Stranger to the Ground

The day wears on. We spend an hour studying the target that we already know very well. The landmarks about it, the conical hill, the mine in the hillside, the junction of highway and railroad, are as familiar to us as the hundred-arch viaduct that leads to Chaumont. We have in our minds, as well as on the maps stamped SECRET, the times and distances and headings to the target, and the altitudes we will fly. We know that our target will be as well-defended as anyone’s, that there will be a massive wall of flak to penetrate and the delicate deadly fingers of missiles to avoid. Oddly enough, the flak does not really bother us. It does not make a bit of difference whether the target is defended from every housetop or not at all . . . if it is necessary to strike it, we shall go along our memorized route and strike it. If we are caught by the screen of fire, it will be one of those unfortunate happenings of war.

The siren blows, like a rough hand jerking sleep away. My room is dark. For more than a second, in the quick ebb of sleep, I know that I must hurry, but I cannot think of where I must go. Then the second is past and my mind is clear.

The Alert siren.

Hurry.

Into the flight suit, into the zippered black jump boots, into the winter flying jacket. A hurried toss of scarf about throat, leave the door swinging closed and open again on my tousled room and join the rush of other Alert pilots in a dash down the wooden stairs and into the waiting Alert truck. The square wooden buildings of Chaumont Air Base are not yet even silhouettes against the east.

There is a husky comment in the darkness of the rattling truck: “Sleep well, America, your National Guard is awake tonight.”

The truck takes us to the airplanes that wait in the dark. The maintenance Alert crew has beaten us to the airplanes, and the APU’s are roaring into steely life. I climb the ladder that is chipped lemon in the daytime and invisible in the night, a feel of aluminum rungs more than a ladder-being. “Power!” the lights blaze in the cockpit, undimmed by the little night-shields that close off most of their light for flying in the dark. The light from them shows me the parachute straps and the safety belt ends and the belt release lanyard and the G-suit and oxygen hoses and the microphone cables. Helmet on, oxygen mask on (how can rubber get so icy cold?), radio on. Night-shields down on the warning lights, twist the rheostats that fill the cockpit with a bloody glow. “Hawk Able Two,” I say to the microphone, and if my flight leader has been faster strapping in than I, he will know that I am ready to go.

“Roj, Two.” He is fast, my flight leader.

I do not know whether this is a real-thing alert or another practice. I assume it is another practice. Now I tend to the finer points of getting ready to go; checking circuit breakers in, bomb switches set in safe positions, gunsight properly set for the delivery that we will use.

“Hawk Able Four.”

“Roj, Four.”

Check the battle damage switches all down where they should be. Turn the navigation lights on to bright flash. We will turn them to dim as we approach the target.

“Hawk Able Three.” Three was awake too late last night.

“Roj, Three. Parsnip, Hawk Able flight is ready to go with four.”

In the combat operations center, the time is checked as we call in. We checked in well before the maximum time allowed, and this is good.

“Hawk Able, Parsnip here. This is a practice alert. Maintain cockpit alert until further notified.”

“Roj.”

So much meaning can be packed into three letters. Hawk Able Leader didn’t just acknowledge the notice, he told the combat operations center that this is a ridiculous dumb stupid game to be played by grown men and good grief you guys it is THREE O’CLOCK IN THE MORNING and you had just better have orders from high headquarters to call this thing at this hour or you will not be getting much sleep tomorrow night.

“Sorry,” says Parsnip, into the silence. They must have had the orders from high headquarters.

So I close the canopy and lock it against the eternal cold wind and I settle in the red light to wait.

I have waited fifteen minutes in the cockpit for the alert to be canceled. I have waited three hours for it. After the three-hour wait, I had climbed stiffly down from the cockpit with the perfect torture for recalcitrant prisoners of war. You take them and strap them by safety belt and shoulder harness to a soft, comfortable armchair. Then you walk away and leave them there. For the incorrigible prisoners, the real troublemakers, you put their feet into tunnels, sort of like rudder-pedal tunnels in a single-engine airplane, and put a control stick in the way so that they don’t have room to move either foot into a different position. In a very few hours the prisoners will become docile, tractable, eager to mend their ways.