and blew the truck into the next world. He also carried his attack so low that he flew through the skyrocketing debris as he pulled out of his dive. Number 4 jet was just entering his attack dive when Samways banked around and got on his tail. Another machine-gunning run, another crushing turn, streaking back down on the target, this time an armored car, and the rockets shot out from under his wings. Minutes later, miles high in the sky, I managed to turn up a bit more pure oxygen; I was sure this was what it was intended for. Just before going again onto the floor of the cockpit, on the last attack, I had glanced into the little mirror to see what Samways was doing but instead saw a face I could not recognize. Eyelids pulled down from the bottoms, so that the eyes were protruding, cheeks creased with long vertical lines, all sodden and formless like gunny sacking dragged from the river. It was myself and I thought, “Good God, what a picture,” but by then the vise held my hands and I could not raise my camera. Sweeping back over our home runway and in for the landing, I looked out at the sleek wings and bulletlike tanks at their tips, then at Bill Samways in the mirror and finally at the little round stains on my knees which were dry and now without color. And I knew that for a short time I had actually been living in another world, a world which now lay beyond me and into which I would never again set foot once the jet rolled to a stop in its place by the squadron shack. And I was glad. LATE JULY: The attack was already twenty-four hours old when I first saw the Mountain. Autumn still had not dimmed the green of rice and soya which swept gownlike from its flanks, nor had the summer sun yet cut through the mists which lay in the valleys and canyons leading back toward its peak. A tiny sooty swallow skimmed low over the paddies beside me then hung fluttering above the poplars just ahead while catching even tinier creatures for her breakfast. Sunlight 36 l Ⅲ. Korea 1950 This is War!
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