Olivia Glazebrook

Trying to be one of the boys

issue 30 August 2003

A group of bored American fighter pilots liven up their posting in cold war Germany with round-the-campfire joshing, petty squabbles, and some traditional extramarital frolicking. But hey — it’s all locker-room stuff: the banter is kept within acceptable boundaries. For safety’s sake a code of behaviour, however peculiar, is observed. Everyone seems to know the rules, written and unwritten.

Into this frustrated pride of alpha males arrives an anomaly, Lieutenant Robert Cassada. Cassada is ambitious, aloof, reticent and therefore different. He lacks the carelessness or the natural talent of his fellow officers. He is also Puerto Rican, a fact which causes confusion and suspicion:

‘Well, how’d he get in the American Air Force?’ ‘Puerto Rico’s part of the United States.’ ‘Since when?’

Rather like the new boy in the class at school, the one who arrives slightly after the start of term (due to some inevitably feeble illness), Cassada seems unable to keep his head below the parapet.

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