The Shepherd

The ShepherdFor a brief moment, while waiting for the control tower to clear me for take-off, I glanced out through the Perspex cockpit canopy at the surrounding German countryside. It lay white and crisp beneath the crackling December moon.Behind me lay the boundary fence of the Royal Air Force base, and beyond the fence, as I had seen while swinging my little fighter into line with the take-off runway, the sheet of snow covering the flat farmland stretched away to the line of the pine trees, t...