The Complete Flying Officer X Stories by H.E. Bates Page A

blue, landscape very green in the sun. And then he came back to the old subject.
    â€œHow did I land? What did it look like?”
    â€œBeautiful.”
    â€œI couldn’t get the tail down. Both tires were punctured.”
    â€œPerfect all the same.”
    He looked quite happy. It was his point of pride, the good landing; all he cared about now. With turrets gone, fuselage like a colander, wings holed, and one air-screw fallen off, he had nevertheless brought her down. And though we all knew it must have been hell, no one said a word.
    Presently his second dicky came into the anteroom. He was very young, about nineteen, with a smooth aristocratic face and smooth aristocratic hair. He looked too young to be a part of a war and he was very excited.
    â€œWent through my sleeve.”
    He held up a cannon shell. Then he held up his arm. There was a neat tear in the sleeve of his battle dress. He was very proud.
    â€œAnd look at this.”
    Across the knuckles of his right hand there was a thread line of dried blood, neat, fine, barely visible. He wetted his other forefinger and rubbed across it, as if to be sure it wouldn’t wash away.
    â€œCame in on the starboard side and out the other.”
    â€œGood show,” said somebody quite automatically. “Good show.”
    â€œAnybody hurt?” I asked.
    â€œEngineer.”
    â€œVery bad?”
    â€œVery bad. I bandaged him and gave him a shot coming home.”
    As he went on talking I looked down at his knees. There were dark patches on them where blood had soaked through his flying-suit. But all that anyone said was:
    â€œThink you pranged them?”
    â€œOh, sure enough! They’ve had it this time.”
    â€œGood show,” we said. “Good show.”
    Now and then, as we talked, the little W.A.A.F. would come in from the telephone to tell someone he was wanted. With her quiet voice she would break for a moment the rhythm of excitement that was now rising through outbursts of laughter to exhilaration. She would hear for a second or two a snatch of the now boisterous but still laconic jargon of flight, “Think we may have pranged in, old boy. Good show. Piece of cake. No trouble at all,” but there would be no sign on her calm and rather ordinary face that it conveyed anything to her at all. Nor did the crews, excited by the afternoon, the warmth, and the relief of return, take any notice of her. She was an automaton, negative, outside of them, coming and going and doing her duty.
    Outside of them, too, I listened and gathered together and finally pieced together the picture of the raid; and then soon afterwards the first real pictures of operations were brought in for the Wing Commander to see, and for a moment there was a flare of excitement. We could see bomb-bursts across the battleships and the quaysand then smoke over the area of town and docks. “You think we pranged them, sir?” we said.
    â€œPranged them? Like hell we did.”
    â€œGood show. Bloody good show.”
    â€œSlap across the Gluckstein.”
    â€œNo doubt this time?”
    â€œNo doubt.”
    â€œGood show,” we said. “Good show.”
    At last, when the photographs had been taken away again, I went out of the anteroom into the hall. As I walked across it, the little W.A.A.F., sitting by the telephone, looked up at me.
    â€œA wonderful show, sir,” she said.
    I paused and looked at her in astonishment. I wondered for a moment how she could possibly know. There had been no time for her to hear the stories of the crews; she had not seen the photographs; she did not know that K for Kitty had been wrapped up and that it must have been hell to land on two dud tires and with a broken airscrew; she did not know that the ships had been hit or that over Brest, on that bright calm afternoon, it had been partly magnificent and partly hell.
    â€œHow did you know?” I said.
    She smiled a little and lifted her face