Last came a canvas helmet with flaps folded up so his ears were free. It always reminded him of the helmet he'd worn to grammar school, goggles in place, imagining that he was Jimmy Doolittle flying the Gee-Bee to racing glory around the pylons.
He looked at the photograph of his parents standing outside St. Luke's on some long ago Sunday morning. It shared a folding leather frame with a photograph of Miss Sue-Anne Pendergast, who had been the 1941 Queen of the Mobile Mardi Gras. Sue-Anne was a nice looking girl... for that matter, a nice girl, period. But she was not, as Bill suggested to his peers, his beloved, almost his fianc‚e.
He had known Sue-Anne all of his life. They'd climbed trees and gone swimming and thrown mudballs at each other since about the time the two of them could talk. Now she was doing her bit for the Boys In Service by writing him faithfully once a week. While she signed her letters, "Love," it wasn't the sort of love Bill had so far in his life been denied. Another of the reasons it was a dirty rotten fucking shame he was probably going to get killed today was that he was, with one exception, a virgin. Just before he'd dropped out of college to join the Marines, he and half a dozen fraternity brothers had gone down from Tuscaloosa to the Tutweiler Hotel in Birmingham, where they had pooled their money and hired a whore from the bellhop. He was so drunk he didn't remember much about it, except that it was not what he expected it to be, and not very pleasant either.
It seemed to Bill common justice that a man should be able to get decently laid before he got himself killed. But that hadn't happened.
The Officer's Mess was an open-sided tent with benches and tables, the food was served cafeteria style. Breakfast was the standard fare: Spam and powdered eggs served any way you wanted them, which meant that you could either have little squares of fried Spam with powdered eggs on the side, or you could have the Spam cut up and mixed into powdered eggs. Plus toast, with your choice of apple or cherry flavored jelly. And coffee, with your choice of canned cow or no canned cow.
He had taken a mug of black coffee and a piece of cold toast and walked out to the flight line. He was afraid that he would throw up and didn't want to vomit in the cockpit.
The plane chief was there, looking over the armorer's shoulders as he checked the Brownings and the links and placement of the belted.50s. They exchanged salutes. The plane chief, a stocky Italian from Florida whose name was Anthony Florentine), was about as old as Bill was, and took his work and the Marine Corps seriously. He was a corporal.
"Good morning, Sir," he said.
"Good morning. Everything shipshape?"
"Yes, Sir. Just checking the guns, Sir."
Funny, it looked to me like you were playing chess.
"You got the word, Sir, that we're to start engines at 0540?"
"No, I didn't."
Jesus, I have to take another dump!
"The Skipper wants the engines warmed up for when the word comes, Sir."
He looked at his watch. It was 0533. In seven minutes he would have to climb in that cockpit and hope that he didn't have nausea or diarrhea.
He walked around the plane and did the preflight, trying to act as nonchalant as possible. When he finished he had four minutes to wait. He leaned against the Wildcat, just behind the cowl flaps.
"I didn't see you in the mess, I wondered where you were,"
Major Parks said, startling him. He hadn't seen The Skipper coming up.
"Good morning, Sir."
"Everything all right? You feeling OK?"
"Yes, Sir, fine."
"You got the word about warming the engines?"
"Yes, Sir. I was about to get in."
"A PBY radioed at five-twenty-five that it had spotted the Japanese fleet," Parks said. "I expect word anytime now that the Navy radar has picked up aircraft. I want to get off the ground as soon as we get a heading. Hit them as far away from here as possible."
"Yes, Sir."
"You're a good pilot, Bill. That's why I put you in a Wildcat. You don't get excited. That's a good thing for a fighter pilot. Excited pilots forget what they've been taught."
"Yes, Sir."
Translated, that means you have had second thoughts about putting me in a Wildcat, because I am very likely to get excited and forget what I've been taught, and would probably change your mind if there was time and put me in one of the goddamned Buffaloes. That being the case, you have decided to inspire the troops with confident words.
Shit!
Major Parks touched his arm.
"Good luck," he said. "Good hunting."
"Thank you, Sir."
Major Parks was both a professional warrior and a realist. He knew that until the shooting actually started there was no way to predict how Lieutenant Dunn, or any of his pilots, would behave in combat. Even so, he had a belief that he could devise guidelines that would give him some indication-a hint if not a prediction-about which pilots could handle best the stress and terrors of combat. With that goal in mind, he had collected as much data as he could about the behavior of British fighter pilots during the Battle of Britain, the battle Churchill had described both accurately and eloquently: "Never in the history of human conflict have so many owed so much to so few."
Parks wondered what the few were really like.
Not without difficulty, he had learned that by and large they were no older than his young officers, and they'd been trained no better. They had also gone up against pilots with more experience than they had, yet they'd done very well.
He'd found two notable differences between the British pilots and his own, perhaps the most important being that the English were defending their homes, literally fighting above their mothers and their girlfriends, where his kids would be fighting halfway around the world from theirs. They would be protecting their mothers and their girlfriends, too, but abstractly, over a wide and empty ocean.
Secondly, the Brits had flown Spitfires against Messerschmidts. Both were splendid aircraft; it was a matter of opinion which was the better. One could charitably call the Wildcat the equal of the Zero, and perhaps when they had enough experience against the Zero to make a bona fide analysis, it would turn out to be so. But that could not be said about the Buffalo, which was hopelessly outclassed by the Zero, and probably by even the Kate.
With no data worth a damn to really go on, Parks realized he would have to go with his gut feeling. He thought that commanders had probably been forced to go on their gut feeling from the beginning of time, but that offered little reassurance. His gut feeling (which he desperately hoped was not wishful thinking) was that his kids-and perhaps Bill Dunn in particular-would acquit themselves well.
He had given Bill Dunn one of his precious few Wildcats because of that gut feeling. And perhaps, he thought, because sometimes when he saw Dunn on the flight line, a spunky little crew-cutted, clean-cut kid who looked more like a cheerleader than a Marine Officer, he reminded him of those young English kids standing beside their Spitfires in an East Anglian field.
(Two)
Lieutenant Bill Dunn watched The Skipper walk down the flight line to the next aircraft, which happened to be a Buffalo, and pause for a word with its pilot.
I can't remember that guy's name! I'm about to go get killed with him, and I can't even remember his name. I wonder if he knows mine?