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

Hurricane. “Thank Christ!” he thought. “Oh, thank Christ for that!”
    The Hurricane circled a few times, but he was too tired, too weak, and still too much in pain to show his joy. Hewas holding the raw stump of the wounded arm with his other arm and he could not wave his hands. He shut his eyes and drifted away, swinging, as if he were drunk and the world were spinning round.
    When he opened his eyes again, the Hurricane had gone and he could see the town more clearly. But it was still far down and once or twice he swung very violently, and because of his hands he could not stop the swinging. He felt very sick and then finally he fell faster, not caring much until he looked down and felt that the roofs of the town, hot in the sun, were flying upward like enormous missiles that would hit him and lift him skyward again. Then for a time he drifted away, more to the edge of the town, and soon it was only the flat roof of a little house that was rushing up to meet him. There was the little house and beside it was a little patch of wheat. The wheat was very green and McAlister saw it wave and shimmer in the wind and sun.
    He hit the ground with great violence and rolled over. He lay still and this, at last he thought, was the moment. “I have been falling twenty-five thousand feet for the privilege of this moment, for the sweetness, the calm, the painlessness, and the silence of being able to die. There is nothing else now. The chute does not matter, nor the arm, nor the pain. It is enough to lie in the wheat and shut my eyes against the sun and wait for the moment, and myself, to end.”
    The crowd of gesticulating Maltese who rushed up to him, trampling the wheat and tearing off his chute andholding up his head, made him very furious; they stopped all his thoughts about dying. He was not going to be bumped about like a piece of beef by anybody and he let out with extraordinary strength with his feet; it was as if the Maltese wanted to tear him to pieces for souvenirs. He kicked very hard for a few moments, just to show how very living he was, and then his strength slipped out of him and he lay emptily on the earth, too tired to be angry again, only telling the Maltese how to give him morphia and how to bind the tourniquet.
    A little later they carried him across the little field of wheat to the advanced dressing-station, and then to the town. He did not know much what happened. Two days later they took off his arm and in the night he was very restless and used to amuse himself sometimes scaring the Sister by telling her he would die because he did not want her to go away. The arm did not smell very nice in the days before they took it off and he was terrified that, without the arm, he would never fly again. But in fifteen days from that moment he was flying solo.
    He is flying solo still. He flies beautifully and dangerously and they have fitted him up with an arm that has many intricate devices. You can see in his face the delight of being able to fly. It is one of the faces of those who fight wars they do not make and for whom flying and life are one: the faces of those who should be watched, the faces of the young — and not of the young who die, but of the young who are shot down and live, of those who are at the beginning of things.

Li Tale
    Rex and Johnnie, who are pilots, and Scottie, who is the navigator, and I, who do not belong to a crew at all, went into the bar of the Grenadier. It was early and Joe was wiping the counter, which was not dirty, with a bright yellow duster.
    â€œWhat shall it be?” Rex said. “Li tale?”
    â€œLi tale it is,” we said.
    â€œThat’s four li tales,” Rex said. “And you, Joe?”
    â€œThank you,” Joe said, “a bitter.”
    Joe drew the four light ales and set them on the bar. He drew the bitter and held it in his hand.
    â€œCheers,” we said.
    â€œCheers, boys,” said Joe.
    We drank. Joe drank too