Alive and Kicking

by Chris Lynch

  We are carrying huge and uncommon firepower, both five-hundred- and one-thousand-pound demolition bombs, as well as incendiaries. Ground crew engineers somehow found space to fit extra fuel tanks inside the bomb-bay compartment, and we find out the importance of that when it takes us nearly five hours to even approach the destination.

  The weather has been awful the whole way, and I confess I am a little nervous when, for the first time ever, Lieutenant Ormston has left his pilot’s position and is right behind me conferring with Bell over the navigator’s table. We were supposed to take a route over the mountains of Yugoslavia and Albania, but the conditions were so heavy that we have had to take an even longer route around them. Their words make it clear we are now approaching the border of Bulgaria, and my nerves jangle all the harder when I feel the reality of it hit. We really are going for it. We’re going to attack Ploesti, the gigantic oil installation that is said to fuel a huge percentage of enemy operations across the European Theater.

  This has been tried before, with little luck. But when we sent a mission over before, it wasn’t one tenth the size of this force so everybody knows this is on a scale of difficulty and importance that probably adds up to all our other missions combined.

  It seems to be bearing that out as we come within range of the mission destination. The first two groups are way farther ahead than they were supposed to be so it becomes almost like two separate, smaller strike forces sixty miles apart. Way off of a plan that would need to heed every detail to have a chance.

  Ploesti’s a giant collection of oil-processing installations that ring around a medium-size city, and each of our groups has an assigned target within the general zone. The final group, just behind us, breaks off to the north as we approach the first IP, the town of Pitesti. The plan from here is for each of the other groups to proceed counterclockwise around the IP perimeter, then peel off at the designated point to attack its individual target.

  As soon as we have left the first group to their assignment, the rest of us drop down to a level of just five hundred feet. Couley could have breathed freely here.

  We are in essence a two BG attack now as the two lead groups are someplace far off, hopefully in the direction of their assignment. We have retained contact with our partners in the group just ahead, and the plan is for us to remain locked together for the duration of the mission.

  Ormston, up in the boss’s chair, hollers in through the intercom for Bell to update him and Bell is quick to let him know we have identified our target, the town of Floresti, and we’re on a course straight for it.

  I am glued to my machine gun, with Gallagher right up against me at the right cheek gun. But he keeps leaning in the direction of his bombardier sights, itching to jump on the task he came for.

  Off in the distance, in several distances it seems, we hear the old familiar sounds of an enemy defending itself from a bomber attack. There is far-off fury that already sounds like a new order of mayhem from what we have known before, and it’s all fingers crossed from here in the hope that every group does its job, and we join up real soon for a relatively healthy formation home.

  But before we even get close enough for Gallagher to take the controls, the defenses are all over us, attacking from all sides and in numbers that make it plain we have come as no surprise to anybody.

  “What is this?” Bell screams as he abandons navigating for some much more important machine gunning. He and I are battering straight ahead at both German and Romanian fighters who are slinging a variety of heavy artillery our way.

  I have no answer for him other than just hollering wordless sound behind my firing, to buck myself up more than anything else.

  Flak is with us as usual, but there are distinctly larger shells going off among them. One explodes just below us somewhere around the tail and our B-24 almost flips a somersault with the impact beneath us. Two seconds later we dip to an angle perpendicular to the ground as one of those shells slams into our left wingman, decimating the plane, scattering metal and Liberator crew body parts in every direction, including a shower of the whole mess spraying across my glass.

  It is every bit the fight of our lives as we right ourselves and bear in on our target refineries dead ahead.

  One of them is smoking heavily from a bombing that has already happened, and I realize we are flying into a burning furnace, far lower than any bomber should.

  Gallagher starts his best shouting that is beginning to be among my favorite sounds, and the pilots cease their so far incredible maneuvering among fighter rounds and antiaircraft shells, through blinding smoke and plummeting dead aircraft, and for a few seconds every man on board becomes meaningless to our supreme bombardier’s inexplicable magic pathfinding straight to the big, ugly refinery that is ours.

  Booo-hooooo-hooooo-hoooom! go the explosions as the refinery erupts like a squat volcano. We witness the first couple of booms ourselves, as they go off before our bombs land. It’s the delayed explosion of some of our partner group’s payload. The fire and pressure of the combination shoots us straight up as we pass over the refinery on a column of smoke and fire that could eventually reach other planets.

  The lead plane of our group is still visible as we waffle out of the chaos that is the target sight. We follow closely as a web of B-24s from the rear end of the giant raid hangs together as tightly as we dare, but as deftly as we had learned in the countryside of England and over the desert of Libya.

  The remainders of us, the two groups who had been pointed at the town of Floresti since starting our engines in Benghazi this morning, cling to the last bits of mission plan together. With flak still very large and real all around us, we follow the final directions closely, banking right, hanging tight, heading back to North Africa.

  But it turns out, naturally, not to be anywhere near that easy. We are chased, through the inferno that is Ploesti, across the IP, and on into Albania, where Bulgarian fighters converge on a Liberator that is struggling to keep up, with trouble in three engines. It is sickening to listen as they shred the straggler with enough firepower to down it ten times over, following the plane and crew almost all the way to the massive crash to the ground.

  It is not until we are out a substantial distance over open water that we are finally rid of the pursuit. Even though I feel my body relax enough to take my hands off the gun handles for the first time since I last saw this sea, I feel in shock. The barely noticeable sounds and movements of a crew still doing all the necessary jobs as best they can, attest to the shared feelings all around.

  But our pilot steps up into the moment to acknowledge the other part, over the speaker. “Gentlemen, that mess was the best thing you ever made.”

  It was. It was the best, and it was a mess, and we did our job.

  There is still only ocean on the horizon when Ormston calls out to Hollings “What do you figure?” he says, asking a question that only they have apparently considered.

  “Can’t see us making it, frankly, sir.”

  The fuel situation has reached critical, as it surely has for the handful of other planes trying to make it back to Africa alongside us, and the ones farther flung with the same aim.

  Dodge is busy on the radio, searching for possible solutions, any dry land we might reach. There is controlled excitement when he and the pilots and Bell end a frantic round of conversation with an agreed plan, a mini-formation banking sharply to the left, and deep sighs of breath all over for the next half hour.

  The joy of the glass nose cone is being first to see whatever we have coming, as it appears, then teases, then seems to move away as the plane begins the cough and splutter. Then it becomes real, becomes the truth and becomes possible without ever becoming less miraculous.

  “Hold on, strap in, prepare for impact,” Ormston calls out as we all holler out and hunker down just before the bump of the tall tree punches our belly, then we hit solid earth with a bang, then another bang, then a crunch. We skid across the field, the intended airstrip still i
n sight a quarter mile ahead. The Liberator does its thing and folds up its wings, the roof feeling like it’s caving in on us, but it doesn’t, and we bang a few times more, roll, rock, and shock until skidding to a stop on the most delicious dollop of island in the world.

  Buongiorno, Sicily.

  I am not even aware of how much of an impact I’ve absorbed on the landing because I am so ecstatic to have landed at all.

  Hollings turns out to be just as good a guy as the last engineer. He quickly wends his way through the crunch to check on the three of us who are all packed into the very front edge of the plane together, like pork stuffed into a sausage casing. “Are you hurt?” he says nervously, easing us out of our lump and into sitting position on the remaining square of floor in front of the navigator’s table.

  “I think I’m okay,” I say. Sitting, cautiously running my hands over my bones to take inventory.

  “Tell me something,” Gallagher says, brushing Hollings off and making his way past, “do your planes ever make it all the way home?”

  Bell stares uncomprehendingly, blood streaming from a gash at his hairline. “Who’s this?” he asks me, pointing at Hollings.

  I smile, point at him, and notice my own hand covered in blood. I reach back up to my head to check for the source, but don’t recall finding it.

  The possibilities are that I’m dead, still unconscious, or a very old man recalling things in no particular order when I hear a sharp and grating Boston accent asking me if I’m the same jerk who always used to slide into second with his spikes up.

  I open my eyes. I’m on a stretcher, on the ground, next to Bell, who is in the same situation only unconscious. Not far off to my right is the collapsed hulk of the remarkable B-24 Batboy with both US Army and Air Corps personnel climbing over and through the corpse of the great ship roughly, like it was just a plane.

  Looming over me to my left is a vehicle that looks like the back half of a tank welded onto the front half of a cargo truck, with a machine gun mounted on the roof. Crouching low between the mutant vehicle and me is another curious beast in camouflage.

  “Oh, no,” I say, though each word bangs another nail into my sore skull. “Can it be? Can you really be that gimpy Red Sox meathead first baseman?”

  “I am that very meathead,” he says with a wide grin. “Roman Bucyk.” He sticks out a hand and gives me a warm grip. He shakes, and does so gently, which must take some restraint for him.

  “So,” I say, “did I die and go to the Eastern Shore league for my sins?”

  “Yup,” he says, “stuck on the Federalsburg A’s for all eternity.”

  A second soldier hops down from the back of the half-track and comes to take one end of Bell’s stretcher. Bucyk slides over to take the other end and the two of them load him into the back of the truck. Then they ferry a few more soldiers to the truck, and finally Bucyk and his partner gather me up.

  “Where am I going?” I ask as they bump along and slide me in last.

  “Field hospital, couple miles,” he says.

  I am suddenly and surprisingly kind of desperate for a little more of the meathead’s time. I reach out and grab his wrist.

  “I’ll see you there. I’m the guy driving you,” he says with a wicked grin that fills me with both reassurance and alarm.

  My head is stitched up by the time he comes around to see me. They have checked me out and so far nothing alarming is showing up, though there is no part of me that isn’t in pain inside and out. I don’t know where the rest of the crew has been taken, but medics assure me every time they come by that everybody is being taken good care of.

  “You look not so bad,” Bucyk says, standing beside my bed. “Seen ya look worse.”

  “Thanks,” I say. Between the pain, the lingering shock of the crash, the mission, the war, and everything else, it’s all kinds of strange enough without trying to have a conversation with this character just now. Even stranger is the fact that I want to.

  I’m not sure where to start, but after several lingering seconds of nothing, he jumps in. “I’m really sorry about your brother,” he says in a new gravelly tone.

  “So, you heard about it,” I say, looking down.

  “Yeah,” he says. “My girl … you might remember Hannah, played for Centreville Ladies, better arm than any of us? Anyway, she’s from right around there and so, she stays informed, local news and all that. The paper there has been very respectful, locals and Shore League boys alike. They post it all, and she sends it to me. Just so I can see how the home front feels about the guys doing it overseas. Nice.”

  I hear the rustling of paper and look up to see him taking a well-folded copy of a familiar eight-page weekly from his breast pocket.

  I take it from him and start reading the part I am obviously meant to read. It is indeed respectful, a nicely set roll call of local sacrifice to the effort.

  “Bill Thomas,” he says when I don’t respond immediately. “You remember Bill Thomas. Teammate of mine in Centreville. Hit .270. Air Corps pilot, went down right near where I was at during Operation Torch. Losing teammates all over, seems. I’m really sorry, Theo.”

  He is awkward, and stumbling, but he sure is giving it a go. It is jarring to hear him say my name, just as I reach my brother’s spot on the list.

  Where it says KILLED IN ACTION.

  “It’s a typo,” I say, folding it up calmly and handing it back to him. “He’s still listed MIA. They haven’t found him yet, is all. Dumb ol’ local papers anyway, huh?”

  “Yeah,” he says, jamming the dumb ol’ paper roughly back in that pocket behind his Bucyk name tag.

  “They might send you home now,” he says, pointing oddly at various parts of me to apparently identify injuries.

  “I don’t think it’s that bad,” I say.

  “Well,” he says, and with his offer of another shake he signals the end of our visit, “make sure you get back somehow, eventually. Get yourself back to baseball. I know I reached my limit and, while I never cared much for you guys, y’know, you could play. Both of you were real ballplayers.” Our handshake is finished now, and he is backing away from it. “You could, you should play again. Get home and do it.”

  He is just about gone when I call him back with a “hey,” and he turns. “Nazis hate baseball,” I say, shaking a fist.

  “Don’t they ever,” he says, shaking his fist in return.

  We lost fifty-four Liberators and over five hundred airmen in the Operation Tidal Wave raid on Ploesti. And despite so much of it not going at all to plan, we still wound up giving the oil operations a pretty good mauling that they will feel for a good long time. There’s real job satisfaction in knowing your work is noted and remembered.

  The USAAF noted us with our second DUC and each man also earned the Distinguished Flying Cross.

  I am surprised to find the return to Shipdham at the end of August feels a little like a homecoming. The whole crew has made it back, and our aircraft is a shiny new B-24J. I have a turret finally, where the glasshouse was on Batboy, and that alone is an exciting development. There is also a retractable belly turret for Hargreaves, where the old plane just had that gun poking straight through the floor.

  In addition to a new plane, mail is waiting for me on my return.

  DEAR BROTHER,

  SO, IT SOUNDS LIKE YOU ARE GOING TO WIN THIS THING ALL BY YOURSELF NOW. OR AT LEAST YOU AND YOUR LITTLE GANG. MAM AND POP WANT ME TO TELL YOU HOW BURSTING THEIR BUTTONS THEY ARE WITH PRIDE (BECAUSE THEY SURELY ARE NOT GETTING FAT THESE DAYS) OVER ALL THE AWARDS AND CITATIONS AND MEDALS AND COMMENDATIONS AND WHATNOT YOU ARE COLLECTING. ARE YOU GOING TO LOOK LIKE A GENERAL OR SOMETHING WITH ALL YOUR DECORATIONS WHEN YOU COME HOME? YOU HAVE BEEN IN THE PAPER, WHICH MAYBE YOU DID NOT KNOW SO I AM INCLUDING IT HERE. YOU ARE NOW AN OFFICIAL HERO INSTEAD OF JUST THE KIND YOU WERE BEFORE.

  MAM IS NOT QUITE UP TO WRITING SO YOU WILL JUST HAVE TO DO WITH ME, SO I HOPE THAT’S OKAY. EVERYBODY SENDS LOVE THOUGH. EVERYBODY.

  AN
D, THEO, I MEANT TO TRY AND WRITE YOU SOONER. I DID, BUT I NEED TO TELL YOU, WE HEARD AGAIN FROM THE NAVY, ABOUT HANK, AND IT WAS A LOT SOONER THAN THREE MONTHS THIS TIME BECAUSE THEY HAD SOMETHING —

  We are just about settled back into England and warmed up to our new aircraft when word comes that we are being detached again to North Africa.

  ARE YOU WRITING? ARE YOU KEEPING UP, AND KEEPING SCORE? IT PROBABLY ISN'T EVEN WORTH THE EFFORT ANYMORE BECAUSE YOU COULD FIGHT TEN MORE OF THESE WARS JUST AS BIG AS THIS ONE AND STILL NOT KEEP UP WITH ME.

  STILL, YOU SHOULD KEEP AT IT. BECAUSE I WILL WANT TO KNOW. WHEN WE GET BACK TOGETHER AND YOU AND I COMPARE ADVENTURES, I WILL STILL WANT TO KNOW. BECAUSE WHATEVER THE DIFFERENCE, YOU ARE IMPORTANT TO ME. WHATEVER YOU DO IS STILL IMPORTANT TO ME EVEN IF WHATALL I DO IS SO MUCH MORE AND BIGGER AND I HAVE NO MORE CHEST SPACE FOR THE AWARDS THEY WANT TO PIN ON ME. BUT I FIGURE, I WOULDN'T HAVE HALF THE CHEST I HAVE IF IT WASN'T FOR YOU.

  EVERYTHING IMPORTANT IN THE EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS, WE HAVE BEEN THERE, MY BROTHER, RIGHT IN THE THICK OF IT. AND ON IT CONTINUES IN JUST THAT WAY UNTIL THE END. SO BE IT.

  I LOVE MY PLANE AND I LOVE MY NOSE TURRET AND MY JOB. BILLY HARGREAVES GOT HIS RETRACTABLE BELLY TURRET, TOO, AND IT WAS GREAT FOR A WHILE. THEN ONCE, AFTER A MISSION, WE WERE WAITING OUT ON THE AIRFIELD LIKE WE DO WHEN IT'S EXTRA BAD. WAITING ON THE STRAGGLERS TO CHEER THEM ON HOME. AND THIS LIBERATOR, WOBBLING, LEAKING, SMOKING, IN BAD TROUBLE COMES INTO VIEW, AND WE CHEER THESE BOYS ON, AND WE SEE THEY GOT NO HYDRAULICS AT ALL, SO NO LANDING GEAR, NO RETRACTING THE RETRACTABLE TURRET UP FROM THAT BIG BELLY.

  HAVE I TOLD YOU ABOUT THIS? HOW IT WORKS? GUY FOLDS AND SQUEEZES DOWN INTO POSITION IN THAT TURRET, WHICH CLOSES BEHIND HIM, AND THE WHOLE THING ROTATES SO HE CAN FACE THE FIGHTERS WITH HIS GUNS AND THERE IS NO MORE DOOR OPENING FOR HIM UP INTO THE PLANE WHILE HE IS IN SHOOTING POSITION. NOT UNTIL THE BALL ROTATES BACK UP, YOU SEE, AND THE DOOR PART MEETS UP WITH THE FUSELAGE OPENING.