Flight to Arras Read Online Free PDF

back of my seat. My enormous boots rest on the bar that operates the rudder. My hands that are so awkward when first I slip on the thick stiff gloves, handle the wheel with ease. Handle the wheel. Handle the wheel....
    â€œDutertre!”
    â€œ... t’n?”
    â€œSomething’s wrong with the inter-com. I can’t hear you. Check your contacts.”
    â€œI can ... you ... ctly.”
    â€œShake it up! Can you still hear me?”
    Dutertre’s voice came through clearly.
    â€œHear you perfectly, Captain.”
    â€œGood! Dutertre, the confounded controls are frozen again. The wheel is stiff and the rudder is stuck fast.”
    â€œThat’s great! What altitude?”
    â€œThirty-two thousand.”
    â€œTemperature?”
    â€œFifty-five below zero. How’s your oxygen?”
    â€œComing fine.”
    â€œGunner! How’s your oxygen?”
    No answer.
    â€œHi! Gunner!”
    No answer.
    â€œDo you hear the gunner, Dutertre?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œCall him.”
    â€œGunner! Gunner!”
    No answer.
    â€œHe must have passed out, Captain. We shall have to dive.”
    I didn’t want to dive unless I had to. The gunner might have dropped off to sleep. I shook up the plane as roughly as I could.
    â€œCaptain, sir?”
    â€œThat you, gunner?”
    â€œI ... er ... yes, sir.”
    â€œNot sure it’s you?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    â€œWhy the devil didn’t you answer before?”
    â€œI had pulled the plug, sir. I was testing the radio.”
    â€œYou’re a bloody fool! Do you think you’re alone in this plane? I was just about to dive. I thought you were dead.”
    â€œEr ... no, sir.”
    â€œI’ll take your word for it. But don’t play that trick on me again. Damn it! Let me know before you cut.”
    â€œSorry, sir. I will. I’ll let you know, sir.”
    Had his oxygen flow stopped working, he wouldn’t have known it. The human body receives no warning. A vague swooning comes over you. In a few seconds you have fainted. In a few minutes you are dead. The flow has constantly to be tested—particularly by the pilot. I pinched my tube lightly a few times and felt the warm life-bringing puffs blow round my nose.
    Â 
    It came to this, that I was working at my trade. All that I felt was the physical pleasure of going through gestures that meant something and were sufficient unto themselves. I was conscious neither of great danger (it had been different while I was dressing) nor of performing a great duty. At this moment the battle between the Nazi and the Occident was reduced to the scale of my job, of my manipulation of certain switches, levers, taps. This was as it should be. The sexton’s love of his God becomes a love of lighting candles. The sexton moves with deliberate step through a church of which he is barely conscious, happy to see the candlesticks bloom one after the other as the result of his ministrations. When he has lighted them all, he rubs his hands. He is proud of himself.
    I for my part am doing a good job of regulating the revolutions of the propeller, and the needle of my compass lies within a single degree of my course. If Dutertre happens to have his eye on the compass, he must be marvelling at me.
    â€œI say, Dutertre! Compass on the course? How does it look?”
    â€œWon’t do, Captain. Too much drift. A little kick to starboard.”
    Well, well.
    â€œCrossing our lines, Captain. I’ve started my camera. What’s your altitude?”
    â€œThirty-three thousand.”

V
    â€œYour course, Captain!”
    He’s right. I was drifting to port. And not by chance, either. It was the town of Albert that was putting me off. I could make it faintly out, far ahead. But already it was shouldering me off with all the weight of its
categorically blocked
. Extraordinary, the memory secreted in the recesses of the human body. My body was remembering every