Much thanks to my beautiful, wonderful, amazing girlfriend, who gave me the book that inspired this – Loose Cannons: 101 Myths, Mishaps and Misadventures of Military History by Graeme Donald. Contains mild Franada (couldn't help it ^^;)

This is set during the Battle of Britain, 1940. I'm not going to try and get any more specific than that with the time frame, because no two historians seem to be able to agree on a set date.

It was a cold day when the planes came in, grey and grim. But so are many days in the United Kingdom, so that wasn't entirely out of the ordinary. What was, was the ragged squadron of planes that whined down the RAF runways and taxied into the hanger where Arthur Kirkland was working on his Hurricane.

The pilots stumbled out, some clutching wounds, all speaking very fast in a language that the Englishman couldn't place.

"Chaps, we need a medic!" He shouted over his shoulder, his eyes never leaving the strangers. Cautiously, he approached them, one hand straying towards any tool that could be used as a weapon, he didn't trust them.

"Say, do any of you blighters speak Queen's?" the personification of Great Britain and Northern Ireland asked hopefully, his eyes scanning the wan looking bunch.

A man came forward, if that was what he could be called. He was desperately emaciated, barely bones and skin, with lank hair that could be blond under the layers of filth that caked it to his scalp. Arthur looked at his eyes and shrank back. This man was a nation, no doubt about it. No one else's eyes had the right to so much pain. A county's worth of suffering burnt with green flames in this man's sunken eye sockets. Shoving his hand – thin and gnarled like a bundle of dry twigs – towards the Englishman, he rasped in a voice that at some point may have been pleasant to the ears,

"Polska. You are?" His English was accented, but discernable, and Arthur offered a smile that was more of a muscle spasm than anything else.

"UK," his said, trying to keep his diction crisp, "What happened to your men?"

"We are the Polish Air Force," the silent what's left of it wasn't necessary. It was painfully obvious that these men were hurt.

"The Nazi's are saying that they wiped you out. They said the Air Force was destroyed in the opening hours of the invasion," England repeated the report he had been read like the parrot he had taken from the coasts of South America back to the home sweet Britain – before he sold it for a tidy profit.

"The Nazi's," Poland hocked an impressive gob of spit onto the concrete floor, "Lying pigs in uniform. We cost them two hundred aircraft." Though his skin was sallow and stretched taut over his bones, and his face gaunt and haunted, there was still fire in this nation, as though he burnt from within. Arthur though he knew that fire, the kind that could consume a man and drive him to madness. But there was something in the Pole's eyes; he was already mad.

"So you wish to join the Allies?" was the polite, ever so upper-class invitation.

"We want to finish what we started," the vulpine smile on Poland's face sent shivers down the spine of the medic as he approached the conversing nations. But Arthur accepted it with a grim nod.

~====o)0(o====~

"Mon ami," the Frenchman retraced his last few steps so that he could speak face to face with the skeletal blond loading his guns, "You have to seed those rounds. We're in L'angleterre's Air Force now; we must abide by his rules." This was said with a sniff, as though he didn't quite buy his own advice. France's friendly tone, too was strained, that of someone barely managing the most meagre impersonation of civility.

"If I know I am run out of bullets, so do those pigs," a sick splat punctuated the epithet, "And I would not want for them to have this advantage. I am not like England and his cricket. I will not play house with murderers," Felix's burning green eyes gave Francis a sharp look, and he took a step back, hands balling into fists.

"Hey there, easy," There were impressive hollow's under the Canadian's eyes as he approached, hands raised to ward off hostility, his words muffled by the cigarette screwed into the corner of his mouth, "We're on the same side here."

"Stay out of this colony," Poland snarled, hoisting his fragile looking body into the cockpit, his eyes spitting sparks, "Speak not of what you cannot understand."

"Save it for the Krauts is all I'm saying," the larger nation said with a smile and a shrug, though his eyes were cold and hard, "Let's see who gets the most Luftwaffe up there, shall we?"

"No question, child," was the curt response, as his helmet was pulled on and his goggles suckered into place.

"C'est vrai, Matthieu," Francis sighed, running a hand through his own lank hair, his face haggard, as though he hadn't slept in a month, "This is not your war."

"And yet here I am, Papa." The effort he was putting into this war that was not his own was draining, but still he fought, and for that, France was grateful, the Canadian and his people had helped so much.

"Here you are, petit chou, and we should make sure our friend does not bomb all of Allemagne without us," the war-torn nation plucked the cigarette from the taller's lips, taking a long pull, "These will kill you."

"So will the Germans. I prefer smokes."

"Less chat; more dead pigs," Felix snapped, his engine slowly whirring into life as the second wave prepared for take-off just as the first came back to reload.

"Chocks away!" Arthur yelled over the bee-hive of sound, yanking his goggles down.

"You're full of it, Anglais!" Francis laughed back, a grim, dangerous twinkle in his eye as he stubbed the cigarette he had stolen against the side of his plane and tossed it out.

"I'll make you eat those words, Frenchie!" England howled, his more regional accent barely discernable above the din.

The all-clear was barely given the all clear before the emaciated Félix and his flint-eyed 303 squadron were in the air and screaming towards the dogfight up above.

The whine of engines was as good as any battle paean any of them had ever fought to, the rattle of guns and the roaring shrieks of passing aircraft reminiscent of the beat of drums and the hoarse singing of a thousand soldiers.

"Poland, you daft sod, get out of there!" Arthur howled into his radio as he watched the Slavic nation uselessly fire his empty guns, "You're out, get back down!"

"No," the other blond's voice was barely a crackle on the radio as his engine whined.

"Poland-!" the Englishman was forced to dive out of the way of a Luftwaffe plane, watching with gritted teeth as the other nation's aircraft gunned itself towards a retreating enemy craft, "What the blue blazes do you think you're doing?!"

Felix's eyes were alight with fire as his propellers screamed and hacked at the German plane, ramming it again and again until the besieged plane groaned and split, it's separated halves staggering in midair for a moment before plummeting to the earth.

"Taran," the Pole whispered delightedly.

The Nazis (I try and refrain from saying Germans, because not all Germans were Nazis, as not all Nazis were Germans) did bomb the Polish air bases, but enough planes got away to make life unpleasant for the Luftwaffe. The Kosciuszko squadron didn't play nice. The Polish word taran, or ram, has been adopted into commonplace aviation-speak because of how often the Poles charged their opponents, doing some serious damage with their propellers.