"Free Choice: Free World."

A "Flying Officer X" story involving a Lithuanian couple who run a restaurant in England.

The narrator finds common ground with them in remembering one of their countrymen who entered "a war he had no need to enter."

The story concerns the true story of Romualdas Marcinkus, the only Lithuanian in the RAF. On February 12, 1942 Marcinkus flew out of RAF Tangmere to attack the destroyers protecting the battleships S.S. Scharnhorst and S.S. Gneisenau as they made their 'dash' up the English Channel from the port of Brest. He was shot down, captured, and made a prisoner-of-war in Stalag Luft III, where he was among the first 10 men to make it out of the camp during the "Great Escape." He was recaptured and shot; his ashes were reinterred, along with those of 48 of the 50 other murdered officers, at Poznan Old Garrison Cemetry.

Published in:

• The Royal Air Force Journal (October 17, 1942)
• There's Something in the Air (1943)
• Slipstream: A Royal Air Force Anthology (1946)
• The Stories of Flying Officer 'X' (1952)
• The Complete Stories of Flying Officer 'X' (Bloomsbury ebook, 2018)