The War Lover

by John Hersey

  Luckily, I bothered. It was the best thing I ever did in my whole life. It meant that I couldn’t stay below for long—and that I was to leave the greenhouse just in time.

  Again I tried to understand what problem was worrying Clint.

  It turned out that he wasn’t worried about the course at all. He took off his right glove and wrote in large letters on a paper he had on a clipboard: “DID I KISS PLANE THIS MORNING?”

  Poor Clint! That was what he wanted of me! He was shaking for fear he had forgotten to go through his ritual of tapping the sides of the hatch opening with his swagger stick and kissing the skin of the ship upon entering The Body that morning. He must have been afraid that we were flying without benefit of his incantations. So convincing was he, looking up at me with frightened eyes through his goggles, that for an instant I was taken in by his mad anxiety; I could not remember whether I had seen him perform the ceremony that morning. The morning seemed dizzyingly far back in time, and I could scarcely remember it at all. I suffered a sharp stab of fear, then I realized that all Clint needed was reassurance, and I took off my glove and picked up Clint’s pencil and wrote: “YES.”

  He seemed better at once and gathered all his papers together in a neat pile. I pointed to his gun in the window on the right, and he readily jumped to it.

  As I started to return to the co-pilot’s seat I looked out the left-hand window, and far, far behind us, somewhat to the south, nearly ninety miles back, I saw smoke rising in a heavy, black tower thousands of feet high. I glanced downward and ahead, and through a beautiful afternoon, with traces of woolly clouds near the ground, I saw the tiny Rhine, between Bonn and Koblenz, with barely visible bugs on its silver stripe—the urgent barges of German war traffic, I supposed. It was a nice day.

  I crawled aft toward the passageway to the cockpit on one hand and my knees, with my walk-around bottle in my other hand, and I climbed up through the trapdoor and had just reached a crouching position between Marrow’s seat and mine, and was about to rise to my feet, with my free hand reaching upward and suspended, as it were, between heaven and earth, when I looked forward and saw them coming in—four single-engined fighters, meaning that a second attack had come up to join the first—from twelve o’clock, away above us, at the very beginning of their run. We were the lead ship; they wanted us; I knew that.

  For a moment I behaved irrationally. My flak suit was near me, stowed under my seat, and (possibly my eye had brushed across it, making me aware of it) I suddenly wanted to remain huddled there, to shrink smaller and smaller, to cover myself with the light chest-protecting armor of the flak suit, which, because of its cumbersomeness, I had seldom worn since early missions. I reached for it, but it would not come loose, so I braced my feet against the side of the ship and tugged, but it was stuck, and for a few crazy seconds I thought my life depended on getting it out, and all I seemed able to do was use main force, for I had not the wit to stop and find out why it was caught.

  I gave up and started again to rise and was half up and half down, and—bingo! and we had had it with the most terrific noise I had ever heard.

  I mean, for sheer noise, this was…

  Almost simultaneously with the noise there was a blast of icy air coming up the passageway from the nose.

  The whole ship went over on one wingtip and into the beginning of a spiral, and I just had time to throw myself, belly downward, across my seat and grab ahold for dear life. We seemed to be falling.

  CHAPTER TEN

  THE TOUR

  July 30 to August 16

  1/

  An announcement of a three-day stand-down, issuing from the Tannoy loudspeakers and rushing like a noisy flock of crows through the trees of the grove around the hutment, brought an end, at last, to the July Blitz.

  With what strength remained to me, I pushed myself up from my bed, where I was lying fully clothed, and ran to the telephone booth in the officers’ club and called Daphne’s rooming house in Cambridge, and I found, for the first time in all my calls to her, that she was not at home. With a beer and a limp copy of Punch (Kid Lynch had smuggled it into the club!), I killed time and stayed awake, and I tried a second call, but she was still out. As I aimlessly wasted minutes until I could phone again I passed the officers’ bulletin board and read an order that during the British bank holidays, from July thirtieth, which that day was, until August third, U.S. servicemen were not permitted to travel by rail. I was so tired that my mind was like a glass of warm milk, but somewhere at the edge of it was a dim recollection that on the day of Lynch’s funeral Daphne had said something about the bank holidays. Had she said she had plans? I couldn’t remember. I began to be afraid that she had gone off somewhere. Gone for five days! I was full of my separate peace with the enemy, my renunciation of all that was aggressive and hurtful in favor of selfless love, which had come to me with the force of a vision in those moments just before we touched down that afternoon, and I simply had to know that I could see Daphne soon and talk with her about it. I called again; still out. This time Mrs. Coffin, Daphne’s landlady, who had no use for Americans, was distinctly short with me. I was frantic. Excuse me, did Mrs. Coffin happen to know whether Miss Poole had gone off on a trip for the holidays?…Hers was a home, not a detective agency…. I simply had to talk with Miss Poole…. Mrs. Coffin could not “materialize” Miss Poole out of thin air….

  In a folly of exhaustion and anxiety, I asked if Mrs. Coffin would take down the number of the booth I was in and ask Miss Poole to call me when she came in. Mrs. Coffin seemed to be taking down the number, but I could not be sure that she was.

  Having rung off, I was flooded by new worries. What if someone was in the booth when Daphne tried to reach me? What if Mrs. Coffin didn’t hear her come home? What if it turned out to be late? What if she didn’t come home at all?

  I went to the bar and ordered a double Scotch, and I slugged it down pretty fast. In my condition the drink rapped me on the back of the skull—and the next thing I knew, it was nearly eleven o’clock, and I was aware of having been asleep in a leather chair, and my neck was stiff, and one whole arm didn’t want to wake up. I wobbled to the bar, feeling woozy and unsteady, and asked Dunk Farmer if there had been any calls on the phone in the booth, and Farmer, to whom, in his endless fantasy of transferring from bar to combat duty, co-pilots were useless, said in his loud cracker twang, “You cain’t expect me to wait on six dozen alcoholic maniacs and tend the telefoam, too. I ain’ got but two hands.”

  He grunted and was no help to me, so I called again, and this time the telephone on the Cambridge end rang and rang and rang, and I knew that Mrs. Coffin must have gone to bed, but I held on, with my teeth grinding, and finally she answered, and at first she refused to call upstairs for Miss Poole, but at last she did, and this time Daphne was there.

  What with having flown six raids in seven days, and having seen the Kid so very dead, and having had my vision of selfless love, and having taken that big slug of whiskey, and now hearing Daphne’s voice again, I felt drunk, and I didn’t know, by the time I had hung up, exactly what I had said or what my Daphne had answered, either.

  I had a vague recollection of her saying that she’d made some plans to go down to Devon with a girl friend, Judith Something-or-Other, and I thought she’d said she would call that off and meet me in London the next day but one (“I need sleep, oh, God, darling, I need sleep sleep sleep!”—that I knew I had said), August first, at ten in the morning, at the usual place, the Leicester Square tube station. I was pretty sure that was what she had said.

  As I was falling into bed, I wondered whether I’d invented the part about somebody named Judith, or whether Daphne had. I’d never heard her mention a close friend named Judith.

  Then I slept for twenty hours.

  2/

  When I got up I squandered the little that was left of the day, July thirty-first, scrounging some transportation to London f
or early the following morning. I finally found a major who’d lined himself up a staff car, and he agreed to stomach my company.

  I arrived at our trysting place a few minutes late, at about ten past ten. Daphne had always been ahead of me at our meetings, even when I’d been punctual, but this morning I was ahead of her. The city seemed ominously hushed, vacant, and purposeless, like a rundown clock which seems not to have any pulsating time in it. Stores were closed. It was a Sunday, and the bank-holiday weekend to boot. The air was mist-laden, and pigeons wheeled black against the sky. The newspaper kiosk beside which we always met was shut. Now and then an empty red bus ghosted along.

  After half an hour, I began to wonder what Daphne had actually said during that phone conversation on the thirtieth. I telephoned Cambridge, but there was no answer from Mrs. Coffin. I went back to my post.

  After an hour and a quarter I was convinced that there was no such person as the girl friend, Judith.

  After two hours I remembered that Junior Sailen had said he had a ride up to London in a weapons carrier that morning, and I walked through deserted streets to the enlisted men’s Red Cross Club that our crew frequented when on pass, and the place was obviously empty, but I asked a tired old Red Cross bag at the hall desk if a Sergeant Sailen had checked in, and she said mine was the first face she’d seen that morning.

  “That’s a poor start for a dull day,” I said.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Your face isn’t so bad, but all you young officers look alike to me. That’s why I work in an enlisted men’s club, because their faces, sergeants and all, each one’s different, they have character. Know what I mean?”

  I didn’t see why I had to stand there and be abused by a sack of prunes just because I was lonely, so I told her to say ta-ta to Junior Sailen if he came in, from his co-pilot. I told her my boy Sailen had character, but it was only half life-size. Then I scrammed.

  I meandered through echoing streets, and I tried whistling to buck up my courage, but the dead, damp walls threw my song, Oft, Lady Be Good, right back in my teeth, so I quit. I walked to the White Tower, in Soho, because once Daph and I had eaten there together, but it was closed, so I went and had a depressing lunch in a Lyons Corner House that looked like a cross between the Alhambra and Madison Square Garden, and in its huge cavern the clattering of my fork on my thick plate vied with those of only two other customers. Out of curiosity I took something that was called Bubble and Squeak on the menu and wished I hadn’t.

  I walked and walked.

  In Hyde Park I saw a dirty duck in a pond and a pack of dogs, like a squad of noisy G.I.’s, chasing a bitch in heat and squabbling with each other; wild life seemed to have taken over the city.

  I strolled along the Embankment trying to think realistically about my determination somehow to quit the work of killing and be free to live for and by selfless love, but I needed Daphne’s help with all that.

  I saw a tall bobby, and I asked him where the Tate Gallery was, and he told me, and I asked him if that was the museum that had the burning sunsets by Turner in it, and he said, “If you please, sir, there’s a handful of jolly fine Turners in the Tate. I bring to mind two vivid sunsets.”

  So I walked to the Tate. I had no sooner entered the museum than my feet began to hurt, and I was just wondering why it was that paintings in a museum always went in my eyes and straight down to my feet when I saw one of the Turners. The sinking sun, reflected on water as I had often seen, from a plane, a fiery orange light reflected on haze in an evening sky, just before deep gloaming, burned my eyes, with a sensation of watering in them, and I was so lonely for Daphne that I had to go outdoors for some air.

  It seemed that I needed to keep moving, but my shoes had all those paintings stored in them, and I had to sit down, so I took a ride in the Tube, to Charing Cross. Then I got up, took the magnificent escalator upward, then went right down again, and rode the Tube to Richmond, where, in the park, Daphne had seemed to be Rima one day. I stayed below and rode to Leicester Square, but I couldn’t face our habitual rendezvous, so I rode to Piccadilly Circus.

  3/

  By my watch it was six o’clock, and I went back to the enlisted men’s Red Cross Club, and this time Junior Sailen was there, drunk, trying to sober up by playing ping-pong with a thin corporal who was over six feet six inches tall; Junior looked like a chipmunk tossing acorns to an Afghan hound. When Junior saw me he ran to me and asked with extraordinary urgency if I’d go out and have a drink with him.

  We went to a pub called the India Sea, and Junior began to cry and tell me about his wife. How could we have risked our lives together so often without my knowing that little Junior Sailen was married? It turned out, what’s more, that his wife was not a head taller than he, as one might have expected, though from what he said she sounded strong for her size.

  “I want out,” he said, weeping. “Let me out of this rat trap! I want to get back where people speak to you. I want my mother and my brother. They’re not like officers, they’re good to me. I owe them a big debt, and I love them, and I feel like they love me, and why can’t I be with my wife? Who made a law that a man can’t be with his wife? I’m no use overseas, she tells me what’s right and wrong, she helps me decide. I’d like to have seven children, and I haven’t got a one. I’m getting old in the service. I’m not a murderer, this worries me, I’m worried day and night in the Air Force. What good’s back pay? It won’t buy her any children out of me, will it? They’re all mean bastards, except Major Marrow, he’s a white man, he’s like my brother, but I need my wife. She holds me when the mean bastards in this Air Force hurt my feelings. Why can’t I be with her? I want her when you guys are mean to me.”

  Junior’s line of chatter only served to mix me up even further about my own yearnings, about my separate peace, so I managed to get lost in the middle of a dart game.

  4/

  I walked some more, in dark streets, and I thought that my torture came from the fact that my loathing of ugliness, of pain, of giving pain, was in direct conflict with my powerful pride, my sense of duty and responsibility, my always having wanted to give my best, work hard, win approval. Daphne had stirred up, at the expense of the striving side of my nature, my more magnanimous side. I needed to talk with her. Where was she? Where was she? Had I driven her away from me? Walking did not produce her.

  Late at night, hanging around the front door of the enlisted men’s Red Cross Club, I got wind of a weapons carrier that was going to take off for Pike Rilling at two in the morning, and I talked the driver into taking me, and I sat on a hard bench with unhappy men for what was, in that ungainly vehicle, a two-hour ride out to the base.

  5/

  Next day I slept late. At the base post office on the way to lunch, I found a short note from Daphne, saying only that unless she heard from me to the contrary, she would come to our Bartleck room on Wednesday, August fourth, to stay, arriving at about seven in the evening. The letter was post-marked August first, but there was no reference to our phone call, and no mention of her plans for the bank holiday.

  I went back to my room after eating and lay on my back and stared at the ceiling.

  It seemed to me that my idea of a separate peace must have been somewhat the product of exhaustion. Not that I wanted to abandon it…I wanted to think some more…. Selfless love was all very well, but with Daphne dodging around…Daphne, Daphne…

  I napped until supper.

  The evening was one of the clearest and most mellow of the year, and after supper we all went outdoors to play softball or horseshoes or just lie around gassing. Marrow, in a ball game, was the loudest partisan on the landscape. You could hear his complaints against the umpire above all the laughter, and the low talking, and the pounding of feet, and the outcry of startled sparrows.

  6/

  On Tuesday Sully got us up for a late raid, and Murika briefed us for Villacoublay airfield at nine
o’clock, but the weather closed in, and the show was scrubbed. In the afternoon there was a severe electrical storm, and I sat in my room with the sky splitting and wondered why, after all my high-minded thoughts about what I was going to do, I had gone along with that morning’s preparations for a raid, the same as ever. I felt as if I had no will of my own.

  7/

  In the morning on Wednesday they briefed us for a Group practice mission but scrubbed it at the last minute. While we were waiting, Handown spoke to Marrow, in my hearing, about Prien. It seemed that lately he’d been vomiting his morning meal and sometimes one other meal a day. Between times he was constantly ravenous, but as soon as he sat down to eat in the mess hall and took two bites he felt as if he had food up to his neck. Sometimes he had the dry heaves. He would lie in bed all day whenever he could. Handown said Prien spoke enthusiastically about the crew—best anywhere. He was dying to finish his tour with us.

  “Only thing is,” Marrow said, “he wants to finish his tour without flying any missions.”

  Handown said he was a good kid and really wished he could get rid of his sickness.

  Marrow said, with great vehemence, “He’s a sissy, and he’s going to get us all in trouble if we don’t watch out.”

  I thought, standing by: We all say we’re sick of it. Prien acts out what we only say.

  8/

  The day dragged, but finally evening came, and I got dressed to the nines, and I went to our room, and Daphne was there, and it suddenly seemed as if nothing had changed, there had been no bank-holiday nightmare at all. She was, it seemed, as devoted to me as ever, and she wanted to hear, with her everlasting sympathy, all about the last part of the Blitz. When I asked her what had happened on Sunday, she told me, in such a way as to make it seem we had never talked on the phone at all, that there had been a serious mix-up with her former boss, for whom she had undertaken to do some part-time work the week before. The mix-up was about the deadline. She had stayed in Cambridge for the whole of the holiday, getting the promised work done.