The Complete Flying Officer X Stories

by H. E. Bates

  Then one day Mrs. Malinovsky asked me a question.

  “Do you know Mr. Markus?” she said.

  “I didn’t know him. I know all about him,” I said.

  “All about him?” she said. “All about him? Then where is he? Where is he now? He used to come in here. Now he doesn’t come.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, why doesn’t he come? Isn’t he on the station any more? Where is he?”

  “We don’t know,” I said. “He flew his Spitfire into the Scharnhorst.”

  Mrs. Malinovsky was very quiet, holding her hands.

  “He was Lithuanian,” she said.

  “Yes,” I said, “the only Lithuanian.”

  “He was so nice man. I don’t believe nice man like that are killed. I don’t believe that nice Mr. Markus was killed!” she said. “I don’t believe it.”

  I did not say anything. It is the thing they all say, the thing they all believe. In the eyes of those who love them, pilots are never dead. So when Mrs. Malinovsky said: “I believe that nice Mr. Markus is all right,” I thought it kinder not to speak.

  After that, whenever I went into the Malinovskys’, we talked about Mr. Markus. There were things about him that Mrs. Malinovsky did not know, and I told her them. There were things about him I did not know, and Mrs. Malinovsky told them to me. I told her how he was the only Lithuanian in the Air Force, a man from a country not at war. I told her how he had played international football and what a distinguished important diplomatic sort of flier he had been, before the war, in his own country, how he had flown important personages all over Europe and how he had been decorated in every capital, until his tunic looked like a coat of many colours. She told me in turn how he used to come into the restaurant with a young lady and eat the Malinovskys’ simple food, and talk, as exiles always talk, of their own country. I told her how he had flown aeroplanes since he was a schoolboy and how, when the war which was not his began, he had gone to France to fly for France, and then how, after France fell, he had come to England to fly for us. I told her what an engaging, temperamental, distinguished person he was, and she told me over and over again how she could not believe he had been killed.

  We talked of him so often, she asking me again and again for news and I telling her and really knowing that there was no more news to tell, that I began to see the Malinovskys’ handy little restaurant, with its actual sausages and fried potatoes and its bortsch that I never tasted, as a corner of Lithuania in England. I was sure that Markus was dead; Mrs. Malinovsky was sure that he was living. Whichever way it was, I used to get great satisfaction from the very fact that Markus had been with us at all: that as a free man, making a free choice, entering a war that he had no need to enter, he had made the choice he had.

  But if I had great satisfaction in Markus, Mrs. Malinovsky had greater faith. And finally one day I was able to go down to the Malinovskys’ and see that faith justified.

  “I have come to tell you something,” I said. “Mr. Markus is all right!”

  “Is — is what? Is all right?” she said. “Is all right?”

  “He is a prisoner,” I said. “It has just come through.”

  Now it was Mrs. Malinovsky who could not speak. She stood crying quietly, slowly clasping and unclasping her hands. Whether she was crying for Markus or Lithuania or Russia or simply out of joy I could not tell. It was her great moment and she was very proud. I felt a great satisfaction too. I remembered the last anyone had ever seen of Markus: how he had taken the Spitfire down to nought feet over the Scharnhorst and had put her practically down the funnel and was never seen again. It was a great satisfaction to all of us to know that he had performed a miracle and was alive.

  “Oh, please God,” Mrs. Malinovsky said, “when war is over we will have bigga celebration! So big, so nice! So nice food! So nice, so nice, so nice, please God!”

  And, please God, we will.

  Here We Go Again

  “Would anyone like to see a picture of Brest?”

  Loud laughter.

  The group captain is large, rubicund, kindly; he looks like a sea-dog, from the days of other armadas, dressed in R.A.F. uniform. Intelligence room is not really very full; it looks like a class-room from which a few faces are missing. The air-crews that are to be briefed sit in rows, facing a white screen on a wall. Many are already wearing flying-kit — sheepskin boots, heavy cream sweaters under their blue battle dresses. Here and there a navigator has a torch, perhaps two, tucked in the top of his boots. At the back of the room stands the epidiascope, an apparatus for projecting pictures, and on the walls are many maps. The light of the winter afternoon is pale and the electric lights are on.

  “All right. Let’s have a look at the weather,” the group captain says. “Can you draw the curtains?”

  The curtains are drawn; in the darker room, even now not completely dark, the light of the projector comes on. Across the screen, ringed with chalky contours of mauve and pink and green, there is now a map of England, the Netherlands, and of France a little south of the occupied zone.

  The Met official has a wooden pointer in his hand. He is young, a decent fellow; but because he is dressed as a civilian, in blue serge, he looks out of place. He begins to give us his little meteorological lesson, but I cannot tell if anyone is listening. Perhaps not. There is a difference between weather on paper, at two in the afternoon, and weather at eighteen thousand, in a Stirling, at ten at night.

  “We are still in the centre of an anti-cyclone. The weather will be clear until you reach the coast. There will be a little light rain over the sea, but it will clear before you reach the target. Eight tenths cloud at first, clearing to five tenths. Base about five thousand. Coming back, conditions will be about the same. Except that there may be ground fog at base.”

  Loud laughter.

  They are all old friends: Brest, the target there, the cloud, the drizzle, and naturally the fog at base. We have been to Brest so many times that it occurs to us that after the war conducted tours to Brest, in comfort of course, would be what is known as a remunerative proposition. Worth thinking about anyhow; since we may even come to that.

  “I think that’s about all,” the Met official says.

  “Will somebody draw the curtains?”

  The curtains are drawn back; the pale winter light streams in on coloured maps, white walls, white faces.

  “The Wing Commander has something to say.”

  The Wing Commander is standing at the side of the room; we turn instinctively to look at him. Except for his eyes, which look old, diffused, distant, he looks quite young. If ever there was a tough one this is the man: cold, slightly ironical, calm except for his hands, which he keeps putting in and out of his pockets; the master of tactics, whose only difficulty is the tactical handling of words.

  “Sergeant O’Brien will lead the first formation. You will take off at 17.30 hours. Billington, you will follow at 17.45.” As he talks he develops a slight habit of nervousness, looking down at his shoes and then up again. Sometimes he pauses, not knowing quite what to say. “And when you come back — if you come back —”

  Loud laughter.

  This too is an old joke, one at which, for various reasons, all must laugh very heartily. When the laughter has died away the Wing Commander finishes speaking. “Don’t let them do to you what they did last time. Watch that. Remember that lesson.”

  No loud laughter this time. Everyone remembers what they did to us last time.

  In a moment the Wing Commander has finished speaking. He turns to read a signal brought up to him by an orderly. There is a short hush. But the orderly goes; the signal is not read out.

  “Is that all, Wing Commander?” the group captain says.

  “That’s all, sir. Thank you.”

  “Any questions?”

  Nobody speaks. The air-crews sit with their hands between their knees, holding their caps, like small boys ready to rush out of school. It is something like the end of a lan
tern lecture in childhood, long ago: the pointer travelling across the map, the strange countries, the laughter, the lesson, the silence, the eagerness to go.

  “No questions? Thank you, then,” the group captain says. “Have a good trip.”

  We file out, crowding in the doorway, down the stairs. There is a muffled tramp of flying boots on concrete, many voices, more laughter. I look into the faces of the crews for a sign of tension, expectation, courage, great events, but the W.A.A.F. orderly coming upstairs, trying to be dignified, trying not to laugh but laughing at last, is the only thing reflected there.

  “As you see,” says Williams, as we walk back to the mess, lifting our eyes instinctively to the windy sky, “a very dull affair.”

  There’s Something in the Air

  All that spring and summer we lived in a big old cream house surrounded by trees that lay under the downs within sight of the sea. The walls of the mess were bright green, but it was never a green like the green of the fresh-mown lawns of the house, or the new leaves of the limes, or the green of the summer meadows under the hills. On hot clear days the sea-light over the sea made the high clouds like ripples of snow and the barrage balloons of passing ships melted into the sky like big bubbles of shining cloud.

  Neither Anderson nor Auerbach got up till twelve. Because they were night fighters their night was day, and part of their day was night, and in this and a few other simple facts they were alike, doing the same things. The few simple facts were that they flew Hurricanes, belonged to the same squadron, were very volatile, and had shot down very many aircraft by night. But in everything else it seemed to me they had nothing in common at all.

  Anderson was English; Auerbach was Czech. Anderson was about six feet two, but Auerbach was a little man about five feet and a half. Anderson had gone practically straight from school to fly, but Auerbach had first to escape from Czechoslovakia down into the Mediterranean and through North Africa and so to France before he was able to reach England. Anderson, very fair and fresh-faced, with a small corn-brown moustache, looked rather aristocratic in a manner that could not have been anything else but English. His moustache alone was an emblem, plain as the Union Jack. But Auerbach did not look particularly Czech or, though his ancestors had been notable military people, particularly aristocratic. He did not look particularly anything. He had in him something of the element of the anonymous peasant. In his tender, crafty, smiling blue eyes there was a profound watchfulness. It was the sort of look that might have been inherited from generations of people perpetually wondering how long the things they possess are going to remain their own. They are watching to see that they are not cheated. That look sometimes made Auerbach, in spite of a sort of cunning vivacity, look quite old.

  In many other things Anderson and Auerbach were not the same. Anderson was very much the young blood whose life was split fairly evenly between flying and girls, and his leaves were beautiful and wild. Auerbach had married an English girl and was now a settled man. He sometimes looked rather shy, and there was a record of how once, before he was married, he had taken a girl out for the evening and how, in the darkness, coming home, he had kissed her on the forehead.

  All that late spring and early summer Anderson and Auerbach flew together. It was one of those periods in a station when the unity and life of a good squadron becomes too strong to remain a local thing, compressed within itself, meaning something to only a few people. It breaks out, and spreading, warm and energetic and fluid, becomes a large thing, meaning something to many people. It was one of those periods when everything was good. The weather was good and calm and sunny, the sea-light lofty and pure over the sea by day. The nights were good and starry, with no ground mist and just the right cover of cloud. The squadron was good and proud and knew itself. The things it did were good and the news of its doings were in the papers. Whenever you came into the mess or the billiard-room or the dining-room and heard laughter boiling over too richly you knew it was that squadron laughing. You knew by their laughter that they wanted nothing else than to be kept as they were, flying by night together, shooting up trains on the flat lands of northern France, shooting down careless Dormers over their own aerodromes. They had found each other. The positive and exuberant feeling of their discovery spread over the station, from Erks to W.A.A.F.’s and from W.A.A.F.’s to officers, until all of us felt it there.

  But the best of all that feeling came from Anderson and Auerbach. Every night Anderson and Auerbach flew out over northern France, separately, to wait for enemy bombers coming home from raids in England. And every morning, when we came down to breakfast, long before Anderson and Auerbach were up, we heard only one question. It was not “What is there for breakfast?” or “What is in the papers?” as if we had any fond ideas that either would be any different from the morning before, but only “How many did Anderson and Auerbach shoot down?”

  When that spring began Anderson and Auerbach had each shot down nine aircraft, all by day. The weather in the winter had been very bad. The long period of inaction began to be broken in the month of April. It had then been a long time since either Anderson or Auerbach had shot anything down. Now they began to shoot something down almost every night. It struck me that what they were doing was very like poaching: something of the same instinct took them alone, across channel, to roam craftily above the dromes of northern France, waiting for stray victims. It was only in the way they did this that they seemed, as always and in almost everything else, very different. Anderson’s way was to choose an aerodrome and fly to it and impatiently fly round it, waiting for the drome lights to be switched on and watching for the navigation light of returning bombers. If the light did not come on very soon, he lost eagerness and flew away to another drome, always impatient and volatile and eager until something happened, always furious and blasphemous when nothing did.

  But all that Auerbach did was to wait. Auerbach had patience. It was the patience of craftiness: of the man who sits above a rabbit hole, waiting to strike. Auerbach had come through Czechoslovakia and the Mediterranean and North Africa and France for the purpose of striking, and now, as I looked at it, a few moments more waiting would not matter. So it was Anderson, they said, who had the brilliance and Auerbach, they said, who had the luck; whereas it was really only the difference between a man who had infinite patience and one who had none at all.

  So almost every morning, by one or two and sometimes three aircraft, we heard that Anderson and Auerbach had raised the score; and almost every noon I used to see Anderson and Auerbach themselves, getting up after their late sleep. What they told me and the way they told it was, as always, very different.

  About noon Auerbach was always in the billiard-room. He was not particularly good, but he played like a clown in a circus and there was always a crowd watching him. He had a droll and magnetic way of laughing, and the laughter in the billiard-room used to bubble over when Auerbach was there.

  “Nice going,” I would say. “What were they?”

  “I think all Dornier 217’s. I’m not sure. Perhaps one Heinkel 111.”

  “Very nice.”

  “Peez of cake.”

  Every noon, while Auerbach was playing billiards, Anderson was on the terrace of the house, sun-bathing, alone. Auerbach used to say very little. He used to give a wink and a nod and a flick of his thumb and it was an understanding between us: the common language that needed no elaboration. But Anderson, lying back on the cream stone terrace, eyes shaded against the sun, his moustache looking more corn-brown and more English than ever against his naked body, liked to talk about what happened. “Yes, and Auerbach got three! Two Dorniers and a Heinkel and a probable, the sod. God, he has the luck. There I stayed over the same drome for twenty minutes and not a sausage. Five minutes after I leave it Auerbach comes and they light up the whole bloody Christmas tree.”

  “Luck,” I said.

  “Luck, hell,” he said. “He’s got some sixth sense or something. He knows which bloody drome they’ll use an
d when they’ll use it.”

  “Just crafty,” I said. “You can see it in his eyes.”

  “Crafty as hell,” he said.

  “And you?” I said. “I hear you got one.”

  “One solitary 217. They switched all the bloody drome lights on and there they were, as big as hell, about a dozen of them. Then as soon as I hit him they put everything out and I was finished.”

  “You must be equal with Auerbach now,” I said.

  “No, he’s one up on me. The lucky sod, he’s always one up on me.”

  “Tomorrow you’ll probably get six,” I said.

  “Me?” he said. “The only time I ever see six is when the bloody ammo runs out.”

  What he said turned out to be true. The next night he saw twenty and the light of the drome and the lights of the bombers were like the lights of a party round a Christmas tree. Anderson went in with great excitement and began to line them up. He hit the first Dornier at only a hundred feet, and she blew up underneath him almost before he had time to pull out of the dive. There is something about being hit at a hundred feet which does not seem to be in the rules, and the confusion must have been very great. The lights of the drome continued to burn as brilliantly as ever and the lights of the incoming bombers were not switched off. All Anderson had to do was to turn and come in again and hit a Heinkel. He saw it crash in wreaths of orange fire in the black space beyond the circle of light. Then he hit another and he saw it, too, burning among the lights, as if something in the Christmas tree had fallen and caught fire. Even then the lights of the drome still kept burning and the bombers circled round like coloured fireflies. It was all so fantastic, with the red and white light shining in the darkness and the coloured lights moving in the sky and the orange fires breaking the darkness, that Anderson could not believe it to be true. It was only when he had the fourth bomber lined up and pressed the tit and nothing happened except a fraction of a second burst that he knew the ammo was spent and it was real after all.