Thought you all might enjoy this.
"But tired or not, none of the young pilots on the flightline this morning is thinking much about sleeping. Anticipation and nerves keep eyes open and mouths firmly shut, the electiricity of the moment paralleled in the metallic razz of sap-fattened bugs and the green whisper of light rain on foliage. There are occasional clinks and snaps of cigarette lighter lids, always followed by sighed exhalations of smoke. One pilot is leaning back against the trunk of a palm tree, looking at photos he has pulled from his pocket. The pilot next to him chews the stem of a long blade of grass as he gazes off to the east toward the twin volcanoes of Mandalagan and Silay, misty blue in the rain, beyond which lie American ships and destiny. The others just stare at their hands, down at the ground, or off into space, figures muted in earth-tone tableau of young men quietly saying goodbye to the world.
Under the meditative weight of this somber lull, each lung-filling yawn or scratched cowlick is someone's small celebration and savored affirmation of a life that will cease to be in an hour or two. Socialized from boyhood to respect silence, these middle-class sons of rice farmers, schoolteachers, and small business owners share an unspoken understanding that this flightline downtime is probably the last chance in their mortal lives to be alone with their thoughts- to daydream, ruminate, fantisize, or just dwell on the white noise of rain-sizzle through palm fronds, the smell of wet grass, and the feel of warm sea air on their cheeks. There is no nervous banter. No pretentious blather or maudlin yammering. There has already been a send-off speech this morning, and there have been countless others in the past few weeks. No need for any more. "Dulce et decorum" lectures and pointifications on the meaning of it all are best left to the crickets in the grass.
Once in the cockpit, it will be all grim reality; the flight will be forty or fifty minutes of edgy boredom followed by a few seconds of screaming adrenaline rush through the American CAP and antiaircraft barrage to go over- then into- the targets. But Yositake should be able to handle the challenges he will face this morning. He is a graduate- as are the other four pilots in his flight- of the elite Imperial Military Academy, Japan's West Point. He has been superbly trained over the last three and a half years to build up an impressive repertoire of combat flier's skills. A qualified recon/assault pilot, he can skip bomb moving ships and strafe targets with impressive accuracy, fly by instruments, alone at night or in pea soup fog, spot for devastating artillery barrages, and coordinate the movement of ground forces from the air. But today, very few of those skills will be called upon, and all of the years of sweat and effort expended on acquiring them will have very little bearing on the outcome of today's mission. Weather willing, he and the other pilots on the flight line this morning will turn over the engines of their bomb-laden, obsolete KI-51 recon/assault planes and fly off into the sunrise to attack a supply convoy spotted heading for the main American landing area at Ormoc on the west coast of Leyte Island. And if all goes well, the fast-closing deck of one of these ships will be the last thing Toshio Yositake ever sees."
Blossoms in the Wind, pp. 78-79
