Fly Boy (4 page)

“What are they waiting for?” somebody asked. There was a hint of both annoyance and anxiety in his voice. Maybe I wasn’t the only one feeling uncomfortable.

Almost on cue, the engine started and the whole truck began rumbling. The little bit of fresh air that had managed to get through the opening in the back was replaced by exhaust fumes. The truck started forward and we rocked from side to side. The ride wasn’t smooth, but at least we were leaving behind the smell of the exhaust.

“Anybody have any idea how far away the camp is?” somebody asked.

There were mumbled responses that varied from “Wouldn’t think too far” to “An hour or two,” so really nobody had any idea. It didn’t matter. We were going wherever they were taking us, and there wasn’t anything we could do about it short of jumping out of the back—and judging from the increasing speed of the truck, that wasn’t much of an option either. I just knew that the faster we drove, the faster we’d get there, and that was fine by me.

I caught little glimpses of the world as it passed, of houses and stores. Paved roads gave way to hard-packed gravel. Behind us was another military truck, and when we hit a curve, I could see a second and third and fourth before the turn blocked my view. Since there had been three hundred of us on the train and each truck held around twenty men, there had to be about fifteen vehicles in this convoy.

The truck’s brakes squealed, slowing it down dramatically before a sharp turn, and a cloud of dust was kicked up—by us and whatever vehicles were in front of us. I was suddenly glad the flap was almost completely closed. The road—the dirt road—was much rougher, and we rocked and bumped our way along slowly. I gripped the bench with both hands to stop myself from bouncing off. Finally we came to a stop.

Almost instantly I could hear doors opening and men yelling. Our flap was pulled back and then the tailgate opened up.

“All of you out, out, out!” screamed an airman.

Again we jumped to our feet and we scrambled out of the trucks, moving awkwardly, bumping bodies and bags as we leaped to the ground.

“Form up in two, I repeat,
two
rows!” screamed a sergeant. “Tallest in the back and shortest in the front!” He looked at Jim.“You’re in the back, Stretch.”Then at me.“And you, son, are definitely in the very front row … We might even want to start a special row just for you!”

A few people started to laugh.

“The rest of you button it up. I’m not here to amuse you!” he screamed. “Is there anybody here who thinks I’m amusing?”

Everybody shut up quickly, put their heads down, and tried to assemble into rows. It wasn’t that easy a task as two rows of about a hundred and fifty men each kept shifting and squirming, trying to fit everybody in. Men bumped into each other and exchanged a few unpleasantries.

I settled into the middle of the front row—almost directly in front of three sergeants standing there glowering at us—
and Jim was directly behind me. I would have liked to have been behind him so I could be completely hidden.

“Come on, double time!” yelled the sergeant—the one who had insulted me.“Come on,
ladies
, how are we to expect any of you to learn to fly if you don’t even know how to stand in two rows?”

Finally, after what seemed like forever but was only a few minutes, we were all standing in our rows.

“Attention!” came the order.

Immediately all bags were dropped to the ground and we stood at attention.

“At ease,” came the next order, and we relaxed—at least slightly.

“Good morning, gentlemen! My name is Flight Warrant Officer Crowly.” He started pacing in front of us. “I have been asked by our commanding officer to welcome you to Manning Depot Number Two, situated in
beautiful
Brandon, Manitoba. He would have welcomed you himself, but he is
far
too busy and
far
too important to
waste
his time on a bunch of raw recruits. And if I do say so myself, you are one of, if not
the
most pathetic group I have ever had the misfortune to greet!”

I knew that some of them—after two days of drinking, gambling, and not sleeping or shaving—did look pretty rough.

“I knew that as the war went on, we’d find ourselves
scraping
the bottom of the barrel, but in this group I see men who might actually be the
barrel
itself!” he yelled. “Or in some cases, if not the bottom of the barrel, only recently out of the crib!”

He suddenly stopped and spun around right in front of me. “Just how old are you, son?”

“I’m eighteen, sir … I mean Flight Officer!” I yelled back.

“I see that you already know I’m not a ‘sir,’ but you’d better get it right. It is Flight
Warrant
Officer! Do you understand that, son?” he demanded.

“Yes, Flight Warrant Officer!” I answered.

“Do you all understand?” he screamed.

“Yes, Flight Warrant Officer!” came back a chorus of replies.

“Only officers are to be addressed as ‘sir,’ although you will salute anybody who outranks you, and gentlemen,
everybody
outranks you! You are the lowest of the low, aircraftman two, an acey-deucey.”

So that’s what that meant.

“While there may be a lower form of life on this planet, it has not yet been found by science. You will salute
everything
. If you pass a cow or a pig, you should salute it because at this point it is making a larger contribution to the war effort than you are! Am I understood?”

“Yes, Flight Warrant Officer!” people yelled.

“Manning Depot is your first stop, one of over two hundred schools scattered throughout the world that make up the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan. In total our schools graduate over three thousand airmen each month. Hopefully more than a few of you men will surprise me and actually graduate. By a show of hands, how many of you want to become pilots?”

My hand went up, as did almost every hand around me.

“What a shock that the acey-deucies all want to become pilots. Well, gentlemen, and I use that term very loosely, you are probably not aware of this, but most of you will
not
become pilots. And do you know why?”

I didn’t think he was looking for an answer, but I was sure he was going to tell us.

“Because while it may seem that flying is magical, airplanes do not fly on magic. You there, boy,” he said, pointing at me once again.“Do you still believe in the Easter Bunny, or Santa Claus?”

“No, Flight Warrant Officer!”

“How about pixies and fairies? Do you believe in them?”

“No, Flight Warrant Officer!” I bellowed, trying desperately to make my voice sound louder and deeper.

“Even this little baby, not long from the crib, who not long ago couldn’t sleep Christmas Eve waiting for Santa to bring him a shiny new bicycle—even
he
knows there’s no magic. We can’t all just become pilots and sprinkle pixie dust on the wings to make the plane fly. For a plane to fly, it needs ground crew that can fix the engines and fuel the aircraft. It does no good to fly a plane if you don’t know where it’s going—it needs navigators. There’s no point in knowing where you’re going if you don’t have gunners to protect the plane along the route. There is no point in being protected and knowing where to go if you can’t do something when you get there—that’s why we need bomb aimers.
All
of these jobs are equally important, and over the next four weeks we will determine just which of those jobs is right for you!”

He could say what he wanted—I
knew
what I was going to be, and there was nothing he could say that would convince me differently.

“I know what’s going on in your heads,” he said.“You figure I don’t know what I’m saying, that you’re going to become a pilot.”

I had the strangest feeling that he
was
reading my mind.

“And that’s what all of you are thinking. But I’m right and you’re wrong. You’d better get that straight right now, because you’re going to soon find out that I’m
always
right and you’re
always
wrong.”

The other two sergeants nodded in agreement.

“When you are dismissed, you are to go inside the barracks, find an empty bunk, drop off your bags, and report back out here for an initial orientation meeting. You have ten minutes to do that. I repeat,
ten minutes
. Not eleven, not twelve,
ten
. Dismissed!” he yelled.

We stampeded into the barracks. The ceilings soared overhead, the floors were bare concrete, and there was a strange odour.

“What is that smell?” I asked.

“I think it’s two smells,” Jim said. “Disinfectant, maybe bleach, is one smell, and it’s there to cover up the other smell, which, as a farm boy, I’m very familiar with. It’s manure.”

“Manure! But why would it …” I let the sentence trail off as it all made sense. I realized what our barracks had actually been.

We were being housed in a building that used to hold livestock. In the centre there was a large open space extending up thirty or forty feet, probably where the show ring or arena had been, and there were hundreds and hundreds of bunk beds that had taken the place of the animal stalls. They’d removed the bars and boards and replaced them with beds, but the smell still lingered. We weren’t going to be sleeping in a barn but in a gigantic cow palace, a place where animals were exhibited at a fall fair.

Most of the beds were already in use, but we came to a whole section where the beds were unmade—blankets and sheets and pillows piled up at the end. We grabbed a bunk bed and Jim dropped his pack onto the bottom bunk while
I tossed my valise up onto the top. For a second I thought about all that money in the bottom of my bag, but really there wasn’t time to do anything about it.

We got back outside in time to see that a line had already formed. Two airmen stood at the front, handing something out. We had no idea what it was for or about, but we knew enough to join in at the end, which quickly expanded as other “acey-deucies” settled in behind us.

“Gentlemen!” a sergeant yelled as he walked down the line. “You will receive a checklist when you get to the front of the line. On that list are seventy steps that you must complete before the day is out. Each of these steps is necessary and important. You can start at step number one and work your way through the list sequentially, but all that is important is that you complete all of the steps, not the order of the steps. Upon completion of each step, it will be duly initialled by the responsible airman. Do I make myself clear?”

“Yes, Sergeant!” we all yelled back.

“If at the end of the day, you do not have your list completed and initialled, then you can safely assume you will be punished accordingly. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Sergeant!”

We got to the front and the airman handed lists to both Jim and me, and we walked away. I looked down. The steps included getting our uniforms—that was steps one through twelve—having medicals, eye examinations, injections, and picking up equipment.

“What for goodness’ sake is a housewife?” Jim asked.

“Well … I guess it means a wife or—”

“No, no, it’s on the list … number thirty-seven: Pick up a housewife.”

I really didn’t know what to say about a housewife, but I was starting to think it might be nice to have my mother around.

“Are you two lost?” a sergeant bellowed in our faces.

“No, Sergeant, not lost, just thinking,” I replied.

“Thinking?
Thinking!
” he screamed. “You’re an acey-deucey! You are not allowed to think! You are not even
capable
of thinking! Follow the list, double time!”

We both jumped and ran off, not even knowing what direction we were heading but needing to get away from the sergeant as quickly as possible. Jim stopped and grabbed a guy who was walking by carrying a uniform.

“Which way are the uniforms, buddy?” he asked.

“Big building straight ahead, then turn hard to starboard.”

“Thanks.”

“Yeah, thanks,” I echoed.

I knew that starboard was right and port was left. I remembered that because
left
and
port
both had four letters.

We weren’t going to waste any more time. We ran to the building, bounded up the stairs, almost crashing into men coming out, and hung a tight right. We bumped into the back of a line of men waiting. Ahead I could see that people at the front were being issued their uniforms. We shuffled forward until we were next in line to be served.

“Size?” the airman behind the counter asked.

“Small.”

He looked up at me and smirked.“ We’ll do the best we can. You might have to use the housewife to do some alterations.”

“She’ll do that?” I asked.

“
She
won’t, but
you
can, with the things
in
the housewife.”

What was that supposed to mean?

The airman handed me my uniform: a pair of blue pants with matching jacket, shirt, tie, socks, and an RCAF wedge cap. The airman took the sheet and put his initials beside the appropriate lines to show that I’d been issued each part of my uniform.

I shuffled sideways to the next counter, where boots were being distributed.