent together. He tapped that out back, though slower and just once, to be sure the other knew how to do it properly for the next time.

            The monster was content with only the other for his company, did not ask for much else, did not need much else. He was more tender than any of the scientists, he was patient but not in a learned manner of one pursuing a definite purpose. He took time with him and he sat so close and when the creature felt the need to stretch his limbs, swimming around, he watched him do just that, a glint in the eye.