Everyone at the train station were all smiling and hugging their loved ones. Before my goodbyes I gave my brother a small plane to remind him of me while I'm gone. As I gave him the plane I told him, "When you get lonely or miss me just know I'll always be up in the skies." Then I heard the final boarding call. I grabbed my bags and said " Goodbye I love you" to my mom and brother. In the back of my mind I hoped this would not be my last goodbye

    After the attack on Pearl Harbor I knew I had to enlist and fight for our safety of our country. I convinced my friend Matt to enlist with me. We both knew we had to help. We trained to be in Bomber Planes with a crew of 6 others. Training was very rigorous and I often budded heads with a lot of people in my squadron but over time we formed a brotherhood. We decided to call ourselves the "Knighthawks".

   We were deployed to Norwich,England . Upon arrival our orders were short and to the point. Our orders were to drop bombs on the oil refineries and metal factories. This was a brilliant plan to stop production of their air, land, and sea war machines. The first run into Germany was nerve-racking. Our whole squadron was apprehensive, except Matt. Matt was the Pilot of the plane. He was determined to complete these missions. He wanted to kill Nazis destroy their supplies and achieve peace all at once. He saw these missions as the first step to the ultimate goal. Seeing Matt's focus helped us concentrate on the mission and forget about our nerves.

   Each subsequent mission became more and more precise. We destroyed four factories in Dortmund, Bremen, Hannover and Frankfurt. After each run it felt more routine. The last city on our tour was Mainz,Germany . Mainz had the largest manufacturing factory in Germany so this bombing was of the upmost importance to us. Our approach and our bombing all went without a hitch. On the way back to the base Matt screamed " We have company!!" We were getting shot from all angles. We were scrambling like crazy and we could barely keep our balance because the plane was

spinning out of control. Once I gathered my balance, I stumbled towards the c***pit. I found Matt slumped on top of the controls, I screamed his name aloud...no response....I shook him as hard as I could, but he was lifeless. For a moment it felt like time froze, and I had a flood of memories that Matt and I shared growing up. Suddenly, I heard my captain yell "NICK!!!!! LET'S GO, WE HAVE TO JUMP!" As he handed me a parachute

I was terrified and felt alone without my best friend. All I knew was that I did not want to be here anymore. I landed behind a small village outside of the main town. Right away I knew someone must have seen me. I crept up to the town as quietly as possible trying to find a place where I could not be seen. In the town I could hear sirens. I found this small house and I broke into it through the window. There was no one inside so I scrambled to find a gun, but found nothing. I went upstairs to hide but I could hear they were close. They busted in the door. I heard the footsteps coming up and bang! They kicked in the door but they did not shoot me. Instead, they did something even worse, they took me in as a prisoner of war. They dragged me to the car and then injected me with something and everything went black.

When I woke up I was in a chair, with my feet and hands tied down and two guns pointed at my head. A German officer was in my face asking me everything he could about what our plan was. Every time I did not answer I got shocked. Each time I got shocked I could see my family and the plane I gave my brother. I just wanted to see my family one last time.