Fly Boy (15 page)

“Great. Is that what I have to look forward to?”

“Maybe you do.”

That wasn’t the reassuring answer I’d expected.

“I just don’t know if I can handle it.”

“I don’t know either,” he said. Again, a brutally honest answer, but not the one I’d been hoping for.

“What I do know is that you acquitted yourself well. I’m not one to blow smoke up your skirt. You followed orders, you reacted promptly, and, quite frankly, you saw that oncoming fighter before I did. If you hadn’t …” He shrugged. “Maybe there would have been one less plane heading home and somebody would be writing a letter to my wife.”

He reached down and offered me a hand, helping me to my feet. “That’s the hardest part of this job. It’s my responsibility to write to inform the family about the fate of their loved one. Today is a good day—I only have fourteen letters to write.”

“
Fourteen
… that’s how many died?” I knew that meant only two planes had gone down—at least, two from our squadron.

“I don’t know yet for certain, but I believe there are eight confirmed deaths.”

“How do you know that?”

“One plane went down without any sign of parachutes. From the other they saw six parachutes deploy, but the seventh was a Roman candle.”

“I don’t know what that means.”

“His chute was on fire, burning as he was plummeting to the ground. Poor bugger—better to just die right away than have to wait for the impact.” He shook his head sadly. “The fate of the other six men is unknown. We hope that they made it to the ground, and after that we can only hope they manage to avoid detection and capture.”

“My father was captured.”

“Your father?”

“He was shot down over France and captured … He flew Spitfires.”

“Ah, that explains your desire to become a pilot.”

How did he know that I—

“There was a letter in your file. We’ll honour that request, even help you along that path.”

“But after tonight I’m not sure I can ever be a pilot. Or even a navigator. I just … just … I don’t know how people can do that … you know, come off the plane and talk like nothing happened … just joking around.”

“That’s the only way they can do it. The only way any of us
can
do it. We get off the plane and we have to put it behind us. There’s no point in talking about what just happened, no point in looking back. Instead, you look forward to something, even something silly like a football game, or a night on the town … or breakfast. Do you think you could handle a little grub?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Start with toast, dry, and then maybe some cornflakes. Don’t even think about bacon or eggs until you’ve lined your stomach.” He smiled. “Come on, kid, time for breakfast.”

I stepped out of the pub and into the cold, clean air. It was good to get away from all the smoke, not to mention the noise. After a few pints of beer, men who would never have thought of singing not only started to warble but somehow believed they were the next Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby. I stayed under the overhang of the building to keep dry, out of the rain.

It had been raining all day. Sometimes it hadn’t been much more than a light drizzle, but then it would come down in buckets, which meant our mission for the night had to be cancelled. This was the third night in a row without us going up. The night before, it was the weather over our target that had been stormy, and we were called back just before we got into the planes. The night before that, we’d been halfway across the Channel when a storm had blown over the target and they’d scrubbed the mission and recalled the planes.

Rather than being grateful that they were out of harm’s way for another night, a lot of the men were snarly and upset, and there’d been a number of arguments and a couple of fist fights. I guess there was too much built-up adrenalin, and when it wasn’t being used for the mission, it had to get out some other way. I knew the whole thing just left a bad taste in my mouth—unfinished business, as if we hadn’t done our
job. Tonight wasn’t quite as bad because we’d suspected all day that the mission was going to be scrubbed. If we weren’t going to finish, it was much better not to have started in the first place.

“Hey, buddy, got a smoke?” It was a soldier, and he had two friends with him. Judging by his accent he was British, but in the darkness it was impossible to make out the unit insignia.

“Sorry, I don’t.”

“Come on, just one. It’s not like I’m asking for the world.”

“I don’t have any,” I repeated.

“Yeah, right, not one … sure,” one of the others said.

His words were slurred and I could smell alcohol on him—on them … or was it coming from me? I’d had a couple of pints myself.

“I don’t smoke,” I said.

I turned and started to walk away, but someone grabbed me and spun me around.

“Bloody air force blokes think they’re better than everybody else,” one of the soldiers growled.

“I don’t think I’m better than anybody,” I said.

“You bloody well better not!” he snapped. “Where are you from?”

“Seventy-two squadron.”

“Are you being smart with me? Where are you from with that stupid-sounding accent?”

This was looking worse by the second. They stood between me and the entrance to the pub—where there were almost a hundred men from my squadron.

“Hear that, boys? He’s too ashamed to tell us where he’s from.”

All three laughed.

“I’ m from Canada.”

“Hell, if I was from Canada, I’d be ashamed to admit it too!” he said, and this was followed by more drunken laughter.

“The only shame is that we have to come all the way over here to save you Brits because you’re not man enough to take on Hitler by yourselves!” I snapped.

The words were out before I could think of the consequences, and almost instantly I regretted them.

“You saying you’re more man than us, you little twerp?” one of the soldiers demanded.

Before I could answer or apologize, he pushed me and I almost tumbled over, slipping in the mud before regaining my balance. I backed away slightly as they seemed to fan out and surround me.

“I think the three of us is going to show you who’s a man and who ain’t!” he said as he pushed me again.

We were now standing in the middle of the muddy lane in the rain. Maybe I could run, or take a swing and run—they were too drunk to catch me. Instead of fists they’d only be able to hurl insults and … No, I wasn’t running from them, not after what I’d been through. I wasn’t going to win this fight, but I wasn’t going to run away from it either.

I put up my fists. They seemed thrown for a split second, and then all three started to laugh. I was going to make sure I wiped the smirk off the face of the first one. I wouldn’t be getting in the last blow, but I was delivering the first one for sure.

“The little fly boy thinks he’s man enough to take on the three of us!”

Just then a voice came out of the shadows. “Well, he must
be more man than any one of you, if it takes three of you to fight him.”

We all turned in the direction of the voice. A man stepped out of the shadows of the building. He was a flyer—a flight lieutenant! And he looked familiar. He was from my squadron.

“Don’t let me disturb you,” the flight lieutenant said. “I just wanted to have a closer look at what’s about to happen.”

“We was just having a little fun with ’im,” one of the soldiers said. “We wasn’t really going to fight him.”

“I didn’t think you were going to fight. After all, there are only
three
of you. I figured that you’d have to go and find at least another one or two. It usually takes at least four soldiers to take on one flyer … especially if that flyer is Canadian.”

I recognized his accent—or lack of accent, to my ears. He was Canadian too.

“So you boys are really not going to like what’s happening next,” he continued. “You’re going to have to fight two of us. Me and the kid.”

“We can’t fight you!” one of them exclaimed. “You’re an officer. We’d be thrown into the stockade if we fought an officer.”

“Then you do have a problem, because I’m going to be fighting you, and it’s going to be very one-sided if you don’t fight back. Tell you what, don’t think of me as an officer, just your superior in every way possible.”

All three looked confused now.

“If it’ll help, since I am your superior officer, I’m
ordering
you to fight us.”

“What?”

“You are hereby
ordered
to engage us in fisticuffs.”

“We can’t do that,” one said, and the other two nodded in
agreement. Now they looked more confused than they did drunk … and they were pretty drunk.

“Are you disobeying a direct order from a superior officer?” he demanded.

“No, sir. I mean, you can’t order us around—we’re in the army.”

“Well, you’d better make up your mind. Either I am your superior officer and you have to obey my order to fight, or I’m not your superior officer and you should feel free to fight us. Which is it? Hurry up, make up your mind! Either way, I see an easy fight in my future!”

They looked at each other, then at the ground, and sort of shuffled their feet in the mud.

“I haven’t got all night to stand here in the rain and argue with three army idiots, so what will it be?” He turned to me. “What do
you
think we should do about this?”

I knew at this point all they wanted was the chance to disappear into the darkness. And with one word, I could let that happen and we could pretend that none of this had happened.

“Well?” he prompted me.

“I don’t know about them, sir, but you are definitely
my
superior officer, and you did order a fight … so …”

I drew back my fist and popped the mouthy one right in the face, and he tumbled backwards into the mud! There was a second of silence, maybe disbelief, before the second jumped forward and took a swing at me. His fist missed, only brushing my face!

The flight lieutenant jumped forward and connected with a solid shot, and I could almost feel the punch as I heard the crack of his knuckles against the guy’s jaw.

Before I could react, the third soldier lunged forward, wrapped his arms around me, and we tumbled over backwards into the mud, him on top of me, his weight forcing the air out of my lungs. I tried to push him off, but he was bigger and heavier. Then the flight lieutenant grabbed him from behind and tackled him into the mud!

I tried to get up, stumbled, fell forward, and connected with the guy, but this time I was on top of him. Our arms were all tangled together and he flailed away, trying to get free. I held on tightly so he couldn’t get a good shot, and I drew back my head and head-butted him in the face! He groaned and instantly stopped fighting. I jumped up. He lay there in the mud, rolling around, his hands covering his face, which was gushing blood. It looked as though I’d broken his nose.

The flight lieutenant was back on his feet and sparring with the other two. He was outnumbered, but he wasn’t being outfought. I leaped forward then, bashing into one, who tumbled into the second, and all three of us collapsed in a pile in the mud. Instantly I was yanked to my feet by the flight lieutenant, and the two of us stood overtop of the other two. They didn’t seem particularly anxious to get up.

“Get your friend and get out of here or you’ll need somebody to carry all three of you!” the flight lieutenant yelled.

They started to get up.

“No!” he yelled. “You crawl over there and get him. You even
try
to get to your feet before that and we’ll knock you back down!”

On all fours they crawled through the mud toward their friend, doing their best to keep an eye on us at the same
time. When they got to his side, they climbed to their feet and helped him up. He was still clutching his face as if he was afraid his nose might fall off. I felt bad, but not too bad. Then, one on each side of him, they limped off into the darkness.

“That wasn’t exactly what I expected when I stepped outside for a breath of fresh air,” the flight lieutenant said.

“Me neither.”

“We might want to go back inside before they decide to come back with some friends.”

I hadn’t even thought of that! I started for the door, but he grabbed me by the arm. “Your cap,” he said.

“Oh, yeah.” I bent down and picked it up out of the mud. It was filthy!

“You might want to wash that before you put it back on. Come on.”

We hurried back into the pub. It was smoky and loud, but warm and dry and, more importantly, safe.

We took a few steps in and noticed that everybody was turning to look at us, and some of them were even pointing. I looked at my tag-team partner. His uniform was covered with mud and his face was filthy. I looked down at my own uniform. No surprise: I looked like a pig that had been wallowing in muck.

The noise died down as some of the men stopped singing and talking and stared at us, obviously wondering what the hell we’d been up to. Some of them were even laughing.

“Can I have your complete attention, please, gentlemen?” the flight lieutenant yelled out, and the room became completely silent. Now every eye
was
on us.