Sons (20 page)

“Now I want one of you to get into that front cockpit and the rest of you on the wings there, and I’ll try to familiarize you with the instruments and controls, after which you can feel free to climb into any plane on the field and learn that cockpit inside out and backwards because you’ll be taking a blindfold test on it day after tomorrow. You, what’s your name, you get in the cockpit. It’s going to feel a little strange at first, but don’t let that bother you.”

That was our first-day introduction to Lieutenant Ralph Di Angelo, who seemed about as pleasant as Captain Burmann, the terror of Orangeburg. (I wondered, in fact, which obstacle course had been named after
him.)
Yesterday, my second day at Gunter, I had gone up for my orientation flight, and today Lieutenant Di Angelo gathered the five of us around him at one of the long tables in the squadron building and chewed on his cigar and said, “Cooper, you want to pay some attention here, or do you want to wash out on your third day?” to which Cooper replied, “No, sir, I’m listening, sir,” and Di Angelo said, “Yes, then keep your head moving,” and cleared his throat, and in his lovable gravelly Elmira, New York, voice said, “Today we’re going to have a demonstration of take-off with the stabilizer back. You’ll remember that yesterday I showed you how to fly with the power off, and the stabilizer trimmed for a glide, and you’ll remember how hard it was to hold your nose down in flying position when we turned the power on again and rolled the trim-tabs back. As a final check before we fly over to Taylor Field today, we’re going to deliberately take off with the stabilizer rolled back about three-quarters, that’s approximately the position for landing. I want you to remember that this is what might happen if you forget your cockpit procedure before take-off or are shooting follow-through landings and aren’t quick enough to neutralize your trim-tabs.

“Remember that you’ve got to keep the
attitude
of the airplane constant when you’re climbing out of the field, never mind the position of your stick, you’re going to have to
fight
that stick in order to keep your nose down. Until I decide to zero the trim-tabs and trim up the ship, you’ll be working your right rudder to correct the torque, and you’ll be keeping that heavy forward pressure on the stick to compensate for the stabilizer being in the wrong position. Any questions?”

“Yes, sir,” Cadet Bollinger, a fuzzy-cheeked boy from Pennsylvania said in his high, almost girlish voice, blue eyes opened wide as if in expectation of a religious miracle. “What happens if we let go of the stick, sir?”

“Bollinger,” Lieutenant Di Angelo said, “if you’re by yourself, you’re dead. I’ll be back there today, so presumably nothing will happen. Seriously,” he went on, though I hadn’t honestly caught any joke, “the nose’ll rise, you’ll do a snap roll at fifty feet, and you’ll end up in the ground. Any other questions?”

Nobody had any other questions.

“Okay,” Di Angelo said, “after we’ve each had a chance at trying to kill ourselves, we’re going over to Taylor and shoot some more landings. Murphy, I want them at the ground today, and not three feet in the air. Jacobs, I want your head moving all the time. There are a couple of hundred airplanes in the air around here, and I want you to keep track of all of them whenever you’re up there. Okay, Tyler, let’s go.”

It was a bleak, gray day, penetratingly cold and damp. I was wearing a zippered jump suit over my underwear, fleece-lined leather flying pants and jacket, fleece-lined gloves and boots, but I was still chilly. My parachute tucked up into the small of my back so it wouldn’t bang against my ass with each step I took, I followed Di Angelo out to his plane, silvery against the gray day, the blue cowling indicating our squadron, the ramp crowded with planes from all the other squadrons as well, yellow cowlings, red ones, white ones. The Eighth Circle, very funny, I thought, and Di Angelo said, “’Morning, Harris,” to the T-3 who was his crew chief, and who was standing near the propeller. “All right, Tyler,” he said to me, “get the log book, and check the red-line entry,” the red line being a diagonal mark across a small box, to the right of which were listed all the Army tech orders not yet complied with. If a red cross was marked in the box instead of that diagonal red line, it meant the airplane was unsafe to fly and was not to be taken up under any circumstances.

Sitting on my parachute in the front cockpit, with Di Angelo behind me, I fastened my seat belt, and then took off the control lock and verified the freedom of the stick and rudder. I turned on the master electrical switch then, put on my earphones, and tuned in the tower. The radio-interphone switch was on radio. I kept watching it from the corner of my eye because I knew that whenever Di Angelo snapped it to inter from his controls in the rear cockpit, I’d be getting an interphone bleat about something or other I was doing wrong. Nor was a cadet supposed to say anything to his instructor from the moment they got into the airplane to the moment they got out; all the radio squawks would be one-way, from the rear cockpit to the front. I verified that my propeller control was in full-low pitch, set my mixture control full-rich, cracked the throttle, and then hit the primer three or four times.

The switch clicked over to inter.

“Let’s go, Tyler, we haven’t got all day here, there’s a war waiting.”

I pulled the stick back against my belly, and then put my toes on the brakes to make sure they were locked. With my right hand on the magneto switch and my left on the throttle, I stuck my head out of the cockpit and yelled, “Clear?” to Harris.

“Clear!” Harris shouted back.

I moved the magneto switch through 1 and 2,
click, click,
and heard the third
click
as I moved it to BOTH, and hit the starter. The propeller spun and caught. I yanked the stick against my belly again, added throttle, and then pulled back to idle. Picking up the mike in my left hand, I said, “Gunter Tower, this is 0934, over.”

“0934, this is your instructor in the rear cockpit,” Di Angelo said. “How about switching back to radio before trying to contact the tower?”

I immediately turned the switch to radio, and said again, “Gunter Tower, this is 0934, over.”

“0934, this is Gunter Tower, go ahead.”

“0934 on the line, ready to taxi.”

“Roger, 0934. You’re clear to taxi to runway 27.”

“0934, Roger and out.”

I signaled to Harris to pull the chocks, my toes on the brakes, the engine ticking over. He yanked them and gave me the thumbs-up signal. I began adding throttle, and the stick suddenly came banging back hard into my belly, jerked by Di Angelo in the back seat, who immediately cut the throttle and snapped the switch to INTER and shouted, “You forgot to keep your stick back, Tyler! You were adding too much throttle! Keep that damn stick back!”

Rattled, I released the brakes and managed to roll the plane out correctly, turning left past the parked planes on the ramp, and moving straight out onto the taxi strip. Di Angelo’s voice erupted into my earphones again.

“Zigzag her down the line, Tyler, how else can you see anything over that big humping engine? Do you want to get us killed before we’re off the ground? Keep your head moving!”

Trembling now, hating that goddamn RADIO-INTER switch and wishing it would break off in his left hand, I waited for the other planes to clear, zigzagging down the line past the maintenance hangars and the squadron building, and finally moving into the number-two position for take-off, parked at a ninety-degree angle to the runway.

“All right, Tyler, I’ve rolled the stabilizer control three-quarters of the way back,” Di Angelo said, “and it’s going to stay there until I roll it to Neutral when we get up in the air.”

I nodded and wet my lips.

“You’re about ready for take-off, aren’t you?” he said, and I looked ahead to see that the number-one plane had already left. “Is your head up and locked?” he shouted. “Let’s keep it moving at all times, Tyler, on the ground as well as in the air, let’s see what the hell’s
happening
around us, shall we?”

I checked the two mags, my eyes on the tachometer, and moved the prop control all the way to the rear, the engine straining, the sound changing as the prop blades cut the air at a greater angle, and then I put it back into low pitch and returned the throttle to idle. I switched to radio, picked up the microphone in my left hand and said, “0934, ready to take off.”

“Roger, 0934,” the tower said, “clear to take off.”

I could not get used to the feel of the stick. I was adding throttle, and the plane was roaring down the runway, but I couldn’t get the tail off the ground, and the pressure on the stick was completely strange to me. The huge engine pounded and pulled, the whole plane seemed to be vibrating with the need to break free of gravity, but the tail would not rise, I could not get her to lift. I remembered what Di Angelo had said about the
attitude
of the plane, concentrate on the
altitude
and never mind what the
controls
are telling you, so I pushed harder on the stick and felt the tail come up only slightly, still refusing to rise completely off the runway, pushed even harder, my arm trembling, the muscles straining, my hand wrapped tight around the resisting shaft of metal that controlled the elevator, pushing, pushing,
What happens if you let go, sir?
The tail was beginning to rise slowly, I could feel her coming up, I kept both feet working the rudders to keep the plane straight, “You’re doing well, Tyler,” Di Angelo said, “keep the pressure on that stick, keep your nose down, you’re getting her off the ground now, there you go, hold her hard, Tyler, don’t let go of that stick, keep the pressure on it!” We were making eighty or ninety miles an hour now, the plane was leaving the runway, rising steadily, fifty feet, climbing smoothly into the air, a hundred feet, still climbing, we had
not
done a snap roll, we had
not
flipped over and hit the ground. From the tail of my eye, I saw the trim-tab control move forward as Di Angelo shoved it into the Neutral position.

“All right,” he said, “climb out of this traffic and level off at 1500 feet, we’ll be flying southeast to Taylor Field. You’re still not looking around enough, Tyler. Close your goddamn canopy. And stop feeling so fucking proud of yourself,” he added, even though he could not see my grin from the rear cockpit.

We walked around the field on Christmas Day, my father and I.

We did not talk much at first. A noisy wet wind was blowing in fiercely off the highway, discouraging conversation. We walked briskly, our strides almost identical, somewhat duckfooted, frankly unattractive. I was an inch shorter than my father, with the same angular build, the same blue eyes and high cheekbones, the same nose my mother used to call “the beak of Caesar, the Roman greaser,” the same thin-lipped mouth. To the single hardy cadet who approached us from the north, we must have looked like differently dressed twins skirting the edge of the parade grounds there, my father with one gloved hand clutching his Homburg to his head, the other in the pocket of his black coat; I with my garrison cap tilted jauntily, the collar of my short overcoat pulled up high around my ears like a raunchy ace.

When my father began talking, his first words were carried away by the wind. I turned toward him and squinted into his face, straining to hear him, because I thought at first he might be saying something important. But he only wanted to know how my training was going, whether or not they were really teaching me to fly because what would matter most when I got over there was how well I knew my job. I told him that my instructor in Primary had taught me all sorts of combat tricks, and then I explained how much I was enjoying Basic, where I was flying the 450-horsepower trainer, and how I was looking forward to Advanced, where I hoped to start flying two-engine planes in preparation for the P-38, assuming of course that the Army didn’t have other plans for me — like perhaps training me for a single-engine fighter plane or, fate worse than death, one of the big four-engine bombers. Ferrying a bomber over Germany, I told my father, wasn’t exactly my idea of fun.

My father said that none of it was fun, and the sooner I learned that, the better off I’d be. Oh yes, he said, he knew how anxious I was to get over there, a young man likes to be where the action is, likes to feel he’s helping to make history. He could understand my frame of mind, he said, because he’d felt exactly the same way back in 1918 when he’d hurried off to join the Army and do his share in winning the Great War. Of course, he said, we don’t call it that any more, do we, Will, the Great War? Which may indicate
some
measure of maturity on the part of the American people since there’s no such thing as a
great
war, is there?

I didn’t enjoy the fact that he’d stooped to punning to make his point, which I found dubious to begin with. I was also beginning to feel very cold and wet, the Alabama rain coming in hard against my face, driven by a fierce northwest wind. Nor was I looking forward to one of the little lectures my father had been fond of delivering before I’d enlisted in the Air Force. I really though we’d settled
that
question once and for all on the day he said he’d sign. So I figured I’d put an end to any further discussion right then and there by simply stating that the Nazis were
bad
and that fighting them was therefore
good,
period.

Yes, my father said, but only three months ago the Italians were bad, and fighting
them
was good. It now appears they were only poor misguided victims of Mussolini, who couldn’t wait to get rid of him, ignoring for the time being a heritage of fascism that went all the way back to the Roman Empire. But then, Will, this is all about fascism, dictatorship, totalitarianism, and enslavement versus liberty, justice, freedom, and Abraham Lincoln’s mother’s dog, isn’t it?

I was about to tell him I didn’t particularly appreciate the note of sarcasm in his voice because I happened to believe that’s
exactly
what this war was about, and I was willing to defend with my life if necessary the very principles he seemed to be mocking. But he wasn’t expecting an answer, and he wasn’t waiting for one. He brought his hand up sharply to clamp the Homburg tighter onto his head as a fresh gust of wind threatened to send it skimming across the railroad tracks to where the Negro troops were billeted. We’re saving the world for democracy all over again, he said, speaking louder than the wind and with the same angry sarcasm, his head turned toward mine, his face wet, his blue eyes demanding attention. We’re assuming, of course, that what the world
wants
or even
needs
is democracy, he said, and we’re assuming that our great American experiment — which is now only in its hundred and sixty-eighth year — will succeed one day, will come to full maturity one day. I wonder just when that’s going to be, though, don’t you? We came through our puberty when we fought the Civil War, Will, and we might have made it safely into manhood if only the world hadn’t involved us in another war so soon afterward. But the very young are always expected to solve the problems of the world, and God knows we were the youngest nation around just then. Europe had thrown some sixty-five million men into the meat grinder and solved nothing at all, so I guess it seemed only proper for us to throw in another four million and set everything right. Well, who knows? Maybe Europe’s getting too old and too wise to ever fight another war after this one. Then again, I thought she was too old even after the
last
one — which didn’t turn out to he the last one at all, did it, but merely the
first
one.