Day by AL Kennedy

AZ: "Alfred Day wanted his war. In its turmoil he found his proper purpose as the tail-gunner in a Lancaster bomber; he found the wild, dark fellowship of his crew, and – most extraordinary of all – he found Joyce, a woman to love. But that’s all gone now – the war took it away. Maybe it took him, too.
Now in 1949, employed as an extra in a war film that echoes his real experience, Day begins to recall what he would rather forget..."

As usual Kennedy finds an extraordinary angle and writes with devastatingly painful accuracy