Under a War-Torn Sky

“‘Hey, didya hear Lord Ha Ha last night?’ asked Henry’s navigator, Fred Bennett, as they slogged across the mud-washed base.

‘Naw, I never listen to that guy,’ said Henry, even though he did. ‘He’s full of baloney.’”

Lord Haw-Haw (not Lord Ha Ha as the author writes) was the nickname of William Joyce. He was born in New York, and his family later moved to England, where Joyce obtained a British passport. He became a German citizen in 1940. He supported the Nazis and broadcast Nazi propaganda to the United Kingdom during the war from his base in Hamburg, Germany. The nickname was a reference to his haughty, pseudo-aristocratic manner of speaking. Joyce was captured in 1945 and returned to Britain. He was hanged for treason in 1946.

“‘Skip was in terrible pain, dragging himself along the ground. Dad said he was my dog, so it was my responsibility to stop his misery.’ Henry’s voice cracked. ‘So I got my rifle. And I shot him…I don’t think I’ll ever forgive that old bastard for making me do that.’”

Henry recalls to Dan the harshness of his father after Henry’s dog Skippy was hit by a truck and broke both his back legs. Henry was only eleven years old. His father seemed obsessed with making a man of Henry, even though here he is still a young child. His father has very rigid rules about right and wrong, Henry says.

“Did Billy make it out? Lord, I know he can be a jerk, Henry prayed silently. But look after him now.”

Henry has just seen the plane Billy White is copiloting hit by a rocket fired by a German fighter plane. He knows the plane has no chance of getting home, and then he sees five crewmembers bail out and their parachutes open. Henry and Billy are not the best of friends, but Henry’s thoughts at this moment reveal much about his character. Not only does he hope that Billy survives, but he expresses himself, not for the last time, in prayer. This shows the basic religious nature he possesses, likely instilled in him as a boy by his mother Lilly. It recurs from time to time in the novel.

“‘I have never done this before,’ said the teacher. ‘But it is time for me to take action. I watched them take my students and did nothing. An old man’s fear. Tomorrow I will know how to proceed.’”

The speaker is the old schoolteacher who offers Henry assistance. He is referring to the fact that the Germans made his students join the army. They were sent to the Russian front and he fears they are all dead. He has finally decided to take a stand. Each of the Resistance members who helps Henry has likely had a moment like this: a tragedy happens to someone they love, they are devastated and grieve, but then they draw on resources they perhaps did not know they had, and decide to fight back with whatever means at their disposal. They may not have the firepower of the Germans but they have the willpower, which proves equally formidable.

“‘Boy, you gonna throw away that scholarship to the university because a bunch of foreigners are fighting again? People who don’t have anything to do with this family, this farm? They don’t even speak English, most of ‘em.’ Henry had simply nodded his head, yes.

‘Then you haven’t learned anything from me,’ Clayton had snapped, and stormed out the back door.”

Clayton Forester berates his son for his decision to sign up for the Air Corps. It is typical of Henry’s father, who often criticizes and denigrates his son. Henry’s meek response shows how he was intimidated and dominated by his father’s aggressive manner and harsh words. This passage also shows how the author uses mini-flashbacks to convey the flavor of Henry’s family life back in Virginia.

“Henry had had a taste of hiding and giving up his life to strangers and pure luck. It wasn’t fun. And hadn’t he flown enough missions through hell? Hadn’t he seen enough blood and explosions? Tennis and starting his college education sounded pretty darn good.”

This is a big moment for Henry. In hospital recovering from his ankle injury, he must decide whether to choose a safe life at the camp in Adelboden with 500 other American servicemen or strike out alone and try to get back to England. He thinks hard about it and is tempted to choose the easier course, but he decides it would be cowardly not to try to escape and rejoin the war effort. He is sure that his people back home—his mother, Patsy, and probably his father, Clayton—would all want him to give it a try.

“Mais qu’est-ce qu’on deviendrait sans la protection des jeunes hommes forts comme vous qui nous gardent sains et saufs…?”

Madame Gaulloise speaks in French as she, with Henry in tow, bustles out of the waiting room at the train station in Montreux. She is ingratiating herself with the soldiers so they will not suspect her. She is skilled at creating distractions that will enable her to do the work for the Resistance without being detected. Her words are not translated, which may puzzle the reader but effectively conveys the situation from Henry’s point of view; he does not know what she is saying either. A translation of her words would be: “But what would we become without the protection of strong young men like you who keep us safe and sound?”

“He could tell too, that she was so engaged, so elevated by creating this moment of musical beauty, she had completely forgotten the sorrow of her imprisoned son, forgotten the dangers of her clandestine work. It was as if he was witnessing a rebirth, a brand-new butterfly shedding ugliness and discovering with some surprise and delight that it had wings.”

The author does not often use figurative language; this is one of the few examples. Henry is listening to Madame Gaulloise playing a Beethoven sonata on the piano. He feels that she has forgotten all the trials and dangers of the present and has entered another world of peace, beauty, and joy. The simile of the butterfly suggests the possibility of freedom or transcendence through art—a world quite beyond what Henry has ever experienced.

“‘Pablo was a monster when he turned on a lover. But before’—she paused—‘il était superbe. I will always have that.’”

Madame Gaulloise has just disclosed to Henry that she once had an affair with the great Pablo Picasso. Picasso was a notorious womanizer who tended to treat his lovers badly, leaving them emotionally scarred. Madame, however, seems to look back on it fondly. All this is fascinating to young Henry, who has not yet made love to a woman, and adds to Madame’s glamour.

“Soon he heard the rush of water. A seething waterfall crashed through the gorge to a bottom Henry couldn’t see. A hundred steps farther he came to a great heap of rocks that had tumbled down in a crushing avalanche of stone. He scrambled over it, knocking loose a slide of pebbles into the abyss. Henry stopped to catch his breath and calm his heart, racing with thinner air and the precariousness of his perch.”

Often the descriptions of nature focus on the beauty of the scene. To that is added in this passage the danger that this particular experience of nature poses to Henry as he descends the French Alps alone. One misstep and he would fall hundreds of feet.

“‘Mercy buckets,’ Henry said purposefully mispronouncing merci beaucoup, French for ‘thank you very much’, with absolutely the worst southern drawl he could muster.”

Young Pierre has just brought Henry a mug of milk in the hayloft. Pierre laughs when he hears Henry’s words. Henry, an only child who had always enjoyed the company of his friend Patsy’s younger brothers, thus initiates the playful relationship that he will develop with Pierre during the one month of their acquaintance.

“He kept to the boy’s small talk and held to the belief that the boy hadn’t explained his uncle’s statement as a way of protecting Henry from knowing too much. It hurt Henry’s feelings to consider that the boy might not entirely trust him.”

Pierre’s uncle has just made a statement in French that the forest will be “busy” that night, meaning that the Resistance will be active. Pierre seems to have learned already, at the age of eight, that it is not a good idea to say too much about such operations, since secrecy is essential. The pervasive issue of trust is also relevant here, as Henry’s reaction shows.

“Ma. Henry had tried not to think much about home; it always made him go wobbly inside. He’d been so all-fired hot to get out and see the world. All he wanted to see now was that sunny kitchen of white cabinets and sweet smells.”

Henry may try to avoid thinking of home, but he does so nonetheless, frequently. This passage shows how the author segues from the immediate moment—Henry is here in the kitchen of Pierre’s mother, watching her cook—to Henry’s memories of incidents from his own family life. What follows is a memory of how the last time he had been home on leave he and his mother did a little dance in the kitchen as a song played on the radio.

“‘Please, God. Please, don’t let them find us. Please.’ Henry squeezed his eyes shut and silently prayed harder than ever.”

Henry and Pierre are hiding in the barn and German soldiers are searching it. In moments such as these, Henry’s habit is to pray. In the course of the novel, he prays many times, although usually only in times of crisis. At other times it does not appear that his worldview is deeply religious, although he certainly believes in the Christian God.

“As he pulled it [a blanket] up over the boy, Henry sang a song his own mother had sung to him in hard times, ‘You Are My Sunshine.’ It was a song about the joy one person could bring another, and what sadness would come if that sunshine were taken away. The lyrics now were bittersweet to Henry and as he sang his voice became a hoarse whisper.”

This is Henry’s touching farewell to Pierre, of whom he has become very fond. It shows how Henry has not been so hardened by war that he cannot experience tender human feelings. “You Are My Sunshine” was first recorded in 1939 by The Pine Ridge Boys (Marv Taylor and Doug Spivey). It was immediately popular and has remained so ever since.

“He reminded Henry of the ace pilots they’d all admired so much back at base…The kind that they all believed could outrun Death and never be hit. But Henry knew better than that now. Dan’s death had shown him that even the seemingly invincible could die.”

Henry is impressed by his first sight of the commander of the Resistance camp. In the more sober thought that follows, however, he shows how he has matured over the previous few months and now takes a more realistic view of life and war.

“Dad’s a good farmer. He never gives up. He kept us from going hungry when a lot of families bellied up in the Depression. I’m not sure if the Depression made him so tough, or if he survived because he was that tough to begin with.”

In conversation with Billy White, Henry expresses a softer attitude to his bullying father. He understands him much better now, recognizing his determination and resilience. Henry goes on to admit that he has learned from his father, developing the toughness that has stood him in good stead in the war. His relationship with Clayton can thus be said to be evolving, even though they are not in direct contact with each other as Henry goes through his European adventure.

“He could see the mountains they’d just left shooting up in the azure sky far away. Before him stretched acres and acres of tightly packed golden sunflowers. They were tall as corn, and their huge yellow faces all turned together toward the sun. Henry had never seen such a beautiful crop.”

During a few days of relative peace and security, Henry looks through a chink in the barn he and his copilots are taking refuge in during daylight hours. They are journeying by van to where they will start walking across the Pyrenees. This is one of many passages where the calm beauty of nature impresses itself on Henry; it acts as a counterpoint to the ongoing human strife.

“Under the water he could hear Patsy calling him. He saw her swimming toward him and motioning for him to follow her somewhere. Henry no longer felt the arms holding him down. He drifted through the water, up toward the sun.”

Henry is being tortured by the Nazis. Two men repeatedly hold his head down in a washtub full of water. He is determined to resist, and his mind produces a hallucinatory auditory and visual image of his sweetheart, Patsy, followed by an image of sunlight to which he is being drawn. Instead of panic, there is love and light—quite a tribute to Henry’s strength of character. This is not the first time he has thought of Patsy during his trek across Europe, and she seems to be becoming increasingly important to him.

“He had killed two men—not from the anonymity of the sky—but face to face, with his own hands. Besides that, he’d wanted to kill them, was glad that he killed them so that he could live. He’d had murder in his heart. He couldn’t wash that out.”

Henry has just killed the Gestapo officer and his driver. As much as the act itself, it is his state of mind that bothers him, although readers may wonder why he refers to his acts as murder, since the victim were enemy combatants who were taking Henry to Lyon, where he would have been tortured. Nevertheless, the fact that he has taken two lives will bother Henry for several weeks. He is particularly disturbed by his killing of the driver, who may have been, he thinks, just an ordinary man who was merely doing his job.

“I prayed too, when all this started. God never answered. The devil has taken the world and laughs at us.”

Claudette, who was once a novice, declares her loss of faith to Henry. Henry has just been having vengeful thoughts dressed up as prayer, which she has overheard. Henry does not answer. He likely does not agree with what she says but he does not wish to enter into a dispute with her over faith in God. Within moments, she apologizes and they embrace and kiss.

“Henry closed his eyes and tried to smell a breeze. If he made himself light, shed the war and his fear, maybe he could just slide up into heaven like a kite, the way he had pretended to do a million times over as a kid. He opened his eyes and focused on the translucent day-moon, the boundless blue that reached toward it. Without fully realizing what he was doing, the words of his favorite poem came out of his mouth like a prayer.”

Henry is facing execution but does not lose his presence of mind, imagining himself into heaven and then drinking in the beauty of sky and day-moon. At that moment the poem “High Flight,” which has always made his thoughts soar heavenwards, spontaneously pours out of his mouth. He is like a man possessed by a vision, although he can have no idea of the effects his moment of inspiration will have on the German soldier responsible for executing him.

“The sergeant’s resolute expression had turned to a troubled, conflicted one. He sighed heavily and shook his head.”

The sergeant is in charge of Henry’s execution. He has just listened to Henry, the man he is about to shoot, recite the poem “High Flight,” which he loves so much, in a language the soldier does not understand. The sight and sound of a condemned man reciting poetry has moved him the soldier so much that he is about to do something that would have been unthinkable just minutes earlier—let Henry go. Although Henry does not yet know it, that poem has saved his life.