Goodbye Mickey Mouse
In Goodbye Mickey Mouse Len Deighton has written his best novel yet: a brilliant, multi-dimensional picture of what it is to be at war… and what it was to be in love in the England of 1944.Goodbye Mickey Mouse is Deighton’s fourteenth novel and a vivid evocation of wartime England, the story of a group of American fighter pilots flying escort missions over Germany in the winter of 1943-4.At the centre of the novel are two young men: the deeply reserved Captain Jamie Farebrother, estranged son of a deskbound colonel, and the cocky Lieutenant Mickey Morse, well on his way to becoming America’s Number One Flying Ace. Alike only in their courage, they forge a bond of friendship in battle with far-reaching consequences for themselves, and for the future of those they love.
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Goodbye Mickey Mouse
Len Deighton
This novel is entirely a work of fiction.
The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Published by HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF
FIRST EDITION
First published in Great Britain by Hutchinson & Co. (Publishers) Ltd 1982
Copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 1982
Introduction copyright © Pluriform Publishing Company BV 2009
The author and publisher would like to thank The Big 3 Music Ltd and United Artists Music Co. Inc. for kind permission to quote from ‘For All We Know’ by Sam M. Lewis and J. Fred Coots (© 1934 Leo Feist Inc.), and Famous Chappell and Chappell Music Canada Ltd for kind permission to quote from ‘That Old Black Magic’, from the film Star Spangled Rhythm, music by Harold Arlen and words by Johnny Mercer (© 1942 Famous Music Corp.)
Len Deighton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EBook Edition © NOVEMBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007347735
Version: 2017-08-10
And all men kill the thing they love,
By all let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword.
Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
Mickey Mouse, US Military Slang. Anything that is unnecessary or unimportant. (Named for the Walt Disney animated cartoon character, in allusion to its childish appeal, its simplicity, triviality, etc.)
The Barnhart Dictionary of New English
Table of Contents
2 Captain James A. Farebrother
3 Staff Sergeant Harold E. Boyer
6 Captain James A. Farebrother
9 Captain James A. Farebrother
11 Brigadier General Alexander J. Bohnen
12 Captain James A. Farebrother
15 Captain James A. Farebrother
16 Lieutenant Colonel Druce ‘Duke’ Scroll
18 Lieutenant Stefan ‘Fix’ Madjicka
24 Lieutenant Colonel Druce ‘Duke’ Scroll
25 Brigadier General Alexander J. Bohnen
26 Captain James A. Farebrother
29 Lieutenant Colonel Druce ‘Duke’ Scroll
‘Never before; never since and never again,’ said a US Eighth Army Air Force veteran when I was researching this book.
He was describing one particular moment in the final months of the war. RAF Bomber Command was operating in the daytime, and flying in loose formations of squadrons instead of in the ‘stream’ it had used previously in night bombing. The RAF heavy bombers were returning across the English Channel at the same time as seemingly endless squadrons of American air force bombers were setting out in tight formations. ‘The sun glinted on them,’ said the American flyer. ‘There must have been a thousand of those RAF heavies. I was in the turret; we were leading the low squadron. All around me and behind and ahead there were over a thousand of our ships. Everywhere I looked, the sky was filled with planes.’
Perhaps he was exaggerating but other flyers remarked upon such awesome sights. The missions of ‘Big Week’ frequently comprised 800 aircraft and this short period of intense air activity was one of the most decisive battles of the war. Certainly there were times when two thousand British and American four-engined bombers shared the sky, and the men who saw these vast, futuristic fleets of aircraft never forgot. Neither did the people—British and German—who with pride and apprehension watched them from the ground.
Goodbye Mickey Mouse was rooted in a failure. I had abandoned a half-completed story about the air fighting in Vietnam when the fighting there ended. To prepare for that Vietnam book I had spent several weeks on a US Air Force base. They gave me a chair in the ready room, a physical exam with jabs, a flight suit with all the paraphernalia and a bed; and let me join the day-to-day life of the aircrew on the base. I ate with the flyers, drank with them, went to their barbecues and flew backseat in the F-4 Phantom. We dropped bombs, flew in formation and did air-to-air refueling. My assigned pilot was Captain Johnny Jumper, a young Vietnam veteran who not only became a life-long friend but also became a General and eventually the US Air Force Chief of Staff.
