Then you'll come along to the hut,'
'Of course,' he said. 'Besides, I'll have to stop at the hangars and tell them to roll me in.---But why did he have to shoot his pilot, Bridesman?'
'Because he is a German,' Bridesman said with a sort of calm and raging patience. 'Germans fight wars by the rule-books. By the book, a German pilot who lands an undamaged German aeroplane containing a German lieutenant general on an enemy aerodrome is either a traitor or a coward, and he must die for it. That poor bloody bugger probably knew while he was eating his breakfast sausage and beer this morning what was going to happen to him. If the general hadn't done it here, they would probably shoot the general himself as soon as they got their hands on him again. Now get rid of that thing and come on to the hut,'
'Right,' he said. Then Bridesman went on and at first he didn't dare roll up the overall to carry it. Then he thought what differ-ence could it possibly make now. So he rolled up the overall and picked up his flying boots and went back to the hangars. B's was open now and they were just rolling in the major's and Brides-man's buses; the rule-book wouldn't let them put the German two-seater under a British shed probably, but on the contrary it would doubtless compel at least six Britons (who, since the infan-try were probably all gone now, would be air mechanics unaccus-tomed both to rifles and having to stop up all night) to pass the night in relays walking with guns around it. 'I had a stoppage,' he told the first mechanic. There was a live shell in. Captain Brides-man helped me clear it. You can roll me in now,'
'yes sir,' the mechanic said. He went on, carrying the rolled overall gingerly, around the hangars and on in the dusk toward the incinerator behind the men's mess, then suddenly he turned sharply again and went to the latrines; it would be pitch dark in-side, unless someone was already there with a torch (Collyer had a tin candlestick; passed going or coming from the latrines, clois-tral indeed he would look, tonsured and with his braces knotted about his waist under his open warm). It was dark and the smell of the Sidcott was stronger than ever inside. He put the flying boots clown and unrolled it but even in the pitch dark there was nothing to see: only the slow thick invisible burning; and he had heard that too: a man in B Flight last year who had got a tracer between the bones of his lower leg and they were still whittling the bone away as the phosphorus rotted it; Thorpe told him that next time they were going to take off the whole leg at the knee to see if that would stop it. Of course the bloke's mistake was in not putting off until day after tomorrow say, going on that patrol (Or tomorrow, for that matter. Or today, except that Collyer wouldn't have let him.), only how could he have known that a year ago, when he himself knew one in the squadron who hadn't Wednesday discovered it until people shot blank archie at him and couldn't seem to believe it even then? rolling up the Sidcott again and fumbling for a moment in the pitch dark (It wasn't quite dark after you got used to it. The canvas walls had gathered a little luminousness, as if delayed day would even begin inside them after it was done outdoors.) until he found the boots. Outside, it was not at all night yet; night wouldn't even begin for two or three hours yet and this time he went straight to Bridesman's hut, pausing only long enough to lay the rolled Sidcott against the wall beside the door. Bridesman was in his shirt sleeves, washing; on the box between his and Cowrie's beds a bottle of whisky sat be-tween his and Cowrie's toothmugs. Bridesman dried his hands and without stopping to roll down his sleeves, dumped the two tooth-brushes from the mugs and poured whisky into them and passed Cowrie's mug to him.
'Down with it,' Bridesman said. 'If the whisky's any good at all, it will burn up whatever germs Cowrie put in it or that you'll leave.' They drank. 'More?' Bridesman said.
'No, thanks. What will they do with the aeroplanes?'
'What will what?' Bridesman said.
'The aeroplanes. Our buses. I didn't have time to do anything with mine. But I might have, if I had had time. You know: wash it out. Taxi it into something-another aeroplane standing on the tarmac, yours maybe. Finish it, do for two of them at once, before they can sell them to South America or the Levantine. So nobody in a comic-opera general's suit can lead the squadron's aeroplanes in some air force that wasn't even in this at all. Maybe Collyer'll let me fly mine once more. Then I shall crash it-'
Bridesman was walking steadily toward him with the bottle. 'Up the mug,' Bridesman said.
'No, thanks. I suppose you dont know just when we'll go home,'
Will you drink, or wont you?' Bridesman said.
'No, thanks.'
'All right,' Bridesman said. Til give you a choice: drink, or shut up-let be-napoo. Which will you have?'
'Why do you keep on saying let be? Let be what? Of course I know the infantry must go home first-the p. b. i. in the mud for four years, out after two weeks and no reason to be glad or even amazed that you are still alive, because all you came out for is to get your rifle clean and count your iron rations so you can go back in for two weeks, and so no reason to be amazed until it's over. Of course they must go home first, throw the bloody rifle away forever and maybe after two weeks even get rid of the lice. Then nothing to do forever more but work all day and sit in pubs in the evenings and then go home and sleep in a clean bed with your wife-'
Bridesman held the bottle almost as though he was going to strike him with it. Tour word's worth damn all. Up the mug,'
"Thanks,' he said. He put the mug back on the box.-'All right,' he said. Tve let be.'
'Then cut along and wash and come to the mess. We'll get one or two others and go to Madame Milhaud's to eat,'
'Collyer told us again this morning none of us were to leave the aerodrome. He probably knows. It's probably as hard to stop a war as it is to start one. Thanks for the whisky,' He went out. He could already smell it even before he was outside the hut and he stooped and took up the overall and went to his hut. It was empty of course; there would probably be a celebration, perhaps even a binge in the mess tonight. Nor did he light the lamp: dropping the flying boots and shoving them under his bed with his foot, then he put the rolled Sidcott carefully on the floor beside the bed and lay down on it, lying quietly on his back in that spurious semblance of darkness and the time for sleeping which walls held, smelling the slow burning, and still there when he heard Burk cursing something or someone and the door banged back and Burk said, Holy Christ, what's that stink?'
'It's my Sidcott,' he said from the bed while someone lit the lamp. 'It's on fire,'
'What the bloody hell did you bring it in here for?' Burk said. 'Do you want to burn down the hut?'
'All right,' he said, swinging his legs over and getting up and then taking up the overall while the others watched him curiously for a moment more, Demarchi at the lamp still holding the burning match in one hand. 'What's the matter? No binge tonight?' Then Burk was cursing Collyer again even before Demarchi said, 'Collyer closed the bar. ' He went outside; it was not even night yet, he could still read his watch: twenty-two hours (no, simple ten o'clock P. M. now because now time was back in mufti too) and he went around the corner of the hut and put the overall on the ground beside the wall, not too close to it, the whole north-west one vast fading church window while he listened to the si-lence crowded and myriad with tiny sounds which he had never heard before in France and didn't know even existed there because they were England. Then he couldn't remember whether he had actually heard them in English nights either or whether someone had told him about them, because four years ago, when such peace-ful night-sounds were legal or at least de rigeur, he had been a child looking forward to no other uniform save that of the Boy Scouts. Then he turned; he could still smell it right up to the door and even inside too though inside of course he couldn't really have sworn whether he actually smelled it or not. They were all in bed now and he got into pyjamas and put out the lamp and got into bed properly, rigid and quiet on his back. The snoring had already begun-Burk always snored and always cursed anyone who told him he did-so he could near nothing but night passing, time passing, the grains of it whispering in a faint rustling murmur from or into whatever it was it ran from or into, and he swung his legs quietly over again and reached under the bed and found the flying boots and put them on and stood up and found his warm quietly and put it on and went out, already smelling it before he reached the door and on around the corner and sat down with his back against the wall beside the overall, not any darker now than it had been at twenty-two (no, ten P. M. now), the vast church window merely wheeling slowly eastward until almost before you knew it now it would fill, renew with light and then the sun, and then tomorrow.