To the Last Man - Jeff Shaara [238]
He looked at the compass, banked the plane, headed for home.
MAY 19, 1918
He sat in his room, drinking a cup of coffee. The morning patrol had been quiet, unusual, the Germans seeming to focus their attention to another part of the line.
He scanned a sheet of paper, the pilot roster, a growing list of figures, flight statistics, hours in the air. Lufbery had begun to separate the pilots in his mind, had instinctively gravitated toward the ones who were improving, several of them, like Rickenbacker and Douglas Campbell, already scoring impressive victories over the Boche fighters. He had tried to be impartial, still allowed some of the other men to accompany him on patrols, but the gap was widening among them, the men who simply wouldn’t learn, or worse, who thought they already had what it took to charge into the fight on their own. It had been the same with the Lafayette pilots, some of them missing what Lufbery believed to be the intangible ingredient, the difference between the steady hand and the sharp eye, and those who found a way simply to stay alive. He thought of Parsons’ own description, the Club of Should Be Dead. Not all of the pilots were members, and the more Lufbery led the young men aloft, the more he realized that many of them would only perform their service. When the war was over, they would return to their homes, claiming some heroism. But even they would know, somewhere in that hidden place, that death had never really been close, and that too often, when the opportunity had come to them, the chance to kill a man, they had backed away.
He tried not to show any kind of favoritism, felt like the father who must treat his sons with the same affection, no matter their differences. In the Lafayette Escadrille, there were some pilots who never flew alongside him, mostly by the luck of the draw, or the decision made by Thenault, for reasons the Frenchman never explained. But now, with the Ninety-fourth, it was Lufbery the instructor’s job to be in the air with all of them. And so he had begun to avoid the men who could not be taught, who would take to the air with all the show and pride of their squadron, and never make a contribution that anyone would remember. It wasn’t always fair of him to pass judgment. Every man who passed the training at Issoudun had qualified himself to fly. Yet Lufbery could not help feeling respect for the good ones, the men you could depend on to cover your tail, who would pursue the enemy for as long as their guns would fire or their planes would fly. These were the men who would gain entry into Parsons’ morbid club.
He raised the coffee cup, saw the muddy grounds in the bottom, set it down again. He had considered going back up, but his Nieuport was in the hands of the mechanics now. The plane had joined the long row of Nieuports that were undergoing a general maintenance. It had angered him, too many of the planes going out of action at one time, a mistake by the chief mechanic. No, I suppose I will just stay here. Or, perhaps, go to the hangar. Get my hands greasy, speed things along a bit.
He heard a low rumbling, moved to the window, thought, It can’t be bombers, not in daytime. Must be . . . antiaircraft batteries. He heard voices in the hallway.
Huffer was shouting, “Infantry reports a Boche observer, heading this way. By himself. Some damned idiot. Who’s available?”
Lufbery went to the door, saw Huffer speaking into the telephone, knew he was talking to someone in the hangar. Huffer looked at him, made a frown, said, “Who’s that? Gude? No one else?” He paused, seemed to ponder the decision. “All right, send him up.” Huffer put the telephone down, said, “They spotted a single Boche coming this way, straight for us. Photographer, most likely. I guess we