by Anita Shreve
Case worked a toothpick; Shulman behind him was humming. Glenn Miller. “A String of Pearls.” Shulman was from Chicago, a welder, like his father before him, he had said. He had bad skin and small, tense eyes. Mason had been a drummer with a band. He played in dance halls in New York City. Sometimes in the pub, he had entertained them with wooden sticks made from a pointer he'd stolen after a briefing, then whittled and sanded. Watching his hands fly over the barroom tables, you could imagine yourself in a supper club, at a table on the floor, listening to a solo and drinking pink gin with a woman in a red dress, although Ted had never actually done this. In the briefing room, Case was opening packs of gum and methodically putting the dry sticks into his mouth, one by one. His foot was jiggling. Despite the cold, the sweat had started already, tricking down the copilot's temples.
Ted looked at the map, shrouded in the black covering. He wondered how long the thin, red strand of yarn would be this time, where exactly it would lead them. In the room the men were coughing, and you could see your breath.
He remembered the oil-stained concrete below the plane, and the way the dawn announced itself—an almost imperceptible lightening in a field of endless gray. On the hardstand all around him were other planes, other ground crews, bomb loaders, fuel trucks. Beyond that were the barren fields and the trees, and in the distance, the lonely rhythmic chugging of a train.
He let Case take up his parachute pack and flight bag, while Aikins, the ground chief, gave him the 1A. A bolt on the landing gear had been repaired, he read, and he began his visual inspection of the outside of the plane. The B-17, which resembled a piece of hammered metal, had been repaired well enough to fly—but not cosmetically. Countless missions had taken their toll. Paint was scratched to reveal the silver of metal; bullets and shrapnel had left their imprint. The olive paint near the top of the plane was stained with oil from the engines.
At the rear of the plane, the men were putting on their Mae Wests. His crew was young—nineteen, twenty—and discouraged by the heavy losses. They called him “the old man,” even though he was only twenty-two that day. If they made it back he would tell them, and he'd get drunk and stay drunk until the New Year. Warren was a farmer's son; Ekberg had worked in a bowling alley. They were strangers thrown together, men you wouldn't gravitate toward back home. Once in a while, if it worked, there were friendships.
Ludwigshafen. He rolled the name on his tongue. Synthetic fuel and chemicals a hundred and twenty miles into Germany, a plant near Mannheim. In the briefing room, the squadron commander had dimmed the lights, and they had all studied the reconnaissance photos— searching among the gray shapes for the targets they were to hit, small rectangles that looked different from the rest. Every briefing ended the same way, with the time-tick and a worn and dreary message: If they didn't do it, someone else would have to.
He walked forward past the waist to the left wing and to the engines. He looked for nicks or cracks in the propellers. One of the ground crew was polishing the Plexiglas nosepiece and saluted him. Ted hoisted himself up into the plane for the interior check. And it was with that gesture, as it always was, that he began to feel uneasy. Not because he was afraid—he was, like all the rest of them—but because he didn't want to be in command. He was a good pilot, maybe even a very good pilot. But he knew he didn't want the responsibility of all those lives behind him. He'd hoped for reconnaissance work when he'd signed up. He'd wanted to be alone.
Case was in the cockpit, his face already white and doughy. He'd be better once they were airborne, Ted knew. It was the waiting before each sortie that put him on the edge.
A pilot was supposed to love his plane, but Ted didn't really. Not love it, actually. He'd heard the other pilots speak of their planes as if they were the women they named them for—Miss Barbara, Jeannie Bee, Reluctant Virgin—caressing them before a mission, kissing them wildly if they made it back. But to Ted, the bomber was a machine that might malfunction and sometimes did—a machine with which it seemed he had barely made a grudging truce in the eleven missions before. He respected the plane, and the men who had to climb inside it, but when the mission was over, he was always glad to leave it behind.
The two pilots were in a five-foot cube. All around them—to the front, sides, behind them on the ceiling, and even on the floor—there were controls, switches, levers. In a B-17, flying was a purely relative concept, he thought, more an engineering operation than a defiance of gravity. In about twenty minutes he would be called upon to perform a complex series of maneuvers in heavy machinery 26,000 feet above the earth, in temperatures of sixty degrees below zero, while German pilots were shooting at him. You weren't supposed to think about it.
Shulman was in the nose; Warren would soon crawl into a fetal position in the ball turret; Ekberg was in the tail. Baker, the new navigator, was quiet with the unfamiliar crew. In the radio compartment, Callahan and Tripp were razzing Rees, who had vomited on the last mission—from fear or from the lousy food on base, the pilot hadn't known. Rees had a large nose, a slipped grin, the grin a defense against the unthinkable.
You puke again, I’m sending you to Ludwigshafen with the load.
Rees leaned toward Tripp, faked a heave.
Fuck off, Rees, Tripp said, pushing the gunner away.
Case, you got any gum?
Case was opening his third stick in as many minutes. He had another one behind his ear. Ted went over the checklist once again, to steady Case's nerves.
Intercooler. Check. Gyros. Check. Fuel shutoff switches. OK. Gear switch. Neutral. Throttle. Check. De-icer and anti-icer, wing and prop. Off. Generators. All set to fire up.
And then he heard it through the radio. The ceiling had lifted just enough over the target. They were going up.
Once, in October he had really flown a plane. A brigadier general needed to be ferried to another base, and Ted, who had completed his third mission just the day before, was asked to take the job. The plane was a gift from God—a single-engine Tiger Moth that lifted from the runway like a bubble. He wondered who had owned it before the war. A titled playboy with a huge estate? Thursday was clear, no haze on the horizon, a strafe of thin white cirrus high above them. He made the ferry to Molesworth by the book, the general saying little, Ted even less. But when the man saluted him from the ground, Ted knew he had the plane to himself.
He'd bumped, like a toy, over the Molesworth airfield and hit the smoother surface of the runway. All around him were empty hardstands, waiting for planes that might or might not come back. He saw the Nissen huts the emergency trucks, the wind sock stuttering toward the east. A mechanic on the wing of an injured B-ll stood to watch him and gave him a wave. Ted opened the throttle. As if sprung, the plane began moving fast. He bounced lightly on the runway, gathering speed. The bouncing stopped. The ride turned silky.
He banked immediately for a turn. Outside his window, the earth pulled away to reveal a stitchery of green and brown and gold, with bits of water glinting in the sun. He saw a tractor plowing, a dog running behind. He could smell the fertilizer on the ground. In another pasture there were sheep, and beyond them, the abstract shapes of hay bales. At the periphery of his vision he was aware of the Nissen huts, the hangar, the wooden control tower—tiny shapes now, of little consequence. Indeed, nothing on the ground seemed to have any consequence at all.
He flew over the village with its pub and church and narrow terraced houses. He followed a dirt lane out to a stone cottage and was rewarded by a reflection of sun from a top window. The sky was a rich navy, the sun glare almost too bright against the nose of the plane. He hit a pocket of turbulence, was buffeted, fell a hundred feet. To the south was a charcoal stain—London, he suspected.
He dove suddenly and went in low over a field of rye to gather speed. He nosed the plane straight up and was pinned against the back of his seat. He climbed into a long, high loop, and for a second, at its apex, he hung motionless, upside down, a speck suspended over the countryside. He fell then into a ru
n out the other side that physically thrilled him. He banked, turned, cruised in an invisible figure eight. They taught you this in flight school, then put you in a thirty-five-ton bomber you were lucky to get off the ground. He was soaring in a barrel roll over the countryside on a day as fine as England had seen in weeks, and he felt, for an instant, free. Free of Case and Shulman and McNulty and the sleepless nights. Free of the pneumonia tubes and the rotten food. Free of the fear of death. Free of the war itself. He had told himself, after the hell of his first mission, that he'd never get into a plane again once the war was over. But on that day— drifting in a slow roll out toward the horizon—he felt, for a moment, the exaltation of flying. A faint whiff of exuberance passed like a mist through his chest, close to his heart.
When the plane stalled, it fluttered and fell like a fledgling that had not meant to leave the nest. He could feel the lightness of the air beneath him, the way the plane began to list. The right wing dipped, and the dip became a spin. He let it go, losing himself in the spiral. He flirted with the spin. But when he knew he had run out of altitude, he put the plane into a steep dive to pull her out and up.
He was a hundred feet from the fields. He'd be grounded if anyone had observed and reported him. He could see the spires of Cambridge in the distance. He began to climb then, as high as he could push the plane. He wanted to take himself aloft—away from the earth.
Case's cheeks were vibrating with the plane. They waited for the takeoff flares. Over the intercom, the pilot asked for position checks. Ekberg, in the tail, sounded drunk. How had he not noticed that before? They would be the second plane behind Old Gold, the lead ship painted garishly to identify it in the air—a gaudy duck with its dull flock behind. Twenty planes, and they were number two.
Ted looked at his mission flimsy, passed it over to Case. On it were the code words and the details of the mission. It was made of rice paper; if they went down, Ted was supposed to eat it. He saw the flares then, gave the thumbs-up sign to the chief on the ground to pull the chocks, closed the window. He taxied out of the hardstand and got into line on the perimeter track. He could not see over the nose and had to use the edge of the taxiway for a guide. Already the noise inside the plane was deafening. He thought sometimes he minded the noise the most, and that if there was a Hell, it would sound like the interior of a B-17. He ran up the engines to test them. They were loaded to the limit, with five thousand pounds of bombs and twenty-six hundred gallons of fuel; it was always a guess as to whether they'd make it off the ground. He thought of Shulman in the nose, watching the rush of the ground beneath him.
Old Gold left the runway; Ted gunned the engines. The noise, which before had seemed unbearable, now became monstrous. He knew that behind and below him the men were praying: Get this sucker off the ground. That's right, he thought, get the bomber off the ground, and then do it, if you're lucky, thirteen more times. The runway ended, and they were up into the soup.
The RAFs called it the milky goldfish bowl. Ted climbed in a spiral over the beacon, looking out for a shadow in the mist—another groping B-17 that might stray too near. At 10,000 feet, he gave the order for oxygen and put on his own mask. Twenty seconds without oxygen could be fatal. Squeeze the pumps, he reminded them; don't freeze your spit. He added, as he always did, to keep the glove liners on, no matter what. The gunners sometimes stripped them off in the heat of battle in order to better manage the machinery, but at high altitude, fingers would freeze on gunmetal and have to be ripped off. It would be so cold the navigator wouldn't be able to make a note with a pencil; lead froze at 20,000 feet. Icy air blasted through the openings in the waist where the gunners stood. Most of the men were plugged in, their electrical suits keeping their bodies functioning. But Ted, after he'd burned his leg on his eighth mission because of a frayed wire, had decided to stay with the sheepskin. They all wore their Mae Wests, but few of them could perform their jobs with their parachutes on their backs. They kept them nearby, hanging on hooks. When they hit the flak, he'd give the order for the flak jackets. Rees would stand on his as he almost always did. On a mission with another crew, Rees had seen a Luftwaffe Junker rake the bomber's belly. The left waist gunner was shot from below. The blast had made a hole two and a half feet wide, and the dead man, to Rees's horror, had simply fallen out the bottom of the plane.
The engines were straining in the climb. At 14,000 feet they broke into the clear.
From the Channel to the rally point, he rotated with Case every fifteen minutes, a tactic he had learned to prevent Case from seizing up on him. Fly the plane close to the others in the formation, but not too close. Scan the sky for the fighters you knew would soon be out there.
Over the intercom, he could hear the chatter. Idle chatter 20,000 feet over the Channel. You were still alive if you could talk to your buddies, joke around. The words played along the surface of the tension, skittering here and there from the nose to the tail.
Those cold-storage eggs weren't any better than that powdered shit. You'd think they'd give the condemned a decent breakfast. Even prisoners get treated better. Shut up with that condemned shit, McNulty. You'll jinx the plane. Listen, Callahan, it's simple. You accept you're dead already, what's the problem? Enjoy the ride. Christ, I hope we don't have to bail out. My chute's fucked up. The wires are out in my boots. My feet are freezing. You sure? I’m positive. Hey, Warren, give me your boots. No fuckin’ way, Ekberg. We go down, I’m coming back to haunt you. Man, I love comin’ up over those clouds. I couldn't stand to live in this country. How do they stand it? Day after day after day, nothing but rain. What's the matter with I’ll Be Home I she throttling back? No, she's caught in the turbulence. How many of us are up here? I dunno, twenty-five, thirty? Boy, am I ever going to let loose tomorrow night. They're bringing the girls all the way from Cambridge for the party. None for you, Shulman, you're married. Nineteen forty-four. Can you believe it? You think the war will end in ‘44? Listen, Rees, I just wanna stay alive in ‘44. Think we can manage that?
Ted listened to the chatter, scanned the skies. The fighting, he knew, could sometimes be a thing of such beauty it took your breath away. The graceful arc of a fighter that had put its armored back to you, even as it glided down and away, out of sight, out of range. The flashbulb pops from silver planes that came at you from the sun. The way a B-17 seemed slowly to fall to earth with great dignity, as though it had been inadvertently let go by God. The odd inkblots against the blue, floating curiosities twenty feet wide and filled with exploding steel. Long white contrails in formation, road maps for German fighters. A plane, severed at the waist, that made your heart stop. Count the chutes. And breaking radio silence, shouting wildly at the doomed crew to bail out, bail out. It was the worst thing you had ever witnessed, and when it was over there was no place to put it. No part of you that could absorb it, and so you learned to transform the event even as it was happening, a sleight of hand, a trick of magic, to turn a kill into a triumph.
Right waist to pilot. Harriet W. is off to the right.
Roger, right waist. Tail gunner, what have we got back there?
Tail to pilot. Our wingman is about three hundred yards back and down off the right wing. Two other 17s about a quarter mile out to your right.
Thanks, tail gunner.
Ball turret to pilot. Contrails.
Roger, ball turret.
Ted thought of Warren in the turret. Five, six, nine hours in as cramped a position as Ted could imagine. A view straight down with nothing but the earth below you. And if the turret jammed, which it sometimes did, the gunner was a prisoner then and had to endure whatever fate dealt him: the plane hit and going down with no chance to bail out; a belly landing in which he would be flattened. The worst position in the crew.
Left waist to pilot. The wing ship has peeled off. Looks like she's aborting.
Roger.
Tail gunner to pilot. We have another formation at three o'clock high.
Thanks. Keep your eye on them.
&n
bsp; Over the Channel, he heard Shulman give the order to test fire the guns. There were bursts of fire, and Ted could smell the smoke passing through the flight deck.
Right waist to pilot. We've lost another ship. She's feathering her prop.
Navigator to pilot. Enemy coast.
Roger. Pilot to all crew. Flak jackets.
He remembered they had just rendezvoused with the escorts, and that his back was hurting from the ceaseless vibrating of the plane. He could smell, he thought, the peculiar acrid scent of the radio emanating from the compartment. And then it was Rees who yelled, or maybe it was Ekberg in the tail. No, it had to have been Rees, and they were hit, shockingly soon, the concussion so severe Ted bit his tongue, and his mouth filled with blood.
The intercom and the skies exploded.
Bandits three o'clock high. Jesus Christ. Shit. Where're the goddamn fighters? FW at twelve o'clock level. Bursts of machine-gun fire. We're in the fight field now. Fuck, my gun is jammed. I saw him, he was hit. He was smoking. Holy Christ. The plane was pummeled, buffeted. White bursts of flame. The escort fighters with them now. Beautiful—look at that. An FW made a pass in front of the cockpit, guns blasting. Knock the pilot out, disable the plane, that's the ticket. Lady-in-waiting's taken a hit, sir. Jesus Christ, they've severed the wing. She's going down. Count the chutes. Stay in formation. The sun was in his eyes. A hit, a blow that could break a spine. But he didn't know from where. Right waist, call in. Tail, call in. Where's the hit? Just above the bomb bay, sir. Four minutes to the Reich. The navigator, Baker, reporting calmly, plotting coordinates, what was he writing with, for God's sake? Ball turret to pilot. A 17 in the low squadron on fire. Left wing on fire and diving away. Fighters! Three o'clock level. Son of a bitch. There was blood splattered on the windshield. Case was screaming. He was hit in the arm. Case was scrunched down below the instrument panel. Behind him, Rees was laughing maniacally. I got one, I got one. That's only a probable, Rees. Shit no, I got him, no probable about it. Case, white-faced, was vomiting. Tripp, get up here with a tourniquet. Case has been hit. Jesus Christ. We're on fire, sir. Tripp tearing bandage cloth with his teeth. Callahan with the fire extinguisher. Shit, the little friends are turning back. Stay in formation. The sun was in his eyes. The squadron was on its own now.
