Jonathan Moss

A fictional character in Harry Turtledove's Timeline-191 novels. Unlike other characters he is more an archetype (combat pilot) than modeled on a historical analogue.

Jonathan Moss originated from a well-to-do family in Chicago and was in his early- to mid-twenties when the First World War broke out. He became an aerial observer assigned to the Ontario Front, flying a Curtiss Super Hudson and believing himself to be a 'knight of the air', metaphorically as well as physically above the ground-based barbarity. His shiny armour was swiftly stained by the reality of aerial warfare with his first kill in September 1914. He grew more disilliusioned as his job grew to include strafing ground troops, supply columns and the occasional refugee herd. Lieutenant Moss soldiered on, however, eventually being paired up with an photographer, Percy Stone, in a Wright-17.

When Stone was wounded over London, Ontario in mid-1915, Moss got himself transferred to a Martin 'single-decker' fighting scout, where he sent more British and Canadian aircraft down in flames (making ace in 1916) even as flightmates died around him. Moss himself was shot down only once (by riflefire), but survived with nothing worse than a bitten tongue.

As the RFC's Sopwith Pup decimated American fighter squadrons in late 1916, Moss was promoted to Captain and shipped out to train on the German-designed Albatros D.II, where he was reunited with Percy Stone. 1917 saw more bloodshed in Ontario, even as the US Army fought its way into Toronto. It was during this time that Moss first met Laura Secord, a Canadian farmwife and staunch patriot who established an antagonistic but strong relationship with the pilot.

After the war's end Moss returned to the study of law, passing the bar exam in 1921 while musing on Laura Secord (now a widow) and his dead comrades. He went to work in Occupied Canada in Berlin (our world's Kitchener, Ontario) - coincidentaly near Secord's farm. Moss spent the next two decades battling for the rights of Canadians against an unsympathetic US government and military, even as he continued his friendship with Secord. Their relationship progressed to the point where the couple eventually married and had a daughter. The union proved to be troubled but durable; Moss received death threats from terrorists and survived a bomb blast that destroyed Occupation Headquarters in Berlin. During the 1930s, as the world headed towards another war, Moss took up flying again and requalified as a fighter pilot.

In 1940, a 'freedom fighter' sent a bomb addressed to Laura for her part in exposing the nascent rebellion of 1925. His wife and daughter were both killed in the blast, his apartment and possessions were trashed, and his twenty years of fighting for Canadian rights had gained him nothing. He rejoined the Army as a regular pilot, winning a promotion to Major and squadron command; the US was eager for any combat veterans it could gain. Operation Blackbeard found him in southern Illinois; he was swiftly transferred to Ohio once the fighting erupted.

This new war proved very different from Moss' experience in Ontario. The CS Army's rapid advance meant that squadron organisation and base postings were haphazard at best. Though his grief was subsumed by the war, Moss felt more alone than ever; the only other pilot he spoke with was Joseph Patrick Kennedy, Jr, and that was due to the latter's loquaciousness. The aging Moss also seemed to have lost much of his piloting skills, as he was shot down over Ohio, and again over Virginia early in 1942. The second time he was captured by the Confederates and shipped to a POW camp.