All War is Lost

below: Last scheduled flight of the Concord from NYC to London. Pics by Sybil







This is my entry for remembrance day also know in France and Belgium as Armistice Day.
I was aboard a train headed for Edinburgh on November 11th, 1999, cruising along England's North Sea coast. Over the intercom came an announcement to observe a minute of silence in remembrance at 11:11.
It occurred to me that along this coast were many air fields where allied pilots and bomber crews left and never returned, many never to be seen again. Simply disappearing into the fog of war.
One of them was my uncle, 19 year old Robert Charles Shilliday, MIA January 1945. My middle name was given to me after my mother's lost brother.
The silence at 11:11 that morning was very special.
afterthought
It didn’t take long after The Wright’s first manned flight at Kitty Hawk that people realized this new wonderful invention would be good to use in the theatre of war.
I am strictly anti-war but I love everything about flight, including the war machines man has created since the early 1900’s. As a child I was surrounded by pilots. My father and three uncles flew in the service, one of them disappearing somewhere in Europe in 1945. So I was exposed to planes from the time I learned to see and think. My father would let me sit in cockpits of a variety of aircraft as they sat in hangars out at the base. Although I never became a pilot myself, I have experienced flight hundreds of times and especially love the feeling of breaking through the cloud into the great blue yonder…..
MY favorite planes as a child include some that my family members flew.
Credits: Sabre - Spad - Spitfire - Kitty Hawk



