It is the singing of the tenor
which makes the sound of a JU-88 something which one cannot mistake.
He lay listening to the noise, and he felt quite certain about what it was. But where were the
sirens, and where the guns? That
German pilot certainly had a nerve coming near Brighton alone in daylight.
The aircraft was always far away, and soon the noise faded away into the distance. Later on there
was another. This one, too,
was far away, but there was the same deep undulating bass and the high singing tenor, and there
was no mistaking it. He had
heard that noise every day during the battle.
He was puzzled. There was a bell on the table by the bed. He reached out his hand and rang it.
He heard the noise of footsteps
down the corridor, and the nurse came in.
“Nurse, what were those airplanes?”
“I’m sure I don’t know. I didn’t hear them. Probably fighters or bombers. I expect they were
returning from France. Why,
what’s the matter?”
“They were JU-88’s. I’m sure they were JU-88’s. I know the sound of the engines. There were
two of them. What were they
doing over here?”
The nurse came up to the side of his bed and began to straighten out the sheets and tuck them in
under the mattress.
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7
“Gracious me, what things you imagine. You mustn’t worry about a thing like that. Would you
like me to get you something to
read?”
“No, thank you.”
She patted his pillow and brushed back the hair from his forehead with her hand.
“They never come over in daylight any longer. You know that. They were probably Lancasters
or Flying Fortresses.”
“Nurse.”
“Yes.”
“Could I have a cigarette?”
“Why certainly you can.”
She went out and came back almost at once with a packet of Players and some matches. She
handed one to him and when he
had put it in his mouth, she struck a match and lit it.
“If you want me again,” she said, “just ring the bell,” and she went out.
Once toward evening he heard the noise of another aircraft. It was far away, but even so he knew
that it was a single-engined
machine. But he could not place it. It was going fast; he could tell that. But it wasn’t a Spit, and it
wasn’t a Hurricane. It did not
sound like an American engine either. They make more noise. He did not know what it was, and
it worried him greatly. Perhaps
I am very ill, he thought. Perhaps I am imagining things. Perhaps I am a little delirious. I simply
do not know what to think.
That evening the nurse came in with a basin of hot water and began to wash him.
“Well,” she said, “I hope you don’t still think that we’re being bombed.”
She had taken off his pajama top and was soaping his right arm with a flannel. He did not
answer.
She rinsed the flannel in the water, rubbed more soap on it, and began to wash his chest.
“You’re looking fine this evening,” she said. “They operated on you as soon as you came in.
They did a marvelous job. You’ll be
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8
all right. I’ve got a brother in the RAF,” she added. “Flying bombers.”
He said, “I went to school in Brighton.”
She looked up quickly. “Well, that’s fine,” she said. “I expect you’ll know some people in the
town.”
“Yes,” he said, “I know quite a few.”
She had finished washing his chest and arms, and now she turned back the bedclothes, so that his
left leg was uncovered. She
did it in such a way that his bandaged stump remained under the sheets. She undid the cord of his
pajama trousers and took
them off. There was no trouble because they had cut off the right trouser leg, so that it could not
interfere with the bandages.
She began to wash his left leg and the rest of his body. This was the first time he had had a bed
bath, and he was embarrassed.
She laid a towel under his leg, and she was washing his foot with the flannel. She said, “This