“What do you miss?”
“Everything. The lights, Rockefeller Center, the Chrysler building, Pan Am …” he laughed, “… there’s no other place. Like Jimmy Walker said—better be a lamp-post in New York than Mayor of Chicago.”
She laughed. “For me it’s Horn and Hardart Automats, Tiffany’s, and Radio City Music Hall and the Rockettes.” She looked at his face. “Are you scared at all, Bill?”
He frowned. “Scared of what?”
“Of what you’ll be doing overseas.”
“No. It’s not dangerous, if you’re properly trained.”
“Colonel Williams said he’d contact me from time to time because the mails are so bad.”
“I’ll keep in touch myself, kid.” He smiled. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be OK.”
“What time do you have to leave tonight?”
“About eight. They’re sending a car for me to take me to the airfield.” He smiled. “I thought we’d have lunch back at the hotel and then there’s a Bing Crosby film—Holiday Inn—how about we go and see that?”
“Can I see you off at the airport?”
“I’m not going from the airport, it’s an army flight from an airfield.” He took her hand. “I’d rather see you off at the bus terminal about seven and you’ll be home by the time I take-off. OK?”
She nodded and shrugged. “I’m going to miss you terribly.”
“I’ll miss you too, honey. But the sooner we get on with it the sooner it’ll be over.”
“Just come back in one piece. That’s all that matters to me.”
He stood up. “Let’s go, honey. We’ve got time to walk back down the Avenue.”
They took a cab to the Port Authority Bus Terminal and Malloy had timed it so there was little time before the bus left. She bought a couple of magazines, kissed him goodbye and then took her seat on the bus, sitting in the window seat so that she could see him at least until the bus left.
As she looked at him she thought that he looked too young to be part of a war. In his uniform he looked even younger. She had always been doubtful about his joining OSS and now that she worked for them she was even more concerned. They had a recklessness that frightened her because they seemed to see war as some kind of game. And she knew from the reports that she was typing that it was no game. As the bus moved off she waved to him, holding up the teddy-bear that he had bought for her at one of the stores near Times Square. She watched him smiling and waving until the bus turned onto 42nd Street.
It was three days before Malloy landed at the RAF airfield in Scotland. He was taken across to the Officers’ Mess and given a bunk-bed for the night. It seemed that he wasn’t expected. Nobody had been informed about his arrival or what they should do with him after he landed. The wing commander who took charge of him seemed faintly amused that he should be so surprised.
“It’s par for the course, captain. Nobody’s ever expected. You get urgent orders to report to some place you’ve never heard of and when you get there they’ve never heard of you.” He laughed. “You say you’re in OSS. What the hell is that?”
“The Office of Strategic Services.”
“Never heard of it. Is it American?”
“Yes. It’s part of the army.”
“Well, I’ve sent a signal down to London to see what they want me to do with you. Meantime, have a meal in the Mess and get some sleep. It could be a couple of days before we discover who owns you.”
It was the first time that Malloy had been outside the United States and the first time in his life where he had felt ill at ease with men who were of his own age. They weren’t unfriendly, they passed down the mustard, salt and some kind of tomato sauce in a bottle. But they were pilots, navigators and air-gunners and he was an outsider with nothing to contribute to their talk. He could barely understand half of it. They had a special coded jargon that was their own. They kept talking about “wizard prangs” and roaring with laughter at a pilot with his arm in a sling. He could hardly believe it when he found out the next day that a “wizard prang” was crashing an aircraft. And they were amused at it. When he asked where he could find a phone to call home he was told that there were no overseas telephone calls allowed apart from official ones.
As the days went by without word from London he sometimes wondered if it wasn’t all some elaborate scheme to test out his morale, but gradually he was absorbed into the squadron and became aware that their exclusive attitude was born of knowing that the odds were against them surviving the next sortie over Germany. In the second week there were two non-returning air-crews after a raid on Hamburg.
At the end of the second week he was called to the Squadron Office and the CO of the unit told him that he was to travel to Manchester where he would do his parachute course.
At the RAF parachute school on the outskirts of Manchester it was as if some official word of approval had gone out. He was the object of curiosity. The Yank. And Malloy found himself responding.
In the echoing hangars, in the creaking baskets of captive balloons and in the bellies of aircraft he was America’s representative. Joked about, teased and genuinely liked, he was at home at last. In the Mess at night he talked to young men who came from the poverty-stricken backstreets of industrial cities and others from middle-class homes. There were young men from the upper classes who he disliked instantly, only to find them as brave and as unsure as the rest of the men on the course. He learned a lot about how to not be an American in just over three weeks. When
