TARGET FOR TO-DAY—CONFESSIONS OF AN AMATEUR DROGUE.

Flak, 1 July 1943, Page 26

TARGET FOR TO-DAY—CONFESSIONS OF AN AMATEUR DROGUE.

This is going to be one of those confession stories. I haven’t told anyone before, but I can’t keep the darned thing on my conscience all my life. It occurred like this. We happen to have borrowed a plane from the Air Force, so that it can fly round while we practise taking shots at it. It’s a swell idea, don’t you think? One after the other, everyone of importance in the camp takes a trip in it, starting from the officers and working down to the less important blokes like me. Then they walk round sticking out their chests, saying how good they are. Now it’s my turn. I’m not so keen. I get sick in anything a boat, a train, a car —darned near on a pushbike. I’m O.K. when I’m walking. And after watching those blokes up in the air I decide there ain’t no future in this flying business. And what’s the use of taking on something without a future, especially when you’re the world’s champion Jonah. Anyway, I say I’ll go up all right. You can't very well back out, and if other blokes go around sticking out their chests in front of the W.A.A.C.’s, why can’t I? When we get out to Taieri, there is the plane all waiting for us. It always says that in the books, and it must be right. I think it is a sort of a dodge to make sure you can’t change your mind. It isn’t one of these modern stream-lined things. It seems to me more like a lot of packing cases tied together with bits of wire. Anyway, it looks like the thing that has been flying around camp, so I guess it must go all right. The pilot gets us to sign a document about going at our own risk or something. There is another chap going up with me as passenger, too, so we both sign it. The pilot laughs. “ I don’t know what they make you sign that thing for,” he says. “ If anything happens when we’re up high, then I guess we’ll get down all right, and if anything happens down low — well, I reckon that won’t be much use to you. Ha! Ha! ” “Ha! Ha! ” says the other chap. “ Ha! Ha! ” says menot very loud. Maybe I haven’t got a sense of humour. The pilot says the back seat is the worst. We toss for seats. I climb into the back. The

ether chap sits facing me, looking right at me. For some reason or other, I don’t like that. It’s not what you would call a comfortable seat. Just a little canvas thing stuck up in a lot of girders. There is a bit of rope tied to one of them and that is for me to hold on to. I grab it and wind it round my wrist a few times to make sure. I’m stuck up on my parachute with my head looking out over the top. I guess I should get a good view. Then the plane starts tearing across the ground to take off. A gale hits me in the face and nearly blows my head off. I crouch down, bent over in half, so that the draught just collects me above the eyes. The parachute straps cut into my shoulders and nearly choke me. My lumbago starts yelling out about the way I’ve bent my back up. Then my goggles, which have a nose piece on them, nearly suffocate me. I try to fix them up with the hand not hanging on to the rope, and they fall over my nose.. The nose piece falls into my mouth. Every now and then I lift my head a quarter of an inch so that I can see over the sideUp we go to 12,000 feet. It’s swell up here. The town is away below us and all the harbour and Peninsula, just as you see it on a map. This is great. I do my best to gaze at it. for a while —if you can call it gazing out of the corner of one eye. I’m still gazing when we go into a patch of cloud. When we come out I’m looking right at the sea. Hell, that’s funny. The other chap is laughing at me. Then I wake —we turned round in that cloud. I look over the other side and sure enough there is Dunedin, just like it was before. After about 20 minutes, I begin to get a bit tired of Dunedin. This flying is a good thing, you know, but a man can’t sit looking at a map for half an hour and still like it. And we don’t seem to be getting anywhere —just going backwards and forwards. It’s getting pretty cold, too. It starts at both ends of me at once and works in to the middle. My legs turn into stone, my hands go a delicate shade of purple, and my back starts freezing into a permanent stoop. My teeth start to chatter and I begin to shiver. Every time I shiver my goggles fall over my mouth. When 1 get them back up again they are fogged so I can’t see out of them.

Then we go down. Not gently, but all of a sudden, from 12,000 feet down to 100. The wires whistle and everything rattles. I start thinking all the nails will come out. (Maybe they don’t use nails on these things.) Everything roars and whistles and screams as if it is going hysterical. I just about am. The gale is nearly scalping me, so I duck down a bit further, heaven knows how. Then all of a sudden we flatten outeverything except me. For a second I think I’m going to keep going down —through the bottom of the plane. But the plane drags me after it, with my stomach close behind. Then the pilot does some of this low-flying stuff. It’s great, that stuffif you like it. As he leap-frogs over a factory chimney, something hits me in the back of the throat. I think it is my breakfast. Next minute I am sure it is— can see it with my own eyes. All Dunedin seems to have got mixed up. One second I see the Gasworks, the next I’m getting a new angle on Queen’s Gardens. Next I see the deck of a ship at the wharf tearing past, next the Gasworks again, next Knox Church. It’s crazy —like Irish stew. Hell—what made me think of stew? My stomach does a spell of hard work, then has a rest, then comes back at it like a tiger. During the rest I see something that looks like

camp, so I give a wave to show how good I am. At least, I stick my arm out, and the wind nearly dislocates my shoulder. Darn this waving business. We pass over the Caledonian Ground and I see that the caretaker has a moustache. It’s a grey one, rather long and a bit curly at the ends. Then we head for home, after shaking hands with the pilot’s girl friend over Wakari or somewhere. We touch old Mother Earth — best mother a man ever had. As we climb out, the pilot notices that a big patch of fabric has gone missing from the fuselage. He scratches his head. “ Gosh, I wonder where I left that,” he says. “Of course, I wouldn’t know. I lose all sense of where I am when I get within 50 feet of the ground. Ha! Ha!” “ Ha! Ha! ” says the other chap. “ Ha! Ha! ” says me. “ I’m blind in one eye, anyway,” says the pilot. “Ha! Ha!” “ Ha! Ha! ” says the other chap. “ Ha! Ha! ” says me. When I get back to camp I stick out my chest. Oh, boy! did you see what we did up in that plane? I’m a swell flyer, I am. Reckon I’ll join the Air Force next war. Well, on second thoughts, maybe I’ll be too old. After all, one war is enough for any man.