Airman's Odyssey

  I too should be glancing into my shop windows if Dutertre did not insist that I go on in this pallid prison of cloud. I should be glancing at the passing countryside. Though Dutertre is right to insist that I be patient. This area over which I fly is treacherous: its air is heavy with conspiracy. Each little manor house below, with its slightly ridiculous lawn and handful of domesticated trees standing like an artless background for a family photograph, has become a blind. If I were to fly low over those houses, no friendly hands would wave to me, but shells would rise and explode.

  Yet even in the belly of this cloud I am on my way home from market. The major was right, after all. When he sent us off in a voice that seemed to say, "And then you take the second turn to the right, where you will see a tobacco shop," his voice was pitched on the right note. My conscience is at rest. I have the major's matches in my pocket--or more truly, Dutertre has them in his pocket. How Dutertre manages to remember what he saw, I cannot imagine. But that is his business. My mind is on more serious things. We shall land; and if the enemy spare us the nuisance of a sudden rush to still another field, I shall challenge Lacordaire and beat him at chess. He hates to lose. So do I. But I shall win.

  Yesterday, be it said without dishonor, Lacordaire got tight. At least, a little tight. He had got tight in order to console himself. Coming in from a sortie, he had forgotten to release his landing gear and had set the plane down on her belly. Unfortunately, Alias had seen him do it; but he had not said a word. And Lacordaire, a pilot of long experience, had stood by, waiting for Alias to turn upon him. He had stood by hoping that Alias would curse him. A violent tongue lashing would have done him good. It would have allowed him to explode too. It would have allowed him to get off his chest the rage against himself that was swelling in him. But Alias had merely shaken his head sadly. Alias' mind was on the plane, not on the pilot. To the major, this accident was a kind of anonymous misfortune, a statistical tax levied on the Group. It was the effect of one of those moments of absent-mindedness that attack even the most experienced pilots. It was an injustice, and Lacordaire was its victim. Except this blunder, Lacordaire's professional record was clean. Alias knew this, and all that bothered him was the plane. Automatically, without thinking, he turned to Lacordaire and asked him how bad he thought the damage was. And I could feel Lacordaire's pent up rage rise a degree at the question. You put your hand cordially on the torturer's shoulder and say to him, "How badly do you think your victim is suffering?" Truly, the human heart is unfathomable. That friendly hand soliciting the torturer's sympathy exasperates the torturer. He flings a black look at the victim and is sorry he hasn't finished her off.

  I am on my way home. Group 2-33 is my home. And I understand the men who live in my home. I cannot be mistaken about Lacordaire. Lacordaire cannot be mistaken about me. Nothing is stronger than the community of feeling between us, the feeling that goes through me when I say, "We of Group 2-33." The particles, the fragments that we are, collect and possess meaning in the fact of the Group.

  Flying in the cloud, I think of Gavoille and Hochede. I am stirred by the community of feeling that binds me to them. I wonder about Gavoille. What sort of people does he come of? There is a wonderful earthy substance in Gavoille. A memory sweeps suddenly over me and fills me with warmth. At Orconte, Gavoille too was billeted with a peasant. One day he said to me, "The farmer's wife killed a pig the other day. She wants us to tty her blood-sausage."

  Three of us sat eating the wonderful black and crackling skin--Gavoille, Israel, and I. There was a crock of white wine to wash it down. Gavoille said as we ate, "I bought this for the farmer's wife, thinking she'd like it. Write something in it for her." It was a copy of one of my books. I was not in the least embarrassed. I wrote in it with pleasure, to please them both. Gavoille sat scratching his leg. Israel was stuffing his pipe. The farmer's wife seemed pleased to have a book inscribed by an author. The kitchen was redolent of the sausage. I was a little tight, for the white wine was heady. I did not feel in the least strange, despite the fact of inscribing a book--a thing which in other circumstances has always bothered me. I did not feel at all out of place. Despite the book, I did not think of myself either as an author or as an outsider. I was not an outsider. Israel looked on and smiled pleasantly as I wrote my name. Gavoille went on scratching his leg. And I felt grateful for the way they took it. That book might have made them look upon me as an outsider. Yet it didn't. I was still one of them.

  The notion of looking on at life has always been hateful to me. What am I if I am not a participant? In order to be, I must participate. I am fed by the quality that resides in those who participate with me. That quality is something the men of the Group never think of--not out of humility, but because they do not stoop to measure it. Gavoille does not wonder about himself, nor does Israel. Each of these men is a web woven of his job, his trade, his duty. That smoking sausage, eaten in these circumstances, is woven into that web. The presence of these men is dense, full of meaning, and it warms my heart. I am able to sit with them in silence. To drink my white wine with them. To sign my book without thereby cutting myself off from them. Nothing in the world is strong enough to wreck this fellowship.

  I do not mean to belittle the workings of the mind or the products of the intelligence. I admire a limpid intelligence as much as any man. But what is a man if he lacks substance? If he is a mere intellect and not a being? As formerly I saw substance in Guillaumet, so now I see it in Gavoille, in Israel.

  I have mentioned before that because I was a writer I might have enjoyed certain advantages, certain liberties in this war. I might for example have been free to leave Group 2-33 the day I no longer approved of what I was ordered to do. But that kind of liberty I reject almost with terror. It is no more than the liberty to be a bystander, which is to say the liberty not to exist. There is no growth except in the fulfillment of obligations.

  We in France all but died of intelligence unsupported by substance. Gavoille exists. He loves, hates, rejoices, complains. He is shaped and heightened by the strands woven together and constituting his being. And exactly as, sitting with him at table, I took pleasure from the crisp sausage we shared, so I take pleasure from the obligations of the craft that fuse us of the Group into a common being. I love Group 2-33. I do not love it with the love of a spectator looking on at a handsome spectacle. I don't give a button for spectacles. I love Group 2-33 because I am part of it and it is part of me, because it nourishes me and I contribute to nourishing it.

  And now, flying home from Arras, I am more than ever interwoven with Group 2-33. I have formed still another tie with it. I have intensified in me that feeling of communion with it that is to be relished and left unspoken. Each of us had risked his life in more or less the same fashion. Israel had disappeared. It seemed pretty certain that in the course of to-day's outing I too should disappear. What have I earned by this swing round the sky except a slightly better right to sit down at their table and be silent with them? The right is dearly bought; but it is a dear right. It is the right to be, and thus to escape non-being.

  Yet the notion that I shall stammer when, some minutes from now, Alias will put his questions, makes me go red. I shall feel ashamed, I know. The major will think me a little idiotic. The shame that I feel already by anticipation is genuine. Yet ... Once again I had taken off--this time to Arras--in search of the proof of my good faith. I had risked my flesh in this sortie. I had risked it being pretty sure that I should lose it. I had given everything to the rules of the game in order to turn them somehow into something other than the rules of the game. And this being so, I have won the right to appear sheepish when the major examines me. The right, that is, to participate. To be interwoven with the rest. To commune with them. To give and receive. To be more than myself. To possess this plenitude that swells so powerfully within me. To feel the love that I feel for the Group, a love that is not an impulse from without but is something inward and never to be manifested--except at a farewell dinner.
At a farewell dinner you are sure to be a little drunk, and the benevolence born of alcohol is sure to make you lean towards your friends as a tree whose boughs bend with gifts. My love of the Group has no need of definition. It is woven of bonds. It is my substance. I am of the Group, and the Group is of me.

  And as I think of the Group, it is impossible for me not to think of Hochede. Hochede made a total gift of himself to this war. More, probably, than any of us, Hochede dwells permanently in that state which I have striven so hard to attain to. Hochede has arrived at the goal towards which the rest of us tend, the goal I seek to reach.

  Hochede is a former sergeant recently promoted second lieutenant. I can imagine that his culture is slight. He is unable to shed any light upon himself. But he is constructed, he is complete. The word duty loses all bombast when applied to Hochede. Any man would be happy to accept his duty as Hochede does. When I think of Hochede I reproach myself for all my petty renunciations, my negligences, my laziness, and my moments of intellectualism, which is to say scepticism. This is not a sign in me of virtue but of intelligent jealousy. I should like to exist as completely as Hochede does. A tree solidly planted on its roots is a beautiful thing. The permanence of Hochede is a beautiful thing. Hochede could never disappoint.

  Volunteer? We were all volunteers on all our sorties. For the rest of us, the reason was a vague need to believe in ourselves. By volunteering, we outdid ourselves a little. Hochede was a volunteer by nature. He was, in essence, this war. The fact was so evident that when a plane was bound to be sacrificed the major thought automatically of Hochede. "Look here, Hochede...." Hochede was steeped in this war as a monk is steeped in religion. For whom did he fight? For himself, since he was interwoven with the war, with the Group, with France. Hochede was fused together with a certain substance, and that substance, which was his own significance, had to be saved. At Hochede's level, life and death are somewhat the same thing. Hochede was already part of both. Perhaps without realizing it, he hardly feared death. Stick it out; make others stick it out--that was what mattered. For Hochede, life and death had become reconciled.

  The first time that Hochede amazed me was when, he being still a sergeant, Gavoille tried to borrow his stopwatch in order to clock a ship.

  "Lieutenant, sir. I.... I'd rather not lend it."

  "Don't be a fool! I'll give it back to you in ten minutes."

  "Sir, there's a stopwatch at the squadron depot."

  "Yes, a broken one. I know it."

  "Sir, I ... Nobody lends stopwatches, sir. I don't have to lend it to the lieutenant. It's not in orders. The lieutenant hasn't the right to insist."

  Military discipline and respect for the hierarchy may demand that a Hochede just unlimbered from a parachute and out of a burning plane jump instantly into another plane and take off on a sortie twice as dangerous. It may not demand that he turn over to an officer a stopwatch that has cost him three months' pay and that seems to him as precious and fragile as a baby. You can tell by the way some men wave their arms that they have no respect for stopwatches. Gavoille seemed to Hochede just such a man. And when Hochede, still fuming with indignation, but having won out, left the room with his stopwatch over his heart, I could have embraced him. Hochede was a man with a heart. He would fight to the death for his stopwatch. His stopwatch existed. He would die for his country. His country existed. Hochede existed, being interwoven with both. He was shaped and heightened by his ties with watch and country.

  And so Hochede was precious in my eyes, though there was no need to tell him so. For like reasons, when Guillaumet, the best friend I ever had, was killed in the course of duty, there was no need for me to speak of him. We had flown the same airlines. Participated in the building of the same structures. Were of the same substance. Something of me died in him. Guillaumet became one of the companions of my silence. I am part of Guillaumet, and Guillaumet is part of me.

  I am part of Guillaumet, of Gavoille, of Hochede, and they are part of me. I am part of Group 2-33, and it of me. I am part of my country, and it of me. My country and I are one. And all the men of Group 2-33 are one with their country.

  XXI

  I have changed a good deal. I had been bitter these last days, Major Alias--these last days when the armored invasion was meeting no resistance, when our sacrificial offerings cost the Group seventeen out of twenty-three crews. It had seemed to me that we--that you in particular--were agreeing to play the part of dead men merely because the show called for dead supernumeraries. I had been bitter, Major Alias; and I had been wrong.

  You in particular, but the rest of us too, had clung to the letter of a duty whose spirit had ceased to be visible for us. You had driven us intuitively not towards victory, which was impossible, but towards self-fulfillment. You knew as well as we did that the intelligence we brought back would never reach the Staff. But you were salvaging rites whose power none of us could perceive. Each time that you examined us on the lorries, the barges, the railway trains we had spotted, examined us as soberly as if our answers could possibly serve a purpose, you seemed to me revoltingly hypocritical. But you were right, Major Alias.

  Until I learnt what I learnt over Arras, I could feel no responsibility for this stream of refugees over which once more I fly. I can be bound to no men except those to whom I give. I understand no men except those to whom I am bound. I exist only to the degree that I am nourished by the springs at my roots. I am bound to that mob on the highways, and it is bound to me. At three hundred miles an hour and an elevation of six hundred feet, now that I have come down out of the clouds, I have become one with that mob. I, flying in the descending night, am like a shepherd who in a single glance counts and collects and welds his scattered sheep into a flock again. That mob is no longer a mob, it is a people.

  We dwell in the rot of defeat, yet I am filled with a solemn and abiding jubilation, as if I had just come from a sacrament. I am steeped in chaos, yet I have won a victory. Is there a single pilot of the Group who ever flew home without this feeling of victory in his breast? This very day, when Penicot came in from a morning's low-altitude sortie and was telling me about it, this was how he spoke: "Whenever one of their ground batteries seemed to me to be aiming too well for my comfort, I would zoom down just above the ground and make straight for the battery at full speed, and the spray from my guns would blow out their ruddy fire as if it was a candle. Before they knew it, I was on their gun crew, and you would have thought I was a bursting shell. Bang! The crew would scatter and flop in every direction. I swear, I felt as if I was scattering nine-pins." And Penicot, victorious captain, roared with glee, as pleased with himself as Gavoille's gunner when they flew through the vault of the enemy searchlights like a military wedding-party marching under an arch of swords.

  "Ninety-four, captain."

  Dutertre had picked up a landmark along the Seine, and we were down now to four hundred feet. Flowing beneath me at three hundred miles an hour, the earth was drawing great rectangles of wheat and alfalfa, great triangles of forest, across my glass windscreen. Divided by the stem of the plane, the flow of the broken landscape to left and right filled me with a curious satisfaction. The Seine shone below, and when I crossed its winding course at an angle it seemed to speed past and pivot upon itself. The swirl of the river was as lovely in my sight as the curve of a sickle in a field. I felt restored to my element. I was captain of my ship. The fuel tanks were holding out. I should certainly win a drink at poker dice from Penicot and then beat Lacordaire at chess. That was how I was when my team had won.

  "Captain! Firing at us! We are in forbidden territory."

  Forbidden, that is, by our own people. A rectangle in which our own people fired on any plane, friend or enemy. We had orders to fly round it, but the Group never bothered to observe these traffic regulations. Well, it was Dutertre who set the course, not I. Nobody could blame me.

  "Firing hard?"

  "Doing as well as they can."

  "Want to go back and round?"
br />   "Oh, no."

  His tone was matter-of-fact. We had been through our storm. For men like us, this anti-aircraft fire was a mere April shower. Still....

  "Dutertre, wouldn't it be silly to be brought down by our own guns?"

  "They won't bring anything down. Just giving themselves a little exercise."

  Dutertre was in a sarcastic mood. Not I. I was happy. I was impatient to be back with the Group again.

  "They are, for a fact. Firing like...."

  The gunner! Come to, has he? This is the first time on board that he has opened his mouth without being spoken to. He took in the whole jaunt without feeling the need of speech. Unless that was he who muttered "Boy! oh, boy!" when the shells were thickest. But you wouldn't call that blabbing, exactly. He spoke now because machine guns are his specialty--and how can you keep a specialist quiet about his specialty?

  It was impossible for me not to contrast in my mind the two worlds of plane and earth. I had led Dutertre and my gunner this day beyond the bourne at which reasonable men would stop. We had seen France in flames. We had seen the sun shining on the sea. We had grown old in the upper altitudes. We had bent our glance upon a distant earth as over the cases of a museum. We had sported in the sunlight with the dust of enemy fighter planes. Thereafter we had dropped earthward again and flung ourselves into the holocaust. What we could offer up, we had sacrificed. And in that sacrifice we had learnt even more about ourselves than we should have done after ten years in a monastery. We had come forth again after ten years in a monastery.

  And in the little time we had taken to wander so far, the caravan of refugees over which we flew had perhaps advanced five hundred yards. In less time than it would take them to lift a motorcar out of a ditch and set it back on the road again, in less time than many a driver would sit drumming impatiently on the wheel as he waited for a stream of traffic to empty itself out of a crossroad, we should be safely back in our haven.