To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [119]
As he took in the panorama of the desolate landscape, Lufbery knew the search for mushrooms was futile. He moved off the low rise toward Parsons, saw the man with a handful of metal, small bits of destruction.
Parsons moved to meet him, said, “Amazing. Incredible. I never imagined. They just left this stuff here. God, Luf, I saw bones, a helmet with a damned hole in it.” He looked at the empty basket in Lufbery’s hand. “You done? I don’t think I wanna be out here when the sun goes down.”
“Yep. Let’s head back.”
“No luck, huh?”
Lufbery shook his head, thought of the word. “Hasn’t been any luck around any of us for a while now.”
They moved in silence, Parsons slipping out toward a shattered cannon, staring down into the barrel, something Lufbery had seen him do before, something they all seemed to do. What does he expect to find in there?
Parsons was beside him again, walked for a few moments, then said, “I have to say, Luf, when I signed up, I never thought that part of the job was going to funerals. I’m damned tired of it.”
Lufbery nodded, stepped up and over another low rise, down toward the trail that would lead them back to the airfield. Parsons was looking at him, seemed to wait for an answer, said, “Sorry. Didn’t mean to stir up something. You’ve been to a damned sight more funerals than I have.”
“It’s okay. You’re right. We’re all tired of it.”
The latest had been a few days before, the second member of the escadrille to die in as many weeks. Both Edmond Genet and Ronald Hoskier had come to the squadron at the first of the year. Genet was barely twenty, Hoskier only a few months older, and the teasing was relentless, all the usual comments about children doing a man’s job. Both had taken it well, had seemed energized by the need to prove something to the “older” men around them. They had flown several missions with Lufbery, and Genet in particular seemed to have the knack for aerobatics, for evading the enemy and turning the tide of a confrontation. Lufbery had been with Genet on patrol when the young man had skillfully maneuvered away from a fight and had broken for home. Lufbery had seen it all, the German pressing the attack, filling the air around Genet’s Nieuport with bullets, the young man appearing to dodge the best the German had to give. When Genet had sought escape, Lufbery assumed his machine gun had jammed, but the German did not pursue, seemed content to let him go. Lufbery could not follow Genet, had been involved in a duel of his own with a German two-seater that ended with the enemy making good his own escape. But when Lufbery returned to the airfield, the awful familiar scenario had played out once more. The pilots had gathered; the telephone calls had been received from the ground observers. Genet had crashed near the French line, his Nieuport ramming straight into the ground with his motor at full power, the wings stripped away. The impact of the crash was so devastating, the plane and Genet himself were buried in a crater of their own making, the young man’s body unrecognizable.
Genet in particular had a knack for friendships, and, like many of the newer pilots, had formed bonds that made the sudden death of any one of them particularly painful. Lufbery had seen too much of that, and though he was never unfriendly, the others had learned that their most celebrated veteran was not a man you could warm up to.
Lufbery felt differently about Parsons, who was a bit older, and though Parsons had come from blue-blood roots, the man himself showed no signs of being an aristocrat. Parsons had been attracted to aeroplanes even as an adolescent, had escaped the rigidity of New England prep schools to flee to the adventurous unknown of California. There he had become friends with aviation pioneer Glenn Curtiss, who, besides teaching Parsons