‘Just three,’ he said. ‘Who else is going?’
‘The major,’ Bridesman said.
‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Why did he pick me?’
‘I dont know. Out of a hat, I think. I can wash you out if you dont like it. It wont matter. I think he really picked you out of a hat.’
‘Why should I not like it?’ he said. Then he said, ‘I just thought——’ and then stopped.
‘Thought what?’ Bridesman said.
‘Nothing,’ he said. Then he was telling it, he didn’t know why: ‘I thought that maybe the major found out about it somehow, and when he wanted one of the new blokes on this job, he remembered about me—’ telling it: that morning when he had been supposed simply to be out practicing, contour chasing probably, and instead had spent that forty or fifty seconds right down on the carpet with the unarmed aeroplane over the hun trenches or at least what he thought was the hun front line: ‘You dont get frightened then; it’s not until later, afterward. And then——It’s like the dentist’s drill, already buzzing before you have even opened your mouth. You’ve got to open your mouth and you know you’re going to all right, only you know at the same time that neither knowing you are going to nor opening it either, is going to help because even after you have closed it again, the thing will buzz at you again and you’ll have to open it again the next moment or tomorrow or maybe it wont be until six months from now, but it will buzz again and you will have to open again because there’s nowhere else you can go …’ He said: ‘Maybe that’s all of it. Maybe when it’s too late and you cant help yourself anymore, you dont really mind getting killed——’
‘I dont know,’ Bridesman said. ‘You didn’t get even one bullet hole?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Maybe I shall this time.’ And this time Bridesman did stop.
‘Listen,’ Bridesman said. ‘This is a job. You know what jobs in this squadron are for.’
‘Yes. To find huns.’
‘And then bust them.’
‘You sound like Monaghan: “Oh, I just ran up behind and busted the ass off the son of a bitch.” ’
‘You do that too,’ Bridesman said. ‘Come on.’ They went on. But he had needed only one glance at the three aeroplanes.
‘Your bus is not back yet,’ he said.
‘No,’ Bridesman said. ‘I’m taking Monaghan’s.’ Then the major came and they took off. As he passed the office, he saw a smallish closed van turn in from the road but he didn’t have time to look then, not until he was off and up and from the turn could really look down. It was the sort of van provost marshals’ people used; and climbing for formation, he saw not one car but two behind the mess—not ordinary muddy staff cars but the sort which detached Life and Horse Guards officers on the staffs of corps- and army-commanders were chauffeured about in. Now he drew in opposite Bridesman across the major’s tail-plane, still climbing but to the southward, so that they would approach the lines squarely, and did so, still climbing; Bridesman waggled his wings and turned away and he did likewise long enough to clear the Vickers, into Germany or anyway toward Germans, and traversed the Lewis on its quadrant and fired it off too and closed in again. Now the major turned back north-west parallel above the front, still climbing and nothing below now to reveal, expose it as front lines although he hadn’t seen it but twice to have learned to know it again—only two kite balloons about a mile apart above the British trenches and two others almost exactly opposite them above the German ones, no dust no murk no gout and drift of smoke purposeless and unorigined and convoluted with no sound out of nothing and already fading and already replaced, no wink of guns as he had seen them once though perhaps at this height you didn’t see flashes anyway: nothing now but the correlative to a map, looking now as it would look on that day when as the general said the last gun would cease beyond the Rhine—for that little space before the earth with one convulsive surge would rush to cover and hide it from the light of day and the sight of man——
He broke off to turn when the major did. They were crossing now, still climbing, right over the upper British balloon, heading straight for the German one. Then he saw it too—a white salvo bursting well below them and in front and then four single bursts pointing away eastward like four asterisks. But he never had time to look where it was pointing because at the same instant German archie burst all around them—or would have, because the major was diving slightly now, going east. But still he could see nothing yet except the black hun archie. It seemed to be everywhere; he flew right through a burst of it, cringing, shrinking convulsively into himself while he waited for the clang and whine which he had heard before. But maybe they were going too fast now, he and the major really diving now, and he noticed for the first time that Bridesman was gone, he didn’t know what had become of him nor when, and then he saw it: a two-seater: he didn’t know what kind because he had never seen a German two-seater in the air before nor any other German for that matter. Then Bridesman came vertically down in front of him and putting his nose down after Bridesman, he discovered that the major had vanished and forgot that too, he and Bridesman going almost straight down, the German right under them now, going west; he could see Bridesman’s tracer going right into it until Bridesman pulled out and away, then his own tracer though he never could seem to get right on the two-seater before he had to pull out and away too, the archie already waiting for him before he was clear even, as though the hun batteries were simply shooting it up here without caring whom it hit or even watching to see. One actually seemed to burst between his upper and lower right-hand planes; he thought, Maybe the reason I dont hear any clang is because this one is going to shoot me down before I have time to. Then he found the two-seater again. That is, not the aeroplane but the white bursts of British archie telling him or them where it was, and an S.E. (it would have to be the major; Bridesman couldn’t possibly have got that far by now) diving toward the bursts. Then Bridesman was just off his wing-tip again, the two of them going full out now in the pocking cloud of black archie like two sparrows through a swirl of dead leaves; and then he saw the balloons and noticed or remembered or perhaps simply saw the sun.
He saw them all—the two-seater apparently emerged neatly and exactly from between the two German balloons and, in its aureole of white archie, flying perfectly straight and perfectly level on a line which would carry it across No-man’s Land and exactly between the two British ones, the major behind and above the two-seater and Bridesman and himself perhaps a mile back in their cloud of black archie, the four of them like four beads sliding on a string and two of them not even going very fast because he and Bridesman were up with the major almost at once. And perhaps it was the look on his face, the major glancing quickly at him then motioning him and Bridesman back into formation. But he didn’t even throttle back and then Bridesman was following him, the two of them passing the major and he thought, Maybe I was wrong, maybe hun archie doesn’t clang and it was ours I heard that day, still thinking that when, slightly ahead of Bridesman, they closed that gap too and flew into the white archie enclosing the two-seater before someone could tell the gunners they could stop now too, the last white wisp of it vanishing in the last fading drift about him and Bridesman now and there was the two-seater flying straight and level and sedate toward the afternoon sun and he pressed the button and nudged and ruddered the tracer right onto it, walking the tracer the whole length of it and return—the engine, the back of the pilot’s head then the observer sitting as motionless as though in a saloon car on the way to the opera, the unfired machine gun slanting back and down from its quadrant behind the observer like a rolled umbrella hanging from a rail, then the observer turned without haste and looked right into the tracer, right at him, and with one hand deliberately raised the goggles—a Prussian face, a Prussian general’s face; he had seen too many caricatures of the Hohenzollern Crown Prince in the last three years not to know a Prussian general when he saw one—and with the other hand put up a monocle at him and looked at him through it, then removed the monocle and faced front again.
Then he pulled away and went past; there was the aerodrome right under them now, until he remembered the archie battery just outside the village where he had seen the torch last night and heard the lorry; from the tight vertical turn he could look straight down at the gunners, shaking his hand at them and yelling: ‘Come on! Come on! This is your last chance!’ and slanted away and came back diving, walking the tracer right through the gun and the pale still up-turned discs of the faces watching him about it; as he pulled up he saw another man whom he had not seen before standing just on the edge of the wood behind the battery; the gentlest nudge on stick and rudder brought this one squarely into the Aldis itself this time and, pulling up at last to get over the trees, he knew that he should have got something very close to a possible ten somewhere about that one’s navel. Then the aerodrome again; he saw the two-seater squaring away to land, the two S.E.’s above and behind it, herding it down; he himself was too high even if he had not been much too fast; even after the vicious sideslip he might still wipe off the S.E.’s frail undercarriage, which was easy enough to do even with sedate landings. But it held, stood up; he was down first, rolling now and for a moment he couldn’t remember where he had seen it then he did remember, beginning to turn as soon as he dared (Someday they would put brakes on them; those who flew them now and lived would probably see it.) and turning: a glimpse of brass and scarlet somewhere near the office, and the infantry in column coming around the corner of the office; he was taxi-ing fast now back along the tarmac past the hangars where three mechanics began to run toward him until he waved them off, taxi-ing on toward the corner of the field and there it was where he had seen it last week and he switched off and got down, the two-seater on the ground too now and Bridesman and the major landing while he watched, the three of them taxi-ing on in a clump like three waddling geese toward the office where the scarlet and brass gleamed beautiful and refulgent in the sun in front of the halted infantry. But he was running a little heavily now in his flying boots and so the ritual had already begun when he arrived—the major and Bridesman on foot now with the adjutant and Thorpe and Monaghan and the rest of B Flight, in the center of them the three Poperinghe a.d.c.’s splendid in scarlet and brass and glittering Guards badges, behind them the infantry officer with his halted platoon deployed into two open files, all facing the German aeroplane.
‘Bridesman,’ he said but at that moment the major said ‘’Shun!’ and the infantry officer shouted ‘Present——harms!’ and at salute now he watched the German pilot jump down and jerk to attention beside the wing while the man in the observer’s seat removed the helmet and goggles and dropped them somewhere and from somewhere inside the cockpit drew out a cap and put it on and did something rapidly with his empty hand like a magician producing a card and set the monocle into his eye and got down from the aeroplane and faced the pilot and said something rapid in German and the pilot stood himself back at ease and then snapped something else at the pilot and the pilot jerked back to attention and then with no more haste than when he had removed the helmet but still a little quicker than anyone could have stopped it drew a pistol from somewhere and even aimed it for a second while the rigid pilot (he looked about eighteen himself) stared not even at the pistol’s muzzle but at the monocle and shot the pilot through the center of the face and turned almost before the body jerked and began to fall and swapped the pistol to the other gloved hand and had started to return the salute when Monaghan jumped across the pilot’s body and flung the other German back into the aeroplane before Bridesman and Thorpe caught and held him.
‘Fool,’ Bridesman said. ‘Dont you know hun generals dont fight strangers?’
‘Strangers?’ Monaghan said. ‘I’m no stranger. I’m trying to kill the son of a bitch. That’s why I came two thousand miles over here: to kill them all so I can get to hell back home!’
‘Bridesman,’ he said again but again the major said ‘’Shun there! Shun!’ and at salute again he watched the German straighten up (he hadn’t even lost the monocle) and flip the pistol over until he held it by the barrel and extend it butt first to the major who took it, and then draw a handkerchief from his cuff and brush off the breast and sleeve of his tunic where Monaghan had touched him and look at Monaghan for just a second with nothing behind the monocle at all as he put the handkerchief back into the cuff and clicked and jerked as he returned the salute and walked forward straight at the group as though it were not there and he didn’t even need to see it part and even scramble a little to get out of the way for him to stride through, the three Guards officers falling in behind, between the two open infantry files, toward the mess; the major said to Collyer:
‘Move this. I dont know whether they want it or not, but neither do we, here.’
‘Bridesman,’ he said again.
‘Pah,’ Bridesman said, spitting, hard. ‘We shant need to go to the mess. I’ve a bottle in the hut.’ Then Bridesman overtook him. ‘Where are you going?’
‘It will only take a moment,’ he said. Then apparently Bridesman saw, noticed the aeroplane too.
‘What’s wrong with your bus? You got down all right.’
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘I left it there because there’s an empty petrol tin in the weeds we can set the tail up on.’ The tin was there: a faint and rusting gleam in the dying end of day. ‘Because it’s over, isn’t it? That’s what they want with that hun general of course. Though why they had to do it this way, when all somebody needed was just to hold out a white sheet or tablecloth; they must have a tablecloth at Pop and surely jerry’s got one at his headquarters that he took away from a Frenchwoman; and somebody owes something for that poor bloodstained taxi-driver he——Which was not like the book either: he did it backward; first he should have unpinned the iron cross from his own coat and hung it on the other one and then shot him——’
‘You fool,’ Bridesman said. ‘You bloody fool.’
‘All right. This will only take a moment.’
‘Let it be,’ Bridesman said. ‘Just let it be.’
‘I just want to see,’ he said. ‘Then I shall. It wont take but a moment.’
‘Will you let it be then? Will you promise?’
‘Of course. What else can I do? I just want to see’—and set the empty petrol tin in position and lifted the S.E.’s tail and swung it around onto the tin and it was just right: in a little better than flying angle: almost in a flat shallow glide, the nose coming down just right; and Bridesman really saying No now.
