Goodbye Mickey Mouse

‘Come in, don’t just stand in the draught,’ said Morse, stubbing out his cigarette in the lid of a hair-cream bottle.

‘My name’s Farebrother, Lieutenant. I’m assigned to your flight.’

‘Kick Winston off that chair and sit down.’ MM’s first impression of the newcomer was of a shy stooped figure in an expensive non-regulation leather jacket, wearing a gold Rolex watch and with a fountain pen that was leaking through the breast pocket of his shirt to make a small blue mark over his heart. His captain’s bars had been worn long enough to become tarnished. It was a nice conceit and MM noted it with admiration.

‘I’m going to be flying Kibitzer, I understand.’

MM recognized the slight eastern accent.

‘So you’re the bastard who popped rivets in my ship.’

‘You’ve got a beautiful bird there, Lieutenant. She ticks like a Swiss watch,’ said Jamie diplomatically. MM purred like a cat with a saucer of cream. ‘But I didn’t pull enough G to pop any rivets.’

‘Where are you from, Captain?’ said MM. ‘New York? Boston? Philly?’ These rich eastern kids were all alike; they treated the rest of the nation as if they were just off a farm in Indiana.

‘I live in California, Lieutenant. But I went to school in the East.’

‘You want a drink, Captain? I’ve got scotch.’

Farebrother held up a thin hand to indicate that he wouldn’t. MM settled back in the pillows and looked at him—a poor little rich boy. Junior figured that singleseat fighters might be a way he could fight the war without rubbing shoulders with the riffraff.

Farebrother said, ‘Are we going to fight the entire war with me calling you Lieutenant and you calling me Captain?’

MM turned and held out a hand that Farebrother shook. ‘Call me Mickey Mouse like everyone else does.’

‘My friends call me Jamie.’

‘Take the weight off your legs, Jamie, and throw me a pack of butts from that carton on my footlocker.’ Morse opened a book of matches to make sure it wasn’t empty. ‘Are you fixed up with a room?’

‘I’m sleeping downstairs—sharing with Lieutenant Hart.’

‘Then you’re on your own. Hart got some kind of ulcer. He won’t be back. If you take my advice you’ll leave his name on the door and try to keep the room all to yourself, like I have this one. No sense in sharing if you can avoid it.’

‘Why are we living in these little houses?’

‘The RAF built them to house officers and their families. That narrow storeroom downstairs, where they fix sandwiches and fry stuff, used to be the family kitchen.’ Farebrother looked round the smoke-filled room. Lieutenant Morse had left no space for anyone else to move in with him. The second bed had been upended and a motorcycle engine occupied its floor space. Parts of the engine were strewn round the room; some were wrapped up in stained cloths and some were in a shallow pan of oil on the floor. In the corner there were Coca-Cola bottles piled up high on a milk crate and on the walls were pinup photos from Yank and a coloured movie poster advertising Dawn Patrol. Above the bed MM had hung a belt with a holstered Colt automatic clipped to it, and above that there was a beautiful grey Stetson.

‘And that old civilian sweeping the hall?’ said Farebrother.

‘We have British civilian servants, batmen they call them. They’ll fix up your laundry and bring you tea in the morning—well, you can make a face, but it’s better than British coffee, believe me. If you want coffee, fix it yourself.’

‘I hear you’re the ranking ace here.’

MM lit his cigarette carefully and then extinguished the match by waving it in the air. ‘You don’t have to be any Baron von Richthofen to be best around here. Most of these kids should still be in Primary Flight School learning how to do gentle turns in a biplane.’

‘Does that go for the pilots in your flight too?’

MM inhaled on his cigarette, closing his eyes as if in deep thought. ‘Rube Wein is my wingman—sad-eyed kid with jug ears, rooms downstairs. He’s no better, no worse than most as a flyer. He’s a brainy little bastard whose idea of a good time is to sit through an evening of Shakespeare, but he’s got eyes like an Indian scout and reaction times as good as any I’ve seen. And don’t let all that book learning fool you, he’s a tough little shit. When he’s on my wing I feel good.’ MM fiddled with his cigarette and tapped some ash into the tin lid. ‘You’ll probably fly wing for Earl Koenige—better pilot than Rube, he’s got that natural feeling for it, but he’s a shy kid and he just won’t get in close enough to get kills. Earl likes airplanes, that’s his trouble. He’s always frightened of bending something or damaging his engine by using full power. He flies these goddamn Mustangs like he was paying the maintenance out of his own pocket.’

Winston sighed and slid gracelessly off the wicker chair, which creaked loudly. Farebrother, who had been standing, sat down on the dog’s cushion and put his feet up on a hard chair. It gave MM a chance to admire Farebrother’s hand-tooled high boots.

‘When do you think we’ll go again?’ Farebrother asked.

‘After that Gelsenkirchen foul-up I thought we’d never go again. I had a hunch we’d all be transferred to the infantry.’

‘What happened?’

MM shook his head sadly. ‘Track in to Colonel Dan leading us to the rendezvous with the Bomb Groups at Emmerich, near the Dutch frontier. We’re tasked to give them close support all the way to the target, and then back as far as Holland again. We’re all tucked in nice and tight behind Colonel Dan. It was like an air show except that the stratus is under us and no one could see anything.’

‘Not even the bombers?’

‘What bombers?’ MM waved an arm to indicate that he could see nothing. ‘I never saw any bombers.’

‘So what happened?’

‘I’ll tell you what happened—nothing happened, that’s what happened. The bombers never found the target. The little magic black boxes that are supposed to see through cloud went on the blink, and the B-17s went miles north of our route. Cut to Colonel Dan, who’s taking us round and round Gelsenkirchen—at least he insists it’s Gelsenkirchen—but all we see is cloud. Then we fly back to England in a nice tight formation, do some low passes over the field to show what split-ass aces we are, and there’s plenty of time for drinks before dinner. Jesus, what a fuck-up!’

‘The mission didn’t bomb?’

‘Oh, they bombed. They bombed, “targets of opportunity”, which is a cute name the Air Force dreamed up for shutting your eyes, toggling the bombload, gaining height, and getting the hell out.’

‘I heard the Bomb Groups were having a tough time,’ said Farebrother. ‘I saw replacements by the truckload heading for the bombers.’

‘Slow dissolve to the Bremen mission one week later,’ said MM. ‘Seems like the target-selection guys at High Wycombe have some kind of private feud with the inhabitants of Bremen.’

Farebrother nodded politely. ‘It’s accessible; it’s near the ocean,’ he said. He reached into his shirt pocket for a packet of Camels and flicked a cigarette up with his fingernail. MM watched him light it. His hands were as steady as a rock. These rich kids are all the same—maybe it’s the school they go to on the east coast. Keep it cool, never laugh, never fart, never shout, never cry. MM admired it. ‘So what happened?’ said Farebrother.

MM realized he’d been daydreaming. He was tired and hung over—he should have told Farebrother to go away and leave him alone, but he didn’t. He told him about Bremen. He told him about the one that got torn in half.

‘We found the rearmost task force miles behind their briefed timings,’ MM said, and stopped. He’d never told the others about that midair collision, not even Rube, his closest buddy. So why tell this guy? Maybe because it was easier to tell a stranger. ‘Thank God we weren’t escorting those B-24s. They call them banana boats; they say they were flying boats that leaked so bad they put wheels on them and christened them bombers.’

Farebrother smiled, but he’d heard the joke before. He could tell that MM was stalling.

‘Those ships need a lot of babying. By the time they were above the cloud cover they were skidding all over the sky. The pilots couldn’t hold formation.’

‘It’s that Davis wing,’ said Farebrother. ‘It wasn’t designed for high loading at that altitude.’

‘Sure, something like that,’ said MM. ‘It was a bad start, flying past those banana boats, and they’ve taken so many casualties over the weeks that by now the pilots are mostly replacements who’ve never flown a tough one before.’ He flicked ash into the lid that was still resting on his chest. ‘You say Bremen’s easy because it’s on the coast, what you don’t know is that the Kraut radar chain goes right along that coast. Anything coming in over the sea comes up clear on their screens. So the fighters were waiting—hundreds of them. Did we have the shit beat out of us!’ MM found that his hands were sweating and he knew his face was flushed. ‘I drank too much last night,’ he explained.

‘You engaged the enemy fighters?’

‘Hey, Jamie! Where’d you pick up that kind of talk? You training to be a general or a reporter or something? Sure, we engaged the enemy—we engaged him good and proper. Another engagement like that and our parents are going to insist we get married.’ He puffed his cigarette vigorously in silence for a moment. ‘Colonel Dan is leading Red—Red is always nominated as the troubleshooters, so Colonel Dan likes to take Red—and I’m leading the second element. We’ve passed the B-24s and found our Forts and we’re keeping real close to them just like it says in the book. But while we’re watching that we don’t get so close the trigger-happy gunners shoot us down, the Messerschmitt 110s come up on the horizon and suddenly they’re loosing off rockets.’

‘No one goes after them?’

‘By the time anyone guessed they were going to fire long-range rockets it was too late, the Krauts were away and heading for their beer ration. Then the Messerschmitt 109s come roaring through the formation—and all this time we’re still over the sea, we’re nowhere near the target—they dive down through the bombers and lift their noses for a second go at their undersides. Colonel Dan goes for them and a few of us get some shots in before they’re diving away. It’s while we’re wrestling with these babies that the withdrawal support group arrives. They’re the Thunderbolts, and those guys think anything with square wings is a Messerschmitt. So who should be surprised when the T-bolts come out of the sun and clobber two of our boys in the first pass? We lost two good pilots that day and we didn’t get one confirmed kill. Then just as we’re getting ready to form up and go home I see some lunatic Kraut come sneaking back toward the bombers. I did a wing-over and chased him, but he was going fast, really fast. I got a couple of squirts at him, but he just flies straight on, no evasive action. For a minute I think maybe the pilot is dead or out of action, then I realize what this crazy bastard is going to do. He’s picked himself one of the Forts in the low box and he just drives straight into its side.’

Farebrother said nothing.