“Winter’s Morning” by Len,Deighton #GBSS16/27

“Winter’s Morning” by Len,Deighton

Number 16 of 27 Great British Short Stories 

Premise: Flyboys (or grizzled old veterans aged 20 or so) go out on a dawn patrol during WW1

Review: The man could write! (he is still alive, just retired)

Outa ten: 10 – now I want to read the other short stories he wrote

Keywords: “Winter divided new pilots into assets and liabilities at either side of seventy hours. Assets sometimes became true friends and close comrades. Assets might even be told your misgivings. The demise of assets could spread grief through the whole Mess. This boy would be dead within a month.” p208

“Perhaps Winter cultivated this resemblance. He’d outlived all the pilots who had been here when he arrived, to become as high in rank as scout pilots ever became. Yet his moody introspective manner and his off-hand attitude to high and low had prevented him from becoming the commanding officer. So wWinter remained a taciturn misanthrope, without any close companions, except for Ginger who had the same skills of survival and responded equally coldly to overtures of friendship from younger pilots.”p. 209 

“Well, now Winter knew true war stories. When old men decided to barter young men for pride and profit, the transaction was called war.” p 212

“Two dots almost ahead of them to the south-east. Far below, Ginger had seen them already, but the boy wouldn’t notice them until they were almost bumping into him. All the new kids were like that. It’s not a matter of eyesight, it’s a matter of knowledge. Just as a tracker on a safari knows that a wide golden blob in the shadow of a tree at midday is going to be a pride of lions resting after a meal, so in the morning an uptight golden blob in the middle of a plain is a cheetah waiting to make a kill. So at five thousand feet, that near the lines, with shellfire visible, they were going to be enemy two-seaters on artillery observation duty.”  p.212

“Woof: a flamer. The boy: will he jump or burn? The whole world was made up of jumpers or burners. There were no parachutes for pilot yet, so either way a man died.” p215

Words: 

Breechblock – a metal block which closes the aperture at the back part of a rifle or gun barrel.

Look up: Immelmann turn – The term Immelmann turn, named after German World War I Eindeckerfighter ace Leutnant Max Immelmann, refers to two different aircraft maneuvers. In World War I aerial combat, an Immelmann turn was a maneuver used after an attack on another aircraft to reposition the attacking aircraft for another attack. In modern aerobatics, an Immelmann turn (also known as a roll-off-the-top, or simply an Immelmann) is an aerobatic maneuver that results in level flight in the opposite direction at a higher altitude.

Afterlives of the story/connections to other stuff: Pastoral by Nevil ShuteIs it online? Here I think.