THE DAWN PATROL

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 8 PT 1

1944

They used to call us the Three Musketeers, those who knew us. It didn’t take long for Jack to learn that I was stationed at Dunsfold Airfield, in the Surrey countryside — an irony that wasn’t lost on either of us, by the way. Once he knew where I was stationed though, he spent every extra moment he could with me. He couldn’t tell me exactly what it was he did now, except to say that he was OSS and, “It’s all very hush-hush.” Only when he said it, it was all proper English and sounded snobbish. Posh, I think they call it.

Jack accepted Ray as my new-found friend, without question, probably more understanding as to how friendships can develop under the most obscure circumstances. He said that when he heard our ship was torpedoed, he felt as if a piece of him was going to die. He pulled every string he could to get the survivors list, and when he heard that we’d arrived in Liverpool after the air raid — once again, he thought it was before — he fretted even more.

“You and Win have caused me nothing but heartache, and worry,” he laughed.

“Have you found her yet?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Not yet. It seems that every hospital they send her to, gets bombed. But I’ll find her.”

Jack looked Ray over the first time he met him — the polished shoes, the creased line of his pants, the dark aviator glasses and flying cap set off at an angle — and nodded ever so slightly. I told Ray later that he had Jack’s approval; all he needed now was to meet Winnie.

“I guess if you guys are good luck for each other, you’d better stick together,” Jack laughed, reaching out to shake Ray’s hand.

“Like glue,” Ray smiled.

“You mean like shit to paper, if I know Bobby,” Jack laughed again, only louder this time.

He’d changed little over the years since leaving home, putting on some extra pounds and filling out a bit — “That’s muscle,” he said. His face looked older, his clean-shaven cheeks coming in dark where his whiskers used to be sparse. There was a scar on his chin — “A souvenir of our little trip out to Dunkirk,” he grinned — and he rubbed it unconsciously whenever he had extra time to himself, reminding me of how Dad rubbed the stump of his left arm whenever he appeared lost in thought.

After, Ray said he found it hard to believe that Jack and I were brothers. He could see little resemblance, except perhaps for the eyes — not the colour, because mine were blue and Jack’s are brown — but the shape of them. And the nose, he added, you both have the same nose. And mouth.

“Is there anything else?” I asked with a laugh.

“I don’t know. I guess I’ll have to get to know him better. You probably have a lot in common.”

“You mean, aside from our parents?” I asked.

“I mean your personalities.”

“I don’t think that has much to do with it. He has none.”
“It’s not something you’re going to notice,” Ray laughed. “If I said to you, ‘Gee, he’s not as selfish as you are,’ you’re not going to think too much of me, are you?”

“Selfish? You mean I’m selfish?”

“I didn’t say that. Bad example. How about...‘He don’t look as stupid?’”

“That’s better,” I grinned, and threw a wadded up sheet of paper at him.

We were sitting in “Northanger Abbey”, the Squad room at RCAF Base Dunsfold, Surrey, waiting for the briefing to begin — most of us just recently waking up. The room was heavy with smoke, a blue haze sitting over our heads and looking the colour of the clouds we so often skimmed across as the moon reflected off them in the dead of night.

Flight Commander, Captain Wilson, walked into the room. A tall, ungainly man with a nasal voice, thin face, and a prominent Adam’s apple, the day we found he was to be promoted, Ray said he didn’t instil much confidence as a leader. He’d flown thirteen missions more than Ray and I, and had given up returning home for his chance to be Flight Commander.

“Excuse me Abby,” he said to the mannequin standing at the front of the room. He lit a cigarette and put it in her hand. When the cigarette died out, the meeting had better be finished. It was a long established rule we all lived by.

Someone had found Abby in the remains of what was once a London department store after an air raid during the Blitz, and brought her back with him. No one remembered who brought her home, just as no one knew who put her in the WAAF’s uniform, undid the top three buttons and painted nipples on her papier-mâché chest. She was Abby, from Northanger Abbey, and her place was at the front of the room.

“Tonight’s sortie is a bombing run over Holland. Fifteen hundred planes. It’s one of our largest, with five airfields involved — two Brits, one Yank, the Dutch, and us. If we can keep our losses down to less than twenty percent, we’ll consider ourselves lucky.”

“Twenty percent? Why so low?” Ray laughed.

“We’ll have fighter escorts this time. All the way there, and all the way back.”

“What’s twenty percent of fifteen hundred?” I asked Ray.

“I thought you were good at math?” Ray said with a laugh, turning to look at me. “How the hell did you ever get to be a pilot?”

“They were desperate. Besides, I don’t need to know much as long as you’re my navigator. I’m just not very good with percentages,” I offered as an explanation.

“You should be glad then. Ignorance really is bliss.”

“What is it?” I insisted.

“Three hundred — rough and dirty.”

“I like it rough,” I laughed.

*

We only lost fourteen of our own planes because we caught Gerry off-guard. Total loses amounted to fewer than twelve percent. A huge success, Bomber Command declared out of London. A huge success, I thought. At twelve percent, that means 180 planes were downed, divide that into the five airfields involved, and it was twenty-five percent losses for all of us — twenty-five percent was another way of saying one in four, which is what they told us the odds were when we first arrived. I guess Ray was right when he said it was all a numbers game as far as Bomber Command was concerned.

We never paid attention as to whether they declared our missions a success or not — success depended on who did, or didn’t make it back — something we all determined once we returned from patrol and joined the previous watch for rum and Ollies. We’d see them seated outside in the morning glow as we made our approach, three dozen pilots and half as many navigators, bombardiers, and flight crew — all of them cheering us on and counting the planes — running out to the field to help with the wounded.

We all valued our lives as much as the next man; we understood the dangers of flying into the maelstrom — ‘Once more into the breach’, as Ray liked to say — ‘once more into the belly of the Beast’. He said the War came at us like that — as though it were a beast wanting to eat us up and spit us out — shit us out the other side if we were lucky, were his actual words — but that was only if the Beast refused to accept your sacrifice.

“It’s all a matter of acceptance,” Ray said. “First, and foremost, you have to accept that you’re here to be shit on. Once you’ve accepted that, the fact that this may very well be your last day — and no matter what you do there’s little you can do to prevent it — it’s easier on your nerves.”

“That’s why we play so hard,” I added.

And play we did, with London just a short drive away.

*

As hard as we liked to play, Jack played harder. He lived in a small flat in a bombed out part of London he had no business being in. He said he liked the solitude it offered. He also liked that there were no street signs or house numbers, so finding him took some time. That was how he stayed out of touch when he needed some time to himself. There were other survivors of the Blitz living in the surrounding buildings — families even — most knowing the buildings were condemned, but choosing to be there anyway.

“Where else do you expect them to live?” Jack asked. With what little food available tightly rationed, they stood out on the streets most days looking for handouts, and trying to care for their children — refusing to give up on them because they'd missed the only chance they’d had to move them out to the country.

“These people have nothing except the shirts on their backs. These are the only homes they have since the bombing started. When you lose everything you've ever had, it’s harder to give it up — even if it’s just a reminder of what you once had.”

We were drinking scotch, the three of us, sitting on a Persian rug he’d pilfered from somewhere. The room was unusually bright, the bombed-out windows as a rule covered with heavy blankets he nailed tightly around the window sashes every night. He pulled then open every morning. The room was clean, the dirt and debris long since swept away. The blankets on the windows did more than help keep the night chill out, but it was never warm enough during the day. The fireplace burned constantly, the supply of wood from the bombed out building around him and endless source. He had a table and three mismatched dining-room chairs, as well as a few armchairs and a small sofa.

Jack lived with a woman. Cecelia. She was tall, and stately, with long auburn hair that flowed down the length of her back, square shoulders slightly pulled back so that her tits rode high on her chest. She had a small nose and thin lips with large dark eyes that taken separately were nothing special, but in grouping them with her sparkling laughter and quick wit, combined to create a beautiful woman.

We would be joining her at a club somewhere in the city later in the evening.

“How can you live with a whore?” I asked, mortified at the discovery.

Jack laughed at my simplicity. “Why wouldn’t I?”

“Does she still do it?”

“What?”

“You know; what ever it is they do?”

“You don’t know?”

“I’ve never been with one before. I mean, I know what they do — you don’t get to live this long and not know what a whore is for — but I’ve never been with one, if that’s what you mean. I’ve never even — ”

“Don’t tell me that!” Jack snorted with laughter.

“It’s not that I haven’t wanted to. But I always thought you should be married before doing that — ”

“And who told you that? Ray?”

“Don’t look at me,” Ray said, and held his hands up in mock surrender. “I happen to like chasing skirts. I like the way their tits bounce when they run, and the way their asses sway when they walk. Oh, and the way their legs shimmer in those stockings they wear — especially when the wind lifts up their skirts. I like whores.”

“You see? Ray understands,” Jack laughed, and poured me another scotch.

“This really is horrible stuff,” I said.

Sitting on the floor of his little flat, the bombed out city blocks of black and charred ruins spread out around us on all sides. The air was heavy with the scent of burnt wood, as well as the closeness of the room. When the wind stirred in the streets below, a grey cloud of dust seemed to settle on everything — the ashes of a life once lived and now forgotten.

“Besides, that’s not the problem,” I said.

“Problem? There’s a problem? What is it? Ray? Can you tell me what his problem is? What does he have against whores?” Jack asked, swallowing a quick mouthful and grimacing as it burned its way down.

Ray shook his head. “I been tryin’ to figure him out since I met him. He plain don’t wanna listen to me.”

“I listen to you,” I said.

“Sure, when I say don’t take this plane, or that one, ‘cause it’s not gonna make it back — ”

“Really? Superstitious are you, Ray?” Jack asked.

“Ray has dreams,” I said. “He knows which plane is gonna buy it, and which is gonna make it,” I explained, and looked over at Ray who stared at me in the sudden silence.

“Dreams?” Jack asked, looking at Ray.

Ray nodded after a moment. “That’s how I knew the ship we were on was gonna sink.”

“And you didn’t tell anybody?”

“Who’s gonna believe me?”

“How many planes went down on that last mission you flew?” Jack asked me.

“Hundred and eighty, rough and dirty,” I said.

“How many from Dunsfold?”

“Fourteen.”

“Fourteen? And do you mean to tell me that it’s the plane you see going down, and not the men?” he asked Ray. He looked at me. “That if you get on a different plane, you’ll live?”

I nodded.

“How’s that possible?” He turned to Ray again.

“I don’t know. It just is,” Ray said.

“And how long have you been doing this?”

“All my life? It’s not just planes, okay? Or ships. It’s people too. It’s just that they’re on the planes when they get shot down, usually in flames.”

“And knowing that, you’ve already traded?” he asked me.

I nodded.

“But that doesn’t make any sense. If you say Bobby’s going to be on a plane that’s going to crash — that he’s supposed to die because of it — how does being on a different plane affect the outcome?”

“It just does. I can’t explain it,” Ray said.

“Well, that’s stupid.”

“It’s kept me alive,” I said.

“But what about someone else? Say the tail gunner? You must know if he’s going to get killed before a flight? Do you tell him?”

“Depends,” Ray said slowly, taking a sip of his drink and looking at Jack with a critical eye.

“Depends? And how does it depend?”

“Depends on whether I like him, or not.”

“You mean you’re playing God?”

“I can’t save everybody,” Ray explained.

“So you have to pick and choose?” Jack said.

“I guess that’s one way of looking at it.”

“What about yourself? What if you were to dream about your own death? What would you do then?”

“Whatever I have to.”

“And by that, you mean switching planes?” Jack asked.

“Something like that.”

“What other options do you have?”

“He can always pretend he’s sick,” I offered.

“That won’t work when the next big push comes through.”

“What push is that? The invasion?” Ray asked.

“What invasion?”

“Oh come on, Jack!” I smiled. “You don’t think we haven’t noticed the build up of troops and supplies? We fly over the countryside all the time. When’s it supposed to happen?”

“I wouldn’t know,” he said.

“You mean you won’t tell us,” I corrected him.

“Something like that,” he smiled.

“It’s all very hush-hush,” I said to Ray, using my best British accent.

Please feel free to leave a comment. I LOVE reading them. Some of the things people say are amazing — to me — because they see things in my stories that I don’t.

Oh yeah, it’s not that I’m calling some of you out — not by name (Al) — but some of you have known me for years…and then some. (Right Grog?) Until next time!