Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille Read Free Page A

pooling in my feet, creeping up the insides of my legs, spilling over into my genitals like some smooth, heavy, golden lotion.
    “But we can’t ever do that. Every time I reach out to touch her, she flies away or she attacks. And it’s not just her, it’s anybody. It’s you and me. All people. We got this war mentality about each other. I see it in terms of her, but it applies all the way around. I’m flying solo, man, and no one can get in my plane. I can’t get in theirs. I touch only the surface.” Brian sat silent. “You asked,” I said.
    Finally, he said, “What’s with all the flying shit?”

    I must turn back now. I bank my French machine to the west. Already I have cut my reserve too close and will have to chance the archie as I cross the lines. The angry black and yellow puffs of explosive will seek out my fragile wood and canvas craft.
    To amuse myself and to take my mind off missing the blue and silver Boche, I sing a song that I heard in the billet last night:

    The young aviator went Hun hunting,
    And now ’neath the wreckage he lay—he lay,
    To the mechanics there standing around him,
    These last dying words he did say—did say.

    Take the cylinders out of my kidneys,
    The connecting rod out of my brain—my brain.
    From the small of my back take the crankshaft,
    And assemble the engine again—again.

    A hint of movement below stops my voice. Sometimes I see motion when there is nothing, but this is another plane, black Iron Crosses readily visible on the top wing, flying a thousand feet below and in my direction. I drop the nose and start a shallow descent into the blind spot above and behind the German.
    Heat rushes to my face. The tail and wings are blue, the fusalage silver, and the cowling red. The head of the consummate pilot who shot me down over Cachy Wood stays still. Perhaps this distance from the lines he feels safe.
    The firing sights of my guns center on his neck. The distance closes from a hundred yards to fifty and his wings stretch farther and farther. At twenty-five yards I place my hand on the lever that will send a fusilade of bright tracers and lead into his cockpit. From this range I will surely pierce his petrol tanks and send him flaming to the ground. I can see where the bullets will strike, imagine his surprise and panic in the second before the heavy slugs pound out his heart and lungs, and invision the initial hint of fire as the left wing tips up and the plane begins its final spiral into an unmarked, snow-covered German field. He will be my first kill.
    A sudden turbulence hits our planes, and I have to fight to keep the sights steady. He makes the same corrections, but his handling of the Fokker is so sure, so graceful. The fighter snaps to his attentions. He waggles his wings. I see no reason for him to do this. He doesn’t turn or change altitude. He waggles them again, like a big dog shaking water from his ears, and I understand that he is playing. His plane sweeps broadly to the left and then broadly to the right; I match the movements. Still, he does not look behind. I believe he thinks he’s alone and he is reveling in his ability to fly. I take my hand from the lever.
    I should peel off, dive away so he will never know that I have seen him, so that we will not have to fight in the pure November air above the virgin fields, so that neither of us will have to die.
    Instead I pull my plane next to his. He looks at me from fifty feet away as we fly once again side by side. He must be startled by my sudden appearance. He must know that I could have shot him down. I raise my hand; I wave. The wind catches my arm and makes it hard to keep above the windscreen. It seems a long time before he waves back. We continue on our course, but we must separate soon. No one would understand our private armistice. He flies well in his beautiful blue and silver Fokker D-2 with the red cowling. I try to learn from him how to be so in place in the air. I wish the war were over