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After the Last Bomb Run What I'd called Indian summer ended abruptly, and there was no flying for awhile. A warm front had moved in on a mild southeasterly breeze, and the English fog that came with it dropped conditions to well below instrument takeoff and landing minimums; and there actually were limits, even in those days when making war seemed to be our only raison d'etre. The fact of the matter, though, was that I'd become a bystander, a spectator, since, as Jardine put it, Lewis, Lockhart, and I had been granted a stay and wouldn't be flying in any case. A stay of what? Why, a stay of execution, of course, but he allowed that that might have been a slight exaggeration: ''Although, when you think of it in cold numbers," he lectured, "a 3 percent loss-rate per sortie comes to 15 percent for the five missions that you wouldn't have to fly, and that wasn't to be sneezed at; and ifMerseburg or Leipzig or BigB or other big jobs were included, the percentage might double." It was a real paradox, quoth he. The more valuable we proved ourselves, the less they were inclined to get extended use out of us. It didn't make sense. Oh Jesus, John, if he was trying to make me feel guilty, it didn't soak in. My euphoria was for a time quite impenetrable. I lounged around eating processed cheese and tinned biscuits from the PX and drinking bottled beer cooled to the fifty-degree room 163 Return from Berlin temperature, cool as Keats's grape drink from "the deep delved earth." My sheepskin jacket warded off hypothermia while I skimmed Wuthering Heights, which had been lying around since I bought it during the summer to read to Elizabeth. Liz. I thought ofher in her new Kettering guise (happy as a lark), the quintessential English schoolgirl in a pink cardigan and greenish plaid skirt with ribbed white stockings up to the pleated hem and oxfords ofheavy brown leather that made her feet look too big. Her wide, well-shaped, rather angular face had gone milk-colored, even a little bluish under the eyes, for lack ofsun; but the eyes themselves, a brighter hue in that pale setting remained otherwise unchanged and still completely in charge of her communication system. I got the drawings out for a quick comparison before the image wafted away. They weren't awfully bad, to use a very English expression I'd picked up, but overly refined. The lines looked coaxed rather than spontaneous and certainly could not have represented Lispeth's easy summer grace. Floating like Botticelli's, they might well have been eleven-year-old Renaissance angels. I could see why Liz and her mum found them beguiling. Three or four days later, when the fog had risen to become low dark clouds, there was a mission posted for the next morning. My spirits sagged a little, and I did feel uneasy. My friends, most ofthem, were still in their battle mode; harm was waiting out there to be done to them, and the headless black dwarfs, even the last one, could kill. Everybody hit the sack early, so I did too, and slept like a farmer. My empathy would be there in the morning, but not very earlyand yet, Good God- there it was again, the flashlight in my face, the same deferential nudge and solicitous words. "Sir, it's time to rise." After a moment ofbefuddlement I sat up and cuffed the infernal thing out ofhis hand and lay back on my sheepskin jacket pillow. "Sorry, sir. I forgot; and by the way, sir, congratulations," was all the fellow said, and that was too much by far. I made no comment, being still half-asleep, while he wandered away to do the job on John and Porter. His memory did serve him better, though, when he 164 After the Last Bomb Run came to Russell. I remained in a doze while they dressed, and in an impressive act of courtesy John coughed as quietly as he could and made none ofhis noisy comments. Porter was his usual considerate self, and a second or two after the door grated shut I sank into a deep slumber. When I woke up, the light coming through the dirty window showed the day to be cloudy bright. It was only a little past seven, so there was still time to...

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