Speaker 1: Author's Playhouse presenting Anfon de sanzu perries deeply stirring account
Speaker 1: of France at war flight to Arts. Those days in
Speaker 1: June nineteen forty were faithful days for France. They were
Speaker 1: faithful days for the whole world. Knowing their doom, Frenchmen
Speaker 1: went to war to make a gesture. And yet something
Speaker 1: may come of a gesture, and what it meant for
Speaker 1: one man is told by the brilliant author and airman
Speaker 1: Anfon de sanzu Peri. As Author's Playhouse presents this tale
Speaker 1: of the spiritual significance of a flight to Ark.
Speaker 2: We ran into a patrol of them in twenty eight thousand,
Speaker 2: controls frozen.
Speaker 3: What could you do well?
Speaker 4: I've always said it's funny.
Speaker 5: They must have had at least eighty search lights funny
Speaker 5: before us, full of pillars.
Speaker 6: And then he tried to land. There's undercarriage half shot away,
Speaker 6: guns jammed, not a chance.
Speaker 5: What do you say, Jean, Oh, hello, Renee, Come sit down.
Speaker 5: I'll do some card tricks for you.
Speaker 4: All right.
Speaker 5: Here, take a card, anyone, yes, anyone, look at it
Speaker 5: there now, remember what it was and put it back
Speaker 5: in the deck, all right. Jack of Heart's reneeh, that's it.
Speaker 5: Do it once more, very well, here.
Speaker 7: Three of clubs.
Speaker 8: You're a marvel captain. How did you do it? Well?
Speaker 5: First you shuffle the deck, and then when you spread
Speaker 5: them out.
Speaker 9: You Captain Jean and Lieutenant Renee reported the major.
Speaker 8: Well, did you know it was our turn?
Speaker 5: Captain pocketed flew this morning?
Speaker 8: Oh yes, I remember. I remember.
Speaker 5: The fact that we had been sent for meant only
Speaker 5: one thing. We were ordered out on assortie. We had
Speaker 5: reached the last days of May nineteen forty, a time
Speaker 5: of full retreat, of full disaster. Crewe after crew was
Speaker 5: being offered up as a sacrifice. It was as if
Speaker 5: you dashed glassfuls of water into a forest fire in
Speaker 5: the hope of putting it out. Fifty reconnaissance crews were
Speaker 5: all we had for the whole French Army, fifty crews
Speaker 5: of three men each, and out of that fifty, twenty
Speaker 5: three made up our particular unit. Now, after three weeks
Speaker 5: of fighting, seventeen of those twenty three had vanished. Our
Speaker 5: group had melted like a lump of wax. Statistics, Yes,
Speaker 5: these are statistics. They are the measure of our defeat
Speaker 5: and the defeat of our country. But they are also
Speaker 5: the measure of another thing. They show how France.
Speaker 6: Fought afternoon John, Hello, Renee, sit down, clerk, catch me
Speaker 6: the weather reports.
Speaker 3: Hm.
Speaker 5: I suppose you know why I sent for you, Sawtye.
Speaker 7: I suppose, yes.
Speaker 6: Well, it's very awkward, I know, but the staff people
Speaker 6: wanted done. They very much wanted done. I argued with them, Yes,
Speaker 6: but they wanted done.
Speaker 8: And that's that.
Speaker 6: Yes, of course, things being as they are, well, there's
Speaker 6: no use worrying about it. No, you'll probably not find
Speaker 6: it so difficult. Here here's your course. They want a
Speaker 6: photography sortie at thirty three hundred feet, and then here
Speaker 6: at Aris a bit of reconnaissance at two thousands tank parks.
Speaker 6: You know, Arris is really the important thing.
Speaker 7: Yes, I see.
Speaker 6: If this sorty bothers you, Jarn, If you don't feel
Speaker 6: up to it today, why, I don't know, Major, You've
Speaker 6: been having it quite steady these days, you know, all.
Speaker 5: Of us have, Yes, I suppose. So I just thought
Speaker 5: that if you know Major, well then there's nothing more.
Speaker 6: But then it, Renee, you lay out your course and
Speaker 6: well perhaps you'd better get along and dress.
Speaker 8: Now.
Speaker 5: I want you off the ground at five point thirty.
Speaker 5: Very good, Major, see you this evening then, yes, of course,
Speaker 5: good luck to you, Thank you sir.
Speaker 2: This sortie has got on his nerves too. What do
Speaker 2: they take us for sending us off on these low
Speaker 2: altitude sorties?
Speaker 5: What's the use of it.
Speaker 2: By the time we get the information back there, troop
Speaker 2: couns will be somewhere else, the tank, everything, the whole
Speaker 2: face of the land will have changed.
Speaker 9: What good is the information?
Speaker 8: What?
Speaker 3: What is the use of sending us out?
Speaker 5: I don't know. I wish I did if.
Speaker 3: It weren't so useless, so completely useless.
Speaker 5: An awkward sortie, the major said, In one which is
Speaker 5: not awkward, one plane out of free manages to return naturally.
Speaker 5: The ratio is not the same when a sortie is nasty.
Speaker 5: I go to my room and prepare to dress item
Speaker 5: by item, I piece together my flags. Is my mind
Speaker 5: filled with spiritual thoughts of the war of the Nazis
Speaker 5: against civilization? Not at all. I think in terms of
Speaker 5: immediate details. I think of possible wounds, of going down
Speaker 5: in flames. I think of the absurdity of flying over
Speaker 5: German held arras of two thousand feet, of the utility
Speaker 5: of the intelligence we are asked to bring back of
Speaker 5: the interminable time it takes to dress in these clothes
Speaker 5: that remind me of men made ready for the executioner,
Speaker 5: And I think of my gloves were the devil? Are
Speaker 5: my gloves?
Speaker 8: You there?
Speaker 5: Have you seen my gloves?
Speaker 7: No?
Speaker 5: Not those?
Speaker 7: Have a look in my bag, sorry, sir, can't find it?
Speaker 8: Oh, you fool?
Speaker 5: Why don't you keep check of those things?
Speaker 7: Sorry?
Speaker 5: Of course you're sorry, but that doesn't bring back my gloves?
Speaker 8: And orderly?
Speaker 5: Have you got that pencil?
Speaker 7: Pencil?
Speaker 8: Sir?
Speaker 5: Yes, pencil. I asked you to get me a pencil.
Speaker 5: I have been asking you for ten minutes to get
Speaker 5: me a pencil. Haven't you got one? Here it is,
Speaker 5: sir hmm yeah, tie a string around it and then
Speaker 5: knotted around this button.
Speaker 8: Yes? What do you want gun her today? Sir? Gun
Speaker 8: her already?
Speaker 5: Well be out in a moment. Catch you tie that knot?
Speaker 5: Is it impossible for you to do a little thing
Speaker 5: like that?
Speaker 8: There you are, sir?
Speaker 5: H well?
Speaker 8: Warming her up? Captain? All right?
Speaker 5: Nothing keeping us that's gone, everything ship shaped renee worked
Speaker 5: out your course, yes, captain, and you gonna You seem
Speaker 5: to be looking rather cheerful I'm all ready, sir. I
Speaker 5: wish once, just once, the general staff would fly its
Speaker 5: own sortie sitting behind them. Oh they're sad, Hello, Jean, Sorry,
Speaker 5: you might know it looks bad, very bad, very bad. Indeed,
Speaker 5: how are you going out? By the time of Albert,
Speaker 5: I thought so, I knew it that had business. I'll
Speaker 5: stop talking like a fool.
Speaker 8: What's up?
Speaker 7: You'll never make it.
Speaker 5: You'll have to give up this sortie give it up.
Speaker 5: Oh that's fine, we'll give it up just like that.
Speaker 5: You'll never get through, I tell you, And why shall
Speaker 5: I never get through?
Speaker 8: I'll tell you why.
Speaker 5: There's three groups of German fighter plane circling permanently over Albert,
Speaker 5: one at eighteen thousand feet, another at twenty five thousand
Speaker 5: and a third of thirty three thousand. They fly in
Speaker 5: relays and hang on until they're relieved. You fly straight
Speaker 5: into a German net. In short, Captain, what you're trying
Speaker 5: to tell me is that the Germans have an air
Speaker 5: force and that this sort he is not altogether advisably.
Speaker 8: Isn't that it?
Speaker 5: Well, we know it here. Why don't you go and
Speaker 5: tell it to general start. I'm just trying to warn you.
Speaker 5: That's all. You should know what you're getting into. We
Speaker 5: do well, good luck than anywhere. Yes, come on you two,
Speaker 5: let's push off. Funny about percent. It wouldn't have cost
Speaker 5: him anything to be a little more cheerful. Why couldn't
Speaker 5: you have merely said, oh, by the way, the Germans
Speaker 5: have a few fighters over all there. It would have
Speaker 5: amounted to the same thing. That's his way, I suppose,
Speaker 5: is she all said?
Speaker 6: Ready to go?
Speaker 8: So all right?
Speaker 5: File in you tube here, hand me another helmet. I
Speaker 5: told you twenty times that my own won't do it's
Speaker 5: too tight. But this is another helmet, sir, I sent
Speaker 5: back your old Sorry, give me a boot.
Speaker 8: Will you help me.
Speaker 5: Check your intercom? Can you hear me, Renee?
Speaker 8: I hear your captain?
Speaker 5: You gunner hear me? I yes, sir, Renee? Can you
Speaker 5: hear the gunner clearly? Captain gunner? Can you hear Lieutenant Renee?
Speaker 8: Yes? Sir?
Speaker 5: What makes you snutter back there? What are you hesitating about?
Speaker 8: Fie? Sir?
Speaker 5: I was talking for my pampson, Gunner. Have a look
Speaker 5: at your oxygen bottles. Air pressure normal, yes, sir, norma
Speaker 5: in all three bottles? All all said Renee?
Speaker 8: Off, said Captain gunner.
Speaker 5: All fusser, let's go altitude twelve thousand, air speed two
Speaker 5: hundred ninety six, compass three hundred and thirteen degrees. Check
Speaker 5: check check. It is strange, this union between plane and man.
Speaker 5: I sit here among a clutter of accessories, oxygen tubes,
Speaker 5: heating connections, the speaking tubes that form the intercommunications between
Speaker 5: the crew. I have a hundred and three instruments to watch,
Speaker 5: and I sit here, depending upon them for my life.
Speaker 5: I am wedded to them for the present, as a
Speaker 5: man is wedded to a woman. I watch them anxiously, lovingly,
Speaker 5: eager to obey their least signal. And the mask through
Speaker 5: which I breathe, that too is strange. It attaches me
Speaker 5: to the plane by a rubber tube as indispensable as
Speaker 5: an umbilical cord. The plane is plugged to the circulation
Speaker 5: of my blood. It is part of my body, and
Speaker 5: the bullets which penetrate it seem to tear my own flesh.
Speaker 5: I checked the oxygen flow. We've been rising fast and
Speaker 5: alty two thousand feet already. Oxygen all right, mane, how
Speaker 5: do you feel?
Speaker 8: First drink?
Speaker 5: Captain you gunner? How's your oxygen?
Speaker 8: All right? Sir?
Speaker 5: Oh? Gunner, no good sized town behind you in your
Speaker 5: cone of fire.
Speaker 10: Notsr arclar.
Speaker 5: Check your guns. Go ahead, let fly work all right,
Speaker 5: arch find sir, all of them? Yes, sir, good air
Speaker 5: speed three five, compass three thirteen. Check your dials, levers, guns,
Speaker 5: firing button, regulate your oxygen flow, check one in against another,
Speaker 5: right rudder, now try left.
Speaker 3: Good.
Speaker 5: The controls are not sluggish. I am beginning to feel
Speaker 5: a quiet glow of comfort. And it all comes to this.
Speaker 5: I am working at my trade now. At this moment,
Speaker 5: the war between the Nazis and civilization is reduced to
Speaker 5: the scale of my job. Checking these instruments. Manipulating them
Speaker 5: will bring victory or defeat. I think of nothing more
Speaker 5: than this now, and it is right to feel this way.
Speaker 5: For the Sexton's love of God becomes a love of
Speaker 5: lighting candles. Each candlestick blooming one after another, testifies to
Speaker 5: his love.
Speaker 8: And so the war for me, Captain is too much.
Speaker 8: Rept aport a little king to the right.
Speaker 9: Right, Oh, captain Renee, we're crossing our lines now, I've
Speaker 9: started my camera.
Speaker 8: What you're up at you thirty three hundred? Hold it.
Speaker 5: Off, my course. There he was right, I was drifting
Speaker 5: too much to Port. But I didn't want to. That's
Speaker 5: the strange thing. Consciously, I have wished to stay on
Speaker 5: my course, but my body registered its disapproval of the idea.
Speaker 5: With the eye of my body, I could see the
Speaker 5: town of Albert far ahead, and I remember there are
Speaker 5: three levels of fighter planes over it. My body begins
Speaker 5: to remember every sudden crash of the past, every laceration
Speaker 5: and fracture it has suffered. It remembers flames and the
Speaker 5: long cutting whips of tracer bullets. My body is afraid
Speaker 5: of blows, and it automatically shuns Albert. The moment I
Speaker 5: leave it to itself, it drifts to Port. Every laceration
Speaker 5: and fracture it has suffered. It remembers flames and the
Speaker 5: long cutting whips of tracer bullets. My body is afraid
Speaker 5: of blows, and it automatically shuns Albert. The moment I
Speaker 5: leave it.
Speaker 4: To itself, it drifts to Port.
Speaker 3: Strange thing, this body.
Speaker 5: I am one who believes that the spirit of man
Speaker 5: alone is important. Yet here is a body that dominates
Speaker 5: the spirit and makes it afraid.
Speaker 3: It is difficult to understand.
Speaker 5: I am beginning to wonder why I am here. What
Speaker 5: do I accomplish by risking my body in a thing
Speaker 5: like this?
Speaker 8: What use is there, captain?
Speaker 5: Captain is six German fighters on the port bow Gunner,
Speaker 5: you hear the lieutenant six ahead port bow.
Speaker 8: Yes?
Speaker 5: Have they seen us?
Speaker 9: Renee Yes, Maggie Torners fifteen hundred feet below?
Speaker 5: Hear that, gunner?
Speaker 6: Yes?
Speaker 5: How near are they?
Speaker 8: About six seconds Captain on.
Speaker 5: Our tail and a few seconds gunner, Gunner. They're crossing
Speaker 5: broadside there.
Speaker 8: Don't see them yet, sir, Yes, I do.
Speaker 5: Now I've lost them myself. Are they after us? Yes,
Speaker 5: rising fast, polly fast, We're heading into the sun. They
Speaker 5: lose them that way, hang on still after us, Gunner.
Speaker 8: They're still coming.
Speaker 5: We gaining it all?
Speaker 8: Well, no, perhaps.
Speaker 5: Are we losing them, Gunner, I believe so. Yes, we
Speaker 5: are soome Rene, Captain. I nothing anything that mattered, nothing
Speaker 5: I thought, no, nothing happen. He's gunner.
Speaker 8: I think we've lost them.
Speaker 10: Sure, very sure. They're breaking down, thank god, thank god.
Speaker 10: Nothing just talking. Well, we're alive anyway, Captain.
Speaker 4: Yes, for the time being, we are alive.
Speaker 5: Even for the time being.
Speaker 3: It is good.
Speaker 5: There is only a profound sense of gratitude inside me,
Speaker 5: something that to be expressed. A scene is suddenly brought
Speaker 5: back to me from boyhood. The present falls away from
Speaker 5: me like dirt from a washed body. I am a
Speaker 5: boy once again, alive with the blind wonder of being alive.
Speaker 5: And this memory rises up before me, fresh as the
Speaker 5: afternoon had happened. I stood in my father's fields, watching
Speaker 5: two hawks circling over a pigeon. The pigeon, all unaware
Speaker 5: of them, was flying toward its coat in our barn.
Speaker 5: And then the hawks dropped downward, and the pigeon sensed
Speaker 5: that death was upon him. He beat his wings in
Speaker 5: a desperate effort to reach the barn.
Speaker 4: And just made it.
Speaker 5: The hawks swooped low and then climbed upward into the
Speaker 5: sky again. I can remember that now, and it takes
Speaker 5: significance in my brain. Death is all about one, and
Speaker 5: there is no escape, And then suddenly away is opened
Speaker 5: and life stretches out again like fields in the morning sun.
Speaker 5: It is something definitely to think about.
Speaker 8: Captain, the camera work is nearly finished. Give me a
Speaker 8: few minutes more and we can make furs.
Speaker 5: Say when ARUs the second half of our mission low
Speaker 5: altitude reconnaissance. The pigeon escapes the hawk only to meet
Speaker 5: the charge from the shotgun. Well, since there is no escape,
Speaker 5: we may as well do our job as workmanlike as possible. Still,
Speaker 5: why should it be this way?
Speaker 8: You may drop down now, captain.
Speaker 5: Very well, going down gunner. Flying to ARUs is like this.
Speaker 5: You have lost altitude over your own zone. Now you
Speaker 5: head north again, and the earth spills out below you.
Speaker 5: The highways are swarming with refugees. Yesterday they were people
Speaker 5: of France, gathering their grain from the fields, breaking their
Speaker 5: dead in homes of peace. To day they are refugees,
Speaker 5: people without a nation. Somewhere in the north of France,
Speaker 5: a boot has scattered an ant hill, and the ants
Speaker 5: are fleeing. These are your people, And sitting here in
Speaker 5: the cockpit of your plane, you feel their pain rise
Speaker 5: up to you through the intervening space. It is a
Speaker 5: pain old as the heart of man. It does not
Speaker 5: stir you to anger, as it should. It merely impresses
Speaker 5: you more than ever with the mark of defeat. Your
Speaker 5: nation is in flight below you. Your nation is defeated.
Speaker 5: Can personal victory help one bit? Can the success of
Speaker 5: your mission count for anything in all this defeat? Once
Speaker 5: all this earth below you was yours, now it is
Speaker 5: divided into your lines and theirs. Twilight has come at last,
Speaker 5: and all the plaine is blue. It streams out below
Speaker 5: you with all the warm intimacy it had for you
Speaker 5: in other days. There are trees looking hedges and green fields.
Speaker 5: There are the barns with stored up grain, and the
Speaker 5: little houses with red tiled roofs. Is it possible that
Speaker 5: there is a war? Everything is so peaceful, almost within reach.
Speaker 5: I can handle all the good things of the earth.
Speaker 5: There are the plum trees with their blossoms. There is
Speaker 5: the wet smelling earth. There is the wet alfalfa moving
Speaker 5: under my wings.
Speaker 9: One seventy four, Captain, one seventy four. You need to
Speaker 9: get a metnasty captain.
Speaker 8: Yes, and I start sick zagging right.
Speaker 5: Upper head lies ars. It is burning, and at first
Speaker 5: it is merely a red plume against the background at night.
Speaker 5: Then if a constant flame. Then it grows slowly, little
Speaker 5: by little, into a great block of flame, licking at
Speaker 5: the sky, faded rene. How much more of this?
Speaker 8: Stick it out? Free minute, Captain, Not bad though, I
Speaker 8: think we'll get through. No stick it out?
Speaker 5: Uh, This is urus a thousand guns below cutting Busett.
Speaker 5: Hundreds of thousands of phosphorescent bullets threading the air to
Speaker 5: me like stalks of wheat, like rapidly flashing knitting needles,
Speaker 5: Like seeds of wheat blown from the mouth of a threshold.
Speaker 5: They rise towards you, billow out, surround you in a
Speaker 5: network of golden wire.
Speaker 4: This is ARUs.
Speaker 5: The fabric of your wings is shredding. Your gas tanks
Speaker 5: are pierced like sieves. The rubber coin alone saving the
Speaker 5: body of your plane staggers under each blow wrenches seems.
Speaker 7: About to burst.
Speaker 8: One more minute, Captain, got one more.
Speaker 5: This is ours.
Speaker 8: The clouds are long, Captain, you might drive for them.
Speaker 5: It's all over now, Yes, Renee you all right? Yes, Gunner,
Speaker 5: you're not heard. Oh ca ser We're in the cloud now,
Speaker 5: Rene check our course, Yes, sir, too formiable.
Speaker 9: We sha't be able to come down out of it
Speaker 9: for more than about twenty minutes. I'll they got some
Speaker 9: landmark along the scene.
Speaker 5: Then good. How were things back there, Gunner?
Speaker 8: Not too bad, sir.
Speaker 5: Wasn't too hot for you, nor still two forty a name. Yes,
Speaker 5: we are alive, all of us. Somehow we have come
Speaker 5: through the shadow. When we had given up death had
Speaker 5: touched our bodies, and having escaped death, we knew that
Speaker 5: the body is merely a tool in man's service. Flames
Speaker 5: strip away flesh, bullets stripped away, but they strip away
Speaker 5: the worship of flesh too. Man, in that instance ceases
Speaker 5: to be concerned with himself. He recognizes of a sudden
Speaker 5: what he forms a part of. He does not lose himself.
Speaker 5: Then he finds himself at last. For man is a
Speaker 5: not a web, a mesh into which relationships are tied.
Speaker 5: Only those relationships matter. The body is an old crop
Speaker 5: that nobody will miss.
Speaker 7: This is true, and.
Speaker 5: I have learned it only because I have come back
Speaker 5: from Ras.
Speaker 8: Captain.
Speaker 5: Yes, that'll make it two forty six, forty six, I
Speaker 5: think we can come down now, Renee, ten minutes more.
Speaker 8: That'll wait the ten.
Speaker 5: Minutes as you say, Renee. Yes, what will you do tonight.
Speaker 8: When we land? I don't know, have a good five.
Speaker 8: I suppose Prophets will challenge lac Hordere to a game
Speaker 8: of chest tonight.
Speaker 5: La Gordair is a good.
Speaker 8: Player, yes, but I shall beat him the night I know.
Speaker 5: How about you, Gunner, how will you celebrate?
Speaker 8: I think I shall eat three extra slices of ham.
Speaker 8: I'm pipefully hungry. Yes, and play the phonograph too, how
Speaker 8: about you, Captain.
Speaker 5: I shall have a pipe too, Yes, and I shall
Speaker 5: go for a walk. You have no idea how much
Speaker 5: I wanted to feel solid earth under my boots today.
Speaker 8: Yes, I know.
Speaker 5: I want to walk through the village to the outskirts
Speaker 5: and listen to the crickets chirp, cheerful things. Crickets.
Speaker 8: Do you ever live? Captain?
Speaker 11: Look down there, it's the same, do you see, Yes, yes,
Speaker 11: I see. We're all most home again. Imagine, I've never thought.
Speaker 5: You never thought you would see it again, did you, Renee?
Speaker 8: Oh, Captain, I did, nor did I.
Speaker 5: But we must not think any more about it.
Speaker 7: We're back. We're really back this time, this day.
Speaker 5: I have led Renee and my gunner beyond the bourne
Speaker 5: at which reasonable men would stop. We have seen France
Speaker 5: in flames. We have seen the sun shining on the sea.
Speaker 5: We have grown old in the upper altitudes, and we
Speaker 5: have played with the dust of enemy fighter planes. And
Speaker 5: after that we dropped earthward again and flung ourselves into
Speaker 5: the holocaust. What we could offer up we have sacrificed,
Speaker 5: And in that sacrifice we have learned more about our
Speaker 5: cells and our country than we should have done if
Speaker 5: we had spent ten years in a monastery. And we
Speaker 5: have learned this. There is no importance in the body.
Speaker 5: It is something to be burned and scourged and broken.
Speaker 5: It is something to be defeated and shamed. We know
Speaker 5: this now, and France knows it, for it is our
Speaker 5: bodies that are going down before the Nazis, our bodies alone,
Speaker 5: because the spirit of France shines as it always has.
Speaker 5: For we went to war knowing full well that it
Speaker 5: signified disaster. Did we refuse battles simply because it meant defeat?
Speaker 5: We knew what the end would be, but even so
Speaker 5: we fought with us spirit conquered intelligence. France played her part,
Speaker 5: and her part consisted in offering herself up to be
Speaker 5: crushed and seeing herself buried for a time in silence.
Speaker 5: But we know that someday this silence will be broken.
Speaker 5: Life always bursts the boundaries of formulas. Despite its ugliness,
Speaker 5: defeat will prove to be the only path to our resurrection.
Speaker 5: To create a tree, I must first condemn a seed
Speaker 5: to rot. After that life gathers itself and thrusts its
Speaker 5: way upwards all barriers. And I say this, we have
Speaker 5: planted the seed. Now we have condemned it to rot
Speaker 5: by this our defeat. But through sacrifice, futile as it
Speaker 5: may seem, through the sacrifice of each plane, each crew member,
Speaker 5: each soldier, we will give the seed life. We will
Speaker 5: give it nourishment, even in our defeat. We will do this,
Speaker 5: and one day the seed will flower, and the long
Speaker 5: silence will be broken, and France will speak to men again,
Speaker 5: this time in words of triumph.