‘He ain’t going to wake up, Prince, he’s gone,’ said Sean. He had pulled away enough of the seaweed to reveal the clothes on the corpse’s body.

No oilskins, no slicker.

‘That ain’t a fisherman,’ he said suddenly. ‘That’s a flying jacket. He’s an airman, one of our boys.’

The pair of them stared with renewed awe at the dead man rolling with the rhythmic pattern of the waves.

‘Gee… reckon we should bury him?’ said Danny. ‘We could make him a nice cross from some driftwood. There’s plenty of it lying around.’

Sean considered the idea, but he knew this kind of thing required the intervention of grown-ups, and someone official to ‘square the box and nail the lid’, as his mom used to say. ‘We should really go tell the deputy, or my dad, or someone. He’s one of our fly-boys, Danny — that makes him important. You go and get my dad and tell him, I’ll see if he’s got a name tag.’

Danny nodded, relieved to have an excuse to step back away from the body. He turned around and ran back across the beach towards the sand dunes and the small village of Port Lawrence beyond, casting one last glance back at Sean as he kneeled down beside the body.

Sean watched Danny go before turning back to the body. He wasn’t that keen to touch it any more than he had to, but he knew it was the right thing to do. The man had a name, and no doubt a mom and a dad, and a missus who needed to be told where he’d ended up.

Sean knew the body would have something with a name on it… a dog tag, or a name-badge on the chest or something. He knew all the fly-boys had some way to identify them.

With one hand only and a barely concealed look of distaste on his face he slowly peeled back the lapel of the leather flying jacket and prepared to slide his fingers under the wet tunic and hunt for some tags. Sean was fully aware that he might just make contact with the dead man’s cold flesh, and his bottom lip drew back with disgust at the thought.