by Jim Shepard
The plane shook and stayed level. The bursts were everywhere. They seemed to be standing still, not moving at all. The fighters had sheared off to let the flak take over. Eddy continually called Steady, Steady, until Bryant wanted to kill him. Beneath him he could hear Snowberry firing his guns in rage and frustration at flak gunners 20,000 feet below. Above him the bomb bay doors of Geezil II and Boom Town were opening, the inside racks and dark bomb shapes slowly becoming visible. He could hear the doors below him swinging open as well and felt the extra drag on the ship.
A burst over the tail blinded him and tore away metal in finger-like strips. He found himself refocusing on the now tattered vertical stabilizer and he heard someone yelling they were hit over the interphone. “It’s Lewis! It’s Lewis!” Snowberry yelled. “Lewis is hit!”
“I’m hit,” Lewis said.
“What do you want me to do?” Gabriel said. “Park it? Somebody check him out.”
Bryant slipped from his seat, trying to get stable footing below.
“Bombs away,” Eddy called. The plane bucked upward from the release of the weight, and Bryant found himself on his side.
“Bombs’re gone, it’s all yours, Lieutenant,” Eddy said, and the plane lurched as Gabriel retook flying control and wrenched it out of its level path, and Bryant fell again, onto his hands and knees. He struggled back through the catwalk over the open bomb bay to the radio room, and then to the waist position, leaning against the severity of the plane’s bank, past a curious Ball, and stopped when Piacenti emerged from the hatchway to the tail and made an open palm and thumbs up.
Back in the dorsal seat he reconnected his interphone to a flood of voices. Cooper told Lewis to hang on, they’d be home soon.
“I’m fine,” Lewis said. “Just doing my best to bleed to death back here.”
The fighters were back on the return flight, but in diminished numbers and intensity, it seemed to Bryant. Two spiraled through the formation just above him in perfect choreography, flashing their powder blue undersides and black crosses at him before looping out of sight.
What pilots these Germans were! He tracked and fired at them like someone throwing stones at sparrows. Even as he fired he felt reduced by their elusiveness and invulnerability, and found the impersonal nature of their menace unsettling and fascinating. They concentrated on the rear of the flight, and he fired industriously and fruitlessly at a few echelons streaking past until Eddy reported fighter escort coming back to meet them and the last Germans wove away behind them and dipped into clouds and were gone, leaving the horizon beyond their contrails clean, the sky bare.
They began descending over the Channel. Bryant felt exhilarated and lucky and thought briefly about the unknown plane he’d seen falling back. “You’re right, Doctor,” Snowberry said, his interphone making him sound like Walter Winchell. “We never should have called it ‘a silly native superstition.’” The interphone became noisy with comments, everyone asking if anyone had seen what they had seen. When the plane dropped below 12,000 feet they were able to get off the oxygen and felt better and safer breathing freely. Bryant went back to the waist, where Lewis was sitting up, wrapped in blankets. Another blanket was folded behind his head as a pillow. He looked okay, more or less. Snowberry was tucking him in and Ball and Piacenti were working awkwardly around them, stowing the waist guns inside.
Bryant hunched nearer. Lewis shrugged. “No problem,” he said. “You should see my flak vest, though.”
“Are you comfortable?” Bryant asked.
Lewis nodded. “I make a nice living,” he said.
There was a crashing and loud metal sounds and the plane banked violently to the left, tumbling everyone together in a heap, and they scrambled up to Bean’s screams that there were bandits, bandits, and the plane continued such violent evasive action that Bryant pinballed his way back to his station, slamming knees and elbows trying to climb back into his turret, and when he finally pulled himself onto his seat by the gun handles they were rollercoastering low over the treetops, the scattered flight around them at various altitudes also weaving and turning. Behind them a pillar of black smoke grew upward in a staggered column and at nine o’clock someone’s 17 was trailing fire steadily, and they all watched as it sailed into a gently rising hill like a skater gliding into a wall. The concussion gave their plane an extra bit of lift.
Piacenti was cursing in a violent stream, badly frightened, and still trying to unshackle the guns. Bryant spied four black shapes high above them heading back to Germany. “Ju88’s,” he said over the interphone. “Six o’clock high withdrawing.” They were jet black and appeared harmless and unreal, right off the silhouette charts.
Another Fortress came in short of the field. They flew over it and the crew was still piling out, and it looked as if everyone was unhurt. Of the twelve planes that had taken off that morning, nine returned, with Paper Doll one of the last. Gabriel fired flares on his approach to signal wounded aboard, and the meat wagon trundled out to their nose before they’d come to a full stop, but Lewis climbed out of the waist himself, showing off the hole punched in his flak vest and the spent 20mm incendiary shell that had done it. Everyone wanted to see, and his luck was at once considered to be potentially legendary. Beneath his vest the meat of his pectorals had been sheared up a bit, he reported, but it was pretty shallow, and he chose not to ride in the meat wagon. He walked along with them holding the incendiary in his fist happier than Bryant had ever seen him. “Imagine this scar with the girls,” he said. Even more cheering, they all understood, was the seemingly incontrovertible evidence this represented that he led a charmed life, and they flew with him.
Paper Doll’s engines went on ticking and hissing and pinging as they cooled, smelling strongly of diesel. The knees were torn on Snowberry’s flight suit, sheepskin gaping out. “You look like you were hit, too, Sergeant,” Cooper said.
Snowberry shrugged. “Yes, sir. No room. The bolt mechanisms in the guns tear my knees. This is the third pair. The requisition people hate me.”
Their elation for Lewis wore off, and they all suddenly felt exhausted. They stood around empty and silent as if at a horrible party. Trucks carried them to debriefing rooms. They each were allowed a shot of whiskey from the bar and then they argued with each other over what they had seen and what they had done, still awkward in their flying gear, everyone angry and relieved and not giving ground on their version, while the intelligence officers looked and listened and tried to piece together one plausible narrative from all the information.
Part Two
The Glass Mountain
After they’d been able to eat Bryant found himself back at the plane, restless despite his exhaustion, and he watched Lewis and Gabriel carry out a holes count, clambering over the plane’s upper surfaces and calling out the jagged machine-gun and cannon-fire holes. Tuliese stood below them, his arms crossed.
Lewis stood erect on the stabilizer and counted with his fingers. “We could drain noodles through our tail, Lieutenant,” he said.
Tuliese found a few more holes forward near Snowberry’s turret. “Lieutenant, what the hell you been doin’ to my ship?” he complained.
“You got off easy, Sergeant,” Gabriel said. “I heard Archangel may be Category E, from the Ju88’s.” Category E meant wrecked beyond repair, unsalvageable.
“I heard the pilot of Archangel was so mad about being jumped that he wouldn’t get out of his plane after he brought it in, sir,” Lewis said. “That true?”
Gabriel said it was. “Gus Truncone. He says cannon shells caved in the whole right side of his cockpit. Looks like a single-seater now.”
Lewis climbed down from the tail. “Is the co-pilot hurt?”
“No,” Gabriel said. “He’s dead.”
They were silent, watching Gabriel make his own check.
“And his best buddy was on Home for Dinner, listed as missing.”
“Missing,” Bryant said, angry with the vagueness. They turned to look at him
. “Like he took a wrong turn at the mess after breakfast.”
Gabriel nodded. “That’s about it,” he said. “Isn’t it?”
Later the crew gathered around Paper Doll for another photo, crowding around Lewis, who held his battered flak jacket aloft with one hand and the remains of the incendiary shell in the other like a small prize fish. They were all there, uneasy and apprehensive, to celebrate Lewis’s good fortune, all but Cooper, who it was reported had gotten the shakes soon after debriefing, and Piacenti, who had wandered away from the plane before the photo session had been organized, and sat up across the way on the hardstand, watching them.
After chow they walked to The Hoops, the village pub. It rose two stories with a quaint lean and Bean was forever getting over the fact that it had a thatched roof.
Hirsch had not been invited, and Bryant was starting to get used to the idea. Snowberry returned to their table with a large red tray full of the oversized English pints. “The way they water them down, it’s a normal beer, all told,” Piacenti said.
“Great story my old man wrote me,” Lewis said. He downed a third of Bean’s beer and passed it to him. “This guy who lives next to my old man, 4F bastard, right?”
“He’s home makin’ the rounds of the skirts while we sit here like chumps,” Piacenti said. He seemed to be considering whether or not to work up a good anger about it.
“What was wrong with him?” Bean asked. Nearly everything was wrong with Bean, and here he was in the Air Corps, on a B-17.
“How should I know?” Lewis said. “I think he told them he had a trick knee or something.”
“Yeah, and I know the trick,” Bryant complained.
Lewis sipped from his beer and folded his arms primly. “Whenever you guys’re ready, I’ll finish my story,” he said.
“We’re not ready,” Snowberry said. He gazed over at the bar. “Why don’t we tell those guys we’re going to be facing screaming death tomorrow, and that we should have the darts?”
“Go ahead, Lewis,” Bryant said.
Lewis topped off his beer with Snowberry’s while Snowberry stared in ostentatious boredom toward the bar.
“This guy’s wife tells him the sink’s acting up. She’s on him all day about it. He says he’ll look at it.”
“I’d look at it,” Piacenti said. “She’d be lookin’ at this.” He made a fist.
“After she goes out, he looks at it and figures he doesn’t know what he’s doing. He goes next door and gets this friend of my old man’s, a retired plumber, real old guy. The old guy is wearing overalls just like the husband. He climbs under the sink and goes at it. 4F goes down the cellar to get tools. The wife comes back. She sees the old guy under the sink and thinks it’s her husband. When she goes by she gives him one of these.” He made a goosing motion with his hand. “Poor old son of a bitch jumps like he’s shot, cracks his head on the sink, knocks himself out. He’s out cold. Bleeding from the noggin. She sees it’s not her husband, and the blood, and starts screaming. 4F runs upstairs, they drag the neighbor out, but they can’t wake him up. They call the ambulance. Ambulance guys put him on a stretcher. They live in a top-floor apartment. The ambulance guys hear the story and they’re laughing so hard they drop this poor old geezer down the stairs.”
Piacenti sputtered beer over the table.
“He breaks his hip. He wakes up in the hospital his head stitched up, seeing two of everything, and a broken hip. He told my old man the last thing he remembered was reaching for the wrench and a hand grabbed his crotch.”
They all felt the best part of the story was all the trouble caused someone who had avoided the Army. Through his laughter Bryant said, “Imagine what the old man told people who came to see him?”
Snowberry pulled his garrison cap over his head like a bandage. “Well, my neighbor’s wife stuck her hand up my ass, see, and …”
Bean was watching them and smiling, the way he watched the radio.
“Funny, huh, Bean?” Lewis asked. He mimicked Bean’s expression. “Bean’s only here because his sweetie stood him up.”
“Her dog died,” Bean said, in her defense.
“Her dog died?” Bryant asked.
“She stood me up for a dog’s funeral,” he said ruefully. They observed a short silence, out of respect.
“You’re better off without her,” Snowberry said. “She was built like a fuel bowser.”
“Have you seen her? I’ve seen her,” Piacenti said. The head of his beer gave his expressions a foamy emphasis. “Dark rooms are awful good for her.”
“You guys shouldn’t say that,” Bean murmured. “She’s nice.”
Piacenti went for another round and got into an argument with someone at the bar over the darts. Lewis and Snowberry went over to see what they could do.
Bean gave Bryant a wincing smile and they sat opposite each other with their hands folded.
“You think about women a lot?” Bean asked.
“Women?” Bryant said.
“You think about Robin? And Lois?” He added the last question with some embarrassment.
“All the time,” Bryant said.
“I do too, with Cynthia,” Bean said. Cynthia was his English girlfriend. He seemed to believe he’d uncovered something unexpected. “You think you’ll marry Robin? I’m only asking out of curiosity.”
“I don’t know,” Bryant said. He wished he’d gone over to the bar, where Lewis had collected four of the six darts and was negotiating with a stubborn-looking fat man with a flat tweed hat for the final two. The fat man was shaking his head emphatically.
“You think you’ll marry Lois?” Bean was nudging his empty pint in various directions with his index finger.
“I don’t know,” Bryant said.
Bean didn’t respond, and Bryant understood that what he had meant to be bravado had sounded to Bean simply evasive.
The negotiators returned with beer and without darts.
“You’re better off, Bean,” Lewis continued. “Kids, mortgage, it’s not for you. You’re Mister Wild Oats.”
“You know,” Bean said, “it’s funny how quick here you start doing things you wouldn’t do at home.”
“You mean like swearing, getting squiffed, grassing?” Lewis said. Grassing was their term for having sex with the local girls outside of the Nissen huts on the grassy areas bordering the revetments.
“I guess,” Bean said uncertainly.
“Part of fighting a war,” Lewis said. “Ask Bryant.”
“Oh, shut up,” Bryant said.
“Women sap the resolve of our fighting forces,” Lewis confided. “Right now she’s all Mary Pickford. Right, Bean? But once she gets you alone—table for two, summer night, you can’t trust her. They get to working on you and they leave you gasping for air. That’s been my experience.”
Snowberry laughed.
“Gasping for air?” Bean asked.
“What I’m saying is, you gotta take some and leave some,” Lewis said. “Like Bryant here.”
“How would you like a knuckle sandwich?” Bryant asked.
Lewis held up his beer to protect himself.
“Gasping for air?” Bean said.
“You know what I heard?” Piacenti said. “I heard our wing has the highest VD rate in the whole ETO.”
“I heard that, too,” Snowberry confirmed. “Is that something, or what? Talk about men.”
“Listen to Sergeant First Aid Station,” Lewis scoffed. They laughed. Prophylactic stations were being called First Aid Stations in deference to the local Brit sensibility.
“You guys can laugh,” Bean said with distaste. “Some of you put your—private parts where I wouldn’t put my boot.”
The table sat stunned, and then whooped with laughter.
“There may be hope for you yet, Bean,” Lewis said.
The darts came available and they stepped up to the bar, sloshing beer on the floor and each other. Lewis threw one dart nearly dead center and four into the wall. The En
glishmen at the bar roared with laughter. “So you’re a gunner, mate?” one called.
“Jealous of the uniform,” Lewis said. “I get it all the time.” He took aim with his final dart. “Focke Wulf,” he said. “Coming up through our contrails.” It stuck on the outside perimeter of the board.
“Hope it’s a big wingspan,” Piacenti commented. They all took turns, keeping track of the points. On close calls they argued the scoring. Bean sat at the bar and smiled apologetically for the noise. Things degenerated until the throwers were lunging and stabbing the board, while the others tried to wrestle them away from it. They pulled the board down from the wall and the barkeep came out from behind the bar and sent them back to their tables like children. They ordered another round as a concession and the barkeep brought it, looking at each sternly as he set the pints before them.
They sipped a while in silence. Lewis’s nose was bleeding, and he was stanching it with a bar napkin.
“Nazis can fly, can’t they?” Snowberry said. It was the first mention of the morning. Bryant agreed he’d seen some awfully great flying.
“Except that we don’t want them flying,” Lewis said, napkin to his nose. “We want them dead.”
Bryant felt himself blushing. He glanced at Lewis but couldn’t tell if he’d been referring to Bryant’s lateness in firing during the first attacks.
“We gave ’em a little something to think about,” Piacenti said.
Lewis snorted. “If that’s so, they’re thinking with big grins on their faces,” he said.
Bryant stood up. He was frightened and ashamed of his performance. “You know, Lewis, we’re really getting tired of your negative attitude,” he said. “You don’t think we have a chance, fine. You don’t have any ambition, fine.”
Lewis took the napkin away from his nose. The blood had formed a bright red oval. “My ambition,” he said, “is to die in my spare time. My ambition is to get something useful into your head so you won’t die the know-nothing asshole you are now.”