Chapter One
First thing you do is, you sit there.
You sit there.
You don't move. You let it wash over you for two, or three, or
four, or five minutes. You've come through it again. You've got at
least one more night of poker ahead of you. One more morning
when you won't wake up dead. Maybe one more red-hot date in
London.
It doesn't matter if it's the first time or the twenty-fourth, which
this one was. What matters is that you're down out of the sky. Your
wheels are on the tarmac. You've brought your crew back safe.
You take a big deep breath. You feel the sweat that has soaked
through your long underwear and your tunic and lubricated the
fleece lining of your leather jacket, plastering it to your shoulders
and back and chest. Maybe you clench and unclench your hands a
few times. Man, it feels good to have turned loose of that yoke.
You've held on to it for maybe six, eight hours, knuckles white,
keeping thirty-two tons of bomber steady at 25,000 feet, your
hands wrapped around that shuddering yoke, your feet tensing
... read full excerpt from: Man Who Flew the Memphis Belle, The: Memoir of a WWII Bomber Pilot ebook
