This is my second attempt at aviation fiction. It’s much shorter and quite different from the first, “Hello, Columbus”, which ran to five chapters. This tale is all in one piece and is, I hope, short enough to be digested in a single sitting.

Also unlike the first story, "Waypoint" has no genesis in my flight simulator experiences. I can promise, however, that we haven’t seen the last of Boxwings Air Freight. I’m not done with them yet and I feel certain they will appear in future writings. This piece is different in content and setting. It takes place in a time that I’ve always had a great interest in – the war years, the first half of the 1940s. I’ve tried to capture just a glimpse of what that must have been like.

It was a time of hardship and a time of contrasts; a time of heroes and of those who thanklessly made their heroism possible. Even here in the US, there were deep shortages of important commodities so that the forces of good could have them in the required quantities. There was great disruption of what had been routine day to day activities in former times and the unwanted absence of a great many people, many permanently. Overlying it all was tension, worry and an uncertainty of the outcome – but also a universal determination to contribute and to succeed in the common effort that hasn’t been equalled since. A contemporary author has referred to those people as, “The Greatest Generation”. I believe he got it right – they were.

I was born a little too late to have been of that period, but grew up in the immediate post-war years, steeped in the aftermath. I don’t have many regrets in life, but I’m just a little bit saddened to not have been able to live that first hand, and to have been a part of that great generation. They did us proud and we should be humbly appreciative of their individual efforts and their collective accomplishment. If not for them, the world today would be a very different place, and not for the better.

So, I’d like to offer a dedication of this work to the people of that generation, those who served and those who supported.
 

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Immense thanks is due to my protégé, the famous Mutley, of Mutley’s Hangar. He’s been the illustrator, editor, publisher, constructive critic, executive producer and even mentor of my writing efforts and has contributed much in both effort and creativity. I don’t have the words to thank him properly, but I think he knows how much I appreciate what he does.

Like many things, writing is fuelled by feedback, my writing no less than anyone else’s. However you feel about this piece, I would very much appreciate hearing from you. Your encouragement drives me to create more and your constructive comments help make the next effort better. If you make it to the end of this story and have the time and inclination, please take a moment to let me know.

Thanks.

John Allard
 

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