The War Lover

by John Hersey

  “ ‘Yes, dear.’

  “ ‘Can I go to the movies in Columbus tonight?’

  “ ‘Who with, dear?’

  “ ‘Bill Marrow.’

  “ ‘That’ll be perfectly all right. Yes, dear. You go right ahead now with Billy.’

  “We drove over to Columbus and I took her to the movies, and one way and another I kept her out real late. I went to see her the very next night, and Mama raised no objection to me taking her to Omaha. So that second night Dottie said to me, ‘You know, Bill,’ she said, ‘I don’t get this. Mama won’t let me go out with anyone else alone, and two nights in a row! And with everyone else she gives me a definite time to be home, and when I come in, she asks me: what did I do? and was I a good girl? But last night she didn’t even call me in her room, and when I went in there she just rolled over and made out she was half asleep, she only groaned like. I don’t get the picture.’

  “So I said, ‘Maybe she just trusts me, Dottie.’

  “And Dottie said, ‘That’s a hot one.’

  “And I said, ‘Yeah, it is.’

  “Junior year I transferred to Georgetown, in Washington, D.C. Christ’s sake, I just had to break away and get to the Eastern seaboard. I arrived in Washington with a portable radio and a brand-new set of golf clubs; I must’ve thought I was joining a God-damn country club. I soon found out.

  “My roommate was Maxwell Gorse Ervin. We called him Plankton, he was so little, he was littler than you are, Boman. He was the hundred-and-fifteen-pound wrestler on the team, and now he’s wrestling the controls of one of those huge PBYs, those flying barges they have in the Navy, you know? He’s a lot smaller than you are, Boman, and those planes, Jesus, they’re huge. I have to laugh when I think of him flying a PBY. Almost as silly as you flying a Fort, Boman.

  “The first time I ever flew, I tell you, it was so much better than going to bed with Dottie’s mama—or anyone else. It was really keen. It was one day Plank and me went out to look around at Anacostia, and while we were looking the planes over we asked if we could hop a ride. And one of the fellows said, ‘Sure.’ It was an old Navy O2U he took us up in. We just flew around Anacostia. God’s teeth, I couldn’t wait to get another ride.

  “Then, vacation time, Plank said to me, ‘Thug,’ he said, that’s what he called me for a while, he said, ‘The hell with the train, let’s go over to Boiling Field and catch a lift in a plane.’ So I said I was game, and we did, and after that we both wanted to be fliers.

  “I lasted out that one year, then I flunked out. That place wore me to the bone. End of that year I weighed a hundred and forty-eight pounds. At the present time I weigh a hundred eighty-six. So you can see. At the present time, by the way, I wear size nine shoes and a size seven and a half hat. Did you ever hear of such small feet going with such a big head? It’s the girls that gave me a swelled head.

  “I wasted two years working in a grain dealer’s office in Omaha. I never did anything except what they told me to do, not a God-damn thing more. I was like a God-damn sergeant. All I could think about was learning how to fly or else getting in there with some girl. But I didn’t do anything about the flying—and the other: hell, those girls were so easy it turned your stomach.

  “Then I got this letter from Plank, he was in Worcester, Mass., and he said he was taking flying lessons, so I packed a suitcase and went out there and got a job, and me and Plank learned at the same time from this old guy that was a boozer from way back. The reason I’m such a good flier, he was drunk all the time, and you could say I was obliged to solo the first time I ever went up.

  “Seriously, though, I was a natural. My reflexes are fast. When a doc hits under my kneecap with that little rubber hammer to test my reflexes, that doc has got to be a well co-ordinated man to duck my foot, I kick like a God-damn bullfrog—know what I mean?

  “I couldn’t afford a plane, so I just bummed rides whenever I could. I built up pretty good hours that way. Then I finally got a job testing for Mildress—I lied like a Eyetalian hoor about how many hours I’d had, and they liked the way I handled a plane, so they put me to work. They’d broke a test pilot’s neck two weeks before, so it was in their minds that they wanted me more than I wanted them.

  “It took me exactly twelve minutes to test a plane, they made these stodgy little trainers—remember, Boman? Twelve flat, to get up, give it a slow roll, a snap left, a snap right, and a dive. Those dives were my meat! I used to give the hoi polloi a thrill, believe me.

  “Then the time came when you could be blind as a mole in the ground and still see there was going to be a war, so I got myself lined up to pretend I had to learn to fly, and from Spanner Field on it was one long rat race. You know that, Boman.

  “That’s about it, except I failed to mention the women in my life, only don’t think I forgot ’em. I never forget ’em for a minute. I’ll never forget one, I called her the Filly from Philly, she came to deliver an album of records, wanted to make me a present of this album—Dwight Fiske; remember Dwight Fiske, Boman?—and she stayed seventy-two hours. The Girl Who Came to Dinner.

  “I don’t know my secret, me and my ugly pan, unless maybe if you treat a hoor like a lady she’ll do anything for you, and you treat a lady like a hoor she’ll either do anything for you or haul off and bop you one, which is a time-saver in the long run.

  “No, seriously, I’m just nice to ’em. I make an effort. I remember when I was working at Mildress, I used to make a point of diving right down over the houses of each one of my best girls daily. To let them know I was thinking about ’em.

  “Some people say I talk too much. That gets me real sore, because I’m just making an effort. Once a girl in Denver, she’d heard I was a blowhard and she came up and she said, ‘Are you this famous Guff Marrow?’ I didn’t talk for two days. Man, that struck a nerve.

  “I didn’t get my name of Buzz until I was at Spanner Air Base, getting my so-called flight instruction when I was already a hell of a flier. In my bunch of cadets, we had two Smiths, two Days, and two Turners, and no less than ten guys named Bill, which was always getting everybody screwed up on exactly who they meant, so they just doled out a whole new bunch of names. They looked at me and said I was going to be Buzz. So I’m Buzz.

  “Let’s see, what else?

  “Oh: cars. I’ve had a slew of cars. The only thing that used to pass me out home was the Streamliner. I clocked it at a hundred and five near Grand Isle, once. My last car, you know, I left it in the parking lot at Bennett the day we flew over here. The key was in it and everything. I just drove up and got out and went on board the plane. It was a second-hand Olds convertible, only cost me two hundred and thirty bucks. Who knows, John Q. Public may be honest after all, the damn thing may even be there when I get back. But if it’s not, hell, I’ll just figure I lost it in a crap game. I’ve lost more’n that at one sitting. But God damn it, I am sore about leaving my electric razor in the car. It was Haverstraw’s fault, the son of a bitch. I told him to put it in the back, in my suitcase. He just left it loose. I’d a lot sooner lose my car than that razor. I have a very tough beard. Have to shave at least twice a day to be presentable.

  “And, let’s see. Wherever I go, I always carry two fifty-dollar bills. I call it my mad money. Case I get in any kind of trouble.

  “Well, you asked for the story of my life.”

  Buzz folded his arms on the table and leaned on them, and stuck out his jaw at Daphne. He looked pleased with himself.

  “But what about the war?” she said, using again the very small voice of someone intimidated by such masculine vitality as his.

  “Never had it so good,” he snapped out.

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I like to fly,” he said. “I like the work we’re doing.”

  “Work?”

  “Listen,” he said, with flashing eyes, “Boman here and I belo
ng to the most destructive group of men in the history of the world. That’s our work.”

  Daphne looked at me questioningly, as if to ask whether I associated myself with these statements, and I believe I gave my head the slightest negative shake. Her look, then, of only a moment’s duration, dissolved me altogether. I had from that instant onward no question in my mind that Daphne really did prefer me to Marrow, and that I was quite lost to her.

  I had an odd, uncomfortable feeling about my pilot. For the first time, I sensed a serious lack in him, and, also for the first time, with Daphne, I was conscious of a gap of nationalities. I felt apologetic about my American colleague. I determined to explain to Daphne, at a later meeting, that…But what would I explain? There was something wanting in Marrow’s education. He was uncultured, crude…. No, that was hardly it…. Ours was a people who liked what money could buy; we were blunt, open, aggressive…. No…

  But I did not need to explain, because already Daphne understood far better than I myself did about Buzz Marrow.

  12/

  Dunk Farmer, the tech-three bartender in the officers’ club, was trying to worm his way onto Apollo Holdreth’s crew.

  A number of us were loafing in the club, playing acey-deucy and shove ha’penny, or just standing at the bar and throwing the bull. It was May twelfth, and by then we had gone more than a week without a mission, for chilly, cheerless, damp weather had kept the Fortresses on the ground, and the combat crews, particularly those that had nearly completed their tours, were increasingly nervous and bored. Many of the men were drinking, and Marrow and I were at the bar having Scotches; neither of us was the least bit tight. I was still oppressed by the shadow of doubt about Marrow that had come over me the previous Sunday, when we had lunched with Daphne.

  You could tell who was considered the hottest pilot in the Group at any time by watching which man Dunk was trying to do a snow job on. Dunk was a Florida swamp cracker who in peacetime had been a shouting sort—a carnival barker, a honky-tonk singer, a small-time auctioneer. Night after night, in the club, he proclaimed, in his rapid, penetrating, assertive voice, a crude fatalism that went down well with the fliers. “I figure I’m a goin’ to die, see, but I don’ reckon it’s goin’ to be till my number’s up. I don’ give a damn what happens, like I might be in a Flyin’ Fortress, or in a boat, see, and it crash, and if it ain’ my time, hell, it cain’t kill me. Might to cripple me, but it cain’t kill me, not if my number ain’ up.”

  It was Dunk’s everlasting complaint that he couldn’t seem to get sprung from bar duty to combat; he couldn’t seem to talk anyone into taking him on as a gunner.

  “Hell, I ben pullin’ treggers ever since I was knee-high to a rabbit tick,” he was saying to Holdreth. “I can shoot real nice.”

  “All right, Dunk,” Holdreth said. “Tell you what. If my tail gunner gets shot up, I’ll take you on.”

  “Gee, Major, that’s the nuts,” Dunk said. His voice was delighted but his face was curiously crestfallen.

  “What makes you want to fly with him?” Marrow asked Dunk, jerking his head in Holdreth’s direction. Holdreth turned his face quickly toward Marrow and saw that Marrow was grinning at him. “He don’t fly a Fort,” Marrow said. “He flies a f—ing windbag.”

  Holdreth could have made a fight out of that crack, but he chose to turn away.

  Marrow had been like that for several days—edgy, provocative. But there was always a grin balanced on the edge, and it was hard to tell how serious he really was.

  Doc Randall, our Flight Surgeon, came slouching up to the bar for the first of his invariable pair of nightcaps. Doc was a big man, who carried himself with a stoop, sagging as he walked and never standing up straight, as if he thought it wouldn’t be polite to be too big. He had a free-flowing mustache and a number of warts and moles, and the lines running down by his mouth were deep, and his brown eyes, under thick brows, were like a judge’s pardon. He had huge hands on thin arms, and his gestures were demonstrations of the law of centrifugal force, for once his hands got moving they swung right out to the limit. It was not a bad idea to stand beyond his reach, when talking to Doc, so as not to be clouted by uncontrolled flying objects with fingers on them. Doc mumbled, especially when on the border of being tight, and this made him seem undogmatic, which we fliers liked in a flight surgeon. It was a basic rule of Air Force life that officers of field rank, desk warriors, chaplains, and flight surgeons should be closely watched for signs of cowardice, effeminacy, hypocrisy, or moral turpitude; Doc was free of all that. He was sturdy, masculine, aggressive, and he had an eagle eye for goof-offs.

  Right now Dunk Farmer, as he poured the Doc a shot, apparently began to face the possibility that Apollo Holdreth’s tail gunner might in fact be killed. “Say, Doc,” Dunk said. “I get a bitch of a pain in my chest when I breathe. Anything I can do about it?”

  “Stop breathing, Dunk,” Doc shortly said. “That’ll relieve the pain.”

  Marrow barked out a laugh. Marrow, I have come to think, was afraid of Doc, and because Buzz was driven to show the world that he was afraid of no man or thing, he took a fierce line with Doc. “Listen, Doc,” he said. “I’m horny. I get horny after we get all these stand-downs. Why don’t you set up a nice clean hoor house for us fliers? I got to get me a girl—or else get up in the air.”

  Doc just stood there looking at Marrow. The placid friendliness in Doc’s stare must have been profoundly upsetting to Marrow, who was itching for a fight.

  “Flying’s the same as saltpeter,” Marrow said. “It kills the sex urge—right, Doc?—in any guy who’s got a lot of it. If you bastards are going to keep me on the ground all the time, why don’t you give me some relief?”

  Doc gave Marrow an unmistakable brush-off. He turned to others at the bar and began discussing with them news that had come over B.B.C. earlier in the evening, of the Axis collapse in North Africa. Von Arnim, Rommel’s successor, had been captured.

  “Where’s the relief in that?” Marrow truculently asked.

  “My office hours begin at six a.m.,” Doc firmly said to Marrow. “At sick quarters. You know where it is.”

  I saw Marrow blanch. I expected him to say that there was nothing the matter with him., he didn’t need a God-damn psychiatrist; but he held his tongue. Buzz was silent, indeed, for half an hour, but he had a couple of snorts, and he was as tense as a racehorse in the starting chutes.

  Doc finally left. No sooner had the door slammed on his exit than Marrow started a meaningless argument with Braddock. Buzz knocked over Brad’s drink. They had a short tussle. Through some extraordinary alchemy, their first angry clinch turned into an embrace, and they wheeled on the rest of us, malevolent, leering, crafty. They became collaborators in stirring up violence; they played on the restlessness of the old hands. Calling for a celebration of the Axis defeat in North Africa, they fomented instead a riot that had no joy in it. It was the worst brawl I had ever witnessed—or rather, assisted. Marrow and Braddock began firing glasses at the club stove. Dunk Farmer shouted for a halt, and he was rewarded by being carried to the door and thrown out. Others joined the disorder—began tearing magazines to shreds, throwing darts at the ceiling. We overturned tables and broke up chairs and smashed bottles of coke and soda, and we tore down the curtains at the windows. Braddock lit fires in three metal wastebaskets, and the smell of burning paint was acrid and strong. Marrow got down a heavy-duty fire extinguisher with a long rubber nozzle and made as if to fight fire by the issue of urine; he squirted the walls and tables. There were fist-fights and sounds of splitting wood and the crash of glass, and three men were carried to bed with serious head injuries.

  “I got my relief,” Marrow said, as we were going to bed.

  13/

  I couldn’t seem to hold formation. I’d put on a lot of manifold pressure, trying to catch up and pack in tight, then I’d get afraid I was going to overshoot, and I’d chop it
off and nearly throw my turbos, and I’d practically lose an engine or two, and I’d have to pour it on again. My feet felt frozen solid; they hurt like the devil, but I was certainly not going to admit it. I remember, more than anything else, my feeling of helplessness.

  When I had got up that morning, I had had a distinct impression that I must have been one of the fellows carried to bed with a cracked head; my mouth had tasted like the inside of one of those wastebaskets Braddock had fired. I had been so foggy that I had put on a pair of badly shrunken wool socks, and long before we had reached altitude the blood had stopped pumping to my feet, and they had grown colder and colder.

  As soon as we reached the enemy coast the German fighters whom we called the Abbeville Kids, in yellow-nosed FW-190s, reacted against us, with attacks from ahead, split-assing right in front of us at two hundred yards, or going on through the formation.

  I was nervous, and my feet were torturing me, and I flew badly. The target was the airplane factory of S.N.C.A. du Nord at Meaulte, not too deep in France, and somehow we got there and home again. My flying was atrocious, there was no doubt of it, and, hung as Marrow was, his was superb.

  No sooner had we got down than Marrow started eating me out. It was the first time I had ever been the object of one of his verbal attacks. He said I flew according to poop. No imagination. Everything I did was in the book.

  Gradually it got worse. “You aren’t thinking about anything but yourself,” he said, “and you know how that hurts everyone back of you in the formation. Other words, you’re just flying along and any correction you make, it’s just for yourself, you’re not thinking it’s got to be smooth and help the other jokers in the formation, doing it gradual—you know? You got to remember that whole formation out behind. You’re going to start the whole God-damn thing accordioning.”