Herman Wouk - The Winds Of War

by The Winds Of War(Lit)

  "Yes, so the Prime Minister said. But there's a political problem, General. Either Hitler's a menace to the United States, in which case we need everything we've got and a lot more-or he isn't, and in that case why should we let you have part of our Navy to fight him?

  I'm just giving you the isolationist argument."

  "Men, Yaas- Of course we hope you'll think of common traditions and all that, and the advantage of keeping us alive, and the possibility that the Germans and Japanese, dominating Europe and Asia and the oceans, might prove more disagreeable over the years than we've been.

  Now I'm still to show you those landing craft we've got up in Bristol, and Fighter Command in Stanmore-"

  "If I can, I'd also like to visit Group operations, Number Eleven Fighter Group."

  Tillet blinked at him. "Number Eleven? jolly good idea. Take a bit of arranging, but I believe we can lay it on."

  Victor Henry sat in the lobby of the Savoy, waiting for Pamela and her fighter pilot. Uniforms thronged past, with only a sprinkling of dinner jackets on white-headed or bald men. The young women, in colorful thin summer finery, looked like a stream of excited amorous angels. On the brink of being invaded by Hitler's hordes, England was the gayest place he had ever seen.

  This was nothing like the glum hedonism of the French in May, going down with knives and forks in their hands. Whenever the American had visited in a hard-driving week-and by now this included shipyards, navy and air bases, factories, government offices, and army maneulvershe had noted the resolute, cheerful spirit, borne out by the rise in production figures. The British were beginning to turn out tanks, planes, guns, and ships as never before. They now claimed to be making airplanes faster than the Germans were knocking them down. The problem was getting to be fighter pilots. If the figures given him were true, they had started with somewhat more than a thousand seasoned men.

  Combat attrition was taking a steep toll, and to send green replacements into the sides was fruitless. They could kill no Germans and the Germans could kill them. England had to sweat Out 1940 with the fighter pilots on hand.

  But how fast was the Luftwaffe losing its own trained pilots?

  That was the key, Tillet said; and the hope was that Goering was already throwing everything in. If so, and if the British could hold on, there would come a crack in Luftwaffe performance. The signal, said Tillet, might be a shift to terror bombing of the cities.

  "Here we are, late as hell," chirruped Pamela, floating up to him in a mauve silk dress. Pamela's flier was short, swarthy, broad-nosed, and rather stout, and his thick wavy black hair badly needed cutting.

  Except for the creased blue uniform, Flight Lieutenant Gallard looked like a young lawyer or businessman rather than an actor, though his brilliant blue eyes, sunken with fatigue, had a dramatic sparkle.

  Diamonds glittered in Pamela's ears. Her hair was done up in a makeshift way. Pug thought she had probably emerged from bed rather than a beauty parlor; and fair enough, in the time and place! The notion gave him a pang of desire to be young and in combat. Their table was waiting in the crowded grillroom. They ordered drinks.

  "Orange squash," said Might lieutenant Callard.

  " Two dry martinis. One orange squash. Very good, sir," purred the silver-haired waiter, with a low bow.

  Gallard gave Victor Henry a fetching grin, showing perfect teeth; it made him seem more of an actor. The fingers of his left hand were beating a brisk tattoo on the starched cloth. "That's the devil of an order, isn't it, in the Savoy?"

  Pamela said to Pug, "I'm told he used to drink like a proper sponge, but he went on orange squash the day we declared war."

  Pug said, "My son's a Navy flier. I wish he'd go on orange squash."

  "It's not a bad idea. This business up there"-Gallard raised a thumb toward the ceiling-"happens fast. You've got to look sharp so as to see the other fellow before he sees you. You have to react fast when you do see him, and then you have to make one quick decision after another. Things get mixed up and keep changing every second. You have to fly that plane for dear life. Now, some of the lads thrive on drink, they say it blows off their steam. I need all my steam for that work."

  "There's a lot I'd like to ask you," said Victor Henry. "But probably this is your night to forget about the air war."

  "Oh?" Gallard gave Pug a long inquiring look, then glanced at Pamela. "Not a bit'. Fire away,"

  "How good are they?"

  "The jerries are fine pilots and ruddy good shots. Our newspaper talk about how easy they are makes us a little sick."

  "And their planes?"

  "The jos a fine machine, but the Spitfire's a good match for it.

  The Hurricane's quite a bit slower; fortunately it's much more maneuverable.

  Their twin-engine i io is an inferior machine, seems to handle very stiffly.

  The bombers of course are sitting birds, if you can get at them."

  "How's R.A.F morale?"

  Gallard Hipped a cigarette in his mouth and lit it with swift gestures of one hand, "I'd say it's very high. But not the way the papers tell it. Not that dashing patriotic business. I can remember the first time I fought Over England, when those dots appeared in the sky just where Fighter Control said they were, I had a bit of that feeling, I thought, rMy, damn their eyes, they're really trying it, and what the hell are they doing flying over my country? Let's shoot the bloody bastards down!" But right away I became damn busy trying not to get shot down myself. That's how it's been ever since." He smoked in silence, his eyes de and far away, his fingers dancing and dancing.

  He shifted in the chair, as though it were too hard. 'It's a job, and we're trying to do our best.

  It's a lot more fighting than we had over France. You can tell your son, Captain, that fear's a big factor, especially as the thing goes on and on. The main thing is learning to live with it. Some chaps simply can't. We call it LMF, lack of moral fibre. The brute fact is that as range decreases, accuracy increases. You've got to close the range.

  There's nothing to do about that old truth of warfare. But there's always the chap who opens up and blazes away from afar, you know, and runs out of bullets and heads for home. And there's the one who somehow always loses the bird he's after in the clouds, or who never finds the foe and aborts the mission. One soon knows who they are.

  Nobody blames them. After a while they're posted out." He fell silent again, looking down at the smoking cigarette in his damped hands, obviously absorbed in memory. He shifted in the chair again, and glanced up from Victor Henry to Pamela, who was watching his face tensely. "Well -the long and the short of it is, it's us against the jerries, Captain Henry, and that's exciting. We're flying these machines that can cross all of England in half an hour. Excellent gun platforms. Best in the world.

  We're doing what very few men can do or ever have done. Or perhaps will ever do again." He looked around at the elegant, grillroom full of well-dressed women and uniformed men, and said with an uncivilized grin, the whites showing around His eyeballs, "If excelling interests you, there it is'-he made the thumb gesture-"up there." "Your orange squash, sir," said the waiter, bowing.

  "And just in time," said Gallard. "I'm talking too much." Pug raised his glass to Gallard. "Thanks. Good luck and good hunting."

  Gallard grinned, drank, and moved restlessly in the chair. "I was an actor of sorts, you know. Give me a cue and I rant away. What does your son fly?" "SBD, the Douglas Dauntless," said Pug. "He's a carrier pilot." Gallard slowly nodded, increasing the speed of his finger tattoo.

  "Dive bomber."

  "Yes."

  "We still argue a lot about that. The jerries copied it from your navy.

  Our command will have no part of it. The pilot's in trouble, we say, in that straight predictable path. Our chaps have got a lot of victories against the Stukas. But then again, providing they get all the way down, they do lay those bombs in just where they're supposed to go. Anyhow, my hat's off to those carrier fellows, landing on a tiny wobbly patch
at sea. I come home to broad immovable mother earth, for whom I'm developing quite an affection."

  "Ah, I have a rival," said Pamela. "I'm glad she's so old and so Hat."

  Gallard smiled at her, raising his eyebrows. "Yes, you've rather got her there, haven't you, Pam?"

  During the meal, he described in detail to Victor Henry the way fighter tactics were evolving on both sides. Gallard got very caught u'p in this, swooping both palms to show maneuvers, pouring otrt a rapid fire of technical language. For the first time he seemed to relax, sitting easily in his chair, grinning with enthusiastic excitement. What he was saving was vital intelligence and Pug wanted to remember as much as possible; he drank very little of the Burgundy he had ordered with the roast beef.

  Pamela at last complained that she was drinking up the bottle by herself.

  "I need all my steam, too," Pug said. "More than Ted does."

  "I'm tired of abstemious heroes. I shall find myself a cowardly sot."

  Gallard was baying his second helping of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding-he was eating enormously, saying that he had lost almost a stone in three weeks and proposed to make it up in three days-when the headwaiter came to him with a written note. Gallard crumpled it up, wiped a napkin across his mouth, and excused himself. He returned in a few minutes, smiled at them, and resumed eating, "Pam, there's been a change," he abruptly said when his plate was empty. "Our s uadron's rest off ops is cancelled. We'll get it when the weather's a little cooler." He smiled at Victor Henry and drummed ten fingers on the table. "I don't mind. One gets fidgety, knowing the thing's still going on full blast and one's out of it."

  In the silence at the little table, Victor Henry thought that the ominousness of this summons went much beyond the riskiness of recalling and sending up a fatigued, edgy pilot. It signalled that the R.A.F was coming to the end of its rope.

  Pamela said, 'I"en do you have to go back? Tomorrow?"

  "Oh, I'm supposed to be on my way now, but I was damned we]] going to enjoy this company, and my beef."

  "I shall drive you to Biggin Hill,"

  "Well, actually, they're digging the chaps out of various pubs and places of lesser repute, Pam.

  We'll be going up together. Those of us they can find." He glanced at his watch. "I'll be cracking off soon, but the evening's young. No reason for you not to go on to that Noel Coward show. I've heard it's very funny."

  Quickly Pug said, "I think now's the time for me to leave you Ioth."

  The R.A.F pilot looked him straight in the eye. 'Why? Don't you think you could bear Pamela's drunken chatter for another little while?

  Don't go, Here she is all tarted up for the first time in weeks."

  "All right," Pug said. "I think I can bear it."

  The pilot and the girl stood. Pamela said, "So soon? Well, we shall have a nice long stroll through the lobby."

  As Pug got up and offered his hand, Ted Gallard said, "Good luck to you, Captain Henry, and to that son of yours in the Dauntless clive bomber. Tell him I recommend orange squash. Come and see us at Biggin Hill aerodrome."

  Left alone at the table, Pug sat and wiped his right hand with a napkin. Gallard's palm had been very wet.

  He did visit Ted Gallard's squadron, one afternoon a few days later.

  Biggin Hill lay southeast of London, squarely in the path of incoming German bombers from the nearest airfields across the Channel.

  The Luftwaffe was persisting in a fierce effort to knock out Biggin Hill, and the aerodrome was a melancholy scene: wrecked aircraft, burned-out roofless hangars, smashed runways, everywhere the inevitable stinks of burned wood, broken drains, blown-up earth, and smashed plaster. But bulldozers were snorting here and there, patching the runways, and a couple of planes landed as Pug arrived. On stubby fighters dispursed all over the field, mechanics in coveralls were climbing and tinkering, with much loud cheerful profanity. The aerodrome was very much in business. Gallard looked very worn, yet happier than he had been in the Savoy Grill. In the dispersal hut he introduced Pug Henry to a dozen or so hollow-eyed, dishevelled lads in wrinkled uniforms, fleece-lined boots and yellow lifejackets, lounging about on chairs and iron cots, either bareheaded or with narrow blue caps tilted over one eye. The arrival of an American Navy captain in mufti dried up the talk, and for a while the radio played jazz in the awkward silence. Then one pink-cheeked fellow who looked as though he had never shaved, offered Pug a mug of bitter tea, with a friendly insult about the uselessness of navies. He had been shot down by a British destroyer in the Channel, he said, and so might be slightly prejudiced. Pug said that speaking for the honor of navies, he regretted the idiocy; but as a friend of England, he approved the marksmanship. That brought a laugh, and they began talking about flying again, self-consciously for a while, but then forgetting the visitor. Some of the slang baffled him, but the picture was clear enough: everlasting alert, almost no sleep, too many airplanes lost in accidents as well as combat, far too many German fighters, and desperate, proud, nervous high

  Mk

  spirits in the much reduced squadron. Pug gathered that almost half the pilots that had started the war were dead.

  When the six o'clock news came on, the talk stopped and all huddled around the radio. It had been a day of minor combat, but again the Luftwaffe had come off second best in planes shot down, at a rate of about three to two. The fliers made thumbs-up gestures to each other, boyishly grinning.

  "They're fine lads," Gallard said, walking Victor Henry back to his car. "Of course, for your benefit they cut the talk about girls.

  I'm the middle-aged man of the squadron, and I get left out of it too, pretty much.

  When they're not flying, these chaps have the most amazing experiences."

  He gave Pug a knowing grin. "One wonders how they manage to climb into their cockpits, but they do, they do."

  "It's a good time to be alive and young," Pug said.

  "Yes. You asked me about morale. Now you've seen it." At the car, as they shook hands, Gallard said diffidently, "I owe you thanks."

  "You do? Whatever for?"

  "Pamela's coming back to England. She told me that when they met you by chance in Washington, she was trying to make up her mind. She decided to ask you about it, and was much impressed by what you said."

  "Well, I'm flattered. I believe I was right. I'm sure her father's surviving nicely without her."

  "Talky? He'll survive us all."

  It's not going well," general Tillet said, maneuvering his car through a beetle-cluster of wet black taxicabs at Marble Arch. The weather had lapsed into rain and fog; pearl-gray murk veiled a warm, sticky, unwarlike London. Umbrella humps crowded the sidew. The tall red omnibuses glistened wetly; so did the rubber ponchos of the bobbies. The miraculous summer weather had given the air battle an exalting radiance, but today London wore a dreary peacetime morning face.

  'The spirit at Biggin Hill is damned good," Pug said.

  "Oh, were you there? Yes, no question about spirit! It's the arithmetic that's bad. Maybe the Fat Boy's getting low on fighter pilots, too. We are, that's Hat. Perilously low. One doesn't know the situation on the other side of the hill. One hangs on and hopes."

  The rain trailed off as they drove. After a while the sun hazily sbonc Out on wet endless rows of identical grimy red houses, and sunlight shafted into the car. Tillet said, "Well, our meteorology blokes are on top of their job. They said the bad weather wouldn't hold, and that Jerry would probably be flying today. Strange, the only decent English summer in a century, and it comes along in the year the Hun attacks from the sky."

  "Is that a good or bad break?"

  "It's to his advantage for locating his target and dropping his bombs.

  But our interceptors have a better chance of finding him and shooting him down. Given the choice, our chaps would have asked for clear skies."

  He talked of Napoleon's luck with weather, and cited battles of Charles XII and Wallenstein that had turned on freak storms. Pug enjoyed Tillet'
s erudition. He was in no position to challenge any of it, and wondered who was. Tillet appeared to have total kno%vledge of every battle ever fought, and he could get as annoyed with Xerxes or Caesar for tactical stupidity, as he was with Hermann Goering. About an hour later they came to a town, drove along a canal of very dirty water, and turned off to a compound of sooty buildings surrounded by a high wire fence.

  A soldier at the gate saluted and let them pass. Pug said, "Where are we?"

  "Uxbridge. I believe you wanted to have a look at Group Operations, Number Eleven Fighter Group," said Tillet.

  "Oh, yes." In three weeks, Tillet had never once mentioned the request and Victor Henry had never repeated it.

  A flight lieutenant with a pleasant chubby round face met them.