And so my days passed, one by one. I lost count. There was nothing on the island but the jungle and birds, and wind and rain and surf. And me. Just me and my ghosts alone on that speck of sand and jungle lost in an endless universe of sea and sky.
Later I learned that five months passed before I was rescued by the crew of a U.S. Navy patrol boat searching for a lost aircrew. Not the crew of the Witch or Charity’s Sake, but a B-24 crew that had also disappeared into the vastness of the great Pacific. The war was way north and west by then.
I must have been a sight when they found me, burned a deep brown by the sun and almost naked, with only a rag around my waist. My beard and hair were wild and tangled, and I babbled incoherently.
The Navy sent me back to the States. They kept me in a naval hospital for a while until I sort of got it glued back together. Then they gave me a medical discharge.
Cut off from human contact during those long nights and long, long days on that island, I could never get the ensign and Modahl and the other guys from the Witch out of my mind. They have been with me every day of my life since.
I have never figured out why they died and I lived.
To this day I still don’t know. It wasn’t because I was a better person or a better warrior. They were the warriors — they carried me. They had courage, I didn’t. They had faith in each other and themselves, and I didn’t. Why was it that they died and I was spared?
The old Vikings would have said that Modahl and the ensign were the lucky ones.
In the years that have passed since I flew in the Sea Witch the world has continued to turn, the seasons have come and gone, babies have been born and old people have passed away. The earth continues as before.
As I get older I have learned that the ensign spoke the truth: The fate of individuals matters very little. We are dust on the wind.
The 17th Day
“What’s a Yank doing in the bleedin’ RFC anyway, I’d like to know,” Nigel Cook asked between slurps of tea. “As if the bleedin’ RFC didn’t have troubles enough, eh, with the Diggers and Canucks and provincials from all over. Wouldn’t the Frogs take you for that Lafayette outfit?”
Paul Hyde had had more than enough of Nigel Cook the last two weeks. Two weeks and two days. Sixteen days of fun and games since he’d reported to the squadron in France. “I don’t speak Frog,” he muttered at Cook, because he had to say something. After all, Cook was the squadron pilot with the most service-time at the front.
Cook thought Hyde’s retort screamingly funny. He elbowed the pilot next to him at the breakfast table and giggled soundlessly. Finally he regained control of himself and managed, “Doesn’t speak Frog.” Then he succumbed to another silent giggling fit.
“Looks like ol’ Cook’s nerves are about shot,” Robert MacDonald murmured to Hyde.
“Has he really been in the squadron a whole year?”
“A week short. He should go home any day now.”
Hyde chewed his toast mechanically, sipped at strong, black tea. Down the table, Cook was pouring brandy into his tea and still giggling. He wiped tears from his eyes, managed to get a cigarette going.
“They ought to have sent him home months ago,” Hyde whispered to MacDonald.
“No doubt, Tex, old man. No doubt.” The Brits all called Hyde “Tex,” although he was from Boston and had never been west of the Hudson. Mac motored on: “Cook isn’t much good to us now, I’m afraid. Has the wind up rather badly.”
Having the wind up was an occupational hazard, Hyde had learned. He grunted in reply.
“But we’ve got you and those two virgins who arrived yesterday, so we’ll give the ol’ Hun a bloody good go today, eh?”
“Yeah.”
“Today you go over the hump, I believe.”
“Today is my seventeenth day,” Hyde acknowledged, and finished up the last of his toast. Seventeen days was the average life expectancy of a British aviator at the front, according to army statistics compiled during the grim days of 1915 and 1916.
“We’ve got better machines now, thank God,” Mac said cheerfully. He had two months at the front under his belt and liked to play the role of veteran warrior. “If a chap learns the trade, stays fit and reasonably sober, snipes his Huns only after a careful look all about, why, I think he could grow old and gray in this business. It’s the new men getting potted who ruin the averages.”
“Quite so,” said Paul Hyde. He had fallen in love with these meaningless little phrases of conversational British and salted them around at every opportunity.
“After all, the average was made up of a few old birds who’d grown positively senile and a lot of young ducks who couldn’t see a Hun until he opened fire.”
“So they say.”
“Why, some of the new fools they send us these days get potted on their very first snipe.”
“Not very cricket, that,” Hyde said, as British as he could.
“Enough philosophy.” Robert MacDonald slapped the table. “They tell me you’re going up with me this morning. Keep your eyes peeled, don’t go swanning off on your own. We’ve got a push on and the Huns will be quite curious. The old man will be most unhappy if I come back without you.”
“I should hope.”
“Let’s not be overly keen, Tex. Not good form. Watch for Huns, obey my signals, don’t get the wind up.”
“Righto,” said Paul Hyde. As he left the table he saw Nigel Cook nipping brandy straight from the flask.
Rain had fallen the previous night. In the hour before dawn the cool, invigorating June air had a tangible substance and a pungent, earthy scent. Dew covered everything. Wisps of fog drifted through the circles of light.
“Bugger fog,” Mac said.
“Getting down through this stuff will be a little chancy, don’t you think, Mac?”
“The general staff isn’t going to call off the war. Might as well do our bit for the king, hadn’t we? Maybe this lot will burn off by the time we come back to land.”
“I was wondering about the getting off. Perhaps we should get off separately, then get together on top. What do you think, Mac?”
“Quite sound, that. I’ll go first, of course.”
They walked to the planes, which were already parked in the takeoff position.
The sky in the east was turning pink when Paul Hyde completed his preflight inspection. The mechanics seemed quite proud of the bullet-hole patches they had completed overnight. Hyde mouthed a compliment, fastened the collar of his leather flying coat tightly, and automatically held his hand a few inches from the exhaust pipe, which ran along each side of the cockpit and ended just behind it. The pipe was cool this morning, of course, but Hyde always checked. He put his left foot in the stirrup on the fuselage and swung his right leg into the cockpit, as if he were mounting a horse. When that exhaust pipe was hot, getting in or out of an S.E.5 was a task for a careful man. Hyde’s first burn, on the inside of his left thigh, was still tender.
Seated, strapped in, Hyde looked around carefully in the predawn gloom. The glow of a nearby light mounted on a pole behind him helped.
The S.E.5A had two guns, an air-cooled Lewis on a Foster mount on the top wing, which fired over the propeller arc, and a synchronized water-cooled Vickers mounted in front of the pilot, slightly to the left of the aircraft’s centerline. The Lewis used a 97-round drum that mounted on top of the weapon, the Vickers was belt-fed. Both guns were .303 caliber.