Back in the barracks he learned that Red Rogers and Ben Taylor had been transferred up to the Twenty-seventh and already had flown up to report for duty. That information, combined with the effects of his spree the night before, conspired to send him down into a state of depression again.
Pretty damned soon, he reflected, the war would be over and unless a fellow did something quick he never would get back into a show. The debacle of that early summer afternoon ate at the back of his mind and made him so self-conscious he imagined that every time he passed an officer he was being regarded with pity, that everybody was saying behind their hands, “There is the bird who got Luf killed.”
Already he had grown cynical and had isolated himself and had but one prayer, a chance to vindicate himself.
He never could vindicate himself back here. He had to get up front to do that. And that seemed as impossible as spanning the poles.
“God, why can’t I get a chance?” he muttered. “I can fly rings around some of those birds up there. Damn! Damn! Damn!”
He reasoned that when a fellow was all torn up inside about anything he ought to go up. A man should go up when he got his thinking apparatus hung together.
So in spite of the admonitions of the field staff, Dorman went up. He took a DH4 but it was a short flight. He circled the field a couple of times and thought about jumping over to Romorantin to see his old buddy, Al Peebles, who was in the Fifth A.S. Regiment. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it; and he decided to put the bus down and go down and get tight all over again.
Coming down he was swept by a ghastly emotion; in an instant he realized he had forgotten all he ever knew of flying, and he had no feel. He remembered his arms and fingers like wood... and he bounced twice and then the D.H. swung over in a perfect somersault and pitched him out.
He picked himself up as the men rushed out to salvage the wreck, and walked off to the barracks. He was sore and at the point of open rebellion and had decided the way to settle the war was with his fists. The first man who said anything to him he didn’t like was going to get busted in the jaw.
Ten minutes later an orderly came into the room and told him Major Carew, who was the commanding officer, wanted to see him.