Part 10 (1/2)

MEXICAN WHOOPEE!

I hadn't seen Darr Alkire since I had resigned from the army several years before, so when I dropped into March Field, Calif., to say h.e.l.lo and he told me that he and a couple of the other officers were flying three s.h.i.+ps down to Mexacali on the Mexican border that afternoon to return the next and asked me to go along, I said yes.

I flew down in the rear seat of Darr's s.h.i.+p, and when we landed and crossed the border everybody proceeded to get drunk. Everybody but Yours Truly. I had been on a party the night before I had dropped in to see Darr and didn't feel up to it.

The next morning we met a Mexican captain, and everybody had to drink a lot of drinks to each other. I still threw mine over my shoulder.

That afternoon the Mexican captain had to escort us to the airport, just to say good-bye to us. The leader of our formation then, no sooner had we taken off, had to lead us in some diving pa.s.ses at the Mexican captain, just to say good-bye to him.

They were having a lot of fun dusting their wings on the airport, saluting the captain, but I wasn't! Darr was sticking his wing in too close to the leader's for comfort. I had a set of dual controls in the rear c.o.c.kpit and couldn't resist just a little pressure on them to ease his wing away from the leader's in some of the pa.s.ses or to pull him up just a little sooner in some of the dives. It was a heluva breach of flying ethics, but after all I was sober!

We got back to March, and Darr, sobered by then, began telling me what a swell guy I had been to sit back there and take it. He said he would have taken the controls away from me, had I been flying drunk, and he sitting back there sober. I thought he was razzing me for a moment, but saw that he really meant it. My pressure on the controls had been so subtle that he hadn't noticed it.

I didn't bother to tell him the truth. I liked the idea that he thought I had had enough sand to sit there and not interfere with him. I didn't have enough nerve to set him straight on the matter.

IT'S A TOUGH RACKET

The hazards of a pilot's life are sometimes different than some people suppose.

For instance, I flew some people to a ranch in Mexico once. I fought bad weather most of the way from New York to Eagle Pa.s.s on the Border, skimming mountains and swamps, and then flew eighty miles of barren mountain and desert country to the ranch house.

They insisted the next day that I go out hunting with them. That meant that I had to ride a horse. I had ridden a horse once before in my life and remembered it as the most uncomfortable means of transportation ever invented by man.

But I went with them. I even began to like it after we had been out a while. I discovered that you could wheel the horse around in a running turn and that it was almost like banking an airplane around. I was having pretty good fun experimenting until I noticed that a certain portion of my anatomy was getting very warm, and then, soon, that it was getting very tender. Pretty soon I began to think that we would never get back to the ranch house. When we finally did, my pants and my anatomy were brilliantly discolored. And when I went to take the pants off, I noticed that quite a bond had developed between me and them, quite an attachment indeed! They were stuck fast and could be persuaded away from me only with their pound of flesh.

I decided that I would stick to my airplane after that. But the next day, I discovered that my airplane was uncomfortable too-and I had to make a five-hour flight to Mexico City.

When I got to Mexico City everything was uncomfortable, and I had to eat my dinner off the mantelpiece that night. There was an additional humiliation. The doctor had to undress me. He had to use plenty of hot oil and go very easy.

ALMOST

Bunny had trusted me on the outward trip, so now, returning to March Field, Calif., I comforted myself in the rear c.o.c.kpit of our army DH with the thought that Bunny could fly as well as I.

San Francisco lay behind us. The Diablo Mountains were beneath. Snug around us, familiar and friendly, was our s.h.i.+p.

But beyond, strange and ominous by now to Bunny and me because we had hardly ever flown in it before, and never for so long, stretched like a white, opaque, and directionless night the fog.

The s.h.i.+p felt as if it were flying straight, but when I peeked over Bunny's shoulder I saw the needle on his bank and turn indicator leaning halfway over to the right. I watched it start back then-Bunny was all right-to the center. But slowly then, inexorably-Bunny! Bunny!-the needle leaned over to the left. The ball was centered, so the turns were good. But that was not enough. Where were we going? Were we weaving?

Circling? Which way were we turning mostly? The ocean was not far off to our right.

Then something else-ice! Its white hands gripped the front of wings, the leading edge of struts and wires. The prop got rough. The motor beat and strained. Once the s.h.i.+p s.h.i.+vered. I saw one aileron go down. Bunny was trying to hold a wing up. I saw the needle straighten. He had held it.