American Dreams (76 page)

Shop windows blew out. Pieces of glass sailed in all directions, llirowing his arms around Julie to protect her, Paul saw bodies hurled upward against flames spouting from a huge crater. Someone screamed,

'Gas main!'

The ground guns kept up their barrage as the Zeppelin glided on above Charing Cross Station. Another bomb landed somewhere. People poured out of nearby theaters, cafes, and pubs. 'God, it's terrible,' Julie said.

'Shouldn't we get out of here?'

"I think so, let's - wait.' Firelight showed him someone half buried 474

Battlefields

under a pile of rubble in Wellington Street. An old woman, her white hair askew, one hand waving feebly.

A man equally elderly and frail turned a terrified face to Paul. 'It's my wife, Liddy, can you help?'

Paul put Julie in the cover of a shop entrance, then dashed into the street to attack the rubble on his knees. The elderly man tried to assist, but he did little more than scratch at the broken stones. Grunting, Paul heaved them aside one by one. He uncovered a crushed gardenia corsage.

The old lady watched intently, hopefully, as he lifted a last block off her bloodied hose. The Zeppelin dropped another bomb as it cruised westward.

Guests from a small hotel, some in sleep attire, milled around yelling questions no one answered. Traffic backed up in the Strand in both directions.

As Paul lifted the old woman from the rubble, he felt her stiffen. Her head lolled over his arm.

Paul and the elderly man stared at each other in the flickering light. 'Oh no, Liddy, please God, no,' the old man said. 'Please God, not Liddy.

Tonight is our anniversary. Forty-nine years.'

The searchlights swept the sky. Little monoplanes with flaming cowl exhausts rose in futile pursuit of the disappearing airship. In the crowd packing the north side of the Strand, he saw Julie waving her tightly rolled program. He wanted to wave back, but it was impossible with a dead woman in his arms.

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Street wardens covered the dead woman and routed traffic into the narrow thoroughfares north of Aldwych and the Strand. Paul and Julie trudged west to the Haymarket, up to Piccadilly, and on to the vicinity of the Ritz before they found a cruising taxi. On Cheyne Walk, they sat with Cecily for an hour, recounting the horror of the raid, then found a cab for her.

I

Paul couldn't sleep. He held Julie in his arms while a screen in his head j|

played an endless loop of film: the bright, moist eyes of the old lady as he lifted rubble off her crushed body. The sudden loll to the side when her eyes dimmed. He remembered again a night in Santiago, Cuba, at the end~

of another war, in another century. Michael had drunkenly shouted words¦

from the Revelation of St. John the Divine:

There were lightnings, and thunderings, and an earthquake. And the cities of the nations fell. ...

fl

At the dinner table next evening, a stack of papers lay near Paul's hand, the London Light and Daily Mail among them. Paul picked up his cup of I

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tea and looked steadily into his wife's beautiful dark eyes. With his other hand he tapped the Light1?, front page.

'Zeppelins. Poison gas. U-boats. Good God, Julie, what kind of world have we dreamed up for our children?'

'Nothing like the old one,' she sighed. 'Let's hope we all survive it.'

'Millions won't. What Michael calls the Great Meat Grinder is running full speed in France.'

'But you'll go back.'

'I have to go back. Sammy's willing. It's what we do, Julie.'

'Of course,' she said, holding his hand while tears welled in her eyes.

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In the late summer Carl shot down his second German plane. The kill wasn't any easier, or less scary, than the first, but it was different, less emotional. Downing the first one had entitled him to paint a black Maltese cross on the Nieuport's cowl. As he plied the little brush, he reflected that there was a mark on his heart too. One that would stay forever.

He was depressed by the news of Rene LeMaye's sudden death. Rene had gone once too often against a Drachen, the penile-shaped observation balloon called in jest die Madchens Traum -- the Maidens' Dream. Long lines of Drachens were strung along the German front, each moored at four thousand feet by a steel cable that carried a telephone line to the ground. Rene had closed in on a balloon as usual, to fire incendiary rounds and ignite the thousand cubic meters of hydrogen in the bag above the observation basket. Somehow his guns jammed, and he attempted to finish the job by slashing the balloon with his wing tip. A squadron mate said Rene accomplished that, only to disappear when some random spark set off the hydrogen, blowing up Rene, his airplane, and the spotter and his assistant in the dangling basket.

Carl lived with a mounting depression after he heard the story. The panache of combat flyers was just a veneer, he had discovered. Major Despardieu had put it candidly: 'There is relentless pressure on the mind and nerves. Four months is about all a man can take before he cracks.

Assuming he remains alive, of course.'

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One beautiful October afternoon, about six miles into German-held territory, four planes from Carl's squadron encountered six triple-wing aircraft with red cowls. The Germans were soon swarming all over them.

One of the red Fokkers doggedly pursued Carl; no matter how he dodged and maneuvered, the German was always there. Maybe the pilot recognized him; aviators had ways of indentifying a specific enemy. Carl didn't know the German, and didn't care to know him.

After an aerial fight that lasted nearly ten minutes, with no victor, Carl took a burst that damaged his engine. He peered over the side to check his position. Enemy anti-aircraft guns - Archie - guarding the moored balloons had swung around to bang away at the French planes. As black clouds bloomed and billowed, Carl signaled a wing mate, pointing at his damaged engine, then banked and headed west.

The Fokker was right behind but withheld fire. Carl's broken fuel line spewed aviation gas behind the Bebe. The balloons that spotted for the German artillery and watched for enemy advances were coming up ahead. Typically they were anchored three miles behind No Man's Land, which told him how far he had to fly to safety. I Ie tilted the Bebe to slide
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between two of the Drachens; the assistant in the basket on his left fired three rounds from a rifle but missed.

Soon all his fuel was gone. The engine sputtered, coughed, died. He lost altitude. The thud of Archie was fading. He snatched off his helmet, looked back. The German was still there. Carl expected to be shot down, perhaps not until he was almost out of danger. That was the mission of airmen, to down the other plane. But a certain code of honor prevailed on both sides.

If one was feeling chivalrous, and the enemy plane had been rendered useless, there was no absolute obligation to kill the airman too. Evidently the German pilot was in that mood. He swooped past Carl on the right, saluting him with a smile of self-congratulation and a cheery wave of a leather

¦

gauntlet. Helmet and goggles concealed all of the man except the smirk. ¦

He peeled away and was gone. Carl held the Bebe aloft until he saw the German trenches and, beyond them in the distance, French balloons, Caquots, moored in a similar line. He glided over the trenches at five hundred feet, drawing some careless ground fire that did no damage. He aimed the plane at a space between shell craters in No Man's Land, well short of the forward trenches on the French side. As carefully as he could, he brought the plane down, and down. ...

I

The ground was rougher than it looked. Something caught the undercarriage, standing the plane on its nose and hurling Carl out of the cockpit.

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He tumbled through the air and landed violently on his left side. There was a red flash of pain, then he blacked out.

He woke to feel excruciating pain in his arm. Germans were firing at him from their trenches. He dragged himself the other way, smelling the filthy miasma of dirt and excrement that befouled the whole Western front. He felt no sensation in his left hand; his arm dangled like a broken twig. He crawled through loops of barbed wire, dragging himself with his right hand and pushing with his knees. The barbed wire raked the back of his neck; he bled on Tess's scarf again.

Nearly unconscious, he fell over the edge of a trench and croaked his name to a French poilu before he sank into comforting darkness.

'Look,' they said, bringing him a small hand mirror in the hospital ward.

His hair was completely white.

'Your left arm is crippled,' they said. 'If it is only damage to nerves, you
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will perhaps recover the use of it one day. Or perhaps not. In any case, you can no longer fly. We are sending you home.7

Carl was too weary and low to be relieved.

'This came for you, dropped in a canister by an enemy pilot,' they said.

Carl translated the letter with no difficulty.

Reinhard Grotzman, the aviator whom you downed some weeks ago, was a friend and comrade. He came, as I did, from the infantry. Hearing of his death, I was determined to find the perpetrator and return the favor.

In the midst of our sky fight, I altered my course for this simple reason.

Few aviators have challenged me as you did, sir. It would be a pleasure to meet a second time, and not as adversaries. Perhaps yOu will one day visit the Fatherland under happier circumstances, and if so, I should like to shake hands with a man of your mettle. Headquarters will always know my whereabouts, as the Army is my career.

With every good wish for your well-being, I remain Yr. Obdt.,

Capt. Hermann Goering

Carl threw the letter on the floor and turned his face to the wall.

The German officer was still acting out a pageant of bravery and courtesy

- fighting a war that no longer existed. In Carl's squadron there were opinionated pilots who argued convincingly that air power shouldn't be 478

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restricted to strategic battlefield missions, but should be used tactically, against factories, railways, cities -- and civilians -- to destroy the industrial base, demoralize the population, hasten the surrender. Hauptmann Goering wouldn't understand such theories, though perhaps those who sent Zeppelins over London already did.

The German must be an old-fashioned, naive sort, Carl concluded as he lay with his good hand under his head, staring at nothing while others in the reeking ward raved and moaned. Hauptmann Goering was captivated
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by some kind of ideal that Carl had seen wither and die in the blood and suffering of a war that had become a slaughter.

'A telegraph message,' they said, showing a folded and grimy flimsy.

'Much delayed.'

He read the first lines. 'Oh, Jesus.' Then he read more. The General had 11

survived the stroke. '¦

Carl smoothed the flimsy, placed it on the front of his coarse gown, and covered it with his hands. He stared at the ceiling. Someone screamed in agony. He closed his eyes, feeling useless and abandoned.

In Paris, on his way to the coast, he went to a cinema to see his sister. He felt better, though his left arm was still useless, devoid of all sensation but a feeble tingle now and then. He protected it in a black sling.

The war had almost completely shut down French picture studios; the theaters depended on American imports, none more popular than those featuring the character Knockabout Nell. The French called her Clumsy Nell. Nelle Gauche au Cirque was the usual misadventure of the lovable hoyden

who could do nothing right until the end. Nell knocked down a tent pole, and the entire tent. She lost the circus cash box down a well, then burned up the wet money trying to dry it on a stove. But when the lion got loose she saved the day, even with her foot jammed in a water bucket. Smiling and cooing, she tamed the beast; he lay down, rolled over, and licked her cheek.

Carl always felt strange watching Fritzi's pictures. She seemed remote from the older sister he'd lived with, teased, and forever adored. She'd always wanted to be a great dramatic actress, but it was clowning that had made her famous. He knew Fritzi deserved her fame when he heard all the chuckling, the roars and whoops of the war-weary French people seated around him. He sat smiling while the silver shadows chased over his face.

When he went out, it was still raining. He sat in a hotel bar for two hours, thinking of Tess.

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87 In the Trenches

4 A /Tust be the funniest damn war in history,' Sammy said minutes IVlbefore the bombardment. 'Blokes just standin' still lookin' and shootin' at each other.' Sammy and Paul had photographed Allied troops for a week, under close supervision, then followed a circuitous route, via occupied Brussels, to the German front line. Film of the Tommies would
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go to Lord Yorke; the German footage was for Paul's own use.

The French howitzers fired their first rounds at four o'clock. Paul had given up filming much earlier, when the light of the winter afternoon was already failing. He and Sammy stood in a forward fire trench, peering over a wooden revetment improvised from pieces of a crate. The officer in charge of the sector, a Major Nagel, yelled into a field telephone while keeping one finger stuck in his ear.

Paul turned up his overcoat collar and chewed his cold cigar. Shells sent up geysers of earth in No Man's Land; dirt rained on them. The artillery barrage directed from observation balloons tore gaps in the barbed wire strung for miles in either direction. That was the purpose -- to open the way for an infantry assault.

In No Man's Land a few shell-blasted trees stood like burned and amputated fingers, evidence that once there had been a pastoral landscape instead of mud and water-filled craters and the endless coils of wire. While he and Sammy watched, a tree trunk took a direct hit, bursting into flame and shooting off coruscating displays of sparks.