Abunch of the boys was whoopin’ it up, as usual. Fighter pilots all, bellied up close to the bar, boot-heels lodged in spittoons. In England this was, in a little tin hut at the edge of a grassy flying field up near the cold North Sea. The fairly indestructible remnants of a hot-shot Mustang squadron, we’d been roosting right here for a year—for we drank upon occasion, the most frequent of which being sundown.
Flying by day were we, and by night winning the bloody great war with Scotch-and-soda, and it seemed that the same rowdy crew always led off on these nighttime missions. Inevitably, as the night bombers of the RAF would string out across the darkening skies, so would Parchesi-Joe and the Gremlin, Pappy and Scotti and Mac and I trail into the musty, dim barroom of our club—lured by the wafted fumes of rare old mountain dew. And in comparison to some of these nightly affairs, combat flying was utter relaxation. The jagged brick footrest of our tiny bar was quite as much an occupational hazard as the flak lobbed up from Happy Valley or Berlin—the designers of our cozy retreat having failed to foresee the disastrous possibilities inherent in the combination of one peashooter pilot, a quart or so of ersatz Scotch, plus the inexorable law of gravity.
Booze, however, was not our sole joy and diversion. Perhaps in the course of an evening there might be a small game of chance; a reckless round of stud, wherein our hard-earned pound notes would sail through the drifting strata of tobacco smoke like snowflakes in a Dakota blizzard.
Other nights we might just crouch in the darkest corner of our lair, hashing over past aerial exploits to evolve fantastic new methods of slaughtering Jerries with a P-51. It has never been proven that there existed any liaison between High Command and our bleary-eyed council, but the most reckless of our alcoholic schemes would invariably come true. Having long since discovered the uncannily accurate prophecies that lay inscribed upon the bottom of every whiskey jug, we were thus led to believe that perhaps High Command had been fashioning our fate with the same carefree bravado as we’d been using to predict it.
But maybe we’d just drink to dear Aunt Gussie. The fairest of queens in the royal courts of old was never toasted as frequently or with such fervor as was this venerable dame. Designed and constructed according to our rigid specifications, this invisible old squaw had been brought into our cruel little world to serve solely as a salve for what we laughingly referred to as our collective conscience. The latter would infrequently cause us pangs, should we all become soaked for no apparent reason. One should always have something definite to celebrate, and Aunt Gussie’s birthday was generally it. She aged rapidly.
And whenever my battered guitar would come from under the bar, then the air would well resound with a notorious collection of ballads: all those we used to know and love so well, a raucous repertoire at best. Even the Red Cross wenches could work up a blush or two at some of these delicate ditties. A fun-loving lot at heart we were, and nothing cramped our style. Each night at closing time our uproarious departure into the blackout would never fail to elicit from our true friend, Pat the bartender, the comment spoken sadly: “The Cream of American Youth. Jeeeezus!” We were sure foolin’ the public.
And so tonight—that rainy night of June the 5th of ‘44, and the night my story begins—the squadron’s evening session started out with the usual routine. After impishly pouring four fingers of rotgut into my glass, my old flying partner Mac had cried: “C’mon, Faro! Leave us have a party!”
“Why certainly,” I replied. “To Aunt Gussie’s 99th, bless her filthy soul!” So with a clink, a gulp, and a shudder, things got under way.
As the jamboree grew both in number and intensity, the talk around the bar became laced through with a thread of tension, for it looked to us as though perhaps our tired old war was coming at last into some sort of focus. In enemy skies of late, we’d accomplished an inordinate amount of highly specialized dirty work, and in retrospect there could be seen a certain method to our madness.
Our bomber escort work had slacked off and we’d set about strafing airdromes, racing deep into Germany to sometimes catch the Luftwaffe with its flaps down. And we’d taken our losses. Then upon our flak-addled heads there had fallen the rightful blame for the acute shortage of underwear which had developed amongst the nerve-shattered railroaders of the Reich—for we’d buzzed joyfully up and down the main lines, seeking out and punching holes into every locomotive constructed by the Jerries in the past century. After that, 8th Fighter Command had declared open season, whereupon anything that might happen into our gun-sights became a legitimate target. Indeed, one sunny Sunday afternoon we’d strafed Germany so mercilessly that Lord Haw-Haw screamed and scolded us over the radio that very night. And another time, we all left our brains in a bucket and set forth on a prolonged low-level attack on that most heavily defended of all German areas: Pas de Calais, just across the Channel from the high cliffs of Dover.
Pas de Calais we preferred to forget. High Command (we never did find out just whose High Command it was), disbelieving the profane pilot reports of a hundred previous missions, had stated its urgent desire to ascertain the degree of alertness maintained by the ten million Jerry flak batteries that bristled the French coast. So on a volunteer basis, under a hundred-foot ceiling—and with our propellers harvesting seaweed and assorted French crops every inch of the way—we’d charged squarely into the muzzle of the goddamned biggest gun in the world. Jerry had chuckled and pulled the trigger, and one helluva lot of wreckage had flown back out over the English Channel.
A lot of dirty work, but now it appeared that the time was approaching for others besides the 8th Air Force to plaster the old country with shot and shell. And today, more cause for speculation. Our P-5IS had been grounded without warning and hastily disfigured by having their wings and bellies painted with broad black and white stripes. To our critical eyes, this foul bit of anti-camouflage had transformed our slim and cocky little fighters into what looked to be a mess of outsized tropical fish. A fine thing, we figured, but what the hell. Orders from Headquarters. This was, remember, the fifth day of June.
By mid-evening, thoughts of higher strategy had been forgotten to the merry tune of popping corks and clinking glassware, and our little spree was just one notch short of roaring when it was brought to a grinding halt by the appearance of a ranking paddlefoot who stomped into the bar and immediately lost what few friends he might have had.
“Patrick!” he shouted over the uproar. “Close the bar!”
We spread out into combat formation and growled in unison: “Closin’ the bar?”
“The bar is closed! That’s orders, goddammit! Get some sleep, flyboys, for you’ll be needin’ it!”
We were thunderstruck! What an unprecedented turn of affairs! But further protesting howls drew only a hearty scowl and advice to play it smart, for a change. So we bitched for a while—out of habit and to preserve our self-respect—then navigated through the drizzly gloom to our cheery little culvert-type home, and there we pondered the deliberate sabotage of our projected wingding. We’d been outranked. Something hot was on the fire. We played a few hands of stud and turned in.
I’d barely dozed off when an orderly poked his ugly noggin into our hut to holler out the old song-and-dance: “Rollout! Briefing for all pilots in twenty minutes! Maximum effort!”