19440351[/URL]]There's that near-to-last scene in
12 O'Clock High where the CO is about to board his aircraft and finds he just can't. Body won't do it. He's had enough, and systems outside of his control are now demanding an end to what he's going through.
Were he RAF, RCAF, RAAF, RNZAF or other Commonwealth flier, he'd run the risk of being labelled "Low Moral Fiber". LMF meant transfer out of the unit and the remainder of the war spent performing the lowest ground duties - kitchen prep, sweeping floors, swabbing out the bog. Damned unkind, and indicative of a very weak appreciation for certain psychological realities.
This from a paper on that policy:
There's a lot in there about "stiff upper lip" and class and "dying like a man" and all that other bullsh!t. Truth is, we all have limits. We all manage stress differently and some can take more than others. If your job forces you to find peace in the idea you're already dead and so needn't worry about dying anymore, how in the hell does a person come back from something like that? What's civilian life look like for someone who's "known" he's dead for three years and yet still walks around, eats, sh!ts, sleeps, breathes...
This might help explain why some of our grandfathers preferred not to speak of those times. Hard to look back on the memories of the Ops you flew when you were a dead man in a Halifax over occupied Europe, then look your precious grandchild in the face. Too much of a switch in mindset to handle gracefully. How much of that burden do you want to drop on this kid you love?
Some guys handled it well. Leonard Cheshire was an ice-blooded goddamn hero. Guy Gibson knew his sh!t and flew as often as he could until he made one mistake and died in a Mosquito. Robert Clothier (middle back row in the following photo) flew
56 ops across two tours with 408 Squdron, came home, was the sole survivor of a B25 crash off the end of the runway at Boundary Bay, was paralyzed from the waist down for two years, and then played Relic on The Beachcombers for 27 seasons.
Other aircrew lasted three trips and flat out could not do it even one more time. Were they cowards? Maybe some were. But I can't judge these men. I'm not qualified and I daresay neither are you. I've never been placed in a position where I had to suit up and go sit in a cold dark aluminum tube high above thousands of capable people all of whom wished me dead and had the equipment to make that happen. Not even once. Imagine doing that thirty times. Imagine losing friends almost every op. It happened to him. Why wouldn't it happen to me. Why not me?
How soon? Tonight?
This is the sort of thing I remember every November 11th.
