Death into Life

TEN thousand boys in the upper air. Squadron upon squadron, their
intricate machines thundered toward the target, heavy with death.
Darkness below; and above, the stars. Below, the invisible carpet of
the fields and little homes; above, and very far beyond those flashing
stars, the invisible galaxies, gliding through the immense dark,
squadron upon squadron of universes, deploying in the boundless and
yet measured space.

In one of the bombers, seven boys. Seven young minds in patterned
unity; each self-cherishing, but all knit inwardly together by fibres
of steel-tempered comradeship. And all equally imprisoned, body and
mind, in their intricate machinery.

Seven boys, and by strange chance a moth. It had strayed, no doubt,
into the plane when the crew were taking their places. Since then it
had wavered hither and thither, up and down its prison, from one domed
transparent turret to another, teased by some obscure longing, needing
though unwittingly a mate. Searching, softly colliding with now this
young human cheek now that, kissing each one like the fluttered
eyelash of an invisible beloved, it spent the numbered seconds of its
life in vain. Or tremulously it thrust with feeble pressure against
the prison windows, drawn by the pin-prick lights of the sky; but
conceiving no immensity, no galaxies.

The seven boys too had their own, their more articulate yearnings.
They craved the life that was normal to their human, and more
conscious, but unfinished, nature. And like the moth sometimes their
minds impotently fluttered at the prison windows, vainly questioning
the stars.

THE REAR-GUNNER

The rear-gunner had never heard of galaxies. Even the stars were for
him little more than drifting lights. He knew, of course, that they
were suns; but what of it? The fact oppressed him. Shunned, it had
sunk almost too deep for memory. And though, on nights like this he
could not help remembering and wondering, after a moment's blankness
he was bored. The stars, he felt, didn't help matters at all. Down
here on earth it was hell, though streaked tantalizingly with
unfulfilling joys, with sex and beer and the bitter shattering ecstasy
of air-fighting. There were moments, too, rather frightening but
somehow exalting, when something deep inside one seemed to take
possession, so that the whole of life changed its colour and became
terribly important, and one kicked oneself for being such a waster.
But they didn't last, those moments. They were probably due to
digestion, or glands or something. No, down here it was hell; and up
there, just those blank stars. And now, to make things worse, he was
starting a cold in his nose. Already it tickled and exasperated him,
and already his head was none too clear. Would it spoil his nerve?
Would he muff his part in the show? Whatever happened, he must not let
the crew down. That really mattered. Mattered? Why 'mattered'? For a
moment an abyss of emptiness opened before him, but he gallantly leapt
it. Hell! He didn't know why it 'mattered', but it did; it mattered
terribly that the crew should do well. Then, remembering an earlier
raid, when the air round the plane was all fire and hammer-blows of
blast, he felt an inner sinking. Of course the odds were that the
whole seven of them would come through safely. But some crews would
not. And sooner or later--He pictured the plane ablaze.