Rush to Glory

by Robert L Hecker

  Everyone laughed, and Luke slapped Hal on the back with approval. Evidently, he had struck the correct note.

  Colonel Sutton put his arm around the waist of the girl. “This is Betty Axley. Betty, Major Bailey, Major Deering and . . . uh . . . Lt. Bailey.”

  Betty Axley shook their hands, answering their murmured greetings with a smile.

  The colonel started to say “Miss Axley . . .” when he was interrupted by the distant thunder of approaching B-17s, and they turned to watch the first squadron of bombers appear out of the haze. Holding a ragged formation, their wheels down, the twelve Flying Fortresses swept the length of the main runway with the low flight a bare fifty feet above the ground. Several bore the marks of battle: engines smoking, props feathered, windows shattered, their aluminum skins ripped and slashed.

  One by one, the big ships peeled off, wheeling up and away into their landing pattern, becoming lost again in the English haze, only the sound of their engines marking their location as they circled.

  “That’s the Lead Squadron,” Luke explained. “The other two are holding until they’re all on the ground.”

  “Why come in so low? Isn’t it dangerous?”

  “Yeah, but it’s more dangerous if they can’t find the runway. This damn ground haze only goes up a couple of hundred feet, but you’ve got to be right on top of the runway to see it.”

  In the murky haze, Hal could just make out two distant yellow lights flanking the approach to the runway.

  “Do those lights really help?”

  “Some, but not much. You just have to fly your pattern, and when you come around that base leg, keep your eye peeled. If you’re lucky, you see them quick enough, so you don’t have to go around again.”

  The first Fort of the low squadron suddenly reappeared out of the mist beyond the end of the runway, its wheels seeking the earth. The pilot was slightly offline and, at the last minute, he whipped the huge ship up in a steep turn like a fighter, horsing it into alignment with the center of the runway and righted it just before its wheels slapped down on the concrete with a faint squeal and puffs of white smoke.

  One by one, the Flying Fortresses of the lead squadron ghosted out of the haze, skimmed the treetops, and settled on the runway, each heavy bomber’s wheels making new black streaks on the ribbon of concrete. They came in so close together that before one ship had turned off onto the perimeter track, another B-17 dropped through the deepening mist onto the runway. One ship came in so fast that it almost overtook the ship ahead of it. But its pilot braked hard and pulled his plane onto the perimeter track with its four propellers only inches from the empennage of the other plane. When they rolled closer, Hal saw that a big chunk of the first ship’s stabilizer had been shot away, and the second ship had several ragged-looking holes in both wings and the fuselage.

  “Flak,” Major Deering said. “Look like they got hit pretty good.”

  “That’s not bad,” the colonel said. “We had a ship come in one time with more than a thousand holes.”

  Hal could not believe that aircraft could still fly with so much battle damage. “I wonder if anybody inside got hit?”

  “I guess not,” Deering said. “They’d have fired a couple of red flares if anybody was hurt.”

  “Not much point,” Luke added flatly, “if they’re dead.”

  Planes of the low squadron began appearing out of the haze. Immediately after one had plopped onto the runway, two red flares streaked from the roof port and arched into the sky. The flares fell onto the green grass beside the runway and smoldered for a moment before they went out.

  A siren began a shrill crescendo, and one of the ambulances raced across the grass toward the plane, its huge red crosses looking like targets of death. The plane’s pilot didn’t try to make it all the way to the perimeter track. He braked the fast-rolling plane so hard the tires smoked, then wheeled off the runway onto the bordering grass and cut the engines. While other planes continued to land and roll along the runway, the ambulance crew carried somebody out of the B-17 on a stretcher.

  Suddenly Hal’s attention was caught by two B-17s that appeared simultaneously out of the haze, each one feeling for the ground. One had turned off his base leg too soon while the other had not turned soon enough so that they were converging as they approached the two yellow lights. The pilots saw each other at the same instant, and slammed power to their engines, horsing their planes’ noses up in a desperate attempt to avoid a collision. As Hal watched, mesmerized by a mounting horror, the two bombers bellied forward, nose up, tail down; then, they enfolded each other with their wings. For a terrible instant, they seemed to dance a ponderous waltz like two over-weight circus bears. Then they erupted into a huge fireball with a blast that shook buildings and, still locked in a tight embrace, slammed to earth beside the runway, spewing flaming wreckage and gouts of earth and soft, green grass.

  Betty Axley made a gasping scream. Hal stared, rigid with shock. He took a step toward the carnage, and Luke grabbed his arm. “No,” he snapped.

  Hal tried to wrench free. “We’ve got to do something,” he gasped.

  “Forget it. Nobody could live through that.”

  Hal let his breath out in a painful moan. He could not tear his eyes from the burning wreckage and the roiling pillar of black smoke. Fire engines and ambulances raced toward the pyre. It was only a gesture; there was no hope for any of the twenty men inside the flaming wreckage.

  “What was it?” Betty Axley whispered. “What went wrong?”

  “God damn haze,” Colonel Sutton muttered. “You can’t see a damn thing. I’d sooner run through flak.”

  “Too damn many planes in too little room,” Major Deering added.

  No one contradicted him. Only someone who had flown missions knew that danger was not just over the target. Death rode with the crews in the darkness before dawn and in the haze of a warm English afternoon.

  “So much for Stutzman’s luck,” Cossell muttered. Luke was silent.

  For another fifteen minutes, ship after ship wheeled out of the haze, searching for the runway, flying almost blindly into the safety of the ground. It seemed a miracle to Hal that there were no more collisions. He wondered what was going through the minds of the crewmen as they rolled past the wreckage, which had been sprayed with foam from a fire truck until it was now a pile of slimy white emitting tendrils of black smoke.

  Everyone had been counting the ships. When the last of the high squadron was down, they waited for a moment; their heads cocked as though listening for phantom engines they knew would never be heard again. After a moment, the colonel sighed and motioned to Major Deering. “You got it. Six, with those two.”

  “Six?” Betty Axley said. “That’s sixty men. How long can you keep this up?”

  “As long as it takes,” the colonel answered grimly.

  She shook her head. “Such a waste.”

  “I’ll say,” Luke said. “This is going to make me short.”

  The colonel said, “I thought you had a couple of new crews ready to go.”

  “Yeah, but that won’t give me any spares. What if somebody aborts?”

  “If we get any more new crews, you can fly them as spares. If somebody aborts, they’ll have to go all the way.”

  “Okay. But one of those I lost was my squadron lead. I’m going to give it to O’Reilly.”

  “Is he ready?”

  “He’s been flying deputy.”

  “Okay. I know O’Reilly. He can handle it.”

  “One thing.” Luke rubbed his jaw as though he was in deep thought. “I’m going to replace his bombardier.”

  The colonel’s eyebrows pinched into a frown. “Break up the crew? Why?”

  “Just ain’t cutting it. I’m going to put Bailey here in his place.”

  The colonel’s gaz
e flicked toward Hal, suspicion in his eyes. “He’s got no missions. You think that’s wise?”

  Hal stood uncomfortably, feeling like a prize bull at a stock sale. Betty Axley was watching him with a knowing smile pulling at her lips. He was sure her smile hid a feeling of disgust at the blatant display of nepotism.

  “I checked his 201 file,” Luke said in a hard voice, which Hal guessed was to help convey the message that there was no favoritism involved. “They’ve got him ticketed for lead. Captain Marshall checked him out today.”

  “What about Schultz?” Major Deering asked, and Luke squinted at him angrily for not letting the subject drop.

  “Schultz’ll be all right. I’ll move him over to Hollister’s crew.”

  The colonel continued to stare at Hal, his face tight. Then he turned back to Luke. “It’s your squadron,” he said. “Give him a couple of squadron leads before you use him on group. And,” he added, “he’d better be good.” As he and the girl walked away, Hal noticed her eyes dart from Luke toward him. He had seen that look in other women’s eyes. They were wondering how he could possibly be brother to the dynamic Luke. Well, this was one time when a beautiful girl’s opinion meant nothing to him.

  “He’ll do,” Luke said to the colonel’s retreating. “I’ll see to that.” Luke looked at Hal, and his voice hardened. “An’ you damn well better. Come on. We can get in on the interrogation.”

  Walking beside his brother and Major Deering toward the Operations building, Hal felt familiar despair. All he had wanted was to fly his missions, do as much damage to the German war machine as possible, and go home. Instead, he felt as though he had become a pawn in Luke’s drive to the top. He could not refuse the chance to be on a lead crew. It was too late for that. After the boast Luke had made to the colonel, his brother would kill him. The only thing he could do now was do his job and hope that they would forget about him.

  Interrogation of the crews took place in a briefing room that extended the complete length of the operations’ Quonset hut. A slightly raised dais was at the far end of the room, backed by a large map of Europe tacked on the rear wall. Light came from bare overhead bulbs in porcelain reflectors and from a row of opaque windows along one side of the curved walls. The room had been set up with a scattering of picnic-type wooden tables flanked by benches where returning crews were already seated, some still wearing their heated suits and sheepskin-lined jackets and boots. A few of the officers carried Colt .45 automatic pistols in shoulder holsters.

  Intelligence Officers were questioning several crews. Each I.O. made careful notes on a pad as the weary men describe pertinent details of their hours in the air. From time to time, the I.O. would ask a question, digging into the facts behind the disagreements and combat-blurred observations: where was the heaviest flak? Did the enemy use rockets? What was your altitude at bomb drop? Your speed? Etc.

  It was surprisingly quiet, considering the number of men in the room. Hal had expected a locker-room kind of excitement, the raw elation of having survived a hard-fought battle. But these men smelled of death. Except for a few sharp voiced comments, the men talked quietly. At one of the tables, a kid wearing a staff sergeant’s stripes and gunner’s wings was quietly sobbing. Nobody said anything to him. The other crewmen sat solemnly talking to the interrogator. Some of them looked as though they, too, were close to tears. Hal noticed there were only seven men at the table instead of the usual ten; then, he remembered the ambulance.

  Only in one corner was there laughter along with the raw odor of whiskey. Here a line of men, officers, and enlisted men alike, edged toward a table that had been set up near the door. Behind the table, a captain and a sergeant were filling shot-glasses from bottles of Canadian Club and passing one to each crewman. Some of the men tossed off the drink in one gulp, while others sipped it carefully. Some gave their ration to another crewman. A few had trouble holding the glass in their shaking hands, to the amusement of their friends. But the laughter was friendly, although sometimes edged with a border of hysteria. For these men, being shot at was not a one-time ordeal. There was still tomorrow. And tomorrow after that. And more tomorrows, until one day there might be no tomorrow. Now, being back on the ground, being alive, was all that mattered.

  On the big map, the colored ribbons used to mark the routes to the primary and secondary targets were still in place, and Hal stepped up on the dais for a closer look. The red ribbon, angling from their Thorpewood Base in central England, curved around curious markings penciled on the map until it reached the mission’s Initial Point in south-western Germany. The bomb run terminated at a dot labeled “Stuttgart.” A green ribbon, beginning at the same I.P., led to a small rail line near Bretten. A blue ribbon marked a route from the coast of England to Holland.

  “That blue one’s where the B-24s went,” a dry voice at his elbow said. “The colonel put it up to improve morale.”

  Hal looked around to see Major Deering looking over his shoulder. “Doesn’t everybody hit the same target?”

  “Not always. Our boys figure the 24s always get the milk runs. Every time we hit the interior of Germany, they hit the coast. Or, at least, it seems that way.”

  “What if we hit the coast?”

  “Then they stay home, I suppose,” he said with a smile. “In all fairness, it averages out pretty even. It’s just that the guys getting shot at always figure they’re the ones who have it the roughest.”

  “And the other ribbons, how come the routes are so crooked?”

  “See these little black lines?” Major Deering pointed out the lines Hal had noticed penciled on the map in Holland, Belgium, and Germany. “These are areas of known flak. These other marks are German fighter bases. We try to plot a course between the heaviest concentrations. We call it a flak corridor.”

  “Oh. How do you know where they’re going to be?”

  “Various ways. Around some important targets, it’s always hot, so we always skirt them if at all possible, like the valley of the Ruhr. It’s hard to tell about the fighters. The Germans move their Sturm units around quite a bit. We figure out what the pitch is as we go along.” He gestured toward the room behind him. “What we learn today will alter this for the next mission. For example,”—he pointed to the map—“we got it heavy here today around Baden. That means they’ve moved more guns in since the last time we were over. Next time we’ll fly around it.”

  “This place they went today, Stuttgart. Was it considered a tough target?”

  Major Deering pursed his lips and looked at the ribbons on the map. “Well, bad enough. The flak was pretty heavy. No fighters, thank God. Not for our group. Not like it used to be. But you can never be sure when they’re going to come up in force. When they do . . . well, even a short run into Holland or France can be rough.” He glanced toward the men drifting out the door after their interrogations. “I guess it really depends on whether you make it back or not.”

  Hal hesitated, then asked, “When will you know where the mission will be tomorrow?”

  “About 2:00 A.M. Comes in by secure TWX from Pinetree.”

  Pinetree, Hal knew, was the code name for headquarters of the 8th Air Force Bomber Command at High Wycombe near London.

  Deering turned toward the door. “There goes Bailey. Let’s hit him up for a ride to the mess hall.”

  Outside the afternoon sunlight had slipped into a long twilight, and the mist clung to the land with an unnatural stillness. Hal suddenly realized that almost from the first moment he had arrived, the sound of airplane engines had been drumming in his ears. During the morning, mechanics labored over the big radial engines, and ships were always warming up or taking off for check flights. Later, the skies had been alive with homing ships from Thorpewood and nearby bases. Now the crews were home; the mechanics were having dinner. The B-17s were black hulks, silently waiting. In the dim light, they looked ominous without eith
er the slim grace they had in flight nor the latent power they evinced sitting on the hardstands in the daylight. Battered, wounded, burned. They seemed to be guarding the empty hardstands of their lost companions. Tomorrow vengeance would be theirs, even at the price of their own death.

  Hal shivered. Instead of being comforting, the gloaming was somehow foreboding as though it, too, was simply waiting for morning when the earth would again echo with the drumming hooves of the pale horse of death.

  It was almost a relief when Luke started the Jeep, and the sound of its clattering engine resounded from the buildings.

  The story of Hal’s bomb-tossing tactic quickly made the rounds, and at dinner, several bombardiers came over to ask how he’d done it. Hal shrugged it off as something everybody was doing in the States.

  Then Luke came over and hit him a thumping blow on the back. “Damn good, ol’ buddy,” he said. “Marshall tells me you can fly that ship better than O’Reilly.”

  O’Reilly looked up and grinned, but his voice was cynical. “Oh, he’s a wizard. Tell you what, Maj, we’ll all stay home on the next mission, and he can take the whole bloody thing himself.”

  Luke shot O’Reilly a hard look, but O’Reilly’s features wore their usual wry twist, and his eyes studied Luke with lazy indifference.

  Luke forced a tight smile. “Okay. Tomorrow we’ve got the high squadron. O’Reilly, we’ll take the lead.” Luke hesitated, then added, “Schultz, you fly with Hollister.”

  There was a sharp, brittle silence. Now it was official. Schultz’s reaction was to stare down at his plate. O’Reilly’s jaw bunched, and Hal could almost read his thoughts. O’Reilly could make a stink and maybe force a review by the group C.O. But he also knew that Luke was squadron commander, and even if Colonel Sutton did not like the situation, he would not interfere unless Luke did something that would adversely affect his squadron’s performance.

  “War is hell,” O’Reilly said and went back to eating.

  “Yeah, ain’t it?” Luke said. And Hal could sense the relief in his voice. “You guys keep up the good work, and you’ll be flying group leads pretty soon.”