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By Root 4459 0

nor the Americans either; and having known the French, fought beside them for almost four years now, he (the major) didn't yet believe it meant anything with them. However, there would be a truce, a remand, for an hour or two hours or perhaps a whole day. But it was a French truce; it wasn't ours-looking about at them, nonchalant and calm and even negligent, speaking in that same casual negligent voice and manner with which he could carry the whole squadron through a binge night, through exuberance and pandemonium and then, with none realising it until afterward, back into sufficient sobriety to cope with the morrow's work, which was not the least of the reasons why, even though no hun-getter, he was one of the most popular and capable squadron commanders in France, though he (the child) had not been there long enough to know that. But he did know that here was the true authentic voice of that invincible island which, with not merely the eighteen years he had but the rest of his promised span which he might very likely lose doing it, he would in joy and pride defend and in gratitude preserve: 'Because we aren't quitting. Not us nor the Americans either. It's not over. Nobody declared it for us; nobody but us shall make our peace. Flights will stand by as usual. Carry on.'

He didn't think Why yet. He just thought What. He had never heard of a recess in war. But then, he knew so little about war; he realised now that he knew nothing about war. He would ask Bridesman, glancing about the room where they were already beginning to disperse, and in the first moment realising that Bridesman was not there, and in the next one that none of the flight commanders Monday was there: not only Bridesman, but Witt and Sibleigh too, which in Witt's case obviously meant that he still had C Flight out on the mid-morning job, and which-the fact that C Flight was still carrying on with the war-ratified the major's words; C Flight hadn't quit, and if he knew Bridesman (and after three weeks he certainly should) B hadn't either; glancing at his watch now: half after ten, thirty minutes yet before B would go up; he would have time to finish the letter to his mother which Bridesman had interrupted yesterday; he could even-since the war would officially begin for him in thirty minutes-write the other one, the succinct and restrained and modestly heroic one to be found among his gear afterward by whoever went through it and decided what should be sent back to his mother: thinking how the patrol went up at eleven and the remand would begin at twelve, which would leave him an hour-no, it would take them ten minutes to get to the lines, which would leave fifty minutes; if fifty minutes was long enough for him to at least make a start after Bishop's and McCudden's and Mannock's records, it would be long enough for him to get shot down in too: already moving toward the door when he heard engines: a flight: taking off: then running up to the hangars, where he learned that it was not even B Flight, shouting at the sergeant, incredulous and amazed: 'Do you mean that all three flight commanders and all the deputies have gone out in one patrol?' and then heard the guns begin, not like any heavy firing he had ever heard before, but furious end simultaneous and vast in extenta sound already in existence to the southeast before audibility began and still in existence to the northwest when audibility ceased. 'They're coming over!' he shouted. The French have betrayed us! They just go out of the way and let them through!'

'Yes, sir,' the flight sergeant said. 'Hadn't you better get along to the office? They may be wanting you.'

'Right,' he said, already running, back up the vacant aerodrome beneath the sky furious with the distant guns, into the office which was worse than empty: the corporal not only sitting as always behind the telephone, but looking at him across the dogeared copy of Punch which he had been looking at when he saw him first three weeks ago. Where's the major?' he cried.

'Down at Wing, sir,' the corporal said.

'Down at Wing?' he cried, incredulous,