[b]episode 2[/b]
[b]The next day, I sat on my bunk in the Quonset hut. This was a rare moment, because out of twelve gunners who lived there, I was the only person in the hut for the moment. The radio was tuned into Calais, a German-run station, which was currently playing swing music. For news, we gunners often tuned in to the BBC or the Armed Forces Network, but for popular music the German stations offered the best variety. Of course, Nazi propaganda came interspersed with the music, but we always ignored that.
In my hand I held a pen, but the sheet of paper in front of me was practically blank. So far, the only words I had managed to squeeze out of my brain were
Dear Margo.
How are you and your folks getting along?
After that opening line, I simply didn’t know what else to say. Not that the life of an airman on a B-24 bomber was boring. The mission of the day before had certainly proven that. Even though I had arrived in England only a few months earlier, I had already experienced more than my share of nerve-wracking experiences. But could I describe all that to Margo?
“Nah,” I whispered to myself. “Even if the censor didn’t chop that stuff out, I shouldn’t frighten her by describing what it’s really like up there.”
I closed my eyes and pressed my fingertips to them. Immediately the near disaster from the previous day sprang onto the screen of my mind: The FW-190 boring straight towardAmerican Pridewith its guns spitting death. The wing of my target shearing off. The crippled fighter spinning around and around, directly toward us . . .
Next I recalled the deafening scream George Baker had let loose. Suspended beneath the Liberator, George had swung his ball turret around just in time to see the 190’s wing break off with the plane spinning out of control toward us. I had instinctively thrown myself backward against the fuselage, but down in the cramped ball turret George had nowhere to jump. I didn’t even need the intercom to hear the shout that he let loose.
Seconds later, George had transformed from terrified to fuming. “For crying out loud, Yoder, or Pulaski, or whoever smeared that 109! Good shooting, but try to knock ’em down a little farther away, will ya? That last one barely missed us. If I’d had a broom, I could’ve dusted off that guy’s cockpit as he passed under me!”
Recalling George’s words made me smile. I pictured my gunner friend reaching down from the ball turret to swat the German plane with a broom. Of course, it was impossible, like something you might see in a newspaper cartoon. But George had to crack some kind of joke to recover from his panic. That’s the same reason that I had replied, “Why, I did that on purpose, George. I was hoping you would snap off a piece of that fighter’s tail for a souvenir.”
The one bright spot in the incident was that I knew I hadn’t killed the pilot. George saw his white parachute blossom several thousand feet below, and that was all right by me. I just wanted to stop Hitler, to knock those planes down so they couldn’t take out any more of our guys.
Back in the present, though, I stared at my nearly blank page.So what else should I write to Margo?
The truth was, every man aboard those bombers, from the nose gunner up front to the tail gunner in the rear, would have preferred to be safely back in the States rather than imitating a duck in a carnival shooting gallery. But none of us were quitters. As our radio operator, David Rose, liked to phrase it, “We’ve got a job to do. It’s a lousy job, and it’s a dangerous job, but somebody’s gotta do it, and that somebody is us!”
I lowered my pen to the sheet of paper and continued my letter.
You asked me to describe what it’s like to serve aboard a bomber, but putting it in a letter is hard. You sort of have to be here to get the full effect. We usually have plenty to do, with flying, plane recognition classes, and classes on ditching procedure. I’m glad you’re not here. I mean, I’d love to see you, but it’s just too dangerous to be in England these days.
I paused. That last part could come across like I was bragging about flying over the war zone, but I hoped she wouldn’t take it that way. I searched for a way to continue the letter without actually describing the hair-raising sensation that accompanied almost every mission. I didn’t care to mention the bloodstained bodies that were pulled from shot-up planes. I also wasn’t about to describe the bombers that fell victim to flak and exploded in midair. Of course, Margo wasn’t naïve. She knew that bombers got shot down.
I decided to skip the war talk and just mention other things.
It’s funny, but British people don’t always speak the same English language we do. Over here they call a radio a “wireless.” A truck isn’t a truck; it’s a “lorry.” And a flashlight is an “electric torch.” Here in Europe, men even cross their legs differently. We American guys cross our legs with one ankle over the opposite knee. But the European men cross their legs with one knee over the other. The British say they can tell us “Yanks” just by how we sit.
I’ve never described our living quarters for you. They call it a Quonset hut. It’s a half-tube of corrugated tin with a door in each end. The bunks are metal, with metal springs underneath, which aren’t so bad. But instead of mattresses they give us “biscuits,” which are big, square canvas cushions crammed with stuffing. We’re supposed to arrange these over the bedsprings, but mine never fit the bed. Charlie Barnes says these biscuits are wonderfully comfortable—but only when compared to sleeping on concrete! Me, I think the Nazis invented them to keep us awake.
We had some excitement in the barracks a couple nights ago. Remember how I wrote that Eddie Pulaski is always pulling crazy stunts? Well, there’s this potbellied stove in our hut for heat. Sometime after midnight, Pulaski tiptoed over to it and dropped in a couple of .45 bullets from his pistol. You should have seen the guys diving under their bunks when those things started shooting off inside the stove! I still have a bruise on my chin from where I banged into the cement floor. And in the middle of all this commotion, Pulaski was roaring with laughter. He’s really a great guy, but just then we all felt like strangling him.
One nice thing about our little Quonset hut is that only one of us gunners here smokes. The larger huts have a constant haze from all the cigarettes.
Thanks for being such a good letter-writer, Margo. I mean, I write to my dad too, but he never was much for writing letters. (Which is funny, since he’s a mailman and delivers them all the time.) If it weren’t for you, I’m not sure who I’d write to.
I squinted at that last sentence. Even though I had passed twelfth-grade English just the year before, I wasn’t positive whether the word “who” was correct, or if it should have been “whom” instead. Then I noticed the last word in the sentence and was positive old Mrs. Baxter would frown and cluck, “Tsk, tsk,” if she caught me ending a sentence with a preposition. In the end, I just shrugged and left the sentence. After all, I figured that a nineteen-year-old guy aboard a United States Army Air Force bomber in 1943 had more important things to worry about than grammar rules.
Staring at the curved wall of the Quonset hut, I relived that week in spring when I met Margo. The 1942 school year had ended on Thursday, June 4, and I finally had my diploma. For a long time Dad had objected to my enlisting in the army. Our branch of the Yoder clan came from a staunchly pacifist Mennonite background. Even though Dad had attended the nondenominational Jordan Memorial Tabernacle since marrying Mom, the pacifist roots still ran deep in him.
“Think what you would be doing,” he would argue.
“Every time you shoot an enemy soldier, you’ll be sending his soul straight to hell.”
“Maybe,” I would counter, “but those Nazis are slaughtering innocent people in Poland, Czechoslovakia, France . . . Who’s going to stop them if Americans don’t step in?”
Dad wouldn’t budge. “Poland . . . Czechoslovakia . . . Let them handle their own problems. America should take care of America.”
If anything, his arguments only hardened my resolve to enlist. To avoid these debates in those final days before reporting for basic training, I took my Indian Scout 101 motorcycle out for long rides in the countryside surrounding Elkhart.[/b]
