“Let’s go, Tyler, we haven’t got all day here, there’s a war waiting.”
I pulled the stick back against my belly, and then put my toes on the brakes to make sure they were locked. With my right hand on the magneto switch and my left on the throttle, I stuck my head out of the cockpit and yelled, “Clear?” to Harris.
“Clear!” Harris shouted back.
I moved the magneto switch through 1 and 2, click, click, and heard the third click as I moved it to BOTH, and hit the starter. The propeller spun and caught. I yanked the stick against my belly again, added throttle, and then pulled back to idle. Picking up the mike in my left hand, I said, “Gunter Tower, this is 0934, over.”
“0934, this is your instructor in the rear cockpit,” Di Angelo said. “How about switching back to radio before trying to contact the tower?”
I immediately turned the switch to radio, and said again, “Gunter Tower, this is 0934, over.”
“0934, this is Gunter Tower, go ahead.”
“0934 on the line, ready to taxi.”
“Roger, 0934. You’re clear to taxi to runway 27.”
“0934, Roger and out.”
I signaled to Harris to pull the chocks, my toes on the brakes, the engine ticking over. He yanked them and gave me the thumbs-up signal. I began adding throttle, and the stick suddenly came banging back hard into my belly, jerked by Di Angelo in the back seat, who immediately cut the throttle and snapped the switch to INTER and shouted, “You forgot to keep your stick back, Tyler! You were adding too much throttle! Keep that damn stick back!”
Rattled, I released the brakes and managed to roll the plane out correctly, turning left past the parked planes on the ramp, and moving straight out onto the taxi strip. Di Angelo’s voice erupted into my earphones again.
“Zigzag her down the line, Tyler, how else can you see anything over that big humping engine? Do you want to get us killed before we’re off the ground? Keep your head moving!”
Trembling now, hating that goddamn RADIO-INTER switch and wishing it would break off in his left hand, I waited for the other planes to clear, zigzagging down the line past the maintenance hangars and the squadron building, and finally moving into the number-two position for take-off, parked at a ninety-degree angle to the runway.
“All right, Tyler, I’ve rolled the stabilizer control three-quarters of the way back,” Di Angelo said, “and it’s going to stay there until I roll it to Neutral when we get up in the air.”
I nodded and wet my lips.
“You’re about ready for take-off, aren’t you?” he said, and I looked ahead to see that the number-one plane had already left. “Is your head up and locked?” he shouted. “Let’s keep it moving at all times, Tyler, on the ground as well as in the air, let’s see what the hell’s happening around us, shall we?”
I checked the two mags, my eyes on the tachometer, and moved the prop control all the way to the rear, the engine straining, the sound changing as the prop blades cut the air at a greater angle, and then I put it back into low pitch and returned the throttle to idle. I switched to radio, picked up the microphone in my left hand and said, “0934, ready to take off.”
“Roger, 0934,” the tower said, “clear to take off.”
I could not get used to the feel of the stick. I was adding throttle, and the plane was roaring down the runway, but I couldn’t get the tail off the ground, and the pressure on the stick was completely strange to me. The huge engine pounded and pulled, the whole plane seemed to be vibrating with the need to break free of gravity, but the tail would not rise, I could not get her to lift. I remembered what Di Angelo had said about the attitude of the plane, concentrate on the altitude and never mind what the controls are telling you, so I pushed harder on the stick and felt the tail come up only slightly, still refusing to rise completely off the runway, pushed even harder, my arm trembling, the muscles straining, my hand wrapped tight around the resisting shaft of metal that controlled the elevator, pushing, pushing, What happens if you let go, sir? The tail was beginning to rise slowly, I could feel her coming up, I kept both feet working the rudders to keep the plane straight, “You’re doing well, Tyler,” Di Angelo said, “keep the pressure on that stick, keep your nose down, you’re getting her off the ground now, there you go, hold her hard, Tyler, don’t let go of that stick, keep the pressure on it!” We were making eighty or ninety miles an hour now, the plane was leaving the runway, rising steadily, fifty feet, climbing smoothly into the air, a hundred feet, still climbing, we had not done a snap roll, we had not flipped over and hit the ground. From the tail of my eye, I saw the trim-tab control move forward as Di Angelo shoved it into the Neutral position.
“All right,” he said, “climb out of this traffic and level off at 1500 feet, we’ll be flying southeast to Taylor Field. You’re still not looking around enough, Tyler. Close your goddamn canopy. And stop feeling so fucking proud of yourself,” he added, even though he could not see my grin from the rear cockpit.
We walked around the field on Christmas Day, my father and I.
We did not talk much at first. A noisy wet wind was blowing in fiercely off the highway, discouraging conversation. We walked briskly, our strides almost identical, somewhat duckfooted, frankly unattractive. I was an inch shorter than my father, with the same angular build, the same blue eyes and high cheekbones, the same nose my mother used to call “the beak of Caesar, the Roman greaser,” the same thin-lipped mouth. To the single hardy cadet who approached us from the north, we must have looked like differently dressed twins skirting the edge of the parade grounds there, my father with one gloved hand clutching his Homburg to his head, the other in the pocket of his black coat; I with my garrison cap tilted jauntily, the collar of my short overcoat pulled up high around my ears like a raunchy ace.
When my father began talking, his first words were carried away by the wind. I turned toward him and squinted into his face, straining to hear him, because I thought at first he might be saying something important. But he only wanted to know how my training was going, whether or not they were really teaching me to fly because what would matter most when I got over there was how well I knew my job. I told him that my instructor in Primary had taught me all sorts of combat tricks, and then I explained how much I was enjoying Basic, where I was flying the 450-horsepower trainer, and how I was looking forward to Advanced, where I hoped to start flying two-engine planes in preparation for the P-38, assuming of course that the Army didn’t have other plans for me — like perhaps training me for a single-engine fighter plane or, fate worse than death, one of the big four-engine bombers. Ferrying a bomber over Germany, I told my father, wasn’t exactly my idea of fun.
My father said that none of it was fun, and the sooner I learned that, the better off I’d be. Oh yes, he said, he knew how anxious I was to get over there, a young man likes to be where the action is, likes to feel he’s helping to make history. He could understand my frame of mind, he said, because he’d felt exactly the same way back in 1918 when he’d hurried off to join the Army and do his share in winning the Great War. Of course, he said, we don’t call it that any more, do we, Will, the Great War? Which may indicate some measure of maturity on the part of the American people since there’s no such thing as a great war, is there?
I didn’t enjoy the fact that he’d stooped to punning to make his point, which I found dubious to begin with. I was also beginning to feel very cold and wet, the Alabama rain coming in hard against my face, driven by a fierce northwest wind. Nor was I looking forward to one of the little lectures my father had been fond of delivering before I’d enlisted in the Air Force. I really though we’d settled that question once and for all on the day he said he’d sign. So I figured I’d put an end to any further discussion right then and there by simply stating that the Nazis were bad and that fighting them was therefore good, period.