by Chris Lynch
I am glad, now, that I made the trip back. But I stay on the edge of the small catwalk that I just walked and will walk again, back to the farthest point, where I belong. The two of them are slumped over Boyd’s guns in a kind of loungey way that I don’t quite understand because they exist where they do and so do I. Every man in his place is an article of faith here, crucial to the smooth running of a thing like this thing. Batboy.
I wave that uncommitted short-arm wave that must come over more like a request to go rather than a signal that that is what you are doing regardless.
Couley raises one stiff arm, as if he’s taking some solemn oath, so I figure that’s to be taken as a wave. Boyd tacks a different way entirely, which seems like a thing I should expect from him. Boyd chooses, rather than a stiff or even a motional wave, to point at me, very hard, definitively, not quite accusingly, but directly would be a fair description.
“It’s not your fault,” Boyd says, his stare bearing on me.
I’m not even close to thinking I know what he’s referring to. So it doesn’t make sense when something in it not only makes me choke up just like that, but it makes me angry, too.
I have to go, right away, to my station, where I belong, and where it is empty, and I can settle in for a while with my machine gun, settle, fit myself in it, around it, to it. Like digging in at the batter’s box. In a way. But more like digging into a powerful machine gun, I suppose.
I’m not even required to be here for hours yet. Neither are the other guys for that matter. But as far as that goes I wouldn’t have left my ship, wouldn’t have left my gun, not once the entire week, if they hadn’t forced me and threatened me with a mental health evaluation. I don’t know whether I am a natural fighting man or not. But I knew from the time that first mission ended, and they started picking it all apart, and especially from the moment I heard about what we had lost, I knew with every part of me that I needed nothing so much as I needed to get back up in the air, to have another shot, to get back at least something of what we’d lost.
“I have to go now,” I say, illustrating the words by the act of going.
“The A’s — it’s not your fault,” Boyd clarifies, catching me an instant before I’ve gotten away again. “That they’re kinda rotten. That’s how they usually are, but I bet you made them better, which is all you can do, really. Right?”
We did. Make them better.
We.
We did. Make that team better. Together.
We did everything together. Better. Everything.
We should have been together. We would be better. The Yorktown would have been better, would be better, probably still.
“All the same, though,” Boyd says through the stillness that I was both causing and swimming in. “Still, A’s will be A’s, and I’d bet we could beat that A’s team you played for. What, D-ball, right?”
“Yeah, D-ball. Still, only a couple hops up to the majors from there.”
“Yeah, I know. But I’m fairly sure we could beat the major league A’s, too. So we’d handle you guys without a lot of trouble.”
“Dream away, Boyd. I’m going to the nose, get to know the gear again.”
“You would be playing for our side, of course,” Couley adds.
That pulls me right back in. “Why would I do that?”
“ ’Cause we’re your team now, Theo,” Boyd says, stunning me with just the sound of my own old regular-me name.
“What are you up to?” I say to him bluntly.
“I’m just talkin’,” he says. “So, go on, you can go. See you around. Nobody here’s gonna try and stop you this time.”
“Good,” I say.
“But don’t be a stranger,” Boyd calls.
“All right,” I call back over my shoulder.
“You know, just come on down this way whenever. Bum around, do nothin’, whatever. Have a go on the tail guns, man, you’ll love it.”
As I get farther away, more volume is required. I don’t feel like more volume right now, frankly.
“Top turret, too,” Couley adds. “Or the waist guns. Belly gun, as well, since you should really get in some time on every one. In case you have to be drafted in due to an unforeseen circumstance, which is of course entirely foreseeable.”
“You mean,” I say flatly, as they have managed to draw me back yet again, “like one of us getting killed.”
“Yes, precisely,” he says with a chilling little swag of pride. “I just heard that air crew are now officially the most likely of all the branches to get shipped home in a box.”
“Or not get shipped there at all …” I say, because sometimes you know when you’re the guy who’s supposed to say a thing.
“Yes, of course,” he says. “I think the odds they’re quoting are like seventy–thirty for each one of us to make it out alive.”
“But, hey,” Boyd pipes up in a goofy, spirited way, “at least the odds are still falling in our favor.”
“Yeah,” I say, having heard just about all of the downbeat stuff I can bear for now, “and that ratio has bottomed out. As of now, that percentage of ours is gonna rise steadily, every day, until each man on this crew is on his last and best mission, back to the ZOI.” That’s zone of interior. That is, home.
Strictly speaking, the gunners, all gunnery trained and qualified to at least sergeant, can rotate to any gun station if all parties agree. I never thought to talk about it with any of the other guys. Mostly because I just about barely talked to them about anything at all, preferring to keep to myself in the isolated cone of glass that is my truest home for however long it lasts.
As I at last reach my small, strange sanctuary, the idea of taking shots from all those positions sends a jolt of excitement through me that even brings back my yell.
“Maybe,” I shout. “Maybe. I’ll think about it.”
If you heard my voice, it would have announced against my wishes that I had already thought about it and the thought suits me mightily.
“The Brotherhood, like it should be,” Boyd announces.
I stare from my perch within the greenhouse nose cone. First I peer up into the early-morning sky. Then I stare back in the direction of those two operators, wondering what the operation is costing me.
“What Brotherhood?” I demand, appearing in the tail section well before they’d have expected.
“The Brotherhood of Bombardment Squadron Gunners, of course.” Couley does a little celebratory full spin of the tail gunner’s turret at his pleasure over the whole business — which has obviously sucked me right in.
I note how far we’ve gone into this discussion together, and how far we’ll be treading into Nazi-held territory later today, and the two things together seem like the work of some jokester a lot funnier than I ever was.
I really was the funny one in the family. Seems like a long time ago now.
“Nope,” I say, belatedly responding to a provocative moment from some time earlier in the conversation. “Even if you talked me into playing for this hodgepodge of a team, we would never on our best day beat the team I played for in Federalsburg. If we played ’em a hundred times we’d lose a hundred games. I know this, guys. I know baseball, and I know this.”
“Well,” Couley says, with a big waking-bear stretch before climbing up to his engineer’s station. “You definitely sound like a guy who knows. And it’s never wise to argue with a guy who knows what he knows and knows it.”
“I know that even bad teams often have one great player on them. And one special guy can change a lot of how things can go.”
“I guess your team had one of these great players, then?” Couley is speaking from up in his perch. I look at him, then I peek behind me at Boyd faking badly at being absorbed in a bunched up knot of tubes and cables within his gun turret. I turn back to Couley.
“The best, George,” I say, with pride leaking out all over me like sap from a maple tree. “Special guy. Great ballplayer, greater man.”
He nods at me,
proud like he was right in there with me. He knows, of course, though we don’t ever talk about it directly. Just like they all know, know everything, before needing to be told.
They are all my brothers after all.
SCARY TO THINK ABOUT. DON'T YOU THINK, HAVING ALL THESE BROTHERS? I FOUND IT SCARY ENOUGH WITH JUST THE ONE.
AS IF THERE WERE NOT MORE THAN ENOUGH SCARY THINGS IN MY HEAD ALREADY, AND I RECKON IN MOST EVERY HEAD WITH A BRAIN INSIDE IT.
BUT THE FIRST TWO MISSIONS ARE BEHIND US AND I CAN SAY THAT I KNOW LESS ABOUT WHAT I'M DOING NOW THAN I DID BEFORE. MISSION ONE, WE WENT IN WITH A WHOLE BUNCH OF BOMBERS, MET A WHOLE BUNCH OF FIGHTERS, DROPPED LOADS OF BOMBS AND SHOT UP THEIR PLANES JUST LIKE THEY DID TO US. AND IN THE FINAL ANALYSIS YOU HAVE TO SAY THAT A LOT OF THINGS THE NAZIS RELY ON TO KEEP CHURNING OUT THE MACHINERY OF WAR THAT KEEPS THEM IN THE GAME ARE NO LONGER THERE, BECAUSE WE KNOCKED 'EM OUT.
THAT'S A W IN THE WIN COLUMN FOR US, THAT'S WHAT I SAY. BUT IT WAS AS IF WE LOST, BECAUSE WE LOST ONE SINGLE B-17 OUT OF A WHOLE SKY FULL OF BOMBERS. ONE.
I KNOW IT; I HEAR MYSELF. IT WAS TEN GOOD MEN, AND NO MATTER HOW MANY WE BROUGHT BACK HOME WITH US, WE LEFT TEN OF THEM IN THE OCEAN.
HOW DO YOU LIVE WITH THAT KIND OF THING? HUH? TEN IS A LOT, BUT YOU KNEW IT WASN'T GONNA LOOK LIKE MUCH AT ALL, AFTER THE NEXT TRIP OR THE NEXT OR THE NEXT. WHAT THEN? HOW IS A GUY SUPPOSED TO GO ON WITH STATS LIKE THESE HANGING OVER HIM EVERY MORNING HE GETS UP?
THANK GOODNESS FOR BASEBALL IS ALL I CAN REALLY SAY. REMEMBER THAT? YOU REMEMBER, OF COURSE YOU DO, YOU BASHED IT INTO MY HEAD MORE THAN EVERYBODY ELSE PUT TOGETHER: IT'S ONE OF THE WAYS BASEBALL IS SUCH A PERFECT SPORT, BECAUSE YOU DON'T HAVE A WEEK BETWEEN GAMES TO THINK TOO HARD ABOUT ALL YOU MESSED UP. BECAUSE THERE IS ANOTHER GAME ONLY A DAY OR TWO LATER AND BOY THAT PREVIOUS GAME AND WHATEVER, WHATEVER BONEHEADED PLAY YOU MADE, IT IS IN THE PAST AND IT HAS TO STAY THERE IF YOUR HEAD'S EVER GONNA BE RIGHT. REMEMBER? 'COURSE YA DO, YOU BEAT IT INTO MY HEAD WITH YOUR HANDS ALMOST AS MUCH AS WITH THE WORDS. HA. REMEMBER? I REMEMBER. SURE YOU REMEMBER.
I REMEMBER IT ALL, BROTHER. ALL OF IT, ALL OF US. ALL OF YOU.
BUT HOW? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO PUT ALL THIS BEHIND ME? EVERY DAY? BY MYSELF?
AND WHAT IF I CAN'T? HUH? WHAT HAPPENS IF I CAN'T BE STRONG THE WAY I WAS SUPPOSED TO BE, THE WAY I THOUGHT I WAS? THE WAY YOU ALWAYS WERE, AND STILL SURELY ARE.
BECAUSE THERE WASN'T A GAME THE NEXT DAY FOR US. HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT? NO, WE HAD TO STEW FOR A WEEK. THEN, FINALLY, THERE WAS ANOTHER MISSION, A BIG RAID, LOTS OF STRATEGIC TARGETS HIT, GOOD WORK. ALSO, BY THE WAY, ANOTHER TWO B-17S WENT DOWN, A WHOLE BUNCH MORE WERE PRETTY WELL DAMAGED AND WE ARE STARTING TO BUILD ON OUR CASUALTY SCORES 'CAUSE WE RACKED UP EIGHT OF OUR BOYS WIA. AND, EIGHTEEN MIA.
M, AND I, AND A. THOSE ARE THE WORST, YOU KNOW. THE WORST THREE LETTERS YOU CAN PUT TOGETHER WHEN REPORTING A SERVICEMAN'S STATUS. I TELL YOU WHAT, I THINK I'D RATHER BE A KIA, OR A POW. OR EVEN A DOA. BETTER THAN GOING THROUGH WHATALL BEING SOME KIND OF FOREVER MISSING MIGHT INVOLVE, LIKE MAYBE BEING A GHOST HANGING THERE WITH ONE FOOT IN EACH WORLD BUT ALL THE REAL BUSINESS PARTS OF HIM BEING IN NEITHER. AND, WHILE THAT'S WHAT I THINK I WOULD PREFER IF I WAS THE SERVICEMAN IN QUESTION, AND IF ANYBODY BOTHERED OFFERING ME A CHOICE, AT THE SAME TIME I HAVE NO DOUBT AT ALL HOW I WOULD FEEL IF I WAS THE SURVIVING FAMILY OF THAT POOR SORRY MIA. THE PARENTS, THE BROTHERS, THE SISTERS. 'CAUSE I HAVE SEEN THOSE FACES, BOY. I SEEN 'EM JUST AS LONG AS I COULD STAND TO SEE 'EM BEFORE TURNING AWAY. AND THEN RUNNING AWAY.
YES. YES, I KNOW. I SHOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER. BETTER HELP TO THEM, MORE COMFORT. LESS OF A BABY BROTHER AND MORE OF A MAN. YES. I KNOW. AND I KNOW, I HAVE TO WRITE THEM. THOUGH TRULY, SUSAN IS THE WRITER … BUT YES, YES. I KNOW. I WILL.
BUT, I TELL YOU, WHAT I'VE BEEN WANTING TO SAY TO YOU ESPECIALLY, I'VE BEEN WANTING TO SAY THAT EVERYBODY, EVERYBODY, EVERY LAST MAN WANTED TO BE RIGHT IN THERE AGAIN AFTER THAT FIRST RAID, LIKE YOU SAID, TO GET IN ANOTHER GAME AS SOON AS YOU CAN, SO YOU CAN FIGHT AND WIN YOUR WAY OUT OF IT, TO BEAT WHATEVER IT WAS THAT BEAT YOU. BEFORE IT HAD THE CHANCE TO BEAT YOU EVEN MORE SERIOUSLY, FROM INSIDE YOUR OWN HEAD. THE WEEK BETWEEN WAS TOUGH, BUT IT ENDED. FOR SOME OF THE BOYS, ANYWAY — MOSTLY ON THE B-17S, BECAUSE IT'S FRANKLY BECOMING OBVIOUS THAT THAT PLANE IS THE TEACHER'S PET OF THE EIGHTH AIR FORCE. THEY GOT THEIR OPPORTUNITY TO GET BACK IN AND START PUNCHING BACK.
MY BOMBARDMENT GROUP IS THE 44TH, WHICH IN CASE YOU'RE INTERESTED, IS PART OF VIII BOMBER COMMAND, WHICH IS UNDER THE “MIGHTY EIGHTH AIR FORCE.” OUR PLANE HAS A NAME, TOO, BUT I'LL SAVE YOU THAT TREAT FOR ANOTHER DAY. ANYWAY, WE DIDN'T HAVE THAT CHANCE TO GET BACK IN AND FIGHT OUR WAY BACK UP. BECAUSE WE WERE MOLING, WHILE ALL THAT FIGHTING WAS GOING ON. YOU KNOW WHAT A MOLE IS, DON'T YOU? IN THE AIR CORPS, IT'S A DUMMY PLANE, A DUMMY MISSION, FILLED WITH DUMMIES WHO DON'T EVEN KNOW WHEN THEY TAKE OFF THAT THEY ARE ONLY FLYING TO SOME USELESS NO-PLACE JUST TO DRAW SOME ATTENTION AWAY FROM THE REAL MISSION. WHICH IS EVEN WORSE THAN BEING GROUNDED, Y'KNOW? FEELING LIKE SUCH BIG BAD HEROES ON OUR WAY UP, ONLY TO FEEL THAT MUCH STUPIDER ON THE WAY BACK.
I COULD ONLY EVER TELL YOU JUST HOW CRUMMY I FELT RETURNING FROM THAT FLIGHT.
SO, I MOLED. AND I STILL HAVE NOT HAD MY SECOND CHANCE, AND I JUST WANT MY CHANCE IS ALL, Y'KNOW? I THOUGHT I WAS GETTING IT, TOO, AW, MAN YOU SHOULDA SEEN ME, BOY, THUMPING MY CHEST LIKE SOME BIG DUMB CRAZY FLYING APE, SO EXCITED TO GET MY HANDS ON THOSE RATS AGAIN. BUT I WAS FOOLED JUST AS BAD AS THE GERMANS WERE. AND SO. AND SO THAT'S THAT, I HAVE TO JUST, JUST, WAIT, WAIT FOR TOMORROW'S GAME, RIGHT? RIGHT?
BUT I AIN'T NO MOLE, BROTHER. NO, SIR, I AIN'T NO MOLE OF ANY KIND AND I PLAN TO SHOW 'EM ALL IN A BIG WAY JUST THE FIRST CHANCE I GET. BECAUSE I CAME HERE TO SHOOT MEN DOWN OUT OF THE SKY. AND I'M GONNA BE GREAT AT IT, TOO. YOU'LL SEE. I CAN'T WAIT FOR YOU TO SEE.
SO. RIGHT. ANYWAY. I JUST HAD TO TELL SOMEONE. HAD TO TELL YOU, IS THE THING. I'LL BE ALL RIGHT, THANKS, SO DON'T WORRY ABOUT ME.
OH, AND WE'RE KNOWN AS THE FLYING EIGHT-BALLS, THE 44TH BG. THOUGHT YOU'D LIKE THAT. THERE'LL BE PLENTY MORE TO TELL YOU SOON, TOO, WITHOUT A DOUBT. WHICH IS WHY I WANT YOU TO KEEP ONE OF THESE DIARIES, JUST LIKE THIS ONE I'VE GOT, NOTHING TOO PRISSY. NOT FOR A COUPLE OF MUGS LIKE US WHO CAN HARDLY WRITE.
ANYWAY, SO THAT'S WHAT WE'RE GONNA DO. WE WILL KEEP OUR DIARIES OF OUR EXPERIENCES THROUGH THE WHOLE WAR, AND THEN WHEN IT'S OVER WE WILL HAVE THESE TWO ACCOUNTS, AND WE CAN EXCHANGE THEM. WE'LL COMPARE ALL OUR ADVENTURES AND HORROR STORIES AND HERO STUFF AND ALL THAT. WE'LL MATCH 'EM UP, RIGHT, AND WE'LL SEE WHO COMES OUT ON TOP. RIGHT? DEAL.
WHO AM I KIDDING? YOU'LL WIN, AND BE CROWNED HERO OF HEROES, 'CAUSE THAT'S THE KIND OF THING YOU ALWAYS DO.
AND HERE'S HOPING YOU DO.
Well, no, I don’t think it’s worthless and embarrassing. Moling is a legitimate part of strategy, and when the strategy works out we are all winning. I don’t care if you put me on shoeshine duty, if the shoes are shinin’ and the Germans are dyin’, then I’m a winner just as much as if I put the bullets into the jerk’s face myself.”
The speaker is Sergeant Peter Quinn, one of our two regular midship waist gunners. Quinn mans one or the other of the guns that sprout from the B-24’s famously broad sides, while Sergeant Billy Hargreaves mans the belly gun, which functions kind of like getting really angry at your downstairs neighbors and trying to shoot them through your floor.
“Yeah, yeah,” says Hargreaves, “but which job would you enjoy doing more?”
“What?” says Quinn. “Don’t be simple, Billy. If they let me have my way, the whole bunch of us would have no guns. We’d —”
“Waaa-haaa …” All five of us at once cut him off, howling laughter because of the crazy non-Quinn-ness of the very idea of disarmament.
“Hey hey hey, if you’ll allow a guy to finish … I was gonna say that if I could make it happen then everybody would just be issued with bullets and hammers. We’d have to hunt and chase each other down, get the other guy onto the ground, and, pow, hammer the bullet right into the guy’s skull. Huh? What an idea, huh? Fairer every way
you look at it. You’d have to be tough, and fit, and you’d have to have the stomach to say hello right to the ugly mug of your enemy before making brainburgers out of him. No more of this wishy-wash of killin’ folk from a million miles away. The better man would always win.” He smiles but still doesn’t pause for a breath. “Killing the enemy with more fairness and more fun. Tell me now, beautiful or beautiful?”
It’s always pretty much like that when Quinn speaks. Nobody knows where he gets it. But he shows no sign of ever running out of it.
And I, for one, am glad. When he goes off on one of those runs, I go right along with him. There is more fun, more noise, more … distraction that comes with that stuff. Keeps a guy in the spirit, and in the group, and out of the dangerous dark corners of his own head.
This hammer-and-bullets debate is just the latest in a growing collection of daffy conversations among us. Us, being — incredibly, to my mind — the very Brotherhood that Boyd boldly predicted we would become. Sergeant Henry “Hank” Boyd, no less. I am not going to call him Hank, not now and not ever. But I am going to admit that this thing, this tight-knit knot of nuts who have a lot in common despite being nothing alike beyond us all being sergeants and all being gunners, has quickly become the Brotherhood that was foretold to me. Or should that be, forewarned? And I didn’t even want one more brother.
“Beautiful?” Dodge says to him in an upswinging, theatrical voice that sounds like he had to have acted in a school play at some point. “Well, yeah, I suppose it’s a kind of beautiful.” He’s a ham, but he’s also a good teammate, and when conditions call for the pilot to order Dodge down from his comfy radioman’s perch and man his gun, the three of them, Quinn, Hargreaves, and Dodge, could not be a more perfect left-center-right trio of midsection gunners. They don’t stop yelling crazy-boasty-threatening stuff — to each other or to the Messerschmitts trying to put big fat bullet holes in all of us. They scream blood and guts through every last shot of a firefight, and in my opinion it’s one of the things that makes this team, under pressure, the most fearsome and determined bunch I have ever been around. We change from the instant we start getting shot at. We improve, if it’s okay to say that. Even if it’s not okay to say it, I’m saying it.
