As for the rest of David’s career in school, one may assume that a lad who could substitute six weeks of unsupervised reading for four years of formal schooling could also stand first in his class academically. This would pay off in money and rank as a young officer’s place on the promotion list was determined by his standing at graduation.
But the competition for first place is sharp indeed, and—worse—makes the cadet who achieves it conspicuous. David became aware of this when he was a fresh-caught plebe. “Mister, are you a savoir?”—that is to say: “academically brainy”—was another trick question; a plebe was damned whether he answered Yes or No.
But standing second—or even tenth—was practically as useful as first place. David noticed something else: The fourth year counted four times as much as the first, the next to the last year three times as much, and so on down—that is, a plebe’s marks did not affect his final standing much—only one part in ten.
David decided to maintain a “low profile”—always the smart decision when one is likely to be shot at.
He finished the first half of his plebe year a little above midway in his class—safe, respectable, inconspicuous. He ended his plebe year in the upper quarter—but by that time the first classmen were thinking only of graduation and paid no attention to his status. His second year he moved to the upper 10 percent; his third year he improved that by a few numbers —and his last year, when it counted most, he went all out and finished with a final standing for four years of sixth—but effectively second, for of those higher in ranking two elected to leave the line of command for specialization, one was not commissioned because he had damaged his eyes by studying too hard, and one resigned after he graduated.
But the care with which David managed his class standing does not show his true talent for laziness—after all, sitting down and reading was his second favorite pastime, and anything which merely called for excellent memory and logical reasoning was no effort to him.
During the mock-warfare cruise that opened David’s last year of school a group of his classmates were discussing what cadet ranks each would receive. By then, they knew pretty well
J.F. 45th
which ones would be selected as cadet officers. Jake is certain to be cadet corps commander—unless he falls overboard. Who gets his battalion? Steve? Or Stinky?
Someone suggested that Dave was in line for that battalion.
Dave had been listening instead of talking, a standard feature of his “low profile”—and very nearly a third way to lie, Ira, and easier than its equivalent—talking while saying nothing—and also tends to give the nontalker a reputation for wisdom. Never cared for it myself—talking is the second of the three real pleasures in life and the only thing that sets us apart from the apes. Though just barely.
Now David broke—or appeared to break—his habitual reserve. “No battalion for me,” he said. “No indeedy! I’m going to be regimental adjutant and stand out in front where the girls can see me.”
Perhaps his remark wasn’t taken seriously—regimental adjutant is lower than battalion commander. But it was certain to be repeated, and David knew it, perhaps by the prospective cadet regimental commander to commissioned officers making the selections for cadet officers.
No matter—David was chosen regimental adjutant.
By military organization of that time, a regimental adjutant did stand out in front, all alone, where female visitors could hardly avoid seeing him. But one may doubt that this figured into Dave’s plans.
The regimental adjutant attends no formations other than full regimental formations. He goes to and from classes alone, instead of marching or being marched. Other first classmen are responsible each for some unit of cadets, be it squad, platoon, company, battalion, or regiment; the regimental adjutant has no such responsibilities and only one minor administrative task; he keeps the watch list for the most senior of the cadet officers.
But he is not on that watch list himself. Instead he is supernumerary who fills in when one of them is ill.
And this was the lazy man’s prize. Those cadet officers were perfect specimens and the chances that one would be too ill to take his day’s duty ranged from negligible to zero.
For three years our hero had been standing watch about every tenth day. These watches weren’t difficult, but they involved either getting to bed a half hour late or getting up a half hour early, and much standing on tired feet, all an affront to Dave’s tender regard for his comfort.
But his last year David stood only three watches, and he “stood” those sitting down, as “Junior Officer of the Watch.”
At last the Day arrived. David graduated, was commissioned —then went to the chapel and remarried his wife. If her belly bulged a little, that was not unusual in brides even in those days, and was always ignored, and condoned once a young couple married. It was widely known though rarely mentioned that an eager young bride could accomplish in seven months or less what takes nine for cow or countess.
Dave was safely past all rocks and shoals; he need never again fear going back to that mule and “honest work.”
But life as a junior officer in a warship turned out to be less than perfect. It had good points—servants, a comfortable bed, easy work that rarely got David’s hands dirty, and twice as much money. But he needed that and more, to support a wife, and his ship was at sea enough that he often lacked the pleasant compensations of marriage. Worst of all, he stood heel-and-toe watches on a short watch list; this meant a four-hour night watch about every other night—standing up. He was sleepy much of the time and his feet hurt.
So David applied for training as an aeronaut. This Navy had recently grasped an idea called “air power” and was trying to grab as much of it as possible in order to keep it out of the wrong hands—the Army’s hands, that is. They were behind as the Army had grabbed first—so volunteers for flying were welcome.
David was quickly ordered to shore duty to see if he had the makings of an aeronaut.
He had indeed! He not only had the mental and physical qualities but also was highly motivated—as his new work was done sitting down, whether in classroom or in the air, and he stood no night watches and received pay-and-a-half for sitting down and sleeping at home; flying was classed as “hazardous duty” and extra pay was awarded.
I had best say something about these aeroplanes since they resemble not at all the aerodynes you are used to. In a way they were hazardous. So is breathing. They were not as hazardous as the automotive ground vehicles then in use, and not nearly as hazardous as being a pedestrian. Accidents, fatal and otherwise, usually could be traced to a mistake on the part of the aeronaut—David never let that sort of accident happen to him. He had no wish to be the hottest pilot in the sky; he merely wanted to be the oldest.
Aeroplanes were weird monstrosities looking like nothing in the sky today, save possibly a child’s kite—they were often called “kites.” They had two wings, one above the other, and the aeronaut sat between them. A small baffle helped to deflect wind from his face. Don’t look surprised; these flimsy structures flew very slowly, pulled through the air by a powered screw.
Wings were made of varnished cloth held rigid by struts—you can see from this alone that their speeds could never be any large fraction of the speed of sound—except on sad occasions when an overly eager pilot would dive straight down, then pull the wings off through trying too abruptly to recover a normal attitude.
Which David never did. Some people are natural fliers. The first time David examined an aeroplane he understood its strengths and weaknesses as thoroughly as he understood the milking stool he had left behind him.
He learned to fly almost as quickly as he had learned to swim.
His instructor said, “Dave, you’re a natural. I’m going to recommend you for fighter training.”
Fighter pilots were the royalty of aeroplane fliers; they went up and engaged enemy pilots in single combat. A fighter who did this successfully five times—killed
the opposing pilot instead of being killed—was called an “Ace,” which was a high honor, for, as you can see, the average chance of doing this is the fifth power of one-half, or one in thirty-two. Whereas the chance of getting killed instead is the complement, close to certainty.
Dave thanked his mentor while his skin crawled and his brain went whir-click as it considered ways to avoid this honor without giving up pay-and-a-half and the comfort of sitting down.
There were other disadvantages to being a fighter pilot besides the prime hazard of getting your ass shot off by some stranger. Fighter pilots flew in one-man kites and did their own navigation—without computers, homing devices, or anything that would be taken for granted today—or even later that century. The method used was called “dead reckoning,” because, if you didn’t reckon it correctly, you were dead—since Navy flying was done over water, from a small floating aerodrome, with a margin of safety in fuel for a fighter plane of only minutes. Add to this the fact that a fighter pilot in combat had to choose between doing navigation or giving singleminded attention to attempting to kill a stranger before that stranger killed him. If he wanted to be an “Ace”—or even eat dinner that night—he must put first things first and worry about navigation later.
In addition to the chance of being lost at sea and drowned in a kite that was out of gas—did I say how these things were powered? The air screw was driven by an engine powered by a chemical exothermic reaction—oxidation of a hydrocarbon fluid called “gas,” which it was not. If you think this unlikely, I assure you that it was unlikely even then. The method was woefully inefficient. A flier was not only likely to run out of gas with nothing around him but ocean, but also this temperamental engine often coughed and quit. Embarrassing. Sometimes fatal.
The lesser drawbacks to being a fighter pilot were not all physical danger; they simply did not fit David’s master plan. Fighter pilots were assigned to floating aerodromes, or carriers. In peacetime, which this nominally was, a flier did not work too hard nor stand many watches and spent much of his time ashore at a land aerodrome even though he was carried on the muster rolls of a carrier ship—thereby credited with sea duty, necessary for promotion and pay.
But for several weeks each year a flier assigned to a carrier ship would actually be at sea, practicing mock warfare—which involved getting up an hour before dawn to warm those cantankerous engines and stand by ready to fly at the first hint of real or simulated danger.
David hated this—he would not willingly attend Judgment Day if it was held before noon.
There was another drawback: landing on these floating aerodromes. On land, David could land on a dime and give back change. But that depended on his own skill, highly developed because his own skin was at stake. But landing on a carrier depended on another pilot’s skill—and David held a dark opinion of entrusting his skin to the skill, good intentions, and alertness of someone else.
Ira, this is so unlike anything you are likely to have seen in your life that I am at loss. Consider your skyport here at New Rome: In landing, a ship is controlled from the ground—right? So it was with aeroplanes landing on carriers—but the analogy breaks down because a landing on a carrier in those days used no instruments. None. I’m not fooling.
It was done by eye alone, just as a boy in a game of catch snatches a ball out of the air—but David was the ball, and the skill used to catch him was not his own but that of a pilot standing on the carrier. David had to suppress his own skill, his own opinions, and place utter faith in the pilot on the carrier—anything less brought disaster.
David had always followed his own opinion—against the whole world if necessary. To place that much faith in another man ran counter to his deepest emotions. A carrier landing was like baring his belly to a surgeon and saying, “Go ahead and cut”—when he was not sure that surgeon was competent to slice ham. Carrier landing came closer to causing David to give up pay-and-a-half and easy hours than any other aspect of flying, so torn was he by the necessity of accepting another pilot’s decision—and one not even sharing his danger, at that!
It took all his willpower to do it the first time, and it never became easy. But he learned one lesson that he never expected to learn—that is, that there were circumstances in which another man’s opinion was not only better than his own, but incomparably better.
You see—no, perhaps you don’t; I have not explained the circumstances. An aeroplane landed on a carrier in a controlled crash, through a hook in its tail catching a wire rope stretched across the top deck. But if the flier follows his own judgment based on experience in landing on a flying field, he is certain to crash into the stem of the ship—or, if he knows this and tries to allow for it, he will fly too high and miss the rope. Instead of a big flat field and plenty of room for minor mistakes, he has only a tiny “window” which he must hit precisely, neither right nor left, nor up nor down, nor too fast nor too slow. But he can’t see what he is doing well enough to judge these variables correctly.
(Later on, the process was made semiautomatic, then automatic, but when it was finally perfected, carriers for aeroplanes were obsolete—a capsule description of most human “progress”: By the time you learn how, it’s too late.
(But it often turns out that what you have learned applies to some new problem. Or we would still be swinging from trees.)
So the flier in the aeroplane must trust a pilot on deck who can see what is going on. He was called “the landing signal officer” and used wigwag flags to signal orders to the aeroplane’s pilot.
The first time David tried this unlikely stunt he chased around the sky three times for fresh approaches before he controlled his panic, quit trying to override the judgment of the LSO, and was allowed to land.
Only then did he discover how scared he was—his bladder cut loose.
That evening he was awarded a fancy certificate: the Royal Order of the Wet Diaper—signed by the LSO, endorsed by his squadron commander, witnessed by his squadron mates. It was a low point in his life, worse than any his plebe year, and it was little consolation that the order was awarded so frequently that certificates were kept ready and waiting for each new group of still-damp fliers.
From then on he was letter-perfect in following orders of landing signal officers, obeying like a robot, emotions and judgment suppressed by a sort of autohypnosis. When it came time to qualify in night landings—much worse on the nerves as the pilot in the air couldn’t see anything but lighted wands the LSO waves instead of flags—David landed perfectly on his first approach.
David kept his mouth shut about his determination not to seek glory as a fighter pilot until he completed all requirements to make permanent his flying status. Then he put in a request for advanced training—in multiple-engine aircraft. This was embarrassing, as his instructor who thought so well of his potential was now his squadron commander and it was necessary to submit this request through him. Once the letter started through the mill, he was called to his boss’s stateroom.
“Dave, what is this?”
“Just what it says, sir. I want to learn to fly the big ones.”
“Are you out of your head? You’re a fighter pilot. Three months of this scouting squadron—one-quarter, so I can give you a good Fitness Report—and you do indeed leave for advanced training. As a fighter.”
David didn’t answer.
His squadron commander persisted. “Dave, are you fretting over that silly ‘Diaper Diploma’? Half the pilots in the fleet have won it. Hell, man, I’ve got one myself. It didn’t hurt you with your shipmates; it just made you look human when you were beginning to suffer from too tight a halo.”
David still did not comment.
“Damn it, don’t just stand there! Take this letter and tear it up. Then submit one for fighter training. I’ll let you go now, instead of waiting three months.”
Dave stood mute. His boss looked at him and turned red, then said softly, “Maybe I was wrong. Maybe you don’t have what it takes to be a fig
hter—Mister Lamb. That’s all. Dismissed.”
In the “big ones,” the multiple-engine flying boats, David at last found his home. They were too big to fly from a carrier at sea; instead duty with them counted as sea duty, although in fact David almost always slept at home—his own bed, his own wife—save for an occasional night as duty officer when he slept at the base, and still less frequent occasions when the big boats flew at night. But they did not fly too often even in daylight and fine weather; they were expensive to fly, too expensive to risk, and the country was going through an economy wave. They flew with full crews—four or five for two-engine boats, more for four-engine boats, and often with passengers to permit people to get flying time to qualify for that extra pay. All of this suited Dave—no more nonsense of trying to navigate while doing sixteen other things, no more relying on the judgment of a landing signal officer, no more depending on just one neurotic engine, no more worries about running out of gas. True, given a choice, he would always make every landing himself—but when he was ranked out of this by a senior pilot, he did not let his worry show and in time ceased to worry, as all big-boat pilots were careful and disposed to live a long time.
(Omitted)
—years David spent comfortably while being promoted two ranks.
Then war broke out. There were always wars that century —but not always everywhere. This one included practically every nation on Earth. David took a dim view of war; in his opinion the purpose of a navy was to appear so fierce as to make it unnecessary to fight. But he was not asked, and it was too late to worry, too late to resign, nor was there anywhere to run. So he did not worry about what he could not help, which was good, as the war was long, bitter, and involved millions of deaths.
“Grandfather Lazarus, what did you do during this war?”
Me? I sold Liberty Bonds and made four-minute speeches and served both on a draft board and a rationing board and made other valuable contributions—until the President called me to Washington, and what I did then was hush-hush and you wouldn’t believe it if I told you. None of your lip, boy; I was telling you what David did.