ROYAL AIR FORCE
The Squadron Leader,, who was with me, added:
'He's just brought down his third Heinkel.  He
looks like making one of our best pilots/
The boy blushed. I asked him:
'Is it different from what you expected?'
'Yes, it is.  Mainly because of the extraordinary
speed at which everything goes on here. You are in
the air with nothing around you but the sky.
Suddenly a black speck appears, then ten, then
thirty—and all at once you're in the middle of a
great roaring swarm, swirling about you. You have
a split second to choose a target and fire. Then they
are gone and you're alone once again in an empty
sky. ... It might be a dream/
It doesn't seem to leave you a great deal of
time to distinguish your own machines from the
enemy's.'
'So little,' the Squadron Leader said, 'that we've
had to enlarge and increase the markings painted on
our machines. By the time the war began, we'd
reduced them to practically nothing at all. It was a
mistake. . , /
He pointed out another pilot to me, he, too, fair
and blue-eyed. He looked no more than sixteen.
'That one,' he said, 'was baptized the Enfant
Terrible by a Frenchwoman in one of your villages
and the nickname has stuck to him. There's no
doubt he deserves it: he's certainly an Enfant Terrille
to the Messerschmitts. The lieutenant walking with
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