The droning grew louder. McLean, leaning on his pitchfork,  scanned the sky looking for the source.

An RAF flyer, he thought. Not unusual in the evening, although this aeroplane sounded much lower than normal.

The noise exploded over the ridge, knocking McLean off his feet. As he fell backwards he saw the low-flying ‘plane, with the Balkenkreuz insignia painted under the wings.

Lying on his back, McLean watched a parachute mushroom from the cockpit. The plane carried on for another half mile, before it careered into the freshly-ploughed field.

McLean picked himself up. He could see the pilot struggling to free himself from the parachute.

Brandishing the pitchfork in front of him, McLean approached. ‘I think you’re a wee bit lost, laddy,’ he called.

The pilot, dazed from his ordeal, raised his hands to the sky and stared at the menacing man coming towards him.

‘Hauptmann Alfred Horn, I have an important message for the Duke of Hamilton.’

‘David McLean, ploughman. I think you better come with me.’

photo-20170717154624399
Copyright J S Brand

In May 1941, Rudolf Hess, Deputy Fuhrer to Hitler, flew from Bavaria to Scotland, crash landing at Floors Farm, south of Glasgow. Ploughman David McLean, brandishing a pitchfork, captured Hess (who initially identified himself as Alfred Horn), before handing him over to the Home Guard. The real reason for Hess’s bizarre flight remains a mystery, although it is believed he wanted to negotiate peace, possibly without Hitler’s knowledge. Read more about Hess and his flight on WIKIPEDIA.

Written as part of Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers. The challenge is to write a flash fiction story in around 150 words, based on the weekly photo prompt. Thanks as always to the challenge host Priceless Joy. For more information visit HERE.

To read other stories based on this week’s prompt, visit HERE.

28 thoughts on “THE PLOUGHMAN AND THE NAZI”

  9. Strangely it took me a while to click that this was about Hess, which is odd as one of oldest friends is obsessed with all things WWII, including this true tale. Nevertheless it’s a really well written story that would stand on its own even if it wasn’t based on fact.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google+ photo

You are commenting using your Google+ account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.