Driving the Bus

Driving The Bus

Ralph Martin flies his Anson Mark V bomber in formation through the belly of a storm with seventeen other bombers at eight thousand feet. The group is on a routine mission training navigators. They took off from #2 ANS Charlottetown in the rain and headed out toward the Magdalene Islands to the north. The purpose of their mission: to fly on instruments alone, out and back, at high altitude.

I am a bus driver, thinks Ralph as he sits in the cockpit squinting into the swirling dark tatters of thunderhead whipping by. A bolt of lightning slashes across the clouds, highlighting nimbus dark edges in the roiling storm. He clutches the controls numbly, barely able to feel them through three pairs of gloves. His breath plumes in front of him as he checks his instruments: the gyroscope reads level, altimeter—eight thousand feet.

Ralph’s ears are full of the plane’s propeller engines. He barely hears the thunder. It is a like a beast bellowing above the herd. Suddenly the plane lurches, tossed by a cross draft in the storm like a child’s toy. Really poor, poor judgment—sending us up in this.

Ralph volunteered for the air force in 1941 at twenty-one. Not out of some desire for glory, but in order to avoid being conscripted into the army. Since then, he’s either been training himself, or training other recruits. He is a cog in the machine, churning out qualified navigators, wireless operators, and bombardiers, like items on the assembly line. Kind of boring, but at least he is an officer—the money is good, they feed him well, and he gets to wear a nice uniform—not bad for a prairie boy raised through the Great Depression.

The trainee wireless operator tells Ralph that he’s received instructions to return to base. Ralph banks the airplane right and comes around one-hundred-eighty degrees. The trainee navigator confirms they are on course back to base. The storm picks up, lightning dancing across her cunning fury. The plane rattles along like a piece of balsa wood in a swollen river. Ralph asks the wireless operator to switch to loop so they can be sure they are on the right track home. Why do we want to be up here? It’s a scrub mission. He brings the airplane down to four thousand feet.

The closest Ralph has come to being in the war is meeting guys coming back from it, and that is enough. He has seen it makes a person fatalistic to be faced with imminent death every day. He flew a mission with one fellow who had come back, a low level bombing run to train a bombardier. That maniac tried to take off as if the Anson Mark V were a highly maneuverable fighter plane. Ralph thought the wings would tear off. They set the marsh on fire when their first drop missed the target. On their second run, flares, signaling to abort, suddenly appeared in front of the plane as they cleared the outer edge of the marsh. They had nearly bombed the ground spotters who were fighting the fire. The veteran just shrugged.

They follow the loop signal back toward #2 ANS Charlottetown. It's taking much longer than it should. Ralph checks with the navigator to ensure they are on course—they are. He now knows they are dealing with a strong headwind. He checks the fuel gauge. They’ll be okay—for now.

It was all much more exciting when he started. Learning to fly was more exhilarating than ferrying navigators about. Tearing through the sky in tiny one-man biplanes, they were all like little kids in a vast playground—playing tag, or pretending they were dog-fighting with the Germans, or just loving the feeling of it—that sudden childish awe they got when they flew into an enormous cloud formation, finding it hollow and full of sunlight, like being in a cathedral in the sky. That was in Saskatoon, the prairies, an elemental place, all flat land and big sky.

The mountains provided different pleasures. He learned to fly Anson Mark V bombers in Vulcan, Alberta. There they flew out to the Rockies to explore canyons, or chase caribou across the badlands. They swooped in low over the herds scaring the bejeebers out of them. They watched the caribou leaping over chasms and arroyos. Just young men letting off steam.

Ralph is worried. The fuel gauge is reading dangerously low. They need to get back soon. If they run out of fuel, how long will they last in the cold water of the Gulf of St. Lawrence? Four minutes? Five? Not long enough. The rain lashing off the cockpit window makes him think he is drowning in the sky.

So he reported a day late to #2 ANS, what was the big deal? The train was delayed. They couldn’t possibly hold that against him, right? Ralph and the other late-reporters stood in line at attention awaiting a dressing down from the English air commodore. “You realize, of course, that if we were in a theatre-of-war, I could have you shot!” says the commodore. Stuffy old fart.

Prince Edward Island humps out of the storm like the back of a leviathan. They are going to make it. At night the island is black like the water, only it doesn’t reflect the lightning, so it’s like a hole in the sea. A safe hole.

After landing the airplane Ralph cuts the engines. The airfield looks empty. They have taken so long to get back—they can’t be the first. Ralph waits in the hangar with his crew. Only four planes have come back. Four. He opens his logbook and records his flight time. His pen hovers over the slot for comments. Fourteen planes lost. All those boys. The comments slot is an inch long. He leaves it blank. He snaps the book closed and walks back to barracks. He needs to rest: he’ll have to drive the bus again tomorrow.