The crew of the Mary Ruth ends up at a
little pub, overcrowded and noisy. They edge their way in to the bar, where the
barmaids are drawing beer as fast as they can. In a moment this crew has found
a table and they have the small glasses of pale yellow fluid in front of them.
It is curious beer. Most of the alcohol has been taken out of it to make
munitions. It is not cold. It is token beer—a gesture rather than a drink.
The bomber crew is solemn. Men who are alerted
for operational missions are usually solemn, but tonight there is some burden
on this crew. There is no way of knowing how these things start. All at once a
crew will feel fated. Then little things go wrong. Then they are uneasy until they
take off for their mission. When the uneasiness is running it is the waiting
that hurts.
They sip the flat, tasteless beer. One of them
says, “I saw a paper from home at the Red Cross in London.” It is quiet. The
others look at him across their glasses. A mixed group of pilots and ATS girls
at the other end of the pub have started a song. It is astonishing how many of
the songs are American. “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home to,” they sing. And the
beat of the song is subtly changed. It has become an English song.
The waist gunner raises his voice to be heard
over the singing. “It seems to me that we are afraid to announce our losses. It
seems almost as if the War Department was afraid that the country couldn’t take
it. I never saw anything the country couldn’t take.”
The ball-turret gunner wipes his mouth with the
back of his hand. “We don’t hear much,” he says, “it’s a funny thing, but the
closer you get to action the less you read papers and war news. I remember
before I joined up I used to know everything that was happening. I knew what
Turkey was doing. I even had maps with pins and I drew out campaigns with
colored pencils. Now I haven’t looked at a paper in two weeks.”
The first man went on, “This paper I saw had
some funny stuff in it. It seemed to think that the war was nearly over.”
“I wish the Jerries thought that,” the tail
gunner says. “I wish you could get Goering’s yellow noses and them damned flak
gunners convinced of that.”
“Well anyway,” the waist gunner says, “I looked
through that paper pretty close. It seems to me that the folks at home are
fighting one war and we’re fighting another one. They’ve got theirs nearly won
and we’ve just got started on ours. I wish they’d get in the same war we’re in.
I wish they’d print the casualties and tell them what it’s like. I think maybe
that they’d like to get in the same war we’re in if they could get it to do.”
