Free Louse by David Grand Page A

of the ship fastens Karl to a harness attached to a steel cable and lowers him out the zeppelin’s belly. When he descends below the clouds, Karl realizes he is the only one who could possibly know the outcome of the bombing. Acting out of desperate uncertainty, he sends a premature communication to his commander, which results in all the bombs landing harmlessly in the Thames. The commander, convinced that he has just obliterated Trafalgar Square, delightedly orders the zeppelin to return home.
    However, the commander’s countenance quickly changes when four British fighter planes—two of which are piloted by the Ruteledge brothers—rise out of the fog bank. Suddenly desperate to make a fast retreat, the commander disengages the cable from which Karl is hanging, sending him to his death. He orders all equipment thrown overboard, and then orders half his crew overboard as well. One after the other the airmen, “Fur Kaiser und Vaterland,” do as ordered. A short battle ensues, during which three of the British planes—including the Ruteledge brothers’—are damaged and must break formation to return to base. The remaining pilot, however, sacrifices his life by crashing into the zeppelin, causing it to burst into flames.
    Poppy narcotically nods at this with pleasure.
    I have seen this film a dozen times as of tonight. I find myself unable to concentrate on its presence as I watch the zeppelin burn. I think of Karl Arnstedt plummeting to his death. His arms stretchout like those of an angel as he careens head first toward the docks. Each movement and line of his body precipitates my mind to wander through the patterns of the story. My thoughts reel forward to the French canteens and the barracks where images of Roy and Monte’s laughing faces, Poppy and Mr. Sherwood’s faces, mock the jeopardy they are about to put themselves in. I imagine the British General addressing the pilots, explaining that the Allied attack cannot be successful unless the German munitions depot is destroyed. Poppy and Mr. Sherwood silently ride a train through the mountains to an airfield where they board a captured German Gotha. Before they can get to the Gotha in my mind, I flash back onto the train and see the blur of the passing landscape from Monte’s point of view. I can hear the
tuh-tuh-tuh tuh-tuh-tuh
rotation of the wheels, and suddenly can see myself in the window again. The image alternates between myself and Mr. Sherwood. The melody I hummed in the study momentarily returns to my mind. I don’t hum it. I just listen to it, trying to fit it into the scheme of the film, wondering if this is where it comes from, if it is a melody I have simply forgotten, if this is possible. And then the image of the window is no longer the window of the train; it has been elevated to the height of a mountain and shows me the same scene I remember seeing in my mind in Poppy’s study. I can see the image of myself reflected in the window, the dark figure behind me and a new, unrecognizable figure behind that. And then they are there and gone, and I am gone, and all I can see now are images from the rest of the movie.
    The German Gotha flies into enemy territory where Monte and Roy successfully annihilate the target. The battle music rises to a crescendo of bassoons, French horns, and flutes, until theRuteledge brothers begin their return trip, at which time the bassoons and French horns are joined with accents of contemplative oboe, and the triumph descends into doom as the score drones into the sounds of propellers cutting the wind. The bombing has been observed by Baron Manfred von Richthofen whose theme is ominously rich with pounding timpani that, even in memory, rumbles my chest, and transports my thoughts to the Allied planes engaging in fierce dogfights with the Germans. The music rises to a new crescendo with strings and volleys of machine gun fire all the way up to the point that the Gotha is shot