Explain the significance of this fantasy and its contrast with going to war? Do you think Cross can eliminate the impact of Martha on his life as a soldier?Explain

At night, on guard, staring into the dark, they were carried away by

jumbo jets. They felt the rush of takeoff. Gone! they yelled. And then

velocity—wings and engines—a smiling stewardess—but it was more than

a plane, it was a real bird, a big sleek silver bird with feathers and talons

and high screeching. They were flying. The weights fell off; there was

nothing to bear. They laughed and held on tight, feeling the cold slap of

wind and altitude, soaring, thinking It's over, I'm gone!—they were

naked, they were light and free—it was all lightness, bright and fast and

buoyant, light as light, a helium buzz in the brain, a giddy bubbling in the

lungs as they were taken up over the clouds and the war, beyond duty,

beyond gravity and mortification and global entanglements—Sin loi! they

yelled. I'm sorry, mother**kers, but I'm out of it, I'm goofed, I'm on a

space cruise, I'm gone!—and it was a restful, unencumbered sensation,

just riding the light waves, sailing that big silver freedom bird over the

mountains and oceans, over America, over the farms and great sleeping

cities and cemeteries and highways and the golden arches of McDonald's,

it was flight, a kind of fleeing, a kind of falling, falling higher and higher,

spinning off the edge of the earth and beyond the sun and through the

vast, silent vacuum where there were no burdens and where everything

weighed exactly nothing—Gone! they screamed. I'm sorry but I'm gone!

—and so at night, not quite dreaming, they gave themselves over to

lightness, they were carried, they were purely borne.