homepage Forums Air Combat & Civil Aviation Battle of Britain + Battle of Britain II Here's what happened (Continued)

Folks,

As always, we find ourselves poised upon the cusp between the past and the future. We are never more than a second, a heart beat from either you know. Here is a very good reason to finish that time machine you've been building. You could jump back or forward a few days. Either way you might reasonably expect to avoid reading any further.

Buried Treasure
By:JRT
HWH_Cont_Page 32
2/24/03

It is late August 1940 and a ten-year-old boy known as Toby looked up and cocked his ear as a roaring, sputtering, popping sound came rushing his way. Standing there, mired almost to his knees, in the midst of his father’s plowed field; the young boy was astonished to see an aircraft suddenly pop up over the rise trailing dense smoke back into the misty, green valley below. He watched as the lumbering aircraft sailed unsteadily over the rocky wall at the end of the field to level off and plow nose first into the fresh earth not 100 yards away from where he stood transfixed.

There was a horrendous cacophony of sounds as the Spitfire skidded across the plowed earth just past the stunned boy to crash headlong with a shower of sparks, acorns and dead limbs right into the great Oak that was the boundary to the next farm.

A Spitfire! Within a moment the boy was streaking toward the downed British fighter. Close behind ran the boy’s father and several farm hands. The father was screaming for the boy to stay clear of the wreckage as it might explode any moment. As if to emphasize the words of the father there came a small but frightening explosion from the nose portion of the twisted fighter. This flattened the boy a good 20 yards from the crash and allowed his father and the field hands to get there first.

As the excited lad rose to his feet and spit out a clod of earth he saw his dad and the other lads rip open the burning airplane’s canopy and begin to remove the struggling pilot. As Toby arrived by a crumpled wing the lads had only just got the poor stricken pilot out of the wreckage of his smoldering craft. As they began to drag the barely conscious man to safety Toby noticed something brown slip from the man’s weakening grasp. The item fell to earth and lay there between the troughs of sticky dirt created by the pilot’s boots being pulled through the soft earth. Toby recognized it was one of the pilot’s leather flying gauntlets. The boy marked the spot in his mind as he followed the men to safety.

By the time help arrived the pilot had lost his final battle. Deeply saddened, young Toby wandered back out toward the burning wreckage. It had been hours since the crash and Toby knew that not much was left of the Spitfire. He was a lad with a mission however and his little legs finally returned him to the very spot where he had seen that glove fall to the ground. Finding it, the reverent minded young lad picked it up and walking solemnly to a grassy patch near that curiously gnarled and splintered old oak. This area just beyond the crash had previously been untouched by the plow. Here he dug a deep hole with his tender little hands and buried the precious gauntlet. Saying the only prayer that he knew and fighting back tears of pain all the while, little Toby stood by that patch of grass and turning his nose toward the setting sun he gave a snappy salute.

It is almost sixty years later now and an elderly man grumbles to himself as his wrinkled old hands dig feverishly into freshly plowed earth right under a curiously splintered and gnarled ancient oak. His failing eyes had spied something partially sticking out of the ground here only a moment ago. There was something buried here and he felt that he just had to get it out. He had to know if it was what he hoped it was. If it were it would be a miracle after sixty years.

The old man’s son and grandsons stopped what they were doing and came over to check on the feeble old man and just to see what he was doing. The old fellow’s mind had been slipping of late and they were concerned that it might have slipped a good deal more after two hours out here in the hot August sun.

The old gentleman was just pulling something dark brown and absolutely filthy from the ground. Holding it as if it were made of pure gold the grandfather turned to his boys with tearing eyes and a huge grin of satisfaction across his sweaty, grizzled face.

Well old Toby’s finally lost it they were all thinking as they recognized the “treasure” he had pulled from the moist English earth. There in his trembling hands was nothing seemingly more valuable to them than a slimy old leather glove just dripping with mud.

Postscript:

Leather is almost indestructible. Archaeologists excavating Hadrian’s Wall have uncovered literally thousands of discarded Roman era leather footwear in very good condition. Amazing.