The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

When Jamie came home it was obvious he’d been crying, but he wouldn’t say
why. He wet the bed in the night and woke up miserable. Outside, gray clouds
were spitting rain. “I can’t go to school in the rain,” Jamie said.
“Of course you can,” Miss Smith replied. She looked awful, her hair every
which way and great dark circles under her eyes. She held her mug of tea in
both hands and stared into it.
“I ain’t going,” Jamie said.
“Don’t start with me,” Miss Smith replied.
We sat down to breakfast and a plane blew up at the airfield.
It crashed, I guess. It didn’t blow up in the air, it blew up because it
slammed into the ground. The gas tank ruptured. We learned that later. It
sounded like a bomb exploding—like a bomb in Butter’s pasture. We all
jumped up, knocking over dishes and chairs. I ran toward the door, toward
Butter, but Miss Smith grabbed me and Jamie and pushed us beneath the
table. After a moment when nothing else happened she got up and looked out
the window. “Oh,” she said, “it’s an airplane.”
Under billows of black smoke across the road, we could see orange flames
and twisted pieces of metal. Jamie cried out, and would have run to the
airfield, but Miss Smith held him back. “No civilians,” she said. “No
civilians, not now. See? They’re getting the fire out.” We could see
servicemen and women, tiny in the distance, working frantically all around
the burning plane.
“Who was the pilot?” Jamie asked. “Who was the crew?”
“We don’t know them,” Miss Smith said, stroking his hair.
“I knew them,” Jamie said.
I wasn’t sure how Jamie could know them—there was a big fence around
the airfield now, and he knew he wasn’t allowed there, though of course that
wouldn’t really stop him—but I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t going to call
him a liar, not over a dead airman.
“I wonder what kind of plane it was,” Miss Smith said.
“A Lysander,” Jamie said. “A transport plane. It could have had ten people