Sherlock Fic: The Principle's the Same - Chapter Six (END)
Title: The Principle's the Same
Author: Narcoleptic_ll (Narkito)
Characters: Sherlock, John
Rating: Teen
Category: Gen, AU, World War II
Word Count: 17.000~~ this chapter: 3000~~
Summary: Sherlock gets wounded on the battle field and they leave him for dead. John, who's just escaped from captivity finds him. Together they start their journey out of enemy territory. Written for a prompt.
Chapter Six: This is the One
Sherlock coughs desperately into John’s jacket, grabbing him by the sides with a distressed look on his eyes. John’s torn between screaming and holding onto Sherlock for dear life. A constant mantra on his mind This can’t be happening playing louder than the rain itself. After the first few seconds of shock, his medical training kicks in and his hands quickly find the hole on Sherlock’s coat. It’s at the back, on the right, waist high. A dark stain already spreading through his clothes.
Sherlock’s completely out of it, his breathing coming in short quick gasps. Water getting everywhere, his scarf dripping, his hair plastered to his forehead and neck; a few rebel curls standing against the weight of the rain and the gravity of the situation. He’s muttering something, but John can’t hear him over the roar of his senses and the drumming of the rain. He’s frantic, there’s nothing he can do, except applying pressure to the wound, and it’s only a matter of time before he gets shot too or somebody comes over and finishes the job. He’s on the ground, Sherlock half sprawled on top of him. He’s using both of his hands to put some pressure on the wound and the upper part of his body to shelter Sherlock from the rain. He’s blinking slowly, Sherlock is, his eyes fixed on John’s figure, but not really focusing on anything.
“Sherlock, you’ll be alright, but please, stay still, I need you to stay still.” He doesn’t, he keeps gesturing for John to come closer, he keeps trying to talk.
John adjusts himself and lowers as far as he can go without disturbing Sherlock’s injuries.
“What? What, Sherlock, tell me.” Sherlock swallows forcibly.
“Tell... tell my mother,” a shuddering breath, “that I’m sorry.”
“Jesus, Sherlock, you’ll have to tell her yourself.” John’s sure there was a smile dangling at Sherlock’s lips, but it comes and goes so fast, he not entirely certain. Sherlock doesn’t say anything else after that, he just concentrates on not falling unconscious.
A small eternity goes by and hands reach into John and pull him upright, forcing his arms behind his back, he fights it with all he’s got, but it isn’t much- it isn’t enough.
Another soldier, with the universally recognised Red Cross painted on his helmet is tending to Sherlock and John keeps yelling for him to help him, to do something, to save him. He’s still screaming and kicking when they drag him away towards the camp.
~~~
“Doctor Watson, can you please follow my finger?”
He’s still fairly wet. Someone put a blanket over him and a nurse is tending to his shoulder, but he can tell from the look on the doctor that whatever it is, it isn’t good.
“Doctor Watson.”
“Yes, follow finger. Yes.” He does as he’s told.
After a few more tests and questions, and a new change of clothes in-between, the doctor takes a deep breath and cocks his head to the side. John speaks first.
“Just tell me. How bad is the infection?”, John’s mind wanders to the redness around the stitches and the fine red line stretching towards his heart. “Am I going to lose the arm?”
“We’re not sure yet.” The doctor has a hesitant look on his face when he says this.
“OK, OK.” No, not OK, but this one is out if his hands, out of his control. “How’s Sherlock?”
“They’ve dug out the bullet, he’s still in surgery, plus he’s in very bad shape, and there’s not much we can do until we get him to other facilities, but first he has to be stabilised.”
“Yes, of course.” John unconsciously goes to touch his left shoulder, which is now under a full padded bandage soaked in antibiotics and his arm in a sling. He stops right before he makes contact with the fabric. His leg twitches.
The doctor takes the pause to interject more details of John’s surgery.
“We’ll need to get you into surgery right away. They’ll come take you immediately. The sulpha tablets you took the past days helped with the infection, but it’s still bad, John. I’ll do my best to save your arm. Any questions?”
John limits himself to nod a few times as he vaguely wonders when exactly they are planning on debriefing him. No one has asked him in full detail about the journey back yet.
~~~
He sees himself as a seven-year old on the country side. He and his brother are at their aunt’s cottage, on their mother’s orders, whose too busy arranging their father’s funeral, away from the public eye and the shame. They’re sitting at the edge of the bridge, watching the water flow away at their feet. The stones edges smoothed away by wind and time.
“Will we ever see father again?”
“No, Sherlock, we won’t.” Mycroft’s words are firm and have an air of finality in them. Sherlock feels something prickle behind his eyes and he’s afraid he might cry. You mustn’t cry, Father had told him last summer, after losing a particularly tricky shot on a cricket match. It seems especially important that he follows his orders now, considering he didn’t much listen to him when he was alive.
“Do you think that will make mother sad?” Mycroft stares at the water for a while and then at Sherlock. His usually inscrutable face; a maddening mix of emotions. He hugs Sherlock briefly by the shoulders. Sherlock shakes his embrace away and gets off the railing and back to the safety of the bridge’s pavement. He’s a bit unsteady on his feet and for a few seconds he feels dazed and unsettled, he doesn’t know why, but he can’t quite shake the sensation that he’s forgotten something.
On their way back to the cottage and to their aunt’s suffocating care, Mycroft unsuccessfully tries to a start a conversation with Sherlock, but his younger brother is lost somewhere inside his head, so it turns out more like an intermittent monologue than anything else.
“Sherlock,” Mycroft tries again, “I know I don’t say this often enough, but I care for you. And you will always be my little brother. If you ever need help, I am here for you.” This seems to get Sherlock’s attention, and for the entirety of two seconds he languidly stares at Mycroft’s eyes, as if to read the words he just heard in there. Then, the noise of an airplane engine claims his interest away from Mycroft, and an unexpected surge of energy flashes through Sherlock’s eyes.
“Mycroft, look! It’s a Messer! Can you believe it?! A Messer, here!”
Mycroft’s eyes are open in utter shock and fear, his hands slowly lifting to his face. The plane makes a go-by over their heads and starts to turn around almost a kilometre away. Sherlock’s jumping up and down too excited to either run after the plane or stay still long enough to properly admire it. Another plane rises on the horizon and joins the first one, making a grand circle around the boys and the fields, testing the winds.
Sherlock lifts his hands over his head and reaches into the sky.
“I can feel their heat. M.E. one-oh-nine! Aren’t they beautiful?”
Mycroft seems to jolt into action by these words, grabbing Sherlock by his shoulders and pushing him into the direction of the stables. The only structure in sight.
“Run, you silly boy, run!” Sherlock doesn’t quite recognise his brother’s voice, he’s never heard this high-pitched version of him, but he doesn’t care, he’s too busy going over the plane specifications in his mind.
“It’s got MG one-three-one machine guns. Thirteen millimetres, and ammo counter too.” He points, fighting Mycroft’s hands, which are pinning him down to the ground, ducking for cover as the planes open fire, raising a double line of dirt and grass that’s heading straight to them. Sherlock takes his jacket off managing to get rid of Mycroft’s hold in the process, and runs to meet the planes. After three long strides, he slips and hits his knee on a rock, blood immediately gushing out in waves of thick red.
Everything goes pitch black.
This is not how the memory goes. But you’re close. Remember, there’s something else you must remember.
He’s back at the bridge. Mycroft’s indulging him, so they’re sitting on the rails, their feet hanging a mere centimetres over the water. They had been talking about father. He’s dead. Sherlock was the one who found him in the study, hanging. He can’t really recall anything else about the matter, not as sharp and genuine as that, anyway. The rest of the affair had been a blur of colours and people. His brother’s talking, but he’s not actually listening. He’s found that if he concentrates on tiny details instead of the bigger picture, he can manage going around without feeling like crying all the time. Still, he knows he shouldn’t but he asks anyway.
“Will we ever see father again?”
After his brother’s response, he wishes they could’ve stayed for the funeral, but mother wouldn’t allow it. Only Mycroft could attend, if he wanted to, but why would he, his father, his real father was still alive, somewhere, but alive.
No, this isn’t what you’re supposed to remember. Try harder. Try something else.
He sees himself, age eleven standing in the platform, watching a train go. He feels betrayed and angry, his stomach churning. It hurts terribly, but he won’t tell, he shouldn’t upset mummy, not over something as silly as this. When he gets home he’ll wreck whatever Mycroft didn’t take, and then, he’ll feel better. He’s sure of it.
No. Try again.
He’s sixteen and lost. His mind feeding him incoherent data about the world and turning inside out whenever he takes another swig of the bottle. He doesn’t see them coming. Johnson takes his bottle out of his hand, not a laudable task, considering the state he had been in, and throws it to the ground, at his feet. He thinks it may be meant to scare him, so he recoils on purpose to please the audience. The laughs that it elicits from the other boys, his classmates, are animated enough for him to consider his mission accomplished. Two of them grab him whilst Johnson hits him twice on the stomach. He doubles over in pain and they let him crumble to the ground, one of them stepping over his back in the process of the retreat. He wouldn’t be surprised if it was that Johnson kid.
Getting closer. Come one, one more time.
The first day, he sees a Messer going down in flames, the ME 109 to be exact. The pilot jumping at the very last second, his parachute never deploying. Poor son of a bitch someone had said and his breath had hitched at the sight.
Data, he needed more data before he could even think of making progress. His brain was constantly on overdrive, had been ever since his mother had fallen ill. “Six months”, the doctor said, and she had already outlived the prognosis by two, so far.
Yes, this is the one, hold on to it, hold on.
At night it was impossible to get any sleep, not enough silence, and not enough movement to pass as white noise. He could only wander so far, before some private or other dragged him back to the camp. He needed to sleep, he needed to think, and he needed some quiet place for him to do both. “There’s no such thing on the frontlines, son, so you better do your job or get out.” The colonel said and he had swallowed his comments on it, and with that, his pride.
He falls fast asleep on the less probable of all places: on the jeep, when they’re moving him north. After three weeks of restless sleep and constant turning and fussing on bed (or what passes for a bed around here), sleeping on a lumpy seat on their way to dangerous lands on a bumpy road, certainly feels like heaven. Being awakened by an explosion seems like the rudest awakening ever. Then again, waking up to the solitude of the aftermath had been worse. Far worse.
You’ve got it. Only one more piece missing.
He can’t believe his eyes when he sees him. The comforting feel of a familiar weapon directed at him sending joyful vibes all over his body. He can’t believe his luck either, for him, for John, to be a doctor.
Oh, John.
~~~
The smell of disinfectant hits his nostrils so hard it actually hurts him. He opens his eyes and closes them immediately; the light too harsh, his sight too long unused. He forces himself to open his eyes again and a white sheet comes into focus. It’s from the bed next to him. An older, unshaved man is beneath those sheets, his eyes opened and tongue mildly sticking out. A part of him is trying to find out whether the man is dead or alive, but he can’t really concentrate long enough for that. The other part of his brain is still blissfully asleep.
He goes about the room, moving nothing but his eyes, his body extremely heavy, impossible to disturb now. There are two more beds, both unoccupied. He’s about to go back to the dead-or-not mystery when he feels a pull from the centre of his body, a puddle of warmness pooling there. Even though he fights it, the warmness and the constant sinking sensation drag him back to sleep.
The second time he wakes up, the disinfectant isn’t so strong, or at least doesn’t feel so bad. On the other hand, previous stimuli that went unnoticed before make enough noise to be noticed now. His thorax feels like it has an elephant sitting on top of it. His head hurts only on his left side, but hurts enough that his vision on that eye is blurry and constricting, every edge of the room sending blinding pierces of pain to his skull; he can almost feel his head thrumming to the rhythm of his breathing.
There’s a radio playing somewhere outside the room and the unshaved guy with his tongue sticking out is gone (quite possibly deceased). He starts assessing the rest of his body past the expected pains and aches. From the bottom up, his leg is on a plaster cast, his entire upper body is tightly wrapped in bandages and there’s and IV drip pushing fluids and painkillers -thank god- into his blood stream. He lifts his hand and touches his face, there’s quite a bit of stubble in there, considerably beyond the 5-o’clock-shadow he so rarely sported when too busy to shave.Unacceptable, his inner voice provides and for a moment he wonders if perhaps he is in fact tongue-sticking-out guy and therefore deceased. No, better not to think like that, tangential thoughts could land him on the wrong side of reason and he’s far too pumped up on painkillers to allow himself wander off like that.
So, stubble, three-day worth and not restrained to the bed. Back to the friendly side then, into a proper hospital.
He wiggles his toes and witnesses the sheet ruffle at his feet. It’s enough to send a jolt of pain through his knee up his leg, but also enough to make him happy that so far he hasn’t lost his ability to walk. Life would be impossibly boring if he was somewhat unable to run around the city for one reason or another. Life would be simply unbearable actually, if that was the case. No, no tangents.
Three days. Proper hospital. Incredibly high on painkillers. Leg on a plaster cast. I’ve been shot!, he suddenly remembers. And with that comes a tidal wave of memories from the journey. The gritty feeling of dirt up to his nostrils. The warm touch of John as he was changing his bandages. The cold of the night. The cold of John’s anger at his prying eyes, at his own embarrassment.
The door swings open and it throws him off his thinking trail. He’s left wide-eyed staring at a taut older man wearing a white coat. A doctor, his brain provides, he’s a doctor. There’s a look of surprise on the doctor’s face and he quickly backs out of the door and calls for a nurse. When he comes back he immediately rushes to Sherlock’s bedside and puts two fingers to his neck, taking his pulse.
“How’re you feeling, Mr Holmes?”
He hasn’t used his voice for some time and it takes him a while to gather enough energy to produce sound, so it comes out rather rough, or at least rougher than he expected.
“I’m not Mr Holmes, my father was Mr Holmes. I’m Sherlock, nothing else.”
“Good, OK. Mr… Sherlock, your pulse is a bit slow, but that is to be expected. Do you know the date?”
Does he actually know the date? Improbable, even without getting shot and walking twenty kilometres on a busted knee, he rarely knows the exact date.
“June. Around the 20th of June.” He gives it a try anyway.
“Good. What year?”
“1944, of course.” His voice also feels a bit better, a bit more like himself.
“Alright. How’s the pain?” That question brings back the image of John asking him the same thing under the French sky in the middle of a wheat field. Something flutters at the pit of his stomach and he gives a side-glance to his IV bag wandering whether there’s such thing as too many painkillers.
~~~
“What do you mean I can’t go see him?”
“Mr Watson, please. I can’t let you out of the room yet, your injuries are healing, you could rip your stitches; it’s just not an option.”
John’s sitting on a hospital bed; his back precariously leaned against the wall, carefully avoiding his left side. He’s dressed on a flimsy hospital gown tied on his back. A glass of water resting on his night table and at least a dozen eyes bouncing between him and Mrs Calloway, the nurse.
“This is ridiculous. You do realise we’re like ten metres away, right? I mean, what could possibly happen over that stretch?” Mrs Calloway starts giving him the thousand-yard stare he’s reserved for her most unwelcoming patients and John hurriedly adds, “never mind, whatever, I’m going.”
“Mr Watson…”, she starts.
“Don’t Mr-Watson me, I know, I get it. I’m a doctor. I understand. Ripped stitches, dizziness, I get it, I really do. I just want to check on him.” He swings his feet over the edge of the bed and hops to the floor, he gives one unsteady pace and sways where he stands, feeling a blush creeping to his face. He catches himself on the wall, narrowly avoiding the night table. Way to go, John. You sure as hell convinced the nurse that you were fine. A few sniggers from his roommates encourage him to stand straighter; he’s not giving up.
The nurse gives him a pointed look and raises her eyebrows. He holds her stare and resorts to pleading, doing his best impression of puppy-eyes, but Mrs Calloway is having none of it. Hands on her hips and chin tucked down, she’s staring him down as you would a very naughty dog, her message clear; get back into bed or else.
She’s a tall, well defined woman, with curves that could make you swoon and forget your name in a nanosecond, but John knows better than to let himself be fooled by her looks, she’s heard the stories from the other soldiers, one of them assures she wrestled him to the ground and pin him there as if he was nothing more than a fluffy pillow. John also knows better than to ask why he had to be restrained in the first place.
Maybe, he thinks to himself, he can blame the swaying and swarming in his head to her beauty. Appeal to her vanity and womanly passions to get away with his will. However, he’s more afraid of what she could do to him if he falls into the wrong choice of words, than if he tries to bypass her to his friend’s room by pure stubbornness and sheer force of will. No, not a good idea. Pleading some more then.
“Please? Five minutes. I’ll even go in a wheelchair if that’s what it takes.”
”Please, Please”, John’s roommates call from their respective beds. “He’ll behave!”, another one adds. “Yes, he’ll be good!” the private to his left claims, joining his hands under his chin, in a begging stance.
The nurse laughs softly under her breath and throws up his hands.
The men cheer.
Ten minutes later John’s bundled up in a thick green blanket (his feet tucked in too), being wheeled to Sherlock’s room by an orderly.
The orderly pushes open the door and John has to admonish himself with a stern inner voice; he’s fussing, almost jumping on the wheel chair, which seems exceedingly inappropriate for a 29-year old army doctor. “Easy”, he tells himself when all the contained excitement, jolts his shoulder and he feels most of his blood drain away from his face. The orderly drops him off at the side of Sherlock’s bed and reminds him that he only has ten minutes, tapping the watch on his wrist as he goes out.
Sherlock’s pale and looks sunken on the bed, as if it’s about to swallow him whole. A plaster cast’s sticking out through the sheets, his upper body wrapped in bandages, a gauze pad on the back, rounding its way to the front, completely warping the straight lines of his body. A duvet’s covering his leg and up to his belly.
“Aren’t you cold?”, John asks, and he knows it’s a terrible conversation opener, but after holding the pieces of Sherlock together in the rain, what else is left to say?
Sherlock shakes his head and pulls the duvet a little closer. His eyes wander off to John’s arm, which’s still very much in bandages and in a sling, close to his chest. It’s John’s turn to shake his head ever so slightly and a small smile spreads over Sherlock’s lips.
“Glad you got to keep the arm.”
“Yeah, well, if they let you keep your charming personality, why not my arm?”, Sherlock’s smile widens at that. “They still had to take some of the muscle out. So, I have an arm; just don’t know how much of it it’s still functional.”
Sherlock nods absentmindedly a few times, and crooks an eyebrow, looks to the other side of the room and then back to John. He doesn’t say anything else though.
A song echoes through the hall and into the room, it’s from a radio that’s lost on the insides of the hospital and its intricate corridors. John doesn’t recognise the song and suddenly realises that’s what his life is going to be like from now on. He will no longer recognise the streets or the people. Even if he were to come back to the city that watched him grow, he would still be lost. There’s so little mundane aspects of him left, all he can remember is the war.
John’s agitation’s coming back -for good reason- and he can see Sherlock’s having a bit of an awkward moment himself.
“So, I just wanted to come see you, make sure you were OK.” John tries for a second time to start a conversation. Sensing his time is almost up.
“Thanks, John.”
“You welcome, mate. It was kind of my job to help you.”
“No, I mean…”
“Yeah, I know what you mean.”
The orderly chooses that exact moment to come take John back to his room. When the door to his room opens his roommates cheer and one of them throws him a dirty sock. He already misses the quiet -even if a bit awkward silence- of Sherlock’s room.
~~~
He’s been debriefed and asked as many questions as the officers could think of. He repeats his story over and over again, signs the reports and swallows the lumps at the back of his throat with as much dignity as he can muster. They wheel him to a different room after his interviewing session is finished and he’s thankful for the time alone, for the silence. Somehow he holds back the overwhelming sense of exposure that threatens to overcome him, squeezing his hand against the fabric of his trousers. He’s afraid that if he starts crying now, he’ll never stop.
It’s been two weeks since his surgery, the arm still hurts quite a bit, but much less than right after getting emergency surgery (or getting shot for that matter). He’s in dire need of physiotherapy and he doubts he’ll be able to live on his own for a while. He knows he’s leaving by the end of the week -ergo, two days-, but he just can’t bring himself to make plans. He’s happy, or at least, he thinks he ought to be. It’s just, everything pretty much seems like a giant blur, a smudge that’s supposed to represent the last three years of his life. It’s a very much indescribable feeling. The Major walks in just then and tells him about his possibilities, about coast hospitals, about physiotherapy, about returning home a hero. He doesn’t care about being a hero, he couldn’t care less about where to go or if a medal suits his needs at the moment. He lets the Major know exactly that. “Small ceremony then”, the Major answers and it’s settled.
The next day he decides he’s going to walk everywhere he wants to go, he’s sick and tired of the wheelchair and orderlies, quite literally, pushing him around. He puts on a roommate’s trousers and a blanket over his shoulders and walks straight through the front door into the garden. He admires the view for a moment and then bends down to pick a flower at his feet. His right leg buckles under him and he lands on the floor on his right side, curling his arm protectively over the other. A nurse rushes to his side to help him but stops dead on her tracks as John starts to laugh. The nurse lets out a long breath as he rolls over on his back and looks up, covering the sun with his hand to get a better look.
“Aren’t we clumsy today?”, the nurse tells him and he laughs again. More like a giggle this time, when it dies down enough he takes a deep calming breath and smiles to her.
“Yes, very. Any chance you can help me getting up?” The nurse bends over and carefully passes an arm under his. After some pulling and tugging, they’re both on their feet and on their way back to the ward.
The nurse puts him in the first wheelchair they pass by and admonishes him about wandering off like that on a bad leg. He jokingly answers he had forgotten all about it, until he tried to pick that flower up. “It must be all the joy riding on wheelchairs, I hadn’t noticed my leg was…”, he makes a gesture towards his leg.
“Well, don’t worry, I’ll tell the doctor so he can check it over.”
“Thank you..?”
“Melanie, my name is Melanie.”
“Well, thank you Melanie.” He says in a sing-song voice.
When Nurse Melanie passes the ward Sherlock’s in on their way to John’s, John asks if she could better drop him off in there instead, whilst she goes look for the doctor. She agrees and wheels him into the room. Sherlock, who was apparently asleep, abruptly opens his eyes and glares at the newcomers, gradually softening his expression as he lays eyes on John. Nurse Melanie makes a hasty retreat, having already dealt with Sherlock’s black moods.
“John.”
“Sherlock.”
“What brings you here?”
“I… I’m… umm,” why is this so hard?, “I wanted to say goodbye. I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“I know, I was wondering when you would come by.”
“Well, as usual secrets are well kept in military facilities…”
“Oh, please, it’s in your file, it says you’re to be discharged at six hundred hours tomorrow. Hardly a secret.” John laughs a bit at that. “So, will you find me when this is over? You know, back home?”
“You mean to say you won’t get yourself killed?”
“Yeah, it also means you get to live… so?”
“Yeah, I’ll think about it.”
“Good.” He relaxes back into the wall a bit, sinking on his pillows. “So, I see you took a rumble on the ground. What was that for? Trying to get the nurse’s attention?”
“Ha! I should’ve, but no, that was not it, I tripped.”
“Tripped? It’s called tripping nowadays. Interesting.” John throws a hearty laugh, leaning his head back and shaking it after.
“Unbelievable…”, he says under his breath. He looks at Sherlock: still stiff moves and bandaged around the chest. He is, in spite of everything and against all odds, very much alive.
There’s a knock on the door and immediately after Nurse Melanie’s head pops in. “The Doctor’s ready for you now, Doctor Watson”.
“Sure, just, one minute.” John grabs the rail of the chair and hoists himself up on his feet, extending his right hand to Sherlock. “It was quite an honour meeting you, Sherlock Holmes.”
Sherlock smiles tightly and shakes his hand back. “Quite an honour meeting you, John Watson. Think about it.”
“I will.” John lets go of Sherlock’s hand and sits back on the chair, motioning the nurse to come in. When she’s wheeling him out he makes her stop and turns around to look at Sherlock.
“So, Sherlock, I’ve been meaning to ask you…”
“Ask away.”
“Does it hurt?”, the nurse gives John a funny look and looks at Sherlock, curious about his answer. Sherlock’s cheek start to turn pink and a huge grin is spreading on his face. His left arm holding this chest.
“Only when I laugh, John, only when I laugh.” John’s laughter can be heard from the reception desk as Nurse Melanie wheels him to an examination room, where the doctor’s waiting to check him out.
The next day, John wakes up at five in the morning to get ready for his discharge. There’s a fresh uniform waiting for him at his bedside table and a razor. He goes about it as best as he can without help. Twenty minutes later an orderly comes in and helps him put on his shirt, tying his shoes, straightening his tie.
At five fifty the doctor walks in, discharge papers in hand and hands him a pen.
“Are you ready to go home, Doctor Watson?”
John inhales deeply through his nose and holds it for a second.
“Yes, I am.”
~End
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Notes:
This chapter got completely out of my control. Can you believe this chapter alone is like a third of the entire word-count? Anyway.
Here are the Wikipedia pages for the ME-109 (Messerschmitt Bf 109) and the machine gun MG 131. Hope you enjoyed the story.