Ray Cross is an older corporal who joined the Royal Air Force to escape Britain, and with it the trauma of his wife’s death in childbirth. Stationed on Zanzibar, he observes two other airmen forcing a young recruit named Flynn to decapitate a chicken, and though he knows he could stop them he doesn’t intervene. After Flynn kills the bird and Ray goes to comfort him, he’s fixated on the fact that the chicken’s eyes stay open and conscious even once it’s been beheaded. Ray recalls his own reason for joining the airforce. His family was always disapproving and hard to please, and they never liked his wife Victoria, even though he worshiped her. When they found out she was pregnant, the couple was ecstatic, but Victoria died in childbirth and the grief forced Ray to run and leave the baby behind. Now, he takes every chance he gets to fly with his superior Squad Leader Dunstan. One day, Dunstan invites two nurses up on the plane with him. One of the nurses looks oddly like Victoria, and she seems like she likes Ray, but he can’t bring himself to feel anything for her. Dunstan invites Ray into the plane with him and sends Flynn to another base to collect supplies. They go up in the plane and Dunstan shows the girls some tricks to impress them, particularly one in which he flies very low to the ground. They pass over the base where Flynn went to get supplies and see the men gathered around waving at them. Flynn climbs up on a car for a better view, but despite Ray’s warnings, Dunstan flies the aircraft so low that it decapitates Flynn when it goes over. Flynn’s eyes remain open after his death, observing the scene and ocean around him.