"All right!" he said. "I'll land her somehow!"
We were getting near the aerodrome, on which, to my great relief, a
machine was "taxying" towards the hangars. It was a relief to see that
the aerodrome was clear, because, with no motive-power to take us off
the ground again, or to swing us round in a hurry, we should be helpless
if we were to land when some other machine was in the way, and we had to
land at once. So, as we faced the wind, and I saw the pilot very wisely
stop the other engine, I felt rather anxious, and hoped it was going to
be all right. If we "undershot," we might land on a shed or a hedge; if
we "overshot," we might run into a ditch--there would be no means of
preventing the calamity. The pilot must have perfect judgment, and must
touch the ground at the right moment.
So I sat beside him, very tense and on the alert, longing to give my
advice, but knowing it was best to keep silent, even if I thought he was
wrong, lest I should confuse his judgment.
Knowing he was probably feeling the strain of responsibility, since four
other lives than his own depended on his skill, I just gripped his arm
and said--
"Priceless ... priceless ... we're going to do a topping landing...."
To the right we swung, and then to the left, as we did an "S" turn, to
lessen our gliding distance.
"Ripping, old man! We'll just--do--it--nicely.... Hardly a bump!...
Well! that was some landing!"
The feat had been achieved, and we had landed with both propellers
stopped.
Soon we were in the mess eating our "41/2-minute" or hard-boiled eggs,
drinking tea, and talking excitedly about the flight, our faces flushed
with the wind, our hair dishevelled.
Then the glow of pleasure is felt, when the flight is finished, the
danger is over, and you can rest, feeling that the rest is well
deserved.
An evening report from a reconnaissance squadron informed us that the
destroyers had been seen steaming into Ostend harbour. Our feelings can
be imagined. Lost chances like that bite deep, and when I met the pilot
many many months later on his return from a German prison camp, after
the Armistice (for he had landed with engine failure behind the German
lines), he said to me--
"Oh, how I wish we _had_ bombed those two destroyers! What a chance!
What a chance!"
This incident illustrates well the curious point of view of an
air-bomber. If those destroyers had been British, and the pilot had
ordered me to bomb them, I could have done so with equanimity. If at any
time I had been sent at night to attack a British town I would have
released my bombs with no feeling of horror; indeed I would not have had
any feelings at all. At first sight that statement sounds brutal and
incredible. Let me say that I could not stand on a beetle without a
feeling of repugnance. It has made me feel sick to shoot an animal in
pain. The idea of killing is repulsive to me.
The explanation is that the airman dropping bombs does not drop them on
human beings. He presses a lever when the metal bar of his bomb-sight
crosses a certain portion of the "map" below him. It is merely a
scientific operation. You never feel that there are human beings, soft
creatures of flesh and blood, below you. You are not conscious of the
fear and misery, of the pain and death, you may be causing. You are
entirely aloof.
I have knelt in the nose of the machine over my objective, and have
pressed the bomb-handle at the critical moment without ever having seen
the bombs in the machine. After a certain time I have seen in the
darkness below flash after flash leap up from the dim ground. In my mind
those _flashes_ have been caused by the movement of my handle. I have
not thought of yellow bombs dropping out of the machine, whirling
through the air with an awe-inspiring scream, and exploding with a cruel
force as they strike the earth. It is as though I had pressed an
electric switch, and had seen a lamp glow in response in some far
distant signal station.
If I had been taken to a scene of devastation, and had been shown a line
of mutilated bodies, and had heard some one say, "You did this!" I
should have been overcome with remorse and sickness, and would have gone
away in tears of shame and loathing. Yet in the air, when the handle has
been thrust home for the last time, and the bombs are actually
scattering their splinters of death, I would get back to my seat and
laugh and say--
"That's done, Jimmy! Let's push home!"
Once at Dunkerque I saw a street closed by a barrier, round which was a
crowd of quiet people. There in the middle of it was a house which had
been demolished by a German bomb during the night, and in the cellar lay
thirty or forty dead or dying people. Men worked frantically at the
crumbled wreckage. An ambulance drove through the barrier. Next to the
driver sat an old man with the tears streaming down his cheeks. His wife
lay dead in the back.