Once There Was a War by John Steinbeck Read Free Book Online

It is pitch black in the room, for the blackout curtains are drawn tight. A man speaks in the darkness. “I wish I was in that ship by now.” He knows that he will be all right when the mission starts. It’s this time of waiting that hurts, and tonight it has been particularly bad.
    It is quiet in the room, and then there is a step, and then a great clatter. A new arrival trying to get to his bunk in the dark has stumbled over the gun rack. The room breaks into loud curses. Everyone curses the new arrival. They tell him where he came from and where they hope he will go. It is a fine, noisy outburst, and the tension goes out of the room. The evil thing has gone.
    You are conscious, lying in your bunk, of a droning sound that goes on and on. It is the Royal Air Force going out for the night bombing again. There must be hundreds of them—a big raid. The sound has been going on all evening and it goes on for another hour. Hundreds of Lancasters, with hundreds of tons of bombs. And, when they come back, you will go out.
    You cannot call the things that happen to bombing crews superstition. Tension and altitude do strange things to a man. At 30,000 feet, the body is living in a condition it was not born to withstand. A man is breathing oxygen from a tube and his eyes and ears are working in the reduced pressure. It is little wonder, then, that he sometimes sees things that are not there and does not see things that are there. Gunners have fired on their own ships and others have poured great bursts into empty air, thinking they saw a swastika. The senses are not trustworthy. And the sky is treacherous with flak. The flak bursts about you and sometimes the fragments come tearing through your ship. The fighters stab past you, flaring with their guns. And, if you happen to see little visions now and then, why, that’s bound to happen. And if on your intensified awareness, small incidents are built up with meanings, why, such things always happen under tension. Ghosts have always ridden through skies and if your body and nerves are strained with altitude, too, such things are bound to happen.
    The barrack room is very silent. From a corner comes a light snore. Someone is talking in his sleep. First a sentence mumbled and then, “Helen, let’s go in the Ferris wheel now.”
    There is secret sound from the far wall, and then a tiny clink of metal. The tail gunner is still feeling through his pockets for his medallion.
    PREPARATION FOR A RAID
    BOMBER STATION IN ENGLAND, July 1, 1943 —In the barracks, a brilliant white light flashes on, jerking you out of sleep. A sharp voice says, “All right, get out of it! Briefing at three o’clock, stand-by at four-twenty. Better get out of it now.”
    The crew struggles sleepily out of their bunks and into clothes. It is 2:30 a.m. There hasn’t been much sleep for anyone.
    Outside the daylight is beginning to come. The crew gropes its way through sleepiness and the semidarkness to the guarded door, and each goes in as he is recognized by the guard.
    Inside there are rows of benches in front of a large white screen, which fills one wall. Some of the crews are already seated. The lights go out and from a projector an aerial photograph is projected on the screen. It is remarkably clear. It shows streets and factories and a winding river, and docks and submarine pens. An Intelligence officer stands beside the screen and he holds a long pointer in his hand. He begins without preliminary. “Here is where you are going,” he says, and he names a German city.
    “Now this squadron will come in from this direction,” the pointer traces the road, making a black shadow on the screen. The pointer stops at three long, narrow buildings, side by side. “This is your target. They make small engine parts here. Knock it out.” He mentions times and as he does a sergeant marks the times on a blackboard. “Standby at such a time, take-off at such a time. You will be over your target at such a time, and