Sentimental Journey

by Jill Barnett

  “EAST OF THE SUN”

  To everyone’s utter surprise, there came a few days of flawlessly perfect weather, with cloudless blue skies and hardly a breath of wind. The enemy bombing raids were at night and concentrated on London. On days like this it felt like the war was far, far away and the goal of every single pilot was to be up there flying around in that big blue sky.

  It was a Tuesday, and most of the ferrying pilots had taken to the air with the crack of dawn, but Charley was left bored and alone in the commons room on a Priority-One Wait, which meant she had to stay put and wait for her plane. Once it arrived, she was to fly it to its destination. Pronto.

  At the sound of plane engines she got up and looked out the window. Two taxi planes landed on the grass about three minutes apart. They were bringing back some of the pool’s ferrying pilots. Before long, the women came through the doors as they always did, gear hanging about them, chattering, dropping their chutes and vests, and making straight for a tea cart. It was loaded daily with wonderfully delicious sandwiches—the English made a sandwich better than anyone in the world—and sweet, freshly baked cakes brought to them by the generous local women, who drew lots for the days of the week they would supply the pilots and airfield workers.

  Around the base they were known as Miss Judith Wednesday, cheese and cucumber sandwiches and strawberry cake, Mrs. Flora Tuesday, salmon, cream cheese, and pudding, and Mrs. Mary Friday, who had a farm, so she often brought egg salad and nut bread with cinnamon.

  “Hey there, Charley.” Dolores poured a cup of tea. “You’re back early.”

  “I haven’t left yet. I drew a P-one-W and have been sitting here half the day.”

  “It’s your punishment for capturing the attention of the most eligible bachelor in all of Great Britain.” Paulette, one of the British pilots, sat down across from her with a full plate.

  Charley groaned. Not this again.

  “You are so lucky. What a dreamboat!”

  “I go all gooey for a man with dark hair and blue eyes.”

  All of them, the three British pilots and the American women, were looking at her expectantly. “I’ve told you this before. We only danced together for a few dances. That was all.”

  “Oh, right.” Lois laughed. “He called here twice for you.”

  “But you weren’t here.” Joan said. “I told him I was available, Charley, but he’d already hung up.”

  “That was weeks and weeks ago. The last I saw of Pilot Commander Inskip was the wave of his hand and the back of his dark head when he walked out the door of the dance, with his cousin . . . if she even was his cousin.”

  “Oh, she’s his cousin all right. We checked for you, sweetie.” Dolores patted her shoulder as she walked past. “Apparently he hasn’t dated anyone since his wife was killed. You’re it.”

  “There’s nothing going on between us. There’s not going to be anything going on. He danced with me. Period.”

  “I don’t know, Charley. You two looked like a smooth couple on that dance floor.”

  “We were a couple. There were two of us.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “Where’s he from, anyway?”

  “Didn’t Connie say something about the family estate in the Uplands?”

  “Whoa.” Dolores raised her hand. “Stop right there. Don’t listen to Connie. She’s not too good with geography. Back at training school in Texas, when Rosalie came in and told us the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, Connie looked up with all seriousness—I swear this is true—and asked, ‘Who’s Pearl Harbor?’ “

  Paulette, Joan, and Lois, the British pilots, who hadn’t heard the story before, began to laugh pretty hard.

  “Did I hear the words ‘Pearl Harbor’?” Connie came in and closed the door behind her. “Are you telling that horrid little story again? Such silly old news.”

  “Maybe, but you’re never going to live it down.” Dolores said, laughing.

  “No. I’m not. Thanks to most of you. You’ll probably still be telling it when my grandchildren are alive.”

  “Well, you have to admit it was pretty funny. We were in navigation classes.”

  “I’m from Vermont. I’ve never been to the Hawaiian Islands. One of you needs to do something really stupid and save me from Dolores’s big mouth.”

  Before anyone could respond, the door burst open and Rosalie came storming inside. She tossed her brown leather helmet on an empty chair. “You are not going to believe this!”

  Dolores handed her a cup of black tea. “What?”

  “Thanks.” Rosalie took a sip. “I had a Hurricane to deliver to East Anglia, and someone from chain watch thought I was a bogie, so they ordered up three more aircraft to investigate me.”

  “That happened to me last month.”

  “Well, it gets better. Those planes, too, were designated as bogies, so the next thing you know, half the fighter command is in the air, flying around to investigate themselves and me.”

  Everyone was laughing.

  “It could have been worse.” Dolores poured her own tea. “They might have classified you as a bandit instead of merely unidentified aircraft.”

  “That’s right,” Connie said. “Someone might have shot you down.”

  “Oh, wait.” Rosalie held up her hand. “I’m not done. We’re going over the Thames at about five thousand feet, and Ops tells us to circle until they can figure out what to do with all of us. So, get this. Every time we pass over the ack-ack batteries, they open fire on us.”

  Dolores was laughing so hard she was snorting and holding herself up with one hand on the tea cart.

  “We didn’t dare break orders, so we tried to edge off course a little each time we passed the guns.”

  “Good God . . . ” someone muttered.

  “Ops finally makes a decision—there is a God—and sends us to Hornchurch. Well, get this . . . when we land, the CO gets on the phone and tracks down the battery commander, who tells him he is ‘frightfully sorry, but his chaps have been on alert for a long time and were getting rather rusty, so when we all came along, it gave them the chance for some real target practice.’ “

  “Lord, but I do so love the British way of dealing with mistakes,” Dolores said.

  “He then pointed out, with this twisted bit of logic, that the very fact that they hadn’t hit any of us just proved how badly they needed the practice.” She set her tea down and grabbed a sandwich, then flopped down in a Morris chair, disgusted. She pulled her hair ribbon out of her curly dark hair and tied it around her wrist. “I swear, I am never flying over Sheppey again.”

  Paddy the dispatcher stuck his head in the door. “Morrison. Your plane’s here. It’s that Lysander II the crew’s fueling up.”

  Charley grabbed her gear. “See you later!” She walked outside, spotted the plane, and began to run across the grass toward it.

  Paddy caught up with her. “Here’s the paperwork.” He shoved it in her hand. “Good luck!” He turned around and made off for the base office.

  She climbed into the pilot’s seat with the help of one of the crew, who were just removing the fuel hose. She did her checks quickly, then fired her up. Soon she was in the air.

  A half an hour into her flight Charley stared down below her wing at the coast drifting by. From above, the land below looked human: a spine of a railroad track; the green hills, patches of farmland, and small villages formed the vital organs and the muscles that made it strong; the rivers, truly the veins of the land.

  She veered southeast and met a cloud or two, then watched the ribbon of English coastline thread along the deep blue water as time and the miles passed by.

  She landed the plane at a small field on the south coast. The sky was turning dusky pink and violet-gray when she taxied along the grass toward the ground activity, and someone with a torchlight waved her over toward a group of dark-uniformed soldiers. She parked the plane, and before she could unbuckle, a tall man with black on his face jumped up on the
wing.

  “We’ve been waiting. Ten more minutes and we’d have had to abort.”

  There was a moment’s pause.

  “Charlotte?”

  She didn’t recognize the man’s face through the face-black. She looked closer. “Skip?”

  “Say, I’m glad it’s you. Will you help us out and taxi over to those petrol pumps? We’re running late.”

  “Sure. No problem.”

  He gave her the okay sign.

  She moved the plane to the pumps, then got out quickly and tossed her chute and flight bag on the grass. The ground crew had already begun fueling.

  Skip was followed by a blond man about their same height. He was smearing on face-black as he ran. He handed his gear to a crew member to stow onboard. He gave Charley a long, assessing look, then climbed on the wing, where Skip handed him a heavy canvas bag and a small black suitcase. The man on the wing tossed the gear in back and turned around. He looked at her, then at Skip.

  He rattled off something in German.

  Charley stiffened, then looked at him uneasily.

  “You’re not amusing, Cassidy. Get your Yank ass inside the damned plane.”

  Thank God, a Yank, not a Nazi.

  “Yeah. Sure.” Cassidy winked at her. “There’s all kinds of Yank ass around here.” He crawled into the passenger seat.

  She burst out laughing.

  Skip turned back around. “Sorry. Ignore him.”

  “It’s okay. Really. Are you the one who’s flying this plane out?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you sign this delivery chit for me?”

  He took it and scribbled his name across, then handed it back to her. “I rang you up a couple of times.”

  “I know.”

  “I can’t call you for a while.”

  “I understand. Duty calls.”

  He was searching her face for something, but she didn’t know why.

  “What’s wrong? A wart on my nose? Lipstick on my teeth?”

  “No. I forgot something that night.”

  “What?”

  He grabbed her by her shoulders and gave her a long, deep kiss that seemed to go on forever.

  “Inskip.” Cassidy called down from the plane.

  Skip pulled back and looked at her, ignoring Cassidy.

  She smiled at him.

  “Hey, there, you two. It’s seventeen-hundred.”

  They both turned and looked at Cassidy, who was holding up his wrist and tapping his watch.

  “I’ve got to go.”

  She nodded, and he released her shoulders and jumped onto the wing. She watched him jump up and crawl inside the plane, then buckle in.

  He looked at her and gave a quick salute.

  “Good-bye, Skip.”

  He leaned out of the plane. “No. Not good-bye.” Then he gave it throttle, and a few minutes later he was in the air.

  She stood there for a long time after the plane had taken off and banked toward the Channel, stood there watching until it was only a speck in the quickly darkening sky. She touched her mouth and smiled, but when she pulled her fingers away, they were covered in greasy, black face paint. She wiped her mouth with her sleeve and laughed as she walked to find a ride to the train station.

  Later, she sat in the train unable to see anything outside the painted windows, so she stared at a brightly colored “Dig For Victory” poster and wondered where Skip was. If he was safe. He’d only said he couldn’t call her for a while and this wasn’t good-bye. That was all he’d said, and she hadn’t asked more. Loose lips, keeping mum, and all that.

  But she thought about him and little else for the long train ride back. She conjured up a hundred clandestine scenarios until they became a little outlandish; only then did she let herself think about the kiss, and she wondered if she would ever see him again.

  “THIS IS WORTH FIGHTING FOR”

  Saboteurs, like spies, go out when the moon is high. That’s what somebody said once. Somebody was a liar. Since working on covert missions in tandem with British Special Air Service, the SAS, J.R. had yet to go out in a single clear night. He’d been in a cramped sub, only to then silently row a small rubber boat through a cold, solid bank of silent fog where even your breathing could carry enough sound to alert the enemy. There was a seaplane in thick cloud cover. He’d parachuted out of a C-47 transport in a snowstorm—his personal favorite mission—or, there was tonight’s adventure, facing torrential rain as they flew to Alsace, deep in France.

  The plane bounced along the unpredictable currents, then dropped like concrete about a hundred feet.

  “Jesus! It was clear as vodka when we left.”

  “Not here, it isn’t.” Inskip had both hands on the controls.

  The plane fell again . . . a few hundred feet; then they hit turbulence that was so strong it almost pulled the yoke out of Inskip’s hands.

  “Damn . . . ” He throttled up. “This weather’s soggy as hell. Can’t see a thing.”

  J.R. sat forward and looked over Inskip’s shoulder to his white knuckles on the yoke and his intense gaze that was locked on the instruments. J.R. glanced at the gauges.

  They were flying low. Real low. He turned and looked outside.

  Rain poured in thick sheets down the windshield, blurring everything from view with a film of drenching water. He thought of Kitty.

  Now that he was married to her, he found there were plenty of moments like this, when he would catch a glimpse of her world. It always humbled him a little, knowing he was outclassed by her ability to be the person she was: stronger, smarter, and more of an enigma to him than most women he’d known, women who had perfect sight. He was damned proud of her.

  Pigheaded, obstinate, smart-mouthed, that was Kincaid. What she did to him with that mouth . . . well, that was something else. God, he missed her. Leave time, whether forty-eight hours or seventy-two, was nothing special for him here. When he got away from the war, what he wanted to do was lose himself inside of her, not inside a local pub, drinking and throwing darts at a board or sitting in a movie house alone or with men he saw day in and day out.

  Funny thing, J.R. had never needed anyone before. He’d relied solely on himself. But now there were some nights when he needed her so much he ached for any small reminder of her, something tangible. They’d all talked about it. During war you needed something personal to remind you that all the destruction and killing, the blood and death, was for something invaluable and not just mankind run amok.

  Sure, he’d have liked to believe that he was a patriot as he was bouncing around over enemy territory in this goddamn plane, and that merely a salute to the flag would keep him focused on his duty. But it would have been a lie. A salute, the flag and what it symbolized, well, it wasn’t enough. Not now. Instead, at night, he would hold her letters to his nose and breathe them in, because she was home, she was that something that was worth fighting for.

  “Look to the west, Cassidy. Can you see anything?”

  J.R. looked down. The rain had let up, just scattered drops on the window. “Looks like trees.” He snapped open his lighter and scanned the maps. “The grass field is only a few miles from the train station. Just beyond the hills.”

  “We had to come in low and from the south to stay undetected. Wait. There. I see something at ten o’clock.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Yeah. I see the torches at the ends of the field.” He pulled out his binoculars. “Circle once.”

  Skip flew the plane low and around.

  “It looks good. I see the maquis. Jean-Luc and the others.”

  “Okay. We’re going in.” Skip took the plane down.

  J.R. checked the gear and pulled his knit cap down over his head.

  Half an hour later he was following a couple of members of the French Resistance slogging through the mud to a train depot, teeming with both Wehrmacht troops and a few SS.

  They had to wait three hours. The train was delayed by the weather and flooding
on the tracks.

  Jean-Luc elbowed J.R. in the side. “Here comes the train.” He used his stolen Mauser rifle to point at a curl of pale smoke slipping over a rise toward the west.

  A few minutes later you could hear the chugging of engine as the troop and supply train rounded the bend and pulled to a stop at the station. The steam had barely settled before the soldiers began to load equipment and men into the cars.

  By the time the engine pulled out, heading toward Frankfurt and then on to Prague, J.R., Skip, and maquis officer Jean-Luc were lying on top of the second-to-the-last railroad car. The train wound its way out of eastern France and into Germany over a broad bridge that spanned the Rhine and past their objective, an SS operation headquarters tucked away in a well-fortified castle. Blowing up the bridge? Well, that bit of fireworks would come afterward.

  “I’M SHOOTING HIGH”

  LUTON AIR BASE

  Red was in the briefing room with the other crews of the 17th Bombardment Group. The men sat in their small, hard chairs; some slouched down and others tapped out the notes to songs on their knees or chewed gum nervously, waiting—wordless—a sense of tension and anticipation keeping them from talking to one another. Scuttlebutt had been circling around the aerodrome for days that this was the big one—HQ’s most important and largest air operation to date.

  The door opened. Everyone turned as the intelligence officer walked down the aisle toward the front of the room, where he paused, then pulled away a dark cloth covering the wall map. The man next to Red let out a low, long whistle. A bright string pinned on the map marked their route, a line from their B-17 base in England to somewhere in southern Germany.

  “Your primary target is here.” The IO tapped a pointer against the map. “This, gentlemen, is the largest center for the manufacture and assembly of the ME 109. You destroy it and you destroy thirty percent of Goering’s fighter production.” He faced them. “I expect you know exactly what that means to all of you on a personal level.”

  There were a few laughs. What it meant was lives to the Allies, lives to men sitting inside that room.