Free Bombs Away by John Steinbeck Page B

squinted through the sight just before the release and he nodded and picked up his phone. “Try another from the northwest,” he said.
    When Bill came back from his first dry run he climbed out of the plane feeling much older than when he had gone. His parachute bounced on him impudently. He hadn’t dropped a single bomb yet, but he had found a target on the ground on the crossed hairs of a bombsight. It was his first little graduation and he felt very good about it. He felt so good about it that he and another cadet took a bus to town that evening. They had not been away from the camp since they had come to the bombardier school, and once out of the camp, standing on the street, they felt deserted and lonely. Civilians looked strange to them, even a little funny. Bill had never noticed clothes very much, but now his eyes saw how many colors in neckties there were and he looked at shirts and cuts of civilian clothes and hats and they seemed odd and outlandish.
    Before he had been in the Army he had not noticed girls in great detail. There were pretty ones and homely ones, well- and badly-dressed ones. He had lumped them in generalities, but now it was nearly a month since he had see any girl and his eyes noticed things he had not seen before—how differently they were made, how differently they walked, and he saw expressions that he had never seen before. But mostly he felt alone and unprotected. He and his companion walked along the street and looked in store windows. They bought some post cards and addressed and mailed them. On a corner there was a little beer and dancing place, a bar, a small dance floor, a juke box, and some tables. They went in and ordered beer and sat down. It was a very gaudy place. After a while they danced with some girls and talked to them. They forgot the time.
    It was Bill’s first run-in with military law. On the record sheet in his squadron room, three gold stars were pasted opposite his name and for each star he contributed 50 cents to the squadron fund; and the next evening Bill and his friend walked post for three hours, a hundred yards up and a hundred yards back. Their parachutes jerked about and rubbed tender places on their backs. Back and forth they marched for three hours. And Bill heard in his ears again the captain’s voice, “It may remind you to look at your watch,” and when Bill said lamely, “I did, sir, but my watch must have been wrong,” the answer was final, “There are no wrong watches in the Air Forces. There are no excuses,” the captain went on. “We’re not trying to baby you. You’re going to be an officer. You’ll have to control yourself. That is your responsibility. You can do what you want in your free time but you must obey the rules.” And he added, “Just a little advice. Don’t ever use that wrong-watch business again. That doesn’t bring out the best in me or in anyone else. Three hours to walk post.”

    Bombardier cadet looks through his bombsight at the target just ahead
    Bill felt disgraced. He walked dolefully back and forth with the parachute banging behind. In the morning he was not only sleepy, but very sore.
    No one seemed to remember his disgrace afterward. It was over and done with. Classwork continued with more work on the trainer and dry runs over the target every day. Bill was getting used to the equipment and his scores were getting better. Now a new process was started.
    In the mornings he and his echelon went out to the skeet range. With 12-gauge shotguns they fired at the little clay plates that came flying out of the towers. Instruments are only as valuable as a good eye makes them. The skeet shooting developed timing and lead.
    In class they studied the nature of errors in bombing, errors due to variation in altitude, speed, and drift, and how to compute the amount of these errors in feet. And on the ranges they practiced shooting a .45-caliber automatic pistol.
    On the twenty-third day, Bill dropped his first practice