Читать книгу Ten Fighter Boys - Jimmy Corbin - Страница 10

Durex is really a most extraordinary character. On the whole his appearance is pretty tidy – shortish, and slicks his hair, but he has got one of those comic faces that looks as if it was made of rubber, with a large mouth and broken nose – not what one would call handsome according to Grecian standards, or any other standards for that matter. He is the clown of the squadron, a man who imitates every noise, from an underground train pulling in and out of a station to the recochetting of a rifle bullet (American movie style). No matter where we were, no matter what was happening, there was a constant barrage of backchat coming from Durex with intermittent ricochetting bullets. Even at dawn readiness you never got rid of this constant burble. You would see him walking down the tarmac all by himself, his mouth working feverishly, and as he approached you would hear all sorts of extraordinary sounds. He could take-off a cockney to perfection and simply delighted in “poking Charlie” at any stray workmen on the aerodrome. I was always surprised that the workmen didn’t resent some of the things he said to them, but they took it in fun.

As a pilot one could hardly class him as being exceptional, but he had plenty of guts, and was always flat-out to have a crack at something, the only trouble about this being, of course, that he very seldom shot anything down himself – he invariably got shot up. I don’t remember a single occasion on which we made contact with the enemy and Durex got home without at least one bullet hole in his machine.

He was a good party type and could keep people amused on the ride home better than anybody I have ever come across, but there is no doubt about it, a little of Durex went a long way.