The Innocents Within: A Novel

I Already he could hear the bombers overhead. The hut was unheated, a row of sinks, a row of toilets. The pilot, whose name was David Gannon, shaved in cold water because there was never any hot this early. He was twenty years old and there was not yet much to shave. Brand new to the squadron, he had blue eyes, crew-cut sandy hair, a fair complexion, and nice teeth. He stood five feet ten, the limit for a fighter pilot in that war, and weighed 150 pounds, which was under the limit. He tended to move quickly, decisively, like the athlete he still thought himself to be. At college he had played varsity basketball--he was more than tall enough for the game as it was played in those years, the tallest man on his team being only six-three. Stripped to the waist as he was now, his ribs showed. Later, if he lived, he would fill out. He had a long neck, prominent Adam's apple, and long fingers with well-bitten nails. He had a man's job but the body of a boy. Major Toft came in and took the sink next to him. Toft was the oldest man in the squadron, twenty-five. "Morning, Davey." "Morning, Major." Toft wore long johns open at the throat, and he set his towel and shaving kit on the shelf. The squadron's top ace, as well as its commander, Toft had already shot down sixteen enemy planes. To Davey he was not only an ace but an older man besides, and he was in awe of him. At all of the mirrors men were shaving. They took their time about it, shaved carefully, for missions lasted six hours or more, and oxygen masks made the least stubble chafe. At the sink Davey stared back at himself. The mirror did not show what was most important about him: that he was still unblooded by life. He had not yet killed anyone, which the entire squadron knew. He had not yet known a woman either, which no one knew, and which he would have died rather than reveal. He did have a girlfriend, Nancy, who was a sophomore at a college in upstate New York. He wrote to her nearly every day, described for her every new plane he flew. She wrote to him less often. Dressed now in flight jacket and flight suit, he stepped outside and found his bike on the rack. The night was still dark and cold, and as he pedaled off it began to rain. There were other bikes ahead of him and behind. The bombers were still passing overhead, but the overcast was too low and thick to see them. The North Sea--cold, clammy--was about a mile away, so close Davey could smell it. The bombers passed over him in boxes, thirty or more planes to the box. The noise was so heavy that the ground seemed to tremble. After each box came a gap that was almost silence, and then the noise increased as the next box came over. The headlight was dim. He pushed his face into the thin English rain. It should have been dawn by now but wasn't; the darkness hung on. The cold had congealed the mud of the path. The wet air bathed Davey's face, made his cheeks red. He breathed it in. Because of the ruts, steering was difficult. Even keeping upright was a problem. The bike was old, no rubber grips. It had belonged to several other pilots before him. Though the collar of his flight jacket was turned up, his ears were cold, his hands too. Cold steel against his fingers, cold rain on his knuckles. At the operations hut, he leaned the bike against the wall, then entered the briefing room. The pilots were all chattering. They stopped when the colonel jumped up onto the dais and the curtain parted, exposing the wall map. Every day there was a different tape fixed to the map. Today's extended all the way to Stuttgart. The silence seemed to deepen. The bombers would take out the industrial complexes around the city, the colonel said. Two of the group's three squadrons, supported by two squRobert Daley is the author of 'The Innocents Within: A Novel', published 2001 under ISBN 9780449004159 and ISBN 0449004155.