On Glorious Wings

by Stephen Coonts

  “I would laugh,” I said. “Isn’t there something you can do about it?”

  “Sure. Just keep that air valve set right and not crash. Not wash out and have those wing flares explode. I’ve got that beat. I’ll just stay up all night, pop the flares and sit down after sunrise. That’s why I have to laugh, see. I can’t fly Camels in the daytime, even. And they don’t know it.”

  “Well, anyway, you did better than you promised,” I said. “You have run him off the continent of Europe.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I sure have to laugh. He’s got to go back to England, where all the men are gone. All those women, and not a man between fourteen and eighty to help him. I have to laugh.”

  VII

  When July came, I was still in the Wing office, still trying to get used to my mechanical leg by sitting at a table equipped with a paper cutter, a pot of glue and one of red ink, and laden with the meager, thin, here soiled and here clean envelopes that came down in periodical batches—envelopes addressed to cities and hamlets and sometimes less than hamlets, about England—when one day I came upon two addressed to the same person in America: a letter and a parcel. I took the letter first. It had neither location nor date:

  Dear Aunt Jenny

  Yes I got the socks Elnora knitted. They fit all right because I gave them to my batman he said they fit all right. Yes I like it here better than where I was these are good guys here except these damn Camels. I am all right about going to church we dont always have church. Sometimes they have it for the ak emmas because I reckon a ak emma needs it but usually I am pretty busy Sunday but I go enough I reckon. Tell Elnora much oblige for the socks they fit all right but maybe you better not tell her I gave them away. Tell Isom and the other niggers hello and Grandfather tell him I got the money all right but war is expensive as hell.

  Johnny.

  But then, the Malbroucks don’t make the wars, anyway. I suppose it takes too many words to make a war. Maybe that’s why.

  The package was addressed like the letter, to Mrs Virginia Sartoris, Jefferson, Mississippi, U.S.A., and I thought, What in the world would it ever occur to him to send to her? I could not imagine him choosing a gift for a woman in a foreign country; choosing one of those trifles which some men can choose with a kind of infallible tact. His would be, if he thought to send anything at all, a section of crank shaft or maybe a handful of wrist pins salvaged from a Hun crash. So I opened the package. Then I sat there, looking at the contents.

  It contained an addressed envelope, a few dog-eared papers, a wrist watch whose strap was stiff with some dark dried liquid, a pair of goggles without any glass in one lens, a silver belt buckle with a monogram. That was all.

  So I didn’t need to read the letter. I didn’t have to look at the contents of the package, but I wanted to. I didn’t want to read the letter, but I had to.

  —Squadron, R.A.F., France.

  5th July, 1918.

  Dear Madam,

  I have to tell you that your son was killed on yesterday morning. He was shot down while in pursuit of duty over the enemy lines. Not due to carelessness or lack of skill. He was a good man. The E.A. outnumbered your son and had more height and speed which is our misfortune but no fault of the Government which would give us better machines if they had them which is no satisfaction to you. Another of ours, Mr R. Kyerling 1000 feet below could not get up there since your son spent much time in the hangar and had a new engine in his machine last week. Your son took fire in ten seconds Mr Kyerling said and jumped from your son’s machine since he was side slipping safely until the E.A. shot away his stabiliser and controls and he began to spin. I am very sad to send you these sad tidings though it may be a comfort to you that he was buried by a minister. His other effects sent you later.

  I am, madam, and etc.

  C. Kaye Major

  He was buried in the cemetary just north of Saint Vaast since we hope it will not be shelled again since we hope it will be over soon by our padre since there were just two Camels and seven E.A. and so it was on our side by that time.

  C. K. Mjr.

  The other papers were letters, from his great-aunt, not many and not long. I dont know why he had kept them. But he had. Maybe he just forgot them, like he had the bill from the London tailor he had found in his overalls in Amiens that day in the spring.

  . . . let those foreign women alone. I lived through a war myself and I know how women act in war, even with Yankees. And a good-for-nothing bellion like you . . .

  And this:

  . . . we think it’s about time you came home. Your grandfather is getting old, and it don’t look like they will ever get done fighting over there. So you come on home. The Yankees are in it now. Let them fight if they want to. It’s their war. It’s not ours.

  And that’s all. That’s it. The courage, the recklessness, call it what you will, is the flash, the instant of sublimation; then flick! the old darkness again. That’s why. It’s too strong for steady diet. And if it were a steady diet, it would not be a flash, a glare. And so, being momentary, it can be preserved and prolonged only on paper: a picture, a few written words that any match, a minute and harmless flame that any child can engender, can obliterate in an instant. A one-inch sliver of sulphur-tipped wood is longer than memory or grief; a flame no larger than a sixpence is fiercer than courage or despair.

  THE WHITE

  FEATHER ACE

  FROM G-8 AND HIS

  BATTLE ACES

  by ANONYMOUS

  Before the dawn of the television age popular entertainment consisted of black-and-white movies, radio, and the pulps, which were magazines and paperbacks printed on cheap, high-acid content paper that turned yellow almost as quickly as you could turn the pages. Pulp fiction used an over-the-top, exclamation-point formula heavy with adjectives and action, a style that survives today in comic books, which matured during the pulp era. This wasn’t literature or even good writing; still, the tremendous amount of fiction the pulps published made them an excellent market for struggling writers. Many of the great novelists of the twentieth century got their start writing for the pulps, which paid by the word—not much, but enough to eat on.

  We felt this anthology would be incomplete without a rock-’em, sock-’em flying tale from the pulps. The one we have selected is from one of the premier pulp flying-adventure magazines of the 1930s, G-8 and His Battle Aces. The magazine was published monthly, or twice a month, from 1933 until the early 1940s. Every issue featured a novella about G-8, always referred to as “Master Spy,” and his sidekicks, and one or two complete short stories. All the stories were World War I flying tales in which the good guys gave the Germans hell on the Western Front. Like most pulp fiction, these tales wore pseudonym by-lines or were published without one. G-8 also starred in his own comic book, which simplified the problem of illustrating the magazine.

  “The White Feather Ace” was a short story published in the February 1939 magazine without a byline. The teaser in the table of contents proclaimed: “Jimmy Putnam rode into the flaming inferno of the skies and let his hot guns speak the words he wanted them all to hear.”

  A man does not wear his courage on his sleeve, but keeps it stored within himself. It stands side by side with fear in any pilot’s breast, and to deny this is a lie! Jimmy Putnam discovered the difference between valour and panic, but only after he had dipped his wings in blood!

  Second Lieutenant Jimmy Putnam was scared silly as he arrived at the field of the 101st Pursuits. He knew the front lines weren’t very far away, and he knew that death lurked over those lines. But his fear was not particularly unusual, for Jimmy Putnam had never been known to be an outstanding hero.

  He was a small, retiring youngster of nineteen. He had wavy blond hair, a rather angelic face, and clear blue eyes that must, he thought as he stood before his new commanding officer, have a very startled look in them.

  Captain Warren, commander of the 101st, was a tall, angular fellow with glasses riding his sharp nose. H
e had a rather cocksure air about him. He was one of those exceptions to the rule in the World War, for through some fluke of mismanagement or by dint of political pull, Captain Warren was not a flying man. Nevertheless he commanded the 101st Squadron.

  The captain surveyed young Jimmy Putnam in an annoying manner as if he were studying an experimental guinea pig in a laboratory.

  Jimmy stood as straight and quiet as he could before his commander’s desk as the latter asked, “Have you ever had any experience on the Front?”

  Young Putnam shook his head.

  “No, sir,” he said.

  As he said that, he felt almost as though he were pronouncing his own death sentence. Captain Warren squinted harder at him, then he leaned back in his chair and tapped the top of his desk with his finger tips.

  “There are certain things, Lieutenant Putnam, that a man must understand before he goes over.”

  He waited for that to sink in.

  “Yes, sir,” Jimmy agreed meekly.

  “You’ve heard about our great aces, Lufberry, Rickenbacker, Frank Luke. Those men stand for true bravery and courage.” He leaned forward and took a closer look at Jimmy Putnam, and Jimmy jumped inwardly. Then the captain shook his finger in Jimmy’s face and charged in a loud voice, “You’re scared! You’re scared silly even before you’ve made your first flight over the lines!”

  Captain Warren’s acts angered Jimmy Putnam a little, but he remained meek and admitted, “I do feel a little nervous, sir.”

  “Bah!” Captain Warren ranted. “You’ve got to get over that. You must remember one thing. If you’re frightened going over the lines, you’re licked before you start. You’ve got to get hold of yourself, Putnam. Remember what the boys said in the Battle of the Marne? Do you want to live forever?”

  Jimmy gulped. He wasn’t sure just what made him say what he did next.

  “Yes, sir,” he answered automatically. “I want to live as long as I can.”

  “Then, by thunder,” Captain Warren roared, “your death warrant is sealed! You must acquire a devil-may-care attitude. We all have to die sometime, my boy.” He glanced at his wrist watch. “Go to your quarters and steel yourself for the ordeal to come. You’re going out on patrol with the others in one hour.”

  To say that Jimmy Putnam was more nervous and scared than when he had entered the C.O.’s office would be putting it mildly. He tried to hang up some of his clothing, but his hands were trembling so that he could hardly hold the clothes long enough to get them on the nails that were driven in the wooden wall of the barracks.

  Someone was coming down the barracks corridor, and he jumped as the footsteps turned into his room. A big, amiable pilot with first lieutenant’s bars on his shoulders entered, smiling. Jimmy snapped to attention and brought up a salute. The big fellow knocked it down good-naturedly.

  “Forget that stuff around me,” he said with a grin. “I’m Wingy Corbett, senior flight leader. I suppose the skipper has been talking to you about bravery and all that stuff.”

  Jimmy nodded.

  “Pay no attention to him,” Corbett advised. “That guy’s a phony.”

  “What do you mean?” Jimmy asked, staring at him. “Isn’t he the commanding officer here?”

  “Sure,” Corbett nodded, “but maybe you didn’t notice that he doesn’t wear any wings on his chest.”

  “Gee!” Jimmy said. “Do you mean he’s a kiwi?”

  “You said it, brother,” Corbett said sourly.

  “But,” Jimmy Putnam ventured, “I thought that they always had flying officers to command squadrons.”

  “Listen, fellow,” Corbett boomed, “when Washington politics enters into a war, anything is liable to happen. None of us here are quite sure how this guy Warren got his appointment, when he’s never piloted a plane himself and doesn’t know anything about it, but the chances are he was worked in because his mother’s aunt’s brother by marriage knew a lobbyist who knew a Congressman, or something like that.

  “As if it wasn’t enough for this guy to know nothing about flying, he has to have some crazy idea that he’s a psychologist and knows how to handle men. The crazy fool scares all the replacements stiff as soon as they get up here, then he gives me the devil because the new men are killed off faster in this squadron than they are in any other. The War Department would have done a lot better by the 101st if they’d sent up a smallpox epidemic instead of Warren.”

  Wingy Corbett paced up and down the little room that was to be Jimmy Putnam’s quarters with an angry expression on his face.

  “I’d give a lot,” he snorted, “if I could figure out some way to get rid of that kiwi.”

  Jimmy gulped and said, “Captain Warren told me we’re going out on patrol in less than an hour.”

  “Yeah,” Corbett nodded. “We’ll go out for evening patrol at four o’clock.” He looked at his wrist watch. “It’s almost a quarter past three now. Would you like to have a drink or two before you go?”

  Jimmy Putnam shook his head.

  “No, thanks,” he said. He hadn’t learned to drink hard liquor and he felt that he wanted a clear head when he went over. “There is one thing I would like to do if it’s possible,” he said. “I would like to spend some time down in the gun pits at target practice.”

  Wingy Corbett stared at him, then began to grin.

  “Say, kid, you’re all right,” he said. “You’re not going to let anything slip, are you? Well, you go right ahead. Go down to the gun pits and shoot all you want, and if that no-good kiwi skipper says anything to you, tell him I sent you down.”

  “Thanks,” Jimmy said.

  He felt much better when he reached the gun pits and began slamming slugs into the bullseye. When he heard Hissos warming, he came out of the pits and walked toward the newest Spad that stood on the tarmac. He saw a group of pilots standing beside one of the hangars. Wingy Corbett called to him from the center of that group and Jimmy went over. Corbett introduced him to Bert Holbert, his flight leader; to Ted Gleason, the pilot who led C flight, and to eleven other young pilots. Corbett cursed under his breath as he saw Captain Warren striding down the tarmac.

  “Here comes our brave and courageous hero to give us another one of his pep talks,” he groaned.

  Then Captain Warren was there, shouting an order for them to line up and stand at attention. The pilots stood in two ragged lines while Warren bellowed at them.

  “You are all here for a purpose!” he barked. “We’ve got to win this war. But fear isn’t going to win it. Remember Lufberry, and Luke, and Rickenbacker. They are brave men who do not fear anything. If you’re going to live long, you’ve got to be fearless like them. As the boys cried in the Marne—Do you want to live forever?”

  No one spoke. Many of the pilots shifted nervously, at which Captain Warren bellowed, “Attention! Now hold out your right arms straight in front of you and extend the fingers. I’m going to look you men over and see who’s got the jitters and who hasn’t.”

  He moved on down the lines of men, barking at this one, condemning that one because of his shaky fingers:

  “You’ll never win that way!” he roared. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. Now get in your planes and go out there and fight!”

  There was hatred in some of the glances that the pilots gave him. For the most part the men walked to their ships on rubbery legs and with quaking hearts.

  Jimmy Putnam was moving through a maze of apprehension, as if he were walking to the gallows. Somehow he got into his cockpit. Automatically he tested his controls as he had learned to do at the advanced flying school.

  Then Wingy Corbett was giving the signal for the take-off. Jimmy pushed forward his throttle with a feeling of a doomed man sitting in the electric chair and throwing the switch for his own electrocution. His knees wobbled and he had hard work keeping his feet on the rudder bar as his Spad swept across the field and gathered speed.

  Then, somehow, he was in the air and he felt a little better. He was followin
g Bert Holbert in the left flight. Opposite them at the head of C flight was Ted Gleason, and leading the center forward flight was Wingy Corbett.

  Jimmy saw the front lines, with their winding trenches, coming at him. The planes of the 101st were five thousand feet above them and still climbing. He was thinking of the heroes down there, the men in the trenches who faced death with smiles on their faces.

  He recalled the words of Captain Warren. Rickenbacker, Lufberry, Luke. Those brave men didn’t have any fear. Putnam was suddenly convinced that he was the most scared man in the entire war. Yet he was determined to go on to what he felt was his almost certain death. A million dollars wouldn’t make him turn back and show the rest of the boys that he was yellow.

  As they crossed the German lines, the Archie guns began grunting up at them, but all fifteen Spads were too high for them to have any effect. A half mile back of the enemy lines they made a ninety degree turn and began flying parallel with those lines.

  Suddenly Jimmy saw Wingy Corbett’s plane, wobbling in a signal. He was pointing high in the air, off to the north. Instinctively, Jimmy looked up in the sky and his heart began pounding twice as fast as it had before. At first he couldn’t see enemy planes up there, but he was sure Wingy Corbett had spotted them.

  The other pilots were staring, too. There was a sudden flurry of excitement among those three close-flying formations. Abruptly, Jimmy Putnam spotted the German planes. They were tearing down from a white cloud, coming straight for them. He tried to count them, for he knew there was a great number. He counted fifteen, and still there were more. He felt a little faint, and his heart was pounding like a great drum. Jimmy’s fingers tightened over his triggers and he felt a little more confident.