The rumble of distant thunder rolled across the flight line as the two little biplanes rolled to a stop and fell silent, the heavens grumbling seemingly at this latest audacious intrusion. Second Lieutenant Roland watched apprehensively from his cockpit as Major Gunn climbed down onto the muddy field and stalked towards him, irritably snatching off his gloves and flying helmet as he approached menacingly around the port wings. “What the bloody hell was that?”
Not suprisingly Gunn was shouting, Roland thought, even more than usual after nearly two deafening hours with a crackling 200 horsepower Hispano Suiza engine in his lap. The crazy old bastard looked as if he might kill him; not for the first time Roland imagined that dogfighting the Hun must surely be preferable to having Gunn as your flying instructor. But Roland had not yet been blooded; Gunn on the other hand was by all accounts an expert murderer, a piece of information which did nothing to allay his anxiety as the mans' eyes bored into his own like a pair of loaded Lewis guns.
Gunn placed a hand on the cockpit coaming and looking back towards his own aircraft, took a deep breath. There was a hole the size of his office desk in his tailplane, and half his rudder was missing presumed dead. How he'd managed to keep flying let alone land had for now escaped him. Hopefully the memory would not return - he had enough nightmares already. The damage would take the erks a couple of days to repair. No matter. The weather looked set to sock in and ground everyone for a week anyway. And he had chopped the throttle on Rolands' last pass; he was probably being too hard on the lad. Roland sat transfixed in his cockpit watching the back of Gunns' head like a cornered hare watches a hound. At length Gunn sighed and turned back to face the young second lieutenant, careful now lest he crush the mans' spirit before he'd the chance to prove himself.
“Look….” His voice was calmer now, Roland thought, “I know I said press home your attacks, but you need to be ready for anything. Think ahead. Always have a trick up your sleeve to counter any sudden move.” He paused, looking to see if the lesson was going home. “You were high left, banking left when I pulled up and throttled back;” he bent his leather gloves and flying helmet over the coaming and raised both hands, gesturing in the time honoured manner of the combat airman, hands curving in an artful display of his words: “you should have broken left then gone high wing-over right and waited for my next move." He was looking over Rolands' aircraft now, so what might have appeared as a wink revealed itself as a nervous tick. "I suppose at least you’ll know what to do if you ever run out of ammunition.” He shot Roland a chilling look. “Better get someone to check your prop. And for future reference, this aircraft is a single seater…. stay out of my cockpit!”
With that he snatched up the gloves and helmet, turned about and stalked off towards the flight huts. A small group of incredulous erks were gathering around the damaged tail of Gunns' kite. Roland breathed a sigh of relief then clambered down and went around to inspect his prop. The old man seemed abit out of sorts... that facial tick was new, and he wondered briefly, having never been really frightened for his life (at least not for more than a few moments) what it could mean. He ran a gloved hand along one of the four beautifully contoured laminated blades. He had always admired fine carpentry. There was some damage along the leading edges. It would have to be replaced.
The door to Flight Ops banged open and hit the stop and there was an obnoxious scraping sound of chair legs on floorboards as the Duty Corporal scrambled to attention. Gunn barged through the room with a curt 'as you were' and paused at the door to the CFI's office, turned and said "428's unserviceable; 440 needs a new prop, but I'll expect it to be airworthy by this afternoon." He turned on his heel and disappeared through the door, slamming it shut behind him. The corporal sat down with a muttered 'Sir' and reached for the field telephone. The Old Man was in a right temper.... better get straight on it.
Gunn threw his helmet and gloves onto a clear spot on his desk and stepped across to the filing cabinet. Retrieving a small key from an inner jacket pocket, he unlocked the second drawer, stopping briefly to examine his shaking hand before producing a silver hip flask with a single shot cap. Moving around the desk he kicked the chair into position and fell into it, opened the flask and half filled the cap. No spillage that way. He threw the fiery liquid into the back of his dry mouth where it seemed to evaporate, the only significant effect being to nearly choke him with the fumes. He grunted in disgust and tossed the cap aside. Leaning his head back he raised the flask to his cracked lips, allowing himself several large gulps, then retrieved the cap from the cluttered desktop and replaced it, finally secreting the flask in his desk drawer. He didn't feel at all well. And there was that tick again... he wondered if Roland had noticed. Damn. Have to do better. Stiff upper lip old boy; King and Country. All that rot. Bloody hell. Bloody, bloody hell. You'd think to be safe on a training unit, especially after spending the better part of two years flying over the front lines; getting shot at day after day by every blasted soldier with a rifle; attacked by hordes of bloodthirsty Hun, sitting comfortably in the cockpits of their appallingly fine machines. And Archie. So much archie. Thud....thud...................THUD THUD. Watching your friends go down, one after another. Some already dead. Some not. Some wishing they were. Oh dear God, not that memory. His eyes began to sting. Retrieving the flask he threw back another generous mouthful and shook his head. Feeling sorry - for who? Your lost friends? Half a million poor sodding infantry?......Yourself?
All of the above. But mostly, he realised, himself. It was a disgusting revelation. The last few months were a lie. Finally the truth; he disgusted himself. He was a coward. A decorated, 17 kill yellow striped coward. When he thought about it, the whole picture right from day one, it made perfect sense. Why join the Flying Corps? He'd told himself back in 1915 that as a proficient pilot, his country needed him more in the air than on the ground. The truth, and he could see this clearly now, was that he'd been too afraid to take his place in the trenches. Heroic stoicism, that's what a soldier has; death stalked the trenches unbiased. It laid hands on the veteran as casually as the novice. You needed a special kind of courage to face that every morning. Up there, above all the mud and carnage, he'd thought that he didn't need stoicism... not if he had an advantage. Just his skill. Skill at arms.... knight of the sky. Beat the odds. He was confident aloft. He knew he could cheat death, with just a little luck and attention to detail.
At least, that's what he'd thought. And so it seemed, for awhile. There was risk, there always had been. But he'd been young, and good at his craft. At first it was actually fun.
Until the heavy losses started. Bloody April. He'd missed the Fokker Scourge of 1915, or rather, he'd been fortunate to arrive at the front with one of the first operational DH2 squadrons. The little pusher aircraft, along with the new two seater FE2's, had swept the Fokkers from the sky. That was his blooding, his first experience of war. Even the darkened skies of the Somme where men struggled in mud and blood and died by the tens of thousands daily, failed to choke his youthful confidence. Then came the Albatross. The Hun stole a march on us. We were dropping like flies... fiery, screaming flies. Day after day. Week after week. So many of his friends - gone in a single month of butchery. But his skill, his craft, kept him alive. Until so much death filled the sky that it seemed even his luck must run out. Not so much a game of skill now as a game of chance. Heroic stoicism. Like a muddy bloody trench, shells dropping death all around. And no soldier he.
They'd found him doubled up behind the latrines vomiting blood, almost unconscious. The MO said stomach ulcer, probably caused by ingesting too much caster oil. Back to good old Blighty for a long rest and recuperation, the dashing war hero returns. Little did they know. Fear. All consuming, all pervading can't bear to wake up in the morning fear. Fear over breakfast. Buzzing with fear all day long, can't sit down, can't stand up, can't do anything, can't do nothing.... afraid of everything; people.... thoughts, terrible thoughts, danger at every turn. Afraid to go to sleep, knowing you'll wake again tomorrow and feel the fear again. Sickening, trembling something eating at your guts terror. Failure of all bodily systems. He'd been weak and sick at heart, every spasm seemed to threaten imminent death, and death, when it stared his way, was so very much more unwelcome than he had ever imagined. The knowledge sickened him further, and he began to despise what he had become. Total loss of self, loss of everything he'd ever done - meaningless. Nothing left but abject bloody miserable panic, all day long, all night long. Unfamiliar, everything strange.... he was lost to himself. Nothing left but pure unmitigated terror.
It would be some years before the concept of the feedback loop entered even the scientific consciousness, and another world war would come and go before the nervous breakdown was seen for what it really was. The biological feedback system designed to keep Gunn safe was now trying to kill him.... like so many million others Gunn had put himself deliberately in harms' way. The brain sends urgent signals to the stomach, which in turn churns uncomfortably in preparation for fight or flight; the amplified signal comes back to the brain - something's wrong, really very wrong - better fight, or run. The brain responds.... won't allow flight, and the fight picks a time of its' own choosing.... the amplified signal goes back to the stomach, something's really really wrong, what do I do? And back and forth, until the churning acids chew through to expose the living tissue. All the while Gunn feels sick, very sick, getting worse every day. A barely living wounded creature suspended in a moment of pure terror, knowing nothing but fear. Fear and the terrible sadness at the loss of everything he once knew; everything he once was. Better to die, but oh, the awful fear of death. Nowhere to turn, nobody to turn to. Trapped in a bubble of fear while the whole world marches on, unknowing, unconcerned. Uncaring. Better to lie down and let death take you, please God quietly, in the night.
Just as there's a limit to how much punishment the human body can take, so too with the mind. A simple formula; if the mind reaches that limit before the body, you can live. If not....
Gunn awoke one fearful morning, surrounded by the ever present moaning of the wounded and dying, the nurses bustling to and fro; the fearful wounds, amputations.... facial disfigurement, all fuel to the fires of his terror. Something was changing... had changed. It was a rare fine day; he took his tea outside to the garden and claimed a vacant chair amongst the other walking wounded gathered there to catch the warmth of the early morning sun. For the first time since his admittance he answered the friendly greetings in kind, suprising himself as much as the men around him. Something really was different. A cigarette offered, and accepted. Someone produced a lit match. Sinking back into the chair and his own thoughts he drew deeply and expelled a fine haze of smoke in the direction of an orphaned cumulus cloud. It would take several cigarettes and another cup of tea to figure it out; he had simply given up. Nothing mattered any more. Life. Death. Suffering. He'd been to the dreadful Abyss, pitched a tent there and hung over the edge, vomited into its' unholy depths. There was nothing left to do save fall in, or crawl slowly away. And he didn't care either way.It was out of his hands..... it always had been. Logic had finally triumphed in his tortured brain, nothing left to fight with, nowhere to run; so he let go, and finally found peace.
This was far from a cheerful victory.... more a surrender, yet it brought blessed relief from the constant attacks on his body and spirit. He would discover, over the coming months, the terrible price it extracted. A loss of interest in all earthly things. Disassociation from the past. Ambivalence for the future. But temporarily he'd reached a relative paradise. His body began to heal, and he looked anew at the strange world around him, albeit as through a window; divorced, remote and unconcerned..... he was part of, yet somehow separated from it.
They released him on a fortnights' recuperative leave several weeks later, but his arrival home turned out to be the highlight. It was all very jolly at first, everyone was so happy to see him again, and so proud. But very soon the conversation became stilted and uncomfortable. His responses lacked intensity or purpose. They seemed genuinely pleased to just have him around but he could sense their concern, and it made him feel out of place. He was more familiar with the rough camaraderie of the squadron, all the fussing and clucking only served to make him withdraw even further. So it was with some relief that he packed his kit at the end of his leave and said his goodbyes at the station. His father, who had fought the Boers in South Africa, placed a calloused hand on his shoulder and told him to look after himself and come home safe. That was a moment. He seemed to know, to understand, but his was a different war and they would ever stand bound together in separate orbits in the manner of fathers and sons since time began; loving, respectful, but somehow out of step with each other. The train pulled away belching sweet smelling black smoke and he sat back, lit a cigarette, and idly contemplated his future.
Last Updated Tuesday, March 30 2010 @ 07:52 PM MDT|127 Hits 