by Mac Hyman
Lieutenant Cover was the only one that hadnt jumped off and was the only one quiet, but he had his chute on backward too, and couldnt fly the plane nohow. And I mean by that time, I was getting right worried with them.
Anyhow, we finally got them all on the truck and got out to the plane, and Ben’s face was about as white as I ever seen it. I never seen him so disgusted. I tried to get him not to notice what was going on and everything by walking around real straight and saying, “Sir,” to everybody, but it didnt help none. He just set there with his face white and said, “They never can fly this plane, Will, in the shape they’re in, but we’ll have to go along with them. We’ll just have to go.”
Then Lieutenant Bridges come up to me while we were standing around and said, “Where did yall go last night?” and I popped up real straight and said, “No excuse, sir,” even though it didnt make no sense, but I said it loud enough for Ben to hear me; but then Lieutenant Bridges said, “Well, that’s a silly place to go. What made you think of going there?” which didnt make no sense neither, but I said again, “No excuse, sir,” and saluted, but I could see Ben out of the corner of my eye shaking his head sideways. So I give up and said, “We went to town. Where did yall go?”
And he said, “No excuse, sir,” and went to giggling again; and in a minute I heered him around the other side of the plane saying to somebody, “Ask me where I went last night,” and they asked him, and he said, “No excuse, sir,” and commenced to giggle again.
Anyhow, there was two mechanics on top of the plane when we got there and they had the cowling off the number two engine with a little ladder running up to it, and finally one of them climbed down and come over to Lieutenant Bridges and said, “Number two engine is out, sir, and there’s a mag drop on number three. It’s in no condition to fly at this time.”
And Lieutenant Bridges said, “What do you mean, it’s in no condition to fly!”
“Well, it just aint,” the fellow said. “It’s in bad shape and . . .”
“What’s the matter with you?” Lieutenant Bridges yelled at him. “Dont you have any guts?”
“Well, it aint a matter of that, sir,” the fellow said, “because I’m stationed here and dont fly nohow, so it aint a matter of guts with me, I just think . . .”
“I used to fly planes that didnt have but one little bitty engine,” Lieutenant Bridges said. “And here I’ve got more engines than I can even count—I dont even know how many engines I do have on this plane, and you come up here telling me about one little ole bitty engine . . .”
“Well, I . . .”
“Who took those cowlings off anyhow? Put them back on,” Lieutenant Bridges said. “What’s this Air Force coming to anyhow.”
So they took on that way a while, and Ben got to worrying more and more about it. He said he didnt think they could fly the plane at all, so I said, “Well, Ben, if you want me to, I’ll clomp them, and maybe when they come to . . .”
But he shook his head and said, “You cant do that, Will. They’re officers and if you clomped them, that would be the worse thing you can do. The only thing we could do is try to talk them out of it, and we aint even supposed to do that.”
But I tried it anyhow because I seen he wanted me to. I went over to Lieutenant Bridges and said, “Why dont we just wait over until tomorrow? Maybe then . . .”
“No excuse, sir,” he said. Then he turned and looked at me and said, “Look, who’s the pilot around here? I am, aint I? You go on and take the train if you dont want to fly with me. Me, I fly, that’s what I do. Off we go into the wild blue yonder. Put those cowlings on back there. Snap it up now. Snap. Snap. Snap.”
So I seen there warnt any use in talking to him any longer, so I went over and tried to talk to Lieutenant Gardella but I dont think he even heered me. He was setting there blinking his eyes and I talked at him a while, only he didnt answer, and finally I reached down and waved my hand in front of his face, but he still just set there, staring ahead and blinking. So then I climbed up in the plane to try to talk to some of the others, only Lieutenant Kendall was already asleep; and I couldnt get Lieutenant Cover to pay no attention to me because he was already navigating just as hard as he could, writing and slinging maps around and peeping down tubes and things, and every time I said something to him, he told me to go away, he was busy.
So I finally give it up and went back outside to where Ben was setting under the tail and told him there didnt seem to be much way of stopping them, but that Lieutenant Bridges had said we could go back on the train ifn we wanted to. But Ben shook his head and said, “We just cant do that, Will!”
“How you mean we cant . . .”
“We cant,” he said. “We’re supposed to stay with the plane and you know that as good as I do. We cant just get off and take a train back every time something comes up. You know better than that, Will. You go ahead if you want to, but myself, I’ll stick with the plane like I’m supposed to.”
I never seen him so firm in my life—he didnt argue or get mad or nothing; he just said it and finally got up and walked away, still shaking his head, and wouldnt even discuss it with me no more.
So I didnt know what to do. I seen he didnt want to go but there warnt no way of talking him out of it. The mechanics was still trying to get the cowlings back on the engine, and Lieutenant Bridges strutted around and yelled out orders at them. I went over and set down on one of the wheels of the plane and started rolling a cigarette, but then I thought about being too close to the engines to smoke, but then I got to thinking that it wouldnt be such a bad idea if they did blow up so I went ahead and lit it and puffed real hard and flipped ashes this way and that, but nothing ever come of it. They finally got the cowlings back on and Lieutenant Bridges was raring to go, prancing around and waving his arms and saying, “Snap it up. Snap. Snap. Snap,” and things like that, and finally the mechanics moved the stand, and I heered one of them say, “We ought to report it to Operations,” and the other answer, “He’ll be gone before we have a chance. There aint a truck around.”
Anyhow, what happened was, Lieutenant Bridges started going around the plane yelling, “All aboard!” and making noises like a train with his mouth, and then he thought of that old joke about, “Get aboard, and if you cant get aboard, get a plank!” and he yelled that one out a lot of times, and everybody that warnt in started getting in; and I decided I would ride up front again and watch them some more. It was real interesting to me up there, and I thought with them all drunk that way, it would be especially interesting, so I yelled to Ben just as he was climbing in that I was going to ride up front, and then I went to get the chocks out from under the wheel. But when I got back, Lieutenant Bridges had already slammed the door, and when I started to knocking on it, trying to get in, I heered one of the engines trying to start.
So for a minute there, I didnt know what to do. I beat some more and nobody opened up, and then one of the engines started backfiring like an old car trying to start up and took my cap off, so I decided to run around to the back and try to get in there. But then that door was locked too and about that time, another one of the engines started with the wind blowing back so that I had to lean into it to keep from falling, so then I run around to the side of the blister to yell at Ben to come unlock the door for me. But about that time another one of the engines started sputtering and taking on, and then the plane give a lurch and jumped forward, and stopped, and then lurched again, and started taxiing off down the runway, so all I could do was just start running and take off after it.
Anyhow, I had to run that way for the longest sort of time, waving my arms and yelling for Ben, trying to get his attention. I was right down under him, but he just set there in front of the blister holding on with his face pale and his eyes big, and all these straps tied around him. And the only way I ever did get him to look around was by slinging a handful of pebbles against the side of it, yelling out, “Ben, open the door! Open the door!” and running along making motions with my hand to sh
ow him what I was talking about.
So then he started trying to get up, but that took him a pretty long time because of the way he had these straps fixed on him. He had little locks around and about, and straps coming down over his shoulder, the way he said jet pilots fixed theirselves in their cockpits, and I thought he never would get them all off. The plane kept on bobbing up and down, going down the runway with the engines backfiring, and I kept running along trying to keep up, and it looked like to me Ben had to undo fifteen straps before he could even move. And then I seen him lean over and start undoing some around his feet. But he finally made it, just as the plane was stopping down at the end of the runway to rev up the engines, and I seen him get up; and in a second after that, the door opened.
Anyhow, what happened then, I started to climb in, but Ben held out his hand for me, so I took it and was just ready to pull myself up when the plane bobbed and the tail end went up in the air and I slipped back. So instead of me getting in, Ben come sailing out. He come flying over my head, his feet going this way and that, and I hit right on my back and Ben kept going. And I guess he must have hit right hard because he didnt even know what was going on for a while after that; he just set there shaking his head like he was trying to come to again.
And before I could do anything else, there was this big roar from the engines and it started to move. It went off bumping and twisting and bucking like a wild horse with the plane straining to get up off the runway like a big buzzard reaching out and feeling of the air with its wings. It got a few feet up and slammed back down so you could see the wheels squash down under the weight, and then all of a sudden it kind of hopped right up off the ground and went zooming along with its right wing going down until it nearly touched the runway. Then it wobbled back and forth until it was about a hundred feet high, and then it wiggled a few more times and straightened out and tried to climb, but then it just keeled over and up, so to speak. And when it hit the ground with the tail end flying off and burning, I was right glad we hadnt been in it after all. I mean something like that could kill you, probably, if you were in it. The front end didnt look so bad; it just went barreling on down the way without no tail until it hit this fence and stopped, but the back end had so much smoke and fire around it, you couldnt even see it hardly. I mean it looked pretty dangerous that way, and I guess a lot of other folks thought so too because in a minute I heered sirens all over the place, wailing and screaming, and folks running across the runway and everything else.
So to tell you the truth, when I seen what happened to that back end, the way it was burning and everything, I really didnt care that me and Ben didnt make it. I didnt say nothing like that to Ben of course, but that’s just the way I felt about it.
19
Anyhow, Ben was still kind of stunned a little bit, shaking his head and blinking his eyes, and I couldnt see no sense in going down to the plane with so many people around already, so what I done, I led him along until we got to the gate, and then I got us on this bus going into town. I figgered I would just head on down for the depot and get up on the train and head on back, but when we got to town, Ben was still kind of groggy from the fall and everything, so I took him up to a bench in the park and we set around there for a while, waiting for him to get cleared up.
But after he did get to feeling better, I kind of wished I had gone on to the depot in the first place, because then he started worrying pretty bad about everything. He started talking about how he bet Lieutenant Bridges and them was all killed and everything, and he got all down in the dumps about it no matter what I said. I told him it didnt look like to me they got hurt none, and he finally agreed it was possible they warnt, but he was still down a good bit, and had to worry about something it seemed like, so then he got started on what we was going to do and everything, and picked around that for a while; and then he hit on the idea that we didnt have no passes and here we were off the base, and that give him something to really tie into. He finally got right upset about it and said to me with his eyes right big, “Do you know what that makes us, Will? Off the base with no passes? That makes us Absent Without Leave, just as sure as anything. We’re AWOL, Will! We’re AWOL!”
So I seen it was better him having something to sink his teeth into that way, so I said, “Well, I guess that’s a fact all right. I hadnt thought of it. It’s true we aint got no passes.”
“You doggone well right we dont!” Ben said. “We’re just about the same as deserters when you come down to it. We were supposed to have stayed with the airplane!”
So I said I had never thought of it that way, and he said there warnt no other way to think of it. He said it was just as clear as anything, and then he got to talking about the Articles of War and things like that, and how nothing was no worse than running off and leaving your plane after it went down, and made a pretty big case out of it. He got to pacing up and down, saying this was probably the worst mess we had ever been in, and the least they would do was to send us to prison, and how he wished we had stayed on the plane in the first place.
“Well, that was my fault, Ben,” I said. “I was the one that made the mistake about that. I caused you to fall.”
But Ben said, “That dont make any difference. Ignorance is no excuse, and we left the plane and it’s a disgrace any way you look at it.” And he stayed pretty firm about it too.
And after that, he got right hard on us, and was so dead-set on the idea that we was AWOL, he couldnt think of anything else. He stopped and set down and shook his head all miserable and said, “Here we are alive and they are all probably dead and . . . Oh, my, Will, we got to do something! And there cant be any slip-ups on it neither because we’ve done enough wrong as it is. We’ve got to do something quick!”
So I said why didnt we take the train on back then, but he had got up and was pacing again by that time, looking all worried and everything. He done that a while and finally got to nodding his head a little bit, and then he come over and set back down on the bench and said, “Look, Will, I’ve thought of a way, but I dont know whether we can use it or not. We’ve got to have some kind of organization from now on—that’s been the trouble all along—so what we have to do now is use the plan of whoever is in charge. Now I’ve got a plan, but I dont know whether we can use it or not because . . .”
“Why, sho we can use it, Ben. You be in charge and we can use your plan and everything will work out fine, I bet. I aint got a plan nohow—all I was going to do was get on the train and go back.”
But Ben said, “My goodness, Will, you cant just do things like that. You cant just put somebody in charge that way. You’re supposed to decide by date of rank. What’s your date of rank now? That’s how we decide.”
“My what?”
“Your date of rank. We have to decide which one ranks the other before we know who will be in charge, and whose plan to use. That’s the only way to work things right, Will.”
So he had me there and I didnt know how to answer. So finally I just said, “Now, Ben, how are we ever going to figger anything like that? How is either one of us going to rank the other when we’re both recruits. Why dont we just go ahead and use your plan and . . .”
But Ben said, “That’s why I want to know your date of rank, Will. What day was you sworn in?”
“Why, the same day you was, Ben. You remember that. We . . .”
“But what time?” Ben said. “What time was you sworn in?”
“Well, I dont remember exactly what time it was, Ben. Look, let’s just use your plan and you be in charge because I aint got one nohow. I was just . . .”
But Ben said, “Nosir. You’ll have to get up a plan if you rank me because then you’ll be in charge. Think. Try to remember.”
So I thought back on it and finally it come to me. I remembered I was one of the first ones sworn in that day, and I was just about to say so when I caught myself and said, “Dont you remember what time you got sworn in?”
“Three-thirty-five that afternoon,” Ben
said.
“Well, I guess you are it,” I said, “because I was one of the last ones that afternoon, I guess it was close to five o’clock.”
So that done it all right. Ben decided he was in charge and we could use his plan, and it turned out to be a mighty good plan too. You could tell he had give it a lot of thought and everything. He said the only thing for us to do would be to turn ourselves in, because that way, they wouldnt court-martial us so bad. But if we let them catch us, they would think we were trying to escape. “So the best way to manage it,” he said, “is to sneak back out to the field as soon as it gets dark and climb over the fence and turn ourselves in down at Operations. We never should have left in the first place.”