She got us across the river, to a quiet-looking area of farm fields, then headed south again, trying for Irkutsk. Wasn’t going to happen. “Make sure your seat belt is tight.” She said, I had time to check the buckle, before she pancaked the Curtiss down in a rye field. It got real exciting for a few seconds, then it was over. We lived through it. The best that can be said. A landing is any crash you can walk away from, this qualified. I felt like I had been in the ring with Jack Dempsey, but we were both alive and in possession of all our parts. Bleeding a little, but don’t sweat the small stuff. “Save your notes,” she ordered.
“I didn’t see shit.”
“Even so. Got your pistol?”
“Yeah.” I stuffed the maps and my notes into that messenger bag, and was ready as I was going to be.
“Let’s go.” She pointed. “Irkutsk is that way.” A farmer and his son came running to see what we might be, I convinced them that sticking us with pitchforks was not a good idea, and told them they could have anything they could pry off the plane. As if I could have stopped them. Fucking Russians. And this lot were all descended from Siberian exiles. Screw history, time to beat feet.
The only problem was that it was getting dark. “I should have asked that farmer for a place to stay for the night.”
“We need to get back to base. How far?”
“Shit if I…” Then I remembered I was supposed to be navigator. Save your stupid pride, she saved your ass. “A few miles. There must be some sort of a road.”
“Lead the way.” Now that we had a little time to think, she looked plenty beat up. Make the best of it.
“I have some gold, we will see if we can get a ride. A wagon if nothing else.”
“The battle is not quieting down.” She turned to look at the smoke rising from the valley. I am a little deaf, but now that she mentioned it, I could hear the evil rumble, even some coming through the ground. That means big stuff, major artillery. Fucking Germans. They do not screw around, and they had an ungodly amount of crap to throw at us. Hoof it, boy. I had spent a lot of time getting away from what the Krauts called the Western Front, and here it was coming to get me. Us. Fuck this for a game of sojers, as the Limeys say.
>>>>>>
We found a little village, they had a tavern, at least a room with food and vodka. We needed both. Captain Brendan was limping pretty badly, just willpower pushing her on. We had hit hard, she was favoring her right knee. My back hurt, and I am not built for hiking. I enquired, there was a coach, a stagecoach sort of deal due through in mid-morning, and “If not, Sasha will take you in his wagon. For a few rubles, you understand.” The landlord promised. I did indeed understand, and I made sure he saw that both of us were armed. We had black bread, herring, and borsch, quite good too. They assumed we were a couple, and I didn’t tell them any different. They were a villainous-looking bunch, but no worse than the denizens of many other dives I have frequented. I asked them about the war, they were indifferent with that true Russian indifference to calamity. “If they get too close, we will simply go cut trees and hunt furs for a few months. Siberia is large.”
“I understand. After the czar, it is hard to fear anybody.”
“The tedeski, the americanski… Fuck their mothers. What is life for the Russian is death to the foreigner.”
“I am American.”
“You were Russian. We know. And your woman?”
“From Ireland.”
“We have read of that land. In books. Strong drinkers. Good singers. Would you sing for us?” I translated for Maeve, she shook her head, no, then reconsidered.
“One song. I am very tired.”
“One song. One new song.” The bartender spoke, the few farmers gathered closer. Maeve drained her glass, stood wincing in pain as her knee took her weight, and sang.
“Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling….
She could sing, and she could sell a song. They all listened in silence, when she finished, they did not applaud, but the bartender filled our glasses, left the bottle on the plank that served as the bar. We drained our shots, thanked the landlord, and asked to be shown our beds. There was just one bed, in the eves, one room, one bed. And not a large bed either. I looked at her, she avoided my eye. “I could sleep on the floor…”
“Why would you want to do that? Do you think I am one of those unnaturals?”
“The thought had crossed my mind. Why else would you be here?”
“In exile?”
“Exactly.”
She shrugged. “Politics. Want the details?”
“I don’t need to know. Seems a little pointless in this place and time.”
She sat, winced, unlaced her boots. I had to help pull them off her injured leg. “You are correct.” She looked me up and down. It look a while. She made up her mind about something. “You are a big one.” She licked her lips. “You be careful, take it slow?”
“With you?”
“Yeah. I’m not real experienced with men.”
“We don’t have to do this.”
“We nearly died a few hours ago.”
“True enough.”
“Shut up and turn out the lamp, do you mind?”
“… Sure.”
>>>>>>>
It was almost a pleasure trying to make love with somebody, instead of just screwing a willing receptacle. Aggravating, but intriguing. I kept feeling I could be doing a better job of this if there wasn’t a battle a few miles away. And, of course, I really just wanted to spend myself into oblivion like I was used to doing with Cookie and her predecessors. Life is complicated sometimes, especially if you are trying to not be a selfish jackass. Let’s just say it is not a role I feel familiar with. I expected more fire from a redhead, but she was quiet and sort of bland tasting. Rich body. I was trying to see her as a person, but my history is against me. She did kiss me in the morning as we were dressing, which might have been a first. Breakfast was tea and kasha, buckwheat porridge, Sasha was waiting with his troika wagon, he had decided that a few rubles was a lot of money, and thought he should rather have it than the stage company.
We were at a USA road block before noon, told our story, and were flivvered to the Angarsk Airfield toot sweet. It was chaos, planes landing and taking off as fast as they could be serviced and sent back up. The battle seemed closer, and we could see dogfights from where we stood at the raw wood control tower. The AA crews looked cranked up and nervous. Soldiers were digging slit trenches as fast as humanly possible, flivvers raced past in all directions, motorcycle messengers risking life and limb to get the battle plans to their correct destinations. It took a while to find the relevant office to take our story, then a while longer to gain access to a telephone and call back to Verkhneudinsk, let them know we were more or less in one piece.
Now that our personal emergencies were over, our aches and pains came back full force. Maeve could barely walk, and my back was locking up, comfortable neither sitting or standing. I managed to send a message back to Ray Reynolds, then sat around uncomfortably until word came back to hop the first train available to take us back to Dalny. Orders to follow ASAP. “I want to fly!” Maeve blurted, but I pointed to a dozen pilots kicking their heels in the shade of the control tower, a line of shot-up and crashed planes that had been dragged to the edge of the field. “More pilots than planes. Let’s follow orders and rest up a few days before we get shot down again. Plenty of war to go around.”
She looked where I pointed, then asked, as if it didn’t matter, “You have another women in Dalny?”
“Ahh… I think she resigned that position a few days ago. She was a more of a convenience anyway.”
“A prostitute? A kept woman?”
“A bit more complicated than that. She was a whore, that much is true. But are you looking for a… man?”
“I….” Long pause. “I suppose so. Is that presumptuous of me? We don’t even know each other, do we?”
“Wars are like that. Where are you from?
Ireland?”
“I was born in America. New Haven, actually.” She admitted.
“I was raised there. Born in the Crimea. Small world.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
It took a while, but… “You didn’t actually ask me if I wanted you as my woman.”
“Do you?”
“You mean married?” I swallowed. “You Catholic?”
“No. And no. I said woman. Partner. Deal?”
“Provisionally? Sure. I guess.”
“Don’t be overwhelming me with enthusiasm.” She quipped, but a twinkle in her green eye gave her away. Oh, a smart ass. What else in a pilot?
“I don’t bullshit people. I try to say what I mean, and try to mean what I say. You want to live together for a while, fine, but I have a paper to run, and you have a war to fight. Our life expectancies are liable to be a little on the short side.”
“Of course. That’s why I… Last night. You know?”
What can you do? She was almost as inarticulate about things that matter as I am. Fuck it. I kissed her. A few airmen glowered at us, but fuck them for a bunch of jealous assholes. When we came up for air, a sergeant was there with a sheaf of papers. “Your travel vouchers and orders. Sir…ers…”
“Thanks. Can you get us a ride to the train station?”
“A few minutes, Captain, Lieutenant. A few minutes.” We didn’t get a few minutes. The northern sky began to roar with motors, the air raid siren, they had only one, wailed, people ran in all directions. I grabbed Maeve, dragged her behind me by the scruff, while I dug for the nearest slit trench. The large explosions walking toward down the length of the field gave me all the impetus I needed.
I hit bottom and cowered but Maeve just had to keep her head up, giving me a running commentary of the action. “BFW M 23? What the holy hell are those doing here?”
I rolled over to see a silver low wing monoplane, very sleek, roar past. As it pulled up out of its dive, a black something detached itself from the bottom of the fuselage and fell down to impact the base of the tower building. Instantly there was a massive blast, a gout of black smoke, and chunks of the wooden building exploded up into the air. “What?” I cleverly asked.
“That’s a damn racer, not a bomber!”
“Get your fucking head down, or you will die, damn it!” I tugged at her tunic, but she was immovable.
“We are here to gather information, correct?”
“Fuck a bunch of information,” I bravely said, but did raise my eyes. Oh, fuck, back in the hero business. I just had time enough to see a dozen or more pursuit jobs, Fokkers, I supposed, wing tip to wing tip, strafe the whole length of the field with tracers. What planes were left on the ground went up in flames, airmen clutched at themselves and fell kicking to the tarmac. Right near us, a motorcycle messenger ran right into a stream of flaming lead, and was blown right off his bike. The bike skidded to a stop at the edge of the trench, motor faithfully still thumping away. The rider convulsed and died, at least I hoped he died, I was not about to crawl out in that shit storm to rescue him. Those planes vanished south, but more motors throbbing in behind them.
Big planes. Three engines each, like the new Ford Trimotor that Patton’s buddy Henry was so proud of. But these, and there were scores of them, wave after wave, were towing stubby looking gliders, each the size of a city bus. Sometimes your brain works on no data. I punched Maeve, who was focused on the burning control tower, to get her attention. “Look!”
“The Junkers Ju 52…Tante Ju…” She said, wonderingly. “Towing… What’s in those…”
“Fucking Krauts. Soldiers! Time to screw out of here!” I jumped out of the trench, wrestled the bike up on its wheels, yelled, “How do I get this fucker in gear?”
“Let me!”
“You know how to…”
“I raced these bastards. Move!” In a second she had a leg over the tank, her butt in the seat, and hands on the controls. “Get on!” I managed to get into the pillion, one foot on one peg, and hands around her body before she jazzed the throttle and slammed it into gear with her other hand. We took off like a scalded rocket, weaving between landing gliders as they skidded to stops. The strafing had to stop to let the soldaten gather their wits and clamber out. Some of the gliders had hit pretty hard, at least one smashed into the burning tower, ammunition was cooking off, and scorched soldiers were stumbling in all directions. Maeve let the front wheel of the Indian touch the ground occasionally, but only when she needed to steer. I was so scared that I could not decide who I was more scared of, her or the Germans. Hang on, fat boy, life is getting interesting right about now. We made it.
The road was clogged with trucks and flivvers headed north, no tanks yet, but we made it into Irkutsk before a MP stopped us. He thought we were fleeing, but her USAS uniform and the travel orders I had managed to cling to all this time saved us from getting sent to the stockade. We got directions to HQ, but that was a madhouse, nobody had time for us. The Train Station was worse, and one look told me that there were no trains headed south. Or liable to be.
I noticed that the orders said, “TSRR or available transportation,” so we grabbed a tank of gas and a few cans of oil from a fueling station, and headed south. Let’s try Verkhneudinsk.
>>>>>>>>
We did have a hassle getting through the guard posts at the tunnels at the bottom end of the big lake, but our obvious look of “what the fuck are we doing here?” and Maeve’s attitude let us by. We also fell into the “least of our worries” category. We were supposed to be in Dalny, that was good enough for your average MP corporal.
We got almost to Verkhneudinsk just about dark, and just before the Zeppelins did. They were not fucking around like the Nationalist Chinese had been, they hit us and hit us hard. Target one was the airfield, they pasted that bastard right into the ground. Hate Zepps, they have much better aim than airplanes. Not as good as heavy artillery, but fuck them all. Fortunately, we were above the city, out of danger, but with a ringside seat for the show. She kicked the Indian up on its stand, we sat there, alongside the road watching our forces get defeated again. “We are fucked, aren’t we?” She asked, and I could only agree.
“We better… Shit, I don’t know what we better do. If the Germans get to that Chita place, and can get their tanks loose in Mongolia, we are so fucked. Irkutsk better hold. If not…”
“If not, what?”
“We swim back to the States and Patton locks us up in camps.”
“Yeah.” She turned and put her hand on my shoulder. “You want to crawl off in the woods and do that again?”
“I want to, sure, but we better not. As soon as the bombs stop falling, we should go down there and find somebody to report to. We are in the Army, you know.”
“I love you.”
“Say what?”
“I know I am raddled and beat up and short on sleep, but that was a very grown up thing to say.” She kissed me. “I love you for saying that, for thinking like that. A grown up.”
“Don’t count on that shit, but thanks. I like you too. You saved our butts three or four times in the last thirty hours or so, and I appreciate it.”
“Another kiss. then.”
Happy to oblige. After that, I asked her to explain what had happened at the airfield. “That was all new stuff, wasn’t it?”
“I… Yes. The BFW M.23 is a Willy Messerschmitt design, made by the Bayerische Flugzeugwerke. A two seat racer, very fast, but a sport plane, not a bomber. But I have heard that last August, the Imperial Japanese Navy sank a retired protected cruiser Akashi, with pursuit planes dropping ten pound bombs. They call it dive bombing. You just aim the whole plane, release the bomb and zoom away.”
“Those were bigger than ten pound bombs.”
“Indeed they were. There is a danger that you will fly into the ground, or be hit with your own shrapnel. The closer you get, the more danger but the more accuracy. A trade off.”
“I get it. Air accuracy su
cks.” Below us, flames and secondary explosions called me a liar. “And the Trimotors?”
“The Junkers Ju 52…Tante Ju, Iron Annie. Pretty much the same as the Ford Trimotor. Nothing new there, but the gliders were a hell of an innovation. I know the Russian and the Germans were big on sailplanes, but who would have thought…”
“Those are easy to build, right? Wood and fabric. Cheap.”
“But you would waste a lot of soldiers.”
“Germany has lots of soldiers. Millions. And lots of guns and planes and no place to use them. All they have for them to do is to mop up the French colonies and send the rest of them down the Line.”
“To kill us.” She said, coolly enough.
“You got it. If they demobilize them, they might cause unrest, like our Bonus Marchers.”
“We are so fucked.” The zepps moved on, leaving flames, sirens, and screams in their wake. “Go now?”
“Yeah. But be careful, sometimes the bastards come back to bomb the medics and the firemen. They will bomb into the wind, shut off their engines and drift back silently.”
“You said you hated zepps.”
“Yeah. I said that. Let’s go.”
>>>>>>>
The Airfield was wiped out, blotted from existence, aviation gasoline and fabric airplanes don’t even leave much wreckage, just the engine blocks, and smoldering tires. Men stood around, tending to each other’s wounds, replacing ammunition in such AA guns as had survived. Nobody there had any time for us, we pressed on into town, looking for the Train Station or the HQ. They had been the same place, but the zepps had found it first. More rubble, more people doing first aid, no help. We saw a band of motorcyclists at an open air market a little way down the main drag, they had a few kerosene lights on, a small fire to cook tea and soup over. We thought they were a messenger encampment, but once we putted over, found that they were not Army, they had only rags and travesties of uniforms on. A lot of oriental women, as armed and ragged as the men. A slim figure in white leather caught my eye. “Ivan! Ivan Hodak!”
Polar Bear Blues Page 20