Perhaps the finest pilot I ever knew was Eddington-Green, whom we called E.G. He had no medals.
E.G. was small and compact, with cool, light, devilish, imperturbable eyes. His hands were surprisingly large for so small a man. On each hand the muscle between the thumb and forefinger, on the back of the hand, was very powerful. It stood out like a swelling.
He had made it hard and powerful by ju-jitsu, but he was afraid of practising the ju-jitsu any longer for fear of hurting, perhaps killing, someone. He looked a small man to kill anybody.
Pilots are often interested in nothing but popsies, kites, and beer. E.G. was interested in many things — so many that I never found out about them all. He raced motorcars and collected stamps; he was interested in ships, had served in the Navy, and was a good radiographer. He had surprising tastes in advanced music; he was a good revolver shot and he was fond of flowers.
One of the few things he was not interested in, it seemed, was getting drunk. There were few parties for E.G. He did not stay up for those occasions, after ops., when air-crews relieve their feelings by doing trapeze acts over sofas.
After a long, hard trip he would come into the mess quite quietly; drink a small light ale; warm his hands by the fire and talk for a few minutes; say that the trip was good or bad, in about as many words; and then go to bed.
It was almost a tradition that no one ever came home before him. No one flew a Stirling so fast and no one, except E.G. himself, knew why.
There was once an occasion when a force of Stirlings, owing to some sudden change of weather at base, was recalled from northern Germany. All the kites, except E.G., were but seventy miles short of their target. E.G. was over the target. He was not long over the target, but he remained there long enough to do a circus act with a ring of searchlights, shooting them out one by one before turning for home. This shook even Intelligence. “You’ve no business to have got so far,” they said.
There is no doubt, of course, that he had been there. He had been there simply because he said so. E.G. never shot a false line, or claimed a target unless he was sure.
The secret of his flying so fast was a trick, but it also had something artistic in it. It was one of those things he was never tired of working out for himself, and which seemed so simple when done. In the same way he used to watch the reactions of himself and other people to living and flying. He used to note how calm and clear and sure and icy he became in the periods when he did not drink at all. He used to note how shaky and sometimes how shortlived were those who did.
In E.G.’s squadron there was at one time a man named Tusser; a big crude ex-civil pilot, who hated Stirlings. Tusser, heavy and bullying, would be badly whistled six non-operational nights out of seven. E.G., who knew why Tusser was whistled and why he bullied and why he hated Stirlings, said: “I give him six more trips.” Two trips later Tusser did not return.
I don’t want to give the impression that E.G. was perfect, but that he was interested not only in flying but also in the things that flying does to men. I shall say nothing about the time he calmly formated with two M.E. 109’s, he himself flying solo, in an Anson trainer.
I liked to hear him describe the feelings and the sight of flight: the solo loneliness, the tracer coming up at you slow and orange until the last furious flashing moment, the moon over the miles and miles of cotton cloud, the flak so thick and many-coloured that it hung in the night air like paper streamers at a ball.
I liked to hear him talk of the time when he was coming home from a night trip to France. It was summer and he was flying at about eighteen thousand, watching the sun rising over the sea. In the serene and beautiful air the sun floated upward like an orange behind the rim of the yellow horizon. Below was a solitary ship, which the navigator reported was smoking badly.
E.G., always curious, put the aircraft into a turn, and, going back, went down to about ten thousand in order to look at her. From that height, in the clear summer morning air, he took the ship to be a merchantman of about 9,000 tons and he took her now to be smoking quite naturally, as if she were stoking up. So he turned the aircraft away, keeping the same height, and headed her again towards England.
And then, from that lower altitude, he saw an amazing thing. He saw the sun just trying to float upward over the horizon: rising for the second time on the same day.
If it hadn’t been for a sense of great curiosity, a strong independent persistence, E.G. would never have seen this at all. It was as if he was living part of his life twice over. This quality of curiosity and independence, which made him test his reactions to drink and work out devices for flying faster and turn back to look at solitary ships that might be in trouble, made him the kind of pilot he was, and once, when he was flying Stirlings, almost finished him as a pilot altogether. His life would have been so much easier, so much smoother, and so much duller if he had kept to other people’s rules instead of making his own.
The weather was not very good when he set out that afternoon to fly into Holland, to attack somewhere inland a target whose name I have forgotten.
It was late December and the weather had been intermittently dirty for several weeks. As E.G. crossed the coast somewhere beyond Scheveningen, the weather suddenly closed down, dark and rainy, and he knew after a few minutes that the chances of seeing the target had gone. There was only one other aircraft with him, and after he had called it up they decided to turn back to sea. “Keep to the coast,” E.G. said. “We may see a little shipping.”
He lost sight of the other aircraft, but his own peculiar independent curiosity made him turn down towards the Hook of Holland instead of out to the open sea. In a couple of hours, if he had been sensible, he could have been eating lobster paste and Swiss roll, or smiling at the W.A.A.F. waitresses, fresh with their afternoon lipstick, in the mess. Instead, he turned the aircraft south-westward, just beyond sight of the coast, to look for shipping.
It was about ten minutes later that his navigator, a big, husky Canadian, who was never really happy except when fighting, called out over the inter-comm. That he could see a tanker below. E.G. turned and saw her, too; she seemed quite large; he thought perhaps about 12,000 tons.
He saw, too, that she had two other ships with her, and they seemed very small beside her. They seemed so small, indeed, that he took them for tugs that had come out to meet her from the coast. It was a great mistake, as he found out later.
He turned away at once to make his first bombing run. The weather was clearer now. The cloud was higher, with breaks in it. There was no rain. He took his time and came in level and low, but not too low, dead over the tanker, and the navigator let go about a third of his bombs.
As he came down, the little escort ships, which he had thought were tugs, hit him with a surprising blaze of fire. He knew then what they were: not tugs, but escort flak ships, and they had holed his starboard wing.
From then he could have turned and gone safely home to lobster paste, Swiss roll, and the W.A.A.F.’s in their cool blue uniforms pouring the tea. Instead, he drew away for a second bombing run. He came in level and low again. The flak was heavier than ever now, and when he drew out again the aircraft, rocking badly, was full of smoke. Even then he could have gone home. Instead, he called the navigator.
“How many left, Mac?”
“Seven.”
“O.K.,” he said. “This time.”
He drew away for a third time. He drew away much farther this time and came in much lower, so that the gunners could use their guns. He came in just over the mast of the tanker.
He saw the crew running across the deck. He saw them fall over one another, over the gear lying on the decks, and down the open hatches. He saw the tracer fire swinging up from the flak ships, like a series of violent orange balls thrown by a conjurer, first casual, then very fast, flying all about him as he dived.
He felt everything suddenly dissolve in a tremendous blast of fire. He felt that his ear-drums had been smashed. He could not see. “This is it,” he thought. “We’ve had it. This is it.”
He tried to pull the plane out of the dive that had taken them so low that it seemed they must clip off the mast of the ship, but for a few moments she would not come. She went soaring along, rocking violently, just above the dirty surface of the sea.
He strained hard to pull her out, and at last, slowly and heavily, she came out and began to climb. At that moment, too, his hearing came back. He heard a raging confusion of excited voices over the inter-comm. The whole crew seemed to be shouting wildly, and what they were shouting shook him for a moment worse than the flak, the explosion, and the dive had done.
“For God’s sake. Fighters!”
He did not realise until that moment what had happened: that the tanker had been steaming steadily into port and that he had been following her in. He suddenly saw below him the flat grey edge of coast; then the dark line of fighters coming up astern from the land. He had just time to see the black smoke of the burning tanker ballooning up below him before he turned out to sea.
He realised at once that the plane would not manoeuvre. He was flying at about three hundred feet, perhaps less, above the sea. The afternoon was already darkening. Heavy cloud was driving in from the land. His speed was down to about a hundred and thirty, and he could neither increase it nor climb.
The plane was dead and heavy and soon the yelling in the inter-comm., which had temporarily ceased, began again. “They’re coming bloody close, E.G.,” the navigator said. “Jeez, they’re bloody close.”
The plane would still not manoeuvre and he still could not increase the speed, but at that last moment he induced her to climb. She climbed very slowly to six or seven hundred feet and as he made height he saw ahead of him a patch of dirty cloud. He went into it, and when finally he came out of it, ten minutes later, the fighters were no longer to be seen.
He came home all the way, in half darkness and then in total darkness, through heavy rain, at what is sometimes jovially described as nought feet. He had only three engines and his speed was never more than a hundred and thirty. He could not see the flare-path well, and he landed too fast, lucky to land at all. It was a brave, exciting, shaky do.
“Did you prang the tanker?” Intelligence asked.
“She was smoking.”
“But did you hit it?”
“We wouldn’t claim it,” E.G. said. “We’re not sure.”
“Mac?”
“Jeez,” Mac said, “we gave ’em hell. I don’t claim no more than that. That’s all I know.”
Intelligence, who is very charming, smiled.
“Are you bloody crazy,” he said, “or don’t you care?”
E.G., who is also charming, but who claims no hit he does not see, who never drinks because he remembers his crew, who flies faster than anyone else and makes his own rules and has no medals, smiled back in answer.
“A little of both,” he said.
They gave him no medals for that. But perhaps he is the sort of man who needs no medals.
The sun rises twice for him.