From the deck of the lighter the men can see
the roofless houses, the burned-out houses. The piles of rubble where the
bombs have fallen. They have seen pictures of this and have read about it, but
that was pictures and reading. It wasn’t real. This is different. It isn’t like
the pictures at all. On the quay, the Red Cross is waiting with caldrons of
coffee, with mountains of cake. They have been serving since dawn and they will
serve until long after dark. The gangplank to the lighter is fixed now. The
men, carrying their heavy barrack bags, packs on their backs and rifles slung
over their shoulders, struggle up the steep gangway to the new country. And in
the distance they can hear the sound of the pipes greeting another lighter-load
of troops.
A PLANE’S NAME
A BOMBER STATION, June 26, 1943—The
bomber crew is getting back from London. The men have been on a
forty-eight-hour pass. At the station an Army bus is waiting, and they pile in
with other crews. Then the big bus moves through the narrow streets of the
little ancient town and rolls into the pleasant green country. Fields of wheat
with hedgerows between. On the right is one of the huge vegetable gardens all
cut up into little plots where families raise their own produce. Some men and
women are working in the garden now, having ridden out of town on their
bicycles.
The Army bus rattles over the rough road and
through a patch of woods. In the distance there are a few squat brown buildings
and a flagstaff flying the American flag. This is a bomber station. England is Uttered
with them. This is one of the best. There is no mud here, and the barracks are
permanent and adequate. There is no high concentration of planes in any one
field. Probably no more than twenty-five Flying Fortresses live here, and they
are so spread out that you do not see them at once. A raider might get one of
them, but he would not be likely to get more than one.
No attempt is made to camouflage the buildings
or the planes—it doesn’t work and it’s just a lot of work. Air protection and
dispersal do work. Barbed wire is strung along the road, coils of it, and in
front of the administration building there is a gate with a sentry box. The
bus pulls to a stop near the gate and the men jump down, adjusting their gas
masks at their sides. No one is permitted to leave the place without his gas
mask. The men file through the gate, identify themselves, and sign In back on
the post. The crews walk slowly to their barracks.
The room is long and narrow and unpainted.
Against each side wall are iron double-decker bunks, alternating with clothes
lockers. A long rack in the middle between the bunks serves as a hanger for
whiter coats and raincoats. Next to it is the rack of rules and submachine
guns of the crew.
Each bunk is carefully made, and to the foot of
each are hung a helmet and a gas mask. On the walls are pinup girls. But the
same girls near each bunk—big-breasted blondes in languorous attitudes, child
faces, parted shiny lips and sleepy eyes, which doubtless mean passion, but
always the same girls.
The crew of the Mary Ruth have their
bunks on the right-hand side of the room. They have had these bunks only a few
weeks. A Fortress was shot down and the bunks were emptied. It is strange to
sleep in the bed of a man who was at breakfast with you and now is dead or a
prisoner hundreds of miles away. It is strange and necessary. His clothes are
in the locker, to be picked up and put away. His helmet is to be taken off the
foot of the bunk and yours put there. You leave his pin-up girls where they
are. Why change them? Yours would be the same girls.
This crew did not name or come over in the Mary
Ruth. On the nose of the ship her name is written, and under it “Memories
of Mobile.” But this crew does not know who Mary Ruth was, nor what
memories are celebrated. She was named when they got her, and they would not
think of changing her name. In some way it would be bad luck.
A rumor has swept through the airfields that
some powerful group in America has protested about the names of the ships and
that an order is about to be issued removing these names and substituting the
names of towns and rivers. It is to be hoped that this is not true. Some of the
best writing of the war has been on the noses of bombers. The names are highly
personal things, and the ships grow to be people. Change the name of
