On Blazing Wings

 

In the black crystal of a Lapland night, men spoke in whispers while they awaited the coming of dawn and battle. Squadron Three of the Second Regiment of the Ilmavoimat, Lentorykmentti, complained like sleepy eagles upon the line, their Mercury VIIs clanking and wheezing, dying out and revving up as though suddenly emerging from a nap into instant awareness of their responsibilities that day.

 

It was becoming barely possible at this hour of 9:00 AM to make out the Fokker D.XXIs which spread their wings close against the breast of earth, shadows against the weirdly beautiful luminescence of the snow.

 

Overhead the brilliance of the northern lights faded slowly before the coming of a briefly interested sun. In the north, the Wind Mother had already stilled her charges. Day was being ushered in—the most important day in the life of David Duane.

 

The pilots huddled about an oil fire in an odorous choom, pretending to find heat in it, but quite able to see one another’s breath, and all continually flexing their ungloved hands to keep the frost from creeping in. By the smoky light of the oil lantern, hanging from a wooden hook on a pole which reached across the upper half of the skin tent, these men looked like Arctic bears with human masks; their militzkas were huge and shaggy, and bulging because of the flying suits underneath; their legs, encased in stumplike pimmies, enhanced the impression. They were not dressed in accordance with Finn regulations, for each had his own idea on how to keep warm. Besides, could they not allow themselves a liberty in many things, considering their post here?

 

The Russians were less than thirty kilometers to the east, and the Russians were persistent in advancing to suicide upon the daggers and into the bullets of the stubbornly resisting handful of Finns. And supporting these valiant troops in white was Squadron Three.

 

If gas could be gotten, if bullets and bombs and engine parts came up, then Squadron Three could continue to carry on. But gas, so far north, was dear, and bullets and bombs were few. For not much weight can be carried by air transport, especially when nearly all available planes were battling bitterly in the south with an enemy of tremendous superiority in the air as well as on the ground; and on those days when planes could be had, then the weather was too bad and the transport pilots must brave the danger of missing this hastily organized port and flying far out into the Arctic Sea to be lost in the eerie flare of the northern lights.

 

It was a suicide post, just as it was a suicide war. Not one man in this group really expected to come out alive. Shot down behind Russian lines, a pilot became a prey to furious troops—if he did not freeze.

 

“I do not think it is so,” said a young Finn lieutenant. “I think it is something which gets into a man’s head—a premonition which takes the form of a vision.”

 

“Saj saw no vision,” replied David Duane’s right wingman. “What he saw was a mirage—like the city Galahad saw when he parted from Sir Percivale and mounted up into the sky.”

 

“I think it was a vision,” said the lieutenant. “Three men have seen it now, and those three are gone. Saj saw it, and Saj is gone. Why haven’t the rest of us seen it? Why haven’t I seen it—I who led his flight?”

 

“Perhaps,” said David, “you are to be with us yet awhile, our machine-gun sweetheart.”

 

“And perhaps not,” said the lieutenant with a shrug. “But I still say—”

 

“It’s a mirage,” said the right wingman. “Though I can’t claim any such travels as our pet wolf David, still I have seen a thing or two. And once, in the Arctic, I saw a mirage of a town. It must have been a mirage, because everyone else saw it as well.”

 

“You defeat yourself,” said the lieutenant. “The rest of us do not see this mirage, and those who have seen it have not been with us more than a week or two thereafter. I’m not superstitious, but if I see it, I’m quite sure I shall make a will and pass out from sheer fright.”

 

“No doubt,” said David ironically. “And take half a dozen of the Red gentlemen along with you to ply you with bromides. There are too many things about this north which are strange to me for me to doubt anything.”

 

“Then don’t doubt that it’s just a mirage,” said the right wingman. “All this nonsense—”

 

“The Lapps believe in such a city,” said a captain. “Or at least they believe in such a land beyond this. Their word for God is also their word for sky—Jumala—and they keep speaking of a heaven on top of the hills—hiisi. And their Puhjola isn’t unlike the Norse Valhalla. Only those killed in battle can go to Puhjola, and our three brothers were very certainly warriors. If they saw Puhjola—”

 

“It’s just a mirage,” said the right wingman. “Why, there’s such a mirage in Alaska. In the winter it appears to be a city built on the clouds, perfect in every detail. Why, it’s so real that a pilot in the United States Army flew right into it trying to find out what town it was. And you’ll all admit that this country is crazy with mirages. Why, only yesterday I almost pulled my ship apart trying to get away from a flight of our Red friends, only to look back and discover that they hadn’t existed, except as reflections on the air. Maybe what I saw was just a picture projected from a real Red flight, perhaps far to the south.”

 

“Saj didn’t make any ordinary town of it,” said the captain. “He described to me a city which couldn’t possibly exist in this day. Golden minarets and domes, parks and wide streets—”

 

The dull cough and sigh of a rocket shell, their takeoff signal, brought them lumbering from the choom. The air was so clear and sharp that their senses were quickened instantly into excitement. The rim of a pale sun was barely showing on the southern horizon, spreading a blue twilight over the limitless table of snow.

 

David had a feeling of unreality. His pimmies crunched on the snow crust—as hard and brittle as rock salt; his goggles were like panes of ice. He mounted to his catwalk and thrust back the cockpit screen, feeling the Fokker rock sturdily under his weight.

 

“I fixed your motor cannon,” said an ordnance officer on the other side of the ship. “I hope it won’t jam today.” 

 

“Thanks,” said David, and the puff of breath which came out with the word was so instantly frozen that it tinkle-tinkled as it dropped on the metal cowl.

 

David slid into the pit and adjusted the seat a trifle. The ordnance officer dropped the screen. David ran an eye over his instrument panel. The warm air from the engine was welcome upon his face and he went through contortions to remove his pimmies and militzka, for to sweat in here meant to freeze a little later outside.

 

As leader of the third flight, he waited for the first to get away. And then, pacing the second, with a wave to his two wingmen, he cracked the throttle. The ship jolted as the skis broke loose and then sped forward with a triumphant snarl.

 

David Duane had begun the most important day of his life.