Read Once There Was a War for Free Online Page B

get any,” says Henry Maurice Grain, one of the gunners. “We got the nose knocked out of our ship, but that was an accident. One of the gunners in a ship high on ahead tossed out some shell casings and they came right through the nose. They’ve got her nearly fixed up now.”
    “But anyway,” the first man says doggedly, “I wish they’d tell them at home that the war isn’t over and I wish they wouldn’t think we’re so brave. I don’t want to be so brave. Shall we have another beer?”
    “What for?” says the tail gunner. “This stuff hasn’t got even enough character for you to dislike it, I’m going back to wipe my guns. Then I won’t have to do it in the morning.”
    They stand up and file slowly out of the pub. It is still daylight. The pigeons are flying about the tower of an old Gothic church, a kind of architecture especially suited to nesting pigeons.
    The hotel taken over by the Red Cross is crowded with men in from the flying fields which dot the countryside. Our bus drives up in front and we pile in. The crew looks automatically at the sky. It is clear, with little puffs of white cloud suspended in the light of a sun that has already gone down.
    “Looks like it might be a clear day,” the radio man says. “That’s good for us and it’s good for them to get at us.”
    The bus rattles back toward the field. The tail gunner muses. “I hope old Red Beard has got a bad cold,” he says. “I didn’t like the look in his eye last time.”
    (Red Beard is an enemy fighter pilot who comes so close that you can almost see his face.)
    SUPERSTITION
    BOMBER STATION IN ENGLAND, June 30, 1943 —It is a bad night in the barracks, such a night as does not happen very often. It is impossible to know how it starts. Nerves are a little thin and no one is sleepy. The tail gunner of the other outfit in the room gets down from his upper bunk and begins rooting about on the floor.
    “What’s the matter?” the man on the lower bunk asks.
    “I lost my medallion,” the tail gunner says.
    No one asks what is was, a St. Christopher or a good-luck piece. The fact of the matter is that it is his medallion and he has lost it. Everyone gets up and looks. They move the double-decker bunk out from the wall. They empty all the shoes. They look behind the steel lockers. They insist that the gunner go through all his pockets. It isn’t a good thing for a man to lose his medallion. Perhaps there has been an uneasiness before. This sets it. The uneasiness creeps all through the room. It takes the channel of being funny. They tell jokes; they rag one another. They ask shoe sizes of one another to outrage their uneasiness. “What size shoes you wear, Brown? I get them if you conk out.” The thing runs bitterly through the room.
    And then the jokes stop. There are many little things you do when you go out on a mission. You leave the things that are to be sent home if you have an accident. You leave them under your pillow, your photographs and the letter you wrote, and your ring. They’re under your pillow, and you don’t make up your bunk. That must be left unmade so that you can slip right in when you get back. No one would think of making up a bunk while its owner is on a mission. You go out clean-shaven too, because you are coming back, to keep your date. You project your mind into the future and the things you are going to do then.
    In the barracks they tell of presentiments they have heard about. There was the radio man who one morning folded his bedding neatly on his cot and put his pillow on top. And he folded his clothing into a neat parcel and cleared his locker. He had never done anything like that before. And sure enough, he was shot down that day.
    The tail gunner still hasn’t found his medallion. He has gone through his pockets over and over again. The brutal talk goes on until one voice says, “For God’s sake shut up. It’s after midnight. We’ve got to get some sleep.”
    The lights are turned out.