To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [237]
“You going after them, sir?”
Lufbery nodded, said nothing.
“Let me go with you. I can show you where—”
Lufbery cut him off with a sharp stare, shook his head slowly.
Rickenbacker backed away, said, “Good luck, sir.”
Lufbery moved past him, was up and into his cockpit in a single motion. He pointed to the prop, the mechanics obeying, the motor coming to life. The Nieuport rolled forward, and he turned out toward the open ground, revved the motor, and within seconds he was in the air.
HE HAD EXHAUSTED MOST OF HIS FUEL, KNEW HE WAS FAR BEHIND the German lines. He could see Metz in the distance, the great fortress city surrounded by several German airfields. For a long two hours there had been only one squadron of Albatroses, but he had completely surprised them, none of the Germans expecting to see a lone Nieuport suddenly falling on them out of the sun. The fight had been brief and automatic, almost too simple, pouring his fire into one of the German planes, which spun down in a streak of black smoke. The others had disappeared before he could relocate them. He had seen nothing else in the air, frustrating, had hoped for more of a response to his presence, but not even the antiaircraft batteries had spotted him.
He wrapped his memory around Jimmy Hall, had stopped holding it away. If he didn’t do this now, it would haunt him, pulling him awake in the middle of the night, just like the memory of all the others. It was the lesson of a veteran, something he had seen in Bill Thaw. You could not pretend you didn’t care about them, that you wouldn’t miss them. You couldn’t forget all the quirks and pieces of their lives that made each of them part of the group. He thought of Rickenbacker, wanting to come with him. He thinks . . . they will all think that this is just revenge. They don’t understand. An hour ago I killed a Boche, probably. And it doesn’t change anything. There is no eye for an eye in war. The killing is random and mindless, and you do it because it’s your job, or you do it to survive, not because there is justice in it.
He felt his shoulders slumping down, stared ahead at nothing, his mind growing numb. No, this cannot ever be about revenge. He remembered DeLaage, their first meeting, the Frenchman making the obvious assumption that Lufbery flew to avenge the death of Marc Pourpe. I believed that too, in the beginning. Of course, it’s powerful inspiration. But I have not felt that for a while. Pourpe is gone, after all, and no matter how many Boche I have killed, he is still gone. He tried to recall how many German planes had gone down in front of him, too many to remember. And Jimmy Hall . . . he thought of Rickenbacker, of course, he wanted revenge of his own. He does not yet know, there is no such thing. Just because a friend is killed, it does not make us better fighters. We can be angry, angry at the war, angry for caring about the ones who are gone. But the enemy . . . is just the enemy. It is our job, after all, to kill him. Lufbery thought of the young pilots. What do they know of loss and death? Yet they must perform just as the rest of us do. To kill a man they must draw inspiration from something else. Patriotism? Perhaps. I will never know the answer to that now. He thought of Richthofen. Eighty confirmations. Remarkable. Richthofen had to know how many, certainly, someone over there kept score. Even if that never mattered to him, Richthofen was never allowed to forget. Like some damned contest, a sporting event, a baseball team, winning eighty games in a row. But Richthofen had to know that every winning streak has an end. And so, he is dead.
Lufbery focused again, looked at his watch, knew he had gone as far as his fuel would allow. He was tired now, felt the end of the day settling around him. The sadness was filling him, the great weight of the loss: Jimmy Hall is gone. Dead . . . well, we don’t know. The Boche will tell us, probably. Both sides are good about that, one piece of chivalry