A God in Ruins

A man named Teddy takes a walk that his men refer to as his “daily constitutional,” (1) and they get nervous if he doesn’t take it. He is on a farm and looks out over the fields. He does not expect to live until the autumn harvest. He salutes the daughter of a farmer on a nearby property. She does not know who he is, and he thinks, “from this distance he was just a uniform” (1). 

A boy named Teddy is walking with his aunt, Izzie. He shows her a skylark in flight and tells her about its beautiful song, although “[i]t was impossible to instruct on the subject of beauty, of course. It simply was” (4). He remembers his mother saying, “The purpose of Art is to convey the truth of a thing, not to be the truth itself” (4). 

Izzie begins singing the song, “Alouette, gentile alouette” (5)—a French war song about plucking birds. In February of 1944, Teddy will fight in World War II. Alouette will be the name of his unit, 425 Squadron. He will think about this day with Izzie before his last flight. They walk through a field of bluebells, and Teddy picks a bouquet to take to his mother.