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Authors: Bobbie Ann Mason
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now, he could be spiraling toward a tropical beach, with Gorman. He needed the sharp edges of his mind. He turned her facedown, like a playing card, on the rough wood of the fruit crate.
That weekend everyone was drunk. A load of WAAFs was trucked in for the officers’ dance at the manor. They were auxiliary for the RAF, working with the crews on one of the nearby bases. Those women drove trucks, worked the radio, manned the check-in stations.
“We do everything but drive the plane,” one told him. “But we steal flips—when a pilot’s going up at night for a little ride and wants to take somebody along. I always go. It’s grand.”
“She’s got a stomach of iron, that one,” said a frowsy brown-haired girl. “I’m glad I’ve got my two feet planted.”
Marshall danced with a tall gal called Sal, who was wearing her mother’s old rabbit wrap, with her hair slung up in a truck driver’s regulation pompadour. The American nurses danced in their jazzy uniforms. They had changed out of their bloodstained brown-striped seersucker nursing dresses.
MARSHALL HAD BEEN scheduled to fly on January 29, but the fog pushed down on the planes as if it were a heavy weight, grounding them. It didn’t lift until nearly noon. The mission was delayed for two days.
The morning of the thirty-first was clear, but the courier running from the weather station reported clouds toward Frankfurt by afternoon. In truth, you couldn’t think logically that far ahead. Marshall was eager to go. His mental wings were flapping like a migrating goose.
The commander was Hornsby, a short, no-nonsense man with bulging eyes like a pug dog. Marshall had observed him coming out of the Officers’ Club late one night, pulling on his leather gloves as if he had a job to do that instant. He was walking with deliberation, almost scurrying, as if he couldn’t keep up with himself, as if his thoughts were racing ahead, his plans and schemes already airborne. He was a man who could envision and execute a swarming.
For a swarming was what it was, when thirty or forty planes took off from Molesworth, one by one, and then circled and began to swirl into formation. Soon the crews could see other swirls around them, as other formations from other bases in England began to join in. Squadrons joined squadrons, becoming sixty-ship combat wings. Before long, there were nearly a thousand planes, from all the air bases in England, the Mighty Eighth Air Force of heavy bombers with their loads. It was intense, impossible to exaggerate, enormous. And later, when their fighter escorts arrived, hovering above, it was a truly colossal force.
It was a sight the world would never see again, Marshall thought, those redoubtable goose-flock Vs hell-bent toward their target. Hundreds and hundreds of aircraft, clouds of them. The flyboys rode through the tangled currents of slipstreams for as long as eight hours, their adrenaline levels shooting sharp. The shudder and shake of the yoke—the little boy on his rocking horse, the high-hearted man mounting the anonymous woman.
The men on the plane that day: Cochran, Campanello, Ford, Grainger, Hadley, Redburn, Stewart. Stone. Lawrence Webb. Hootie Williams.
Hootie! The name still ripped his guts.
WHEN HE RETURNED from the war and saw Loretta again, she expected him to propose to her in an old-fashioned way. He had arrived in Cincinnati on a troop train from Philadelphia, and she had taken the bus to Union Station. The grand dome of the station was so immense he felt like a toy soldier beneath it.
“You’re the handsomest thing I ever saw in my life,” she cried. “Sweetheart, you’re all mine!”
Her warmth flowed through him, promising to erase the recent past. He felt it slipping away, like a spiral movement in his mind.
Her flirtatious manner seemed exaggerated, the bow on her hat whimsical, her giggle girlish. It was jarring, seeing this innocent, naïve girl. He was overwhelmed with joy to be with her, on
That weekend everyone was drunk. A load of WAAFs was trucked in for the officers’ dance at the manor. They were auxiliary for the RAF, working with the crews on one of the nearby bases. Those women drove trucks, worked the radio, manned the check-in stations.
“We do everything but drive the plane,” one told him. “But we steal flips—when a pilot’s going up at night for a little ride and wants to take somebody along. I always go. It’s grand.”
“She’s got a stomach of iron, that one,” said a frowsy brown-haired girl. “I’m glad I’ve got my two feet planted.”
Marshall danced with a tall gal called Sal, who was wearing her mother’s old rabbit wrap, with her hair slung up in a truck driver’s regulation pompadour. The American nurses danced in their jazzy uniforms. They had changed out of their bloodstained brown-striped seersucker nursing dresses.
MARSHALL HAD BEEN scheduled to fly on January 29, but the fog pushed down on the planes as if it were a heavy weight, grounding them. It didn’t lift until nearly noon. The mission was delayed for two days.
The morning of the thirty-first was clear, but the courier running from the weather station reported clouds toward Frankfurt by afternoon. In truth, you couldn’t think logically that far ahead. Marshall was eager to go. His mental wings were flapping like a migrating goose.
The commander was Hornsby, a short, no-nonsense man with bulging eyes like a pug dog. Marshall had observed him coming out of the Officers’ Club late one night, pulling on his leather gloves as if he had a job to do that instant. He was walking with deliberation, almost scurrying, as if he couldn’t keep up with himself, as if his thoughts were racing ahead, his plans and schemes already airborne. He was a man who could envision and execute a swarming.
For a swarming was what it was, when thirty or forty planes took off from Molesworth, one by one, and then circled and began to swirl into formation. Soon the crews could see other swirls around them, as other formations from other bases in England began to join in. Squadrons joined squadrons, becoming sixty-ship combat wings. Before long, there were nearly a thousand planes, from all the air bases in England, the Mighty Eighth Air Force of heavy bombers with their loads. It was intense, impossible to exaggerate, enormous. And later, when their fighter escorts arrived, hovering above, it was a truly colossal force.
It was a sight the world would never see again, Marshall thought, those redoubtable goose-flock Vs hell-bent toward their target. Hundreds and hundreds of aircraft, clouds of them. The flyboys rode through the tangled currents of slipstreams for as long as eight hours, their adrenaline levels shooting sharp. The shudder and shake of the yoke—the little boy on his rocking horse, the high-hearted man mounting the anonymous woman.
The men on the plane that day: Cochran, Campanello, Ford, Grainger, Hadley, Redburn, Stewart. Stone. Lawrence Webb. Hootie Williams.
Hootie! The name still ripped his guts.
WHEN HE RETURNED from the war and saw Loretta again, she expected him to propose to her in an old-fashioned way. He had arrived in Cincinnati on a troop train from Philadelphia, and she had taken the bus to Union Station. The grand dome of the station was so immense he felt like a toy soldier beneath it.
“You’re the handsomest thing I ever saw in my life,” she cried. “Sweetheart, you’re all mine!”
Her warmth flowed through him, promising to erase the recent past. He felt it slipping away, like a spiral movement in his mind.
Her flirtatious manner seemed exaggerated, the bow on her hat whimsical, her giggle girlish. It was jarring, seeing this innocent, naïve girl. He was overwhelmed with joy to be with her, on
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