James Salter: The Hunters

The Korean War, in which the action of this novel takes place, was fought from 1950 to 1953. The geography of Korea and the sort of fighting that took place there were then familiar matters. Jet fighters were newly operational and the first combat between them occurred when pilots and planes from the Soviet Union were sent to support the communist armies of China and North Korea. They were opposed mainly by United States jets.

The Russian planes were swept-wing MIG-15s, well-designed and armed with rapid-firing cannon. There were many of them, flying out of airfields in China that for political reasons were never bombed. They were opposed by a smaller number of F-86s, a roughly equivalent aircraft, at the time the best in the U.S. Air Force.

The F-86 could not fly quite as high—to about 45,000 as against 48,000 feet—and its performance at high altitude was not as good, but lower down it was slightly superior. It carried machine guns with enough ammunition for—to give an idea of the brevity of the aerial engagements—only eleven seconds of firing, but a burst of two or three seconds in a fight could be quite sufficient. There were no missiles in those days; these came a few years later.

The basic combat formation was two planes and was called an element: leader and wingman, meant to be inseparable. The wingman, usually a little less experienced, was a kind of bodyguard. His duties were nothing less than sacred: to serve as a lookout, especially when the leader was engaged with the enemy, and if needed, to support him with fire. Wingmen who had lost their leaders and vice versa were to immediately withdraw from the combat area.

A flight was made up of two elements and was the normal minimum force, although in a fight it often could not remain intact and broke into elements of two planes each. A squadron mission might involve three or four flights.

The chief defensive maneuver was a hard turn, the hardest possible, called a break, to keep another plane from getting into firing position behind. “Break right!”or “Break left!” was the urgent call when enemy fighters were closing in. Fighters don’t fight, as Saint-Exupéry wrote, they murder, and the act was usually done by getting on the tail of the other plane, as close as possible, even point blank, and firing.

Aces are pilots who have downed five airplanes. They are champions. There were thirty-nine American aces during the Korean War. Their immortality was not as great as believed. At least one was himself shot down and killed. Others died afterward in crashes. Many of the aces were squadron, group, or even wing commanders, men often in the lead, aggressive and bold. Commanders were also shot down, at least five of them to my knowledge.

A small red star painted on the side of a pilot’s plane, just below the cockpit, was the symbol of a kill. Discreet, almost invisible in the air, a row of five was a mark of highest honor, greater than any trophy or prize.

It was said of Lord Byron that he was more proud of his Norman ancestors who had accompanied William the Conqueror in the invasion of England than of having written famed works. The name de Burun, not yet Anglicized, was inscribed in the Domesday book. Looking back, I feel a pride akin to that in having flown and fought along the Yalu.

A winter night, black and frozen, was moving over Japan, over the choppy waters to the east, over the rugged floating islands, all the cities and towns, the small houses, the bitter streets.

Cleve stood at the window, looking out. Dusk had arrived, and he felt a numb lethargy. Full animation had not yet returned to him. It seemed that everybody had gone somewhere while he had been asleep. The room was empty.

He leaned forward slightly and allowed the pane to touch the tip of his nose. It was cold, but benign. A circle of condensation formed quickly about the spot. He exhaled a few times through his mouth and made it larger. After a while he stepped back from the window. He hesitated, and then traced the letters C M C in the damp translucence.

It was a large dormitory room. There were ten double-deck beds and, as in all such places it seemed to him, no shelves, closets, hangers, or other furniture of any kind. The ceiling lights were protected by little wire cages, like those in a gymnasium. The building itself had evidently been a warehouse at one time. Its vast interior was filled with such rooms—the walls of bare concrete, the doors of riveted steel and set half a foot off the floor like those in a ship. He had come back from Tokyo a few hours before and, tired by a day of walking about and the seventeen-mile drive, had lain down for a few minutes before dinner. Sleep had taken him quickly. When he woke up, it was in the darkened room, alone. He felt beyond the inhabited world, isolated from all its life and activity. He stared through the steel-trussed panes of glass with weightless eyes, watching nothing. Night was coming quickly. The bare, thin trees were vanishing in the gloom, and lights were appearing in windows. He saw a pair of figures walking down the street side by side, not talking. They turned a corner and passed from his field of vision.

Cleve had spent four days in this replacement center, waiting for the orders that would send him on to Korea. All the time it had been among strangers, many of whom had just come from the war and were on their way, as lighthearted as children, back to the States. They passed him in loud, satisfied numbers. During his four nights, perhaps fifty different men had slept in the room, or at least dropped their bags there before heading for Tokyo. That was where most of them were now, he guessed. They left in the evenings and did not come back until the following day.

He picked up his towel and toilet articles and stepped across the corridor into the shower room. It was usually crowded in there, with a row of men standing before the steamy mirrors while water condensed in heavy drops on the ceiling and fell down upon them; but now it was empty except for a lean, towheaded man who could have been twenty-eight or thirty-eight, in the shower bin, singing away. His shoes, stuffed with socks, were on a bench just outside the bin—black, well-wrinkled flying boots. He stopped his song.

“Howdy,” he greeted Cleve.

The spray was bouncing off the floor with a comfortable sound.

“How’s the water,” Cleve asked, “hot?”

“Hot as you’d want it. It feels pretty good on my old chilly bones, I’ll tell you that.”

“I’ll bet it does.”

“It’ll soon put you right,” the lean man explained amicably.

Cleve hung his towel on a hook and began to undress.

“What weather,” he commented. “It’s cold enough to wear your clothes in the shower.”

“It’s murder. Have you been to Korea yet?”

“No, I’m just going. How is it there?”

“I don’t know. I’m on my way there myself. If it’s like I think, though, we’ll be missing this hot water.”

“Among other things, I imagine.”

Cleve stepped under the shower just as the lean man got out and began vigorously to dry himself. When he had finished, he slipped his bare feet into the boots, wrapped a towel about himself, and picked up his discarded clothes.

“See you,” he said cheerily.

Cleve spent a long time allowing the warm flow to batter his shoulders and torso and make of his hair a thin, sodden cap. He felt both cleanliness and security, standing beneath the water, things that traveling deprived one of the soonest. Finally he turned the shower off, dried, and went back to the room to dress for dinner.