A replica Royal Aircraft Factory SE5a at Hood Aerodrome in Masterton, New Zealand.
Part 1 of 2
THEY took Peter from the wreckage with scarcely a scar except his twisted leg. Death had smoothed out some of the age in him, and left his face much as I remembered it long ago in the Mashonaland hills.
In his pocket was his old battered Pilgrim's Progress. It lies before me as I write, and beside it — for I was his only legatee — the little case which came to him weeks later, containing the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a soldier of Britain.*
It was from the Pilgrim's Progress that I read next morning, when in the lee of an apple-orchard Mary and Blenkiron and I stood in the soft spring rain beside his grave.
Hannay implies that Peter was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
Précis
After his friend Peter, an RAF pilot, was killed in the Great War, Richard Hannay was present to watch him pulled from the wreckage of his plane. Peter left little in his Will except the Victoria Cross he was awarded for his self-scrifice, and his well-thumbed copy of Bunyan’s ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’, from which Hannay read at the graveside. (58 / 60 words)
Part Two
A First World War cemetery at Saint-Quentin in the Aisne department of Picardy, France. It was near here that the action of ‘Mr Standfast’ took place, during the German offensive ‘Operation Michael’, from 21st March to 5th April 1918.
AND what I read was the tale in the end not of Mr Standfast, whom he had singled out for his counterpart, but of Mr Valiant-for-Truth whom he had not hoped to emulate. I set down the words as a salute and a farewell:*
Then said he, ‘I am going to my Father’s; and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder.’ So he passed over, and all the trumpets sounded for him on the other side.
The passage is taken from Part II of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’ by John Bunyan (1628-1688). See Wikipedia: The Pilgrim’s Progress.
Précis
Hannay records for posterity the words he read at Peter Pienaar’s graveside, from his friend’s own copy of ‘Pilgrim’s Progress’. Peter had modestly identified with Mr Standfast, but it was the passage where Mr Valiant-for-Truth is welcomed with triumphant joy to heaven that Hannay recited that day. (47 / 60 words)
