by John Hersey
I think it was Prien’s having cleared out that made me say, “Listen, you guys, what do you want to do? If you want to bail out, we’re over Belgium. Or do you want to try to get home?”
There was a very long silence.
Clint said, “We’ve got about fifty minutes to go beyond the Belgian coast to hit an airdrome.”
Farr said, “I’m game,” but he didn’t say for what.
Junior said, “Kind of windy back here.” The hatch was open and doubtless tempting.
I said, “Neg, how about you?”
He said, “I don’t think I ought to say, sir. If the fellows want to jump…”
Only then did I remember that Handown’s parachute harness was holding Marrow back in the seat across the way. Buzz’s head was flopping around. Handown didn’t think he ought to say!
“Let’s give it a try,” I said. “We can always ditch this thing if we have to. O.K., everybody?”
The only answer was from Farr. “Teacher, I’ll go along if you fly real nice.”
I remembered that my parachute was down below, alongside Max’s dead body.
We were all quiet for some time. I felt horribly depressed. I got Haverstraw to come forward and take the oxygen mask off Marrow’s face.
Neg Handown announced fighters coming down from overhead. “The whole bloody Luftwaffe,” he said. “This is going to be interesting.”
For the next six or seven minutes we were treated to the vicious acrobatics of some twenty Messerschmidts, most of which, fortunately, kept coming in from abeam; they never caught on that we were defenseless from head-on attacks.
Since we were not under pressure to stay in formation, we did have far more than usual leeway for evasive maneuvers, and I guess I did everything except turn The Body over on her back. I motioned to Clint Haverstraw, who was still forward, to plug himself into the co-pilot’s jackbox, and he stood behind Marrow calling out attacks in the front sectors. When planes did come in from ahead, I turned the ship to one side or the other to uncover our waist guns.
I began to get calls of encouragement from the boys.
“Attaboy, Lieutenant, swing her over. More! More!”
“Rack it to ’em, Teacher.”
Junior Sailen shouted, “I got one! I think I got one! Oh, Jesus God, I think I really got one!” In all our missions Junior had never made a claim.
We took a hit in our left wing, and the number-one engine began to backfire in an alarming way, but after a few coughs it seemed to catch on again—though its pressure fell and our speed dropped off to about one twenty-five.
In the midst of the worst of all this, I suffered an attack of yawning. Not once, but three or four times, my face stretched, my neck muscles drew tight, my mouth gaped, my eyes squinted. I could not help myself. I thought with amazement that I might drop off to sleep at the height of the worst danger and greatest responsibility I’d ever known. But when the yawns passed I was wide awake.
Suddenly the Germans were all gone, and a Spit-5 came in close, after lifting its wing at a distance, and it throttled down and flew right alongside, and I got on the VHF band, and I heard, very plainly, one of those warm, genteel voices of the R.A.F. “Hello, Big Friend,” the voice said, in parlor tones. “Is everything tickety-boo?”
“I got an engine and a half,” I said. “Sure, I’m putt-putting along.” Daphne had given me the sort of ear that made me go all understated when I talked with an Englishman, even when I was so scared I may have had a load in my pants. “But I sure am glad to see you. Any more like you at home?”
“We’ll circle you.”
“Thank you, Little Friend, that’s very good news.”
I switched over to CALL, and I shouted to the crew in quite a different tone of voice, “Listen! We got Spits! They’re going to stay with us.”
There were cheers on the interphone, but I can’t say that I was happy. Marrow’s head was lolling back on the seat, his mouth was open, his face was white except for the red oval crease where his oxygen mask had pressed the flesh.
The altimeter said we were at eight thousand seven hundred feet.
“How much longer to the coast, Clint?”
“Shouldn’t be more than ten minutes now. You ought to see it pretty soon.”
“And how long did you say from there?”
“Fifty minutes, maybe a little more, the way number one’s rattling.”
I studied the gasoline gauges, and I did some figuring, and I said, “I guess we’re going to have to ditch this old Body in the sea.”
2/
Soon I saw the coast, which looked at first like a long edge of cloud shadow, and I began to doubt the wisdom of my decision to go as far as we could and land on the water. With her front end opened up, The Body would not breast the waves but would scoop and dig. I had no idea how much sea was running, how high the heads of the waves would be, with their madwomen’s hair of foam. I recalled some earlier ditchings in our Group: three lost; all hands lost; all rescued; six lost…I tried to remember our drills on ditching procedure on the land—our jokes about the sea of mud on which we seemed to have set sail; and our boredom, for who could have thought it would ever happen to us?
I became unsure of myself, thinking I should not be bullheaded just because I had announced my decision to the crew; perhaps I should wheel around and order everyone to jump, with The Body gliding toward the sea.
But somehow I wanted to get to the west, as far as we could go, and I kept plodding along on one and a half engines, unsure, and about that time Junior Sailen called up. He said he’d been hit in the arm by a piece of the shell that had jammed his turret, and he asked if he could bail out, and being in the midst of my doubt about ditching I said, “Go ahead, if you want to.” I was sorry he’d been hit; he’d certainly been quiet about it. We were thirty miles from the Channel, and he said, “I can’t swim so good, is it all right with you if I get out?” Junior had been wanting to jump for a long time, he must have been eying that empty hatch opening back there in the tail and envying Prien, and of course he could simply have skipped, the way Prien had, and no one the wiser, but Junior had to square everything with the people who took care of him, so he made it clear: he was hurt, he couldn’t swim, he wanted permission. I didn’t mind. I was depressed and fearful of my judgment. I wasn’t going to force Junior to drown with the rest of us, if that was what was in store for us. I told them, I said, “What I’m going to do is stick with this thing as long as possible and give this ditching a try. It’s been done before, let’s give it a try.” Then I said, “Anyone that wants to hop off here is welcome to.” Junior said in his politest manner, “If you don’t mind, Lieutenant, I think I’ll go,” and I had Marrow’s clipboard with a map on it in my lap, and I said, “We’re just past a town called Saint Nicholas, I guess it’s farm country, don’t rip too soon,” because I remembered Kozy’s body flapping like a ribbon when he went out of the tail of Braddock’s ship, and Junior said, “Thanks, sir,” he wasn’t calling me by my nickname any more. That was the last we heard of him. He bailed out, and he was killed by some civilians, I heard later, some black Belgians, or whatever they called them.
3/
I saw three separate flights of Germans diving down from the upper sky; I supposed our friendly fighters were driving them off from the task forces. They ignored us.
My behind was sore. The right cheek had a stabbing pain in it.
The coastline was vivid now, the meeting place of green and blue. Under a clear sky the sea was thankfully blue; I don’t think I could have ditched in that grayish-brown liquid we had so often flown across. To the southwest the glare of the lowering sun was spread wide on the water.
Marrow was stirring, and when I looked across at my seat, where he lolled, his mouth open, I felt as if my chest were banded, like a barrel, with iron straps of sorrow. I could hardly bear to look at him. I ha
d loathed him for three days, yet now I could only think of the magnificent aviator he had once been, hunched forward over the column, arrogant, steady, holding between his finger tips, like a flounce of satin, all the power of The Body. I tried to think what had broken him. That babbling of Farr’s had driven him over the edge; the great war lover couldn’t stand the sound of a man’s fear. But he had obviously been lost long before that final collapse into passivity. We had often talked in the hutment, and in the club over comfortable drinks, about fear, and fliers had frequently said that everyone had fear in flight and in danger. Fear was the constant; what varied was each man’s capacity for holding it at arm’s length. That was courage. Fear was the common lot; courage was given to some. That was what everyone seemed to believe—except Marrow, who said that was a pile of s—, he wasn’t afraid in an airplane. The others and I called him a liar. But now, with Daphne’s help, I believed him. Not only had he been free of fear in combat; he had enjoyed our missions, he had enjoyed them too much, and it may be that he had come at the end to fear not the clashes and killing but his enjoyment of them. For to enjoy, even to enjoy horror, was to live, and much as he had shouted about his zest for life, I believe Buzz had found life, at the innermost heart of it, unbearable. Death gave me terror; for Marrow death was home. And I think Max’s having reached this longed-for home before him was more than Buzz could stand. He’d been passed over again. Besides, The Body, his body as he imagined, had been opened up to let death in. He was maimed. His power and manliness were not untouchable at all; they were being taken away from him. Because of the inner drive for death he did not know he had, he passively welcomed his emasculation and disarmament. Now he was hurrying home. As Prien had acted out the sickness many of us had felt, Marrow had begun to mimic, with heartbreaking authority, a final approach to the death he unknowingly wanted.
It was terrible to watch him. I remembered his galloping across a field with a bucket of coals from the ash heap behind the enlisted men’s mess, whooping at Braddock; his cheek-splitting grin as he stepped back to the ranks after getting his medal, while the fliers cheered and the nurses waved their pretty caps; his eyes popping as he told a story of getting some lucky girl to put her face down on his eight-dollar pillow. I had been completely taken in by his seeming vitality—and so, I’m afraid, had he. But now he looked like a very old person who had reached the stage of bidding death to come right in at the mouth, the nostrils, the eyes. There was the faintest look of surprise on his face.
I had hated him, but I felt only despair, looking at him. It did not make me proud or happy to be sitting in his seat under these circumstances.
Now that I think of it, I had almost no fear. We were over the coast, about to leave the enemy shoreline, and we kept losing altitude, gliding lower and lower, with the four Spits circling around us in a radius of a couple of miles, in a crippled ship that couldn’t make England. Why was I so much less afraid than I had often been in much less danger? I think because of my feeling about the men who were left with me: Handown, Haverstraw, Lamb, Farr, Bragnani; and Brindt’s body; and Marrow’s living shell. Maybe courage is love. I had disliked Max; hated him, I believe. But I must have cared about him, too, for I had fought to keep him alive. (There had certainly been courage, alias love, in Max’s eyes at the very end of his life; too late.) I had no use for Farr; I had thought I loathed Marrow. But I guess they mattered to me. Love, like fear and anger, floods and ebbs in us, and I suppose I had just enough in me that afternoon to keep me functioning, though I felt rotten, rotten, rotten.
4/
We left the coast north of Ostend, with the blue inlet of the Wester Schelde off to the right, at twenty-nine minutes past five. We were at six thousand one hundred feet, and we were dropping now at nearly three hundred feet a minute.
I said, “Clint, you busy?”
“I’m on the tail gun.” He must have gone back there of his own accord after Junior had jumped.
I said, “Look, we’ve got to get ready.”
“Ah’m ready, massa boss,” Clint said.
“Listen, everybody,” I said, “we’ve got to get all the weight out of this thing that we can. Leave your guns till last, and leave a few rounds leading into the guns. Then you can dump the rest of the ammunition. Lamb, hold onto your MF/DF, your IFF, and your liaison, but you can dump all the other equipment. Everybody start with the loose stuff—flak suits and all like that.”
The men began tearing things apart, dumping thousands of dollars’ worth of apparatus into the sea.
Handown was keeping a lookout, revolving his turret slowly round and round. When we were at about fifty-five hundred feet, he called in some twin-engine fighters diving down on us, and everyone went to his gun, and the Germans came through on us in spite of our Spitfires, and we fired the tag ends of our ammunition, just to give them an impressive show. But one of them made a pretty good pass, and I think he hit the number one, because it began to wind up, though in truth it had been misbehaving for some time. They only took the one pass and then went off looking for other stragglers.
During this run by the Germans, Butcher Lamb, for the first time in his career as a gunner, was suddenly animated. He shouted on the interphone, swearing at the Germans, and calling on me to roll it, shake them off our tail. What had got into him?
We were just riding, at that point, I didn’t dare pull any evasive maneuvers, because we were staggering along not too far above critical air speed. I had thought that the lower we got, the denser the air would be, and I would hold up better with the same power settings, but by this time I had every bit of emergency war power poured to those two engines, and the temperatures were up as high as they could go, the pressures were way too high, and number one began missing a beat here and there, and winding up. So naturally there was a tendency for the number four to pull us off course to the left, and when Lamb shouted to me that he had made contact with the control station on liaison, I flipped my jackbox switch over, and there was one of those polite English voices, sounding as if it were on a phone in an adjoining room, asking me, “Are you veering from your intended course?” I looked at the compass and I was way to the south of our course, flying about two fifty degrees. I felt suddenly as if someone in England was watching over me, and “Oops,” I said, “beg your pardon,” on liaison, and got back on course. They must have plotted me several times and found me drifting off to the south and they must have thought, “Oh-oh, that joker’s getting way off his course, he’s maybe going to miss England altogether,” so they worried about me, and now they had told me to get back on course again—only, having that built-in politeness of Englishmen, they hadn’t told me, they’d asked me. Talk about love. I loved that voice.
5/
I loved England. I wanted England. Dimly in the distance to the left I could see the tall bluffs of the east coast, the stretch from Dover to Margate, where the glare path of the sun ended in shadow. I was straining every nerve and muscle to get as far as I could, mushing the plane, with the nose up high, just a hair faster than stalling, it seemed, yet moving enough so as not to lose any more altitude than I could help. I wanted a miracle to buoy me to England. I wanted to make it and knew I couldn’t. I wanted to fly just once more over the amazing multiplicity of greens, the aimless lanes and hedges, the hamlets in evening peace, Ely on its hilltop, the Dutch drainage canals, a wide loop over the ancient courts of Cambridge, where, I knew from Daphne, great minds of an individualistic people had taken nourishment—Bacon, Ben Jonson, Cromwell, Milton, Dryden, Newton, Pitt the Younger, Byron, Darwin, Thackeray.
I wanted Daphne. I wanted, just once more, to be with my Daph, to lie on my back in a meadow by a sluggish stream, with my head in her lap, talking about us. Couldn’t I see her once more, to tell her I’d meant to handle things differently? I wanted another chance at life. Couldn’t a man try again, and get it right this time?
I was so weary! I yearned for my sack at Pike Rilling.
I’d sleep for four days and four nights.
My left hand was at my throat. I’d taken off my mitts, and my hand was bare, and it was fingering something soft…a piece of silk—my scarf, cut from Kid Lynch’s parachute. Then, with a flood of anger and fear, I realized I wanted more than I was going to get. I wanted Lynch back, and Braddock, and Kozy, and Colonel Whelan, and Silg, and Stedman, and Curly Jonas, and all the cemetery-full at Cambridge where the backhoe and loader and dozer had worked so hard for so many months. I wanted it all undone; to be back in Donkentown, where the wag of a collie’s tail was all there was to notice, in a moment, like this, of summertime, except for the hum of a bluebottle, and in the distance the clanking of the bascule bridge being raised for a coal barge to pass.
I very much wanted Marrow back, the way he was supposed to be—impossible to live with; I wanted Prien back, and Junior. And Max.
Oh, my God!
“Clint, would you come up here a minute?” This was something I didn’t want to broadcast on the interphone.
In a few seconds he was at my shoulder. I screamed at him over the whistling of the wind through the holes in the instrument panel, “Look, Clint, I’ve got to ask you to do something tough.” I couldn’t look at his face. “Would you crawl down below and untie…the…the whatyoumaycallit…and put it out the hatch?”
“You mean Max?”
“Yeah. You know, so he won’t be trapped in there.” I couldn’t bring myself to say, So Max would have a decent burial at sea.
Clint got the idea right away. “Sure. Sure, Bo,” he said, and he ducked down and fought his way through the gale in the trapdoor.
It should have been wrapped in a parachute, with something to weigh it down—a machine gun, or a couple of the radio transmitters we had dumped. But there wasn’t time; there was never time. I poked my head over, after a while, and saw that Clint had slid Max over to the hatch opening. Clint seemed to be hesitating. I said out loud—but no one could hear me, “We commit this body….” That’s all I could think to say.
