When Heroes Flew
H.W. “Buzz” Bernard
Copyright © 2020 by H.W. “Buzz” Bernard.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Severn River Publishing
www.SevernRiverPublishing.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN: 978-1-951249-97-7 (Paperback)
ISBN: 978-1-951249-98-4 (Hardback)
Contents
Also by H.W. “Buzz” Bernard
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
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Author’s Note
About the Author
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To the memory of the men who truly “wrote” this story, the aircrews who flew Operation Tidal Wave on August 1, 1943.
And to the memory of my wife, Christina, who grew up in pre-war and wartime Nazi Germany.
“The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward.”
—Sir Winston Churchill
Prologue
On a bitter December day in 1928, Egon Richter, seventeen, and his father, Gerhard, crunched across a snowy field in the Hunsrück, the high rolling plateau south of the Mosel River in west-central Germany. Underneath a bleak, colorless dawn, their breaths trailed behind them in thin, silvery streams.
They had come to hunt wild boar, hoping to down a fine, fat hog for Christmas dinner. As they approached the edge of a woods, Gerhard held up his arm, hand extended. They halted. Well back in the forest, half hidden among the firs and spruce, a shadowy form, low to the ground, shuffled haltingly through the semi-darkness.
Egon and his father waited in silence for almost ten minutes until the form reached the tree line, the delineation between forest and field. There, the shape came into sharp definition: a huge hog, an old boar, battle-scarred and limping. With one tusk broken off and an open wound across his flank—testimony to a recent duel, no doubt—he appeared in no condition for another fight. Yet when he spotted the two men, he squared up to face them, the coarse hair between his massive shoulders rising in a bristling warning.
He snorted a cannonade of steam into the brittle cold, then launched a mock charge, kicking up a spray of dirty snow and dead grass. But he proved incapable of even a short dash. One of his front legs gave way and he pitched snout-down onto the frozen ground, furrowing through the icy cover like a snowplow.
Egon raised his rifle, a Mauser bolt-action—a relic of the Great War in which his father had fought and been wounded a decade earlier—and positioned the front sight over the hog’s heart. He pictured the pig on the holiday dinner table, his family seated around it in anticipation of a sumptuous feast.
The boar lurched to his feet, but refused to flee. Instead, he stood his ground, grunting and snorting, his tiny red eyes locked on the hunters in what seemed to Egon pure hatred. The animal stalked forward, this time cautiously, favoring his gimpy leg. Still, he displayed the determination of a beast spoiling for a fight. Egon steadied his aim.
“Don’t,” his father said, his voice soft and raspy in the cold. “He’s an old warrior. Let him live. Honor his service and bravery.”
Without looking at his father and holding his aim, Egon responded, “Nein, Papa. He challenged us. I will answer that. I, too, am a warrior.”
He squeezed the trigger. The gunshot reverberated over the frigid Hunsrück. The boar staggered, spun, then collapsed into the snow. He attempted to rise, but was able to lift only his head. Egon worked the bolt on the Mauser. An empty shell casing arced into the frosty air. He fired again. The hog ceased moving.
Egon, overflowing with celebratory enthusiasm, dashed forward. He knelt by his kill, expecting to feel his father’s approving hand on his shoulder. No such touch came. He looked behind him. His father, unsmiling, arms folded across his chest, remained in place, ankle-deep in the crusty snow.
Egon shrugged, laid the rifle against the boar’s bristly hide, and withdrew his skinning knife.
1
En route from Hardwick, England, to Benghazi, Libya
March 26, 1943
At ten thousand feet, a lone United States Army Air Force B-24 bomber roared southward over the Bay of Biscay off the coast of France. The plane, piloted by Captain Al Lycoming and his copilot, Second Lieutenant Lenny Sorenson, “Sorey,” was not on a bombing mission. Rather, it had been dispatched to Benghazi, Libya, from its home base in Hardwick, England, to join up with a small bomber force already in place in North Africa. The reason for their deployment had been rather obscure, only that they were to participate in an operation involving “experimental bombing tactics.”
They edged around Spain, keeping a watchful eye out for German fighters based in the so-called “neutral” nation. Al had been warned that the Nazis apparently held their own definition of what constituted neutrality, so he kept the crew on high alert.
They cruised without incident for over an hour, but off the coast of Portugal the peacefulness ended. Tail gunner shouted a warning over the interphone. “Aircraft coming up on our six. Fast.”
“How many?” Al called back.
“One.”
“German?”
“Can’t tell.”
“Get ready to shoot.”
“Roger that.”
“All positions, prepare to fire.”
Al turned to Sorey. “Let’s take ’er down, gain some speed.”
“Ready.”
The tail position again: “Hold on. Looks like a friendly. He’s peeled off to our port.”
Al glanced to his left, out the cockpit glass. A fighter tore into view, then slowed as it came abeam of the bomber. The fighter bore an RAF roundel on its side.
“Hold your fire, everyone,” Al called. “It’s a Brit. Spitfire.”
Sorey leaned forward to see around Al and get a good look at the fighter. “Probably out of Gibraltar.”
Al nodded.
The Spitfire waggled its wings and accelerated away.
Once the B-24 reached the Straits of Gibraltar, Al relaxed. He pressed his throat mike to make an announcement. “We’ve reached Gibraltar, so it should be clear sailing from here on out. We’ll grab some gas in Casablanca, then press on running parallel to the North A
frican coast to Benghazi. The stop in Casablanca will be brief, about forty-five minutes, so get out and stretch your legs. But don’t go wandering off looking for Bogart and Bergman or you’ll end up AWOL and sitting out the war in Leavenworth.”
In response came a chuckle or two, a series of “Yes, sirs,” and a few double clicks—an informal radio signal of acknowledgement.
Sorey turned toward Al and raised his voice to be heard over the bellow of the bomber’s four big engines. “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns . . .”
“Jesus. You memorized lines from the movie?”
“Seen it four times.”
Al rolled his eyes. “War is hell.”
“Nothin’ else to do but sleep, eat, and fight.”
The stop in Casablanca ate up an hour, but once airborne again, Al got them back on schedule. They flew eastward along the north coast of Morocco and, after that, Algeria, the deep blue Mediterranean Sea below them, a gray-smeared cloud deck of altostratus above. The air proved smooth, unlike the thermal-ridden summers that could send them bouncing up and down as if riding an invisible roller coaster.
“Sorey,” Al said, “take it for a while, would you? I just wanna close my eyes for a few minutes.”
“Yes, sir. I got the controls. Have a good snooze.”
Al shut his eyes and allowed his thoughts to drift off to Sarah, his wife, and their last night together in the States before he’d shipped out for England.
They had married just after he’d joined the Army in mid-1941, guessing it would not be long before the US entered the war. He also thought if he volunteered early he’d have a better chance of doing what he wanted, being an aviator. His thoughts turned out to be correct.
He and Sarah had been separated during much of his flight training—he spent time in locations such as Santa Ana, California, and Tucson, Arizona—but after he’d received his overseas orders in the late summer of ’42, she had taken the train—several, in fact—from Oregon to New York. First the SP&S—Spokane, Portland, and Seattle—from Portland to Seattle. Then the Empire Builder to Chicago, followed by the 20th Century Limited to Grand Central in New York City.
The five-day slog proved exhausting in railcars crammed with GIs, but well worth it for the chance to spend a day or two with Al before he deployed to Europe.
The night before his scheduled departure, they journeyed to the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle for dinner and dancing. The venture had set him back a small fortune, over fifteen bucks, but for a chance to sway to the Glenn Miller Orchestra, it seemed a tiny expenditure. Besides, he figured, he wasn’t going to be spending much money once he entered combat. And as always, there lurked just beyond the horizon of their happiness the unspoken fear, the unacknowledged reality, they might never see one another again.
They sat at a table near the dance floor, sipping Manhattans after dinner and listening to the orchestra run through the new favorites of a nation at war: “V for Victory Hop,” “American Patrol,” and “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.”
During a break in the music, he slid a crumpled photograph, something clipped from the Arizona Daily Star in Tucson where he’d completed his B-24 training, across the table to her.
“My baby,” he said.
She looked askance at him.
“Second-best baby,” he corrected.
She nodded her approval. “That’s what you fly?”
“It’s a B-24 bomber. It’s called a Liberator.”
“A Liberator? Like what we’re doing for Europe, trying to liberate it?”
“Yes. I guess that’s a good way to think of it.”
She studied the picture. A hint of a frown crept over her face.
“I know,” he said. “It’s not quite so sleek and glamorous as the B-17.”
“That’s the one they call the Flying Fortress?”
“Yeah. It’s the bomber that gets most of the press.”
“I can see why.”
He hung his head in mock shame. “Even the guys who fly the Lib say it looks like a pregnant cow.”
She laughed. “It’s not that bad. It just looks . . .”
“Different?”
He knew it did. With its slab-sided fuselage, twin vertical stabilizers, and a high-mounted straight wing that spanned one hundred ten feet, it bore a much more businesslike and boxy appearance than the popularized Flying Fortress.
“Yes, different,” she said. “Tell me about it. You know, the stuff you can, the stuff that isn’t secret.”
He took a swallow of his Manhattan. “Well, without giving away any numbers, it’s actually a bit faster, has a longer range, and typically carries a bigger bomb load than the B-17.” He paused for a moment, then added, “But it’s a handful to fly.”
She locked her gaze on him, and he read the trepidation in her eyes.
“I’m a good pilot,” he said. “I love flying it. I know what I’m doing. It’s just that it’s not like driving a Packard. More like driving a garbage truck.”
She reached across the table for his hand. “I know you’re a good pilot. But I’ll never stop worrying about you. You’re the most important thing in my life.”
“And you in mine,” he responded, and meant it.
“Promise me you’ll come home,” she whispered.
He couldn’t, but knew he had to. A part of him, the intellectual part, understood he might not return, that people in Axis fighters and behind flak guns would be trying to kill him. But another part of him—the youthful, not-yet-battle-tested part, the part that bore a sense of invincibility—brimmed with excitement and anticipation over embarking on a “great adventure.” A ripple of guilt surged through him. He realized how hard it must be for Sarah, and all the others left behind—wives, girlfriends, parents, children—to see their loved ones off to war.
“I don’t know,” he responded. “I don’t know how I can make that guarantee. There are just too many—”
“Promise me, damn you, promise,” she hissed, and gripped his hand so fiercely he thought she might bruise it. “I know you’ll be lying. But I want to hear the words. Please say them.” Her eyes brimmed with tears as her gaze bore into his soul.
“I’ll come home, Sarah, I will. I love you so much. That’s all the incentive I need. Somehow, someway, I’ll make it.” He attempted to force genuine conviction into his words, but it proved futile.
“How many missions?” she asked, her voice husky with emotion.
“Before I can come home? Right now, twenty-five.” Twenty-five opportunities for the enemy to make sure he wouldn’t.
The orchestra returned from its intermission and launched into “String of Pearls,” and the audience applauded.
“Let’s dance,” he said.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “You look so handsome in your uniform, I’m not sure I want other women noticing you.”
He stood. “I understand. I guess I could easily be mistaken for Clark Gable.”
She frowned and gave him an icy stare. “Sure, if you grew a mustache and a couple of inches, maybe.”
Holding hands, they wove their way onto the dance floor.
A stratus of cigarette smoke, like an early morning overcast along the Pacific coast, hung over the floor. The aroma of sirloin steaks and spilled whiskey floated through the casino. He pulled Sarah close and buried his face in her honeysuckle-scented hair as the Miller band began one of his favorites, “Tuxedo Junction.”
They glided across the hardwood floor to the soft oop-pah oop-pah of the trombone section as the musicians fanned hat mutes in front of their instruments. They seemed to become one, floating through an ephemeral world of beauty and peace where no one else existed, as if he and Sarah had the casino to themselves.
The orchestra moved from “Tuxedo Junction” to “At Last,” and the magic of the evening seemed endless.
“Sir, Benghazi’s coming up.” Sorey’s voice over the interphone snapped Al awake. He didn’t realize he’d fallen asleep.
“Sorry, Sorey. Didn’t think I’d go lights out like that.”
“Been a long day, Pops, I know. But I’d like you at the controls with me when we set ’er down.”
Al hated his nickname, “Pops,” but realized he’d earned it because his advanced age, thirty, made him the oldest member of his ten-man crew. Not that it really mattered. Everyone on the crew sported a nickname. It had become an esprit de corps sort of thing. Even the bomber had a name. In fact, all American bombers did. Not only did they have names but also elaborate artwork on their noses to accompany them.
The artwork, in truth, often bordered on the prurient by featuring long-legged, big-breasted women in the nude or only scantily clad. The bomber names themselves could be suggestive. Strawberry Bitch, Male Call, Bangin’ Lulu, Wicked Woman. Al supposed a lot of the nose art would not necessarily be welcomed back in the States, but in combat theaters, men called the shots, and sexy ladies depicted on B-24s and B-17s were SOP—Standard Operating Procedure.
Al’s Liberator had been christened something a little different . . . nothing lascivious. It went by Oregon Grinder and bore a cartoon logo of an organ grinder, wearing a top hat with “OREGON” stenciled on it, stuffing an evil-looking dancing monkey, a caricature of Adolf Hitler, into what was, in effect, a meat grinder.
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