Under a War-Torn Sky

Henry, although only just turned 19, is not exactly a newbie to the war. He has already undertaken 14 bombing missions, all of them dangerous. However, he is still a young man struggling to come to terms with what is happening around him, and who will embark on an important emotional and psychological journey of self-discovery throughout the narrative, introducing the key theme of The Experience of Coming-of-Age.

Henry thinks often of his home and family in Virginia, with his homesickness revealing how emotionally dependent he still is upon his family, and how much he longs to return to them. He contrasts his present dangerous situation with the peace and security of life on the farm. In Chapter 2, for example, Henry thinks of “the warm bacon smell and sizzling sound of his ma’s frying pan as she cooked breakfast” (21). After he is shot down in France and begins his long walk, he comes across a group of houses with beams in a diamond pattern, and thinks they look “just like gingerbread houses pictured in a book of fairy tales his mother used to read him” (48, emphasis added). As he remembers those days of innocence, tears well up in his eyes. These frequent invocations of family life and Henry’s emotional responses to them speak to how Henry must wrestle with loneliness and uncertainty far from his usual comforts, emphasizing how he must develop resilience and self-reliance if he is to survive his ordeals.

In this section, Henry must confront new dangers, introducing the theme of Courage and Resilience in the Face of Fear. Henry exhibits courageous behavior when he refuses to leave Dan behind when his captain orders a bail out. He drags Dan out of the cockpit, ignoring the fact that this slows him down and puts his own escape at risk. When Out of the Blue is destroyed, Henry finds himself in a different kind of danger, alone and injured in a foreign land. While during his missions Henry always had the camaraderie and support of his fellow servicemen to sustain him, he will now have to navigate unfamiliar terrain on his own, which requires a new kind of courage and focus.

The two Frenchmen Henry meets, who look after him and help him on his way, also show courage despite their fear. The old teacher lost all his students when the Nazis forced them to join their army. They were sent to the Russian front and the teacher believes they are likely all dead. He finally decides to take a stand against the Nazis by helping the downed American flyer. He finds the courage to help even though Henry sees that this “frail, mild man” was “obviously afraid” (58), which suggests people can be courageous at any age and even when they might not appear openly strong or heroic. The second man is the father of one of the teacher’s students, which is why he is ready to help too. He does it for his son, Francois. Both men know the danger they face, and the inspection of the boat by hostile Swiss soldiers clearly shows that danger. These two men are the first in a line of French people, members of the French Resistance, who will all show great courage in protecting him, even though that puts them at risk of capture and execution by the Nazis.

After Henry is shot down, he slowly becomes exposed to another view of the war that he had not up to this point considered. He realizes that bombs have victims, and that French civilians have suffered losses not only from the Germans but also from American bombing raids. The schoolteacher tells him that the people of Mulhouse—a German-occupied French city in Alsace—are not well-disposed toward Americans, since they suffered under severe American bombing. Henry and his colleagues had thought of the war as a battle between warplanes and had “never really thought much about the people they were trying to liberate, or what their struggles must be on the ground under a war-torn sky” (51). Now, he will begin to find out.

Amidst the perils of his situation, Henry exhibits signs of a quiet religious faith that will help him through the trials to come, which also introduces the theme of The Importance of Kindness and Human Connection. Henry prays for the protection of other people, not just his own, which emphasizes his empathy and compassion. For example, he says, “God bless the ground crew” (11) about the team that looks after Out of the Blue, since he trusts them to ensure the plane is in perfect mechanical condition, and knows being grateful for their labor is important. In Chapter 4, when he sees Billy White’s plane get destroyed, he offers a prayer to God for Billy’s survival, even though he and Billy did not always get along well. In these ways, Henry demonstrates his connections to others and his desire to treat others with kindness.