Free The Complete Flying Officer X Stories by H.E. Bates Page A

chosen for him. I don’t know what education exactly meant to them; I don’t know what ambitions they had for him. But neither could have been connected with his flying a bomber. Yet they never uttered the smallest reproach or protest to what must have been rather a terrifying prospect to them. They might have thought that it would be better for him to be ploughing his own good Somerset clay. They probably did. But if they did they didn’t once say so. They simply knew he wanted to fly and they let him fly because it was the thing that was nearest his heart.
    His own part was just as straightforward and steadfast. As I became acquainted with it I didn’t wonder at all that he had been made a bomber pilot. The qualities for it were all there in his behaviour towards these two simple, self-sacrificial people. They had sent him to a pretty expensive school — to them it must have been fabulous — and he might easily have turned his back on them. A touch of swollen head and he might easily have decided that he was too good for that shabby little cottage, with the unplastered walls, the windows stuffed with paper, and the one cheap oil lamp carried from room to room. But I don’t suppose he ever dreamed of it. He remained not only loyal to them, but loyal in a positive way. He sent home to them a third of his pay every month, which for a pilot officer meant practically the same sacrifice as they had made for him.
    He couldn’t in fact have been more steadfast and careful. Perhaps he was too steadfast and, if it’s possible asthe captain of a crew of seven in a very expensive piece of aircraft, too careful. Yet nothing went right for him. Before his first big trip with a Stirling he felt the same dry mental tension, and the same sour wet slackness of the stomach, that you feel before a race. It was a sort of cold excitement. He felt it get worse as he taxied the aircraft across the field. It was winter and there was a kind of smokiness in the falling twilight over the few distant trees; and the hangars, looming up with their red lights burning, looked enormous. The runway seemed foreshortened and it looked practically impossible not to prang something on take-off. He was certain it would be all right once he was up, but it was the idea of lugging thirty-two tons of aircraft off the wet runway, which was soft in places, and in half-light, that worried him.
    He was worked up to a very high state of tension, with the kite actually on the runway, when Control informed him that the whole show would be scrubbed. His crew swore and mouthed at everybody and everything all the way back to dispersal. He felt too empty to say anything. He felt as if his stomach had dropped out and that he might be going to pieces. The awful anticlimax of the thing was too much.
    That night he didn’t sleep very well. He fell asleep and then woke up. His blankets had slipped and he was very cold and he did not know what time it was. He could hear his watch ticking very loudly. Someone had left a light on in the passage outside and it shone through the fan-light of the bedroom door. He lay for hours watching it, sleepless,cold, his mind full of the impression of the wet runway, the hangars looming up in the twilight, the idea that he was about to prang something on take-off.
    Then he fell asleep and dreamed that he really did prang something. He was taking off and his port wing hit the control tower, which had wide, deep, circular windows. Through these windows he could see Brand, the control officer, and a little flying officer named Danvers, and the two orderlies, one wearing earphones. The two officers were drinking tea, and his wing knocked the cups out of their hands. The tea shot up in a brown wave that broke on Brand’s tunic, and he saw vividly the look of helpless and terrified indignation on Brand’s face a second before he was hit and died.
    It was fantastic, but very real also, and he woke in a terrible