There are no atheists in foxholes,
nor in Marauders clawing the sky,
where engines chant like iron prayers
and flak blooms black as blight.
Below, the foot soldiers drown in earth,
boots married to sucking clay,
faces tilted upward through rain and smoke,
watching salvation thunder past.
“Go get ’em, boys,” they mutter,
voices thin as breath in winter,
as B-26s roll overhead in hundreds,
steel crosses stitched across the clouds.
Hope rises from the trenches
with the smell of cordite and wet wool,
because somewhere above that ceiling of hell
are men who can push the war away—
just a little, just for today.
Up there, the pilots ride the storm,
soaked in flak, in fire, in black smoke,
hands white on throttles, teeth clenched tight,
each heartbeat a whispered plea.
Not for glory. Not for victory.
Just to make it through the run.
Just to see the earth again—
that hard-to-love airfield,
black with mud and oil and rain,
beautiful as mercy.
Between sky and soil,
faith passes back and forth—
from the men who pray for wings,
to the men who pray for ground.
And in that narrow space
between falling bombs and rising smoke,
belief is not a doctrine
but a need—
spoken in engines,
in shouted curses,
in silence,
in the simple hope
of coming home alive.
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