All Comments on 'P40 Bedouin Dreams'

I enjoyed reading your story. Easily worth 5 stars. Thank you for sharing another great story.

MST, you continue to amaze me with the quality of your stories. Your characters are personable and believable. I did not notice any anachronisms or errors of fact. Which is flabbergasting in a historical fiction these days.

...you should do it more often. Very well done, a wonderful read.

I'm a sucker for anything WWII related that involves planes. Your usual good writing and storytelling. Thanks.

An excellent piece of work indeed.

Good character development considering it's a short story, and intriguing "what if's".

More please!

At the beginning, it seemed as if you were inspired by Antoine de Saint Exupery's last desert flight, and was ready for something with a tinge of The Little Prince. It turned into a story much more like Paul Bowles' Sheltering Sky. Of course, in the end it's all your own. Nicely done, conveying the resignation to fate and nature in the beginning, the resignation to being the outsider, the last ditch but successful effort to protect beauty and humanity, and the pilot's displacement amidst the Bedouins.

I am honored beyond words. What an unexpected and wonderful gift, and more touching because of it. Thank you, my friend.

A very sweet and astounding story. Thanks

Thank you.

D.S.

I've now read this story 5 or 6 times and it still makes me want to be him !!!***

***I give it 5 stars and a 4 on the Budweiser Scale !!!

The story is excellent, and I echo everyone else's praise.

Except one thing: Cardiff. In *England*.

I'm an Englishman myself, so I accept it as an honest mistake. But a Welshman, now; a Welshman would be seriously offended by someone suggesting that Cardiff is in the Godforsaken, enemy land of England. The 'Diff is very definitely in Wales!

This one starts out not very romantic -- crashing in the desert and nearly dying under the merciless sun. But it's all context for the story itself. A far sexier version of Laurence of Arabia (WWII this time; Germans were even nastier!), with heroism, romance, and cultural detail to spare. I love stories that make me wonder. Even more, I love historical what-ifs that the author writes so well, I *wish* they were the truth. Who knows? Maybe this was Dennis Copping's happy ending after all... I hope so!

Very interesting. I only hope this really happened! I remember the news article well.

And a very interesting story. I enjoyed it very much.

Mark Felton did a video on Flt. Sgt. Copping that covers his flight, disappearance, and the discovery of his aircraft. While Mark's story points to an unhappy ending, I prefer MSTarot's story...

https://youtu.be/JHcB7jQj0T0

Hmm, gone native. Certainly not the first. A very good story, thank you, MSTarot.

'...all but standing on the flaps...'

Nope, flap lever is not something you would have to hold down with your feet.

''... felt my wheels touching the jagged rocks....'

Only an idiot would attempt a wheel-down landing in rough terrain. A belly landing is the best shot. Actually the safest would have been to bail out, and not wait until you're too low, as this character did.

So, not a very believable or authentic beginning.

Wastes what's left of the day he crashed, and all of the next day, before he decides to try to move and look for some way to survive?

Why would he bother removing the radio and batteries from the plane? They perfectly usable where they are, even if he has to do a little rewiring.

Kind of hard to root for a protagonist this stupid.

This story used the crash landing of Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping in the deserts of Egypt in 1942 as its inspiration.

His crashed airplane was not found till 2012.

The plane's condition in my story, wheels torn off while landing, the radio and battery removed, and a shelter built next to the aircraft are all authentic to that crash. Why he removed the radio I do not know, but he was a seasoned pilot who flew out from a repair base where war-damaged planes were often taken to be repaired. So, while I might not know why he did that, he probably had a reason.

"Standing on the flaps" was a saying used by British pilots in WW1 that lingered its way into WW2. I don't remember where I exactly saw that bit of trivia, but I thought I sounded cool so I added it to my story. I use YouTube and/or Google for story research.

Human remains, possibly those of Dennis Copping, were found 3 miles from the wreck. They have yet to be returned to his family.

I like my ending better. MST