by Jill Barnett
After a long and intense briefing, Red filed out of the room early, while most of the others stayed there discussing the mission. They were wound up tight as springs. This was their first mission into Germany.
Once outside, Red stood with his hands in the pockets of his leather flight jacket, and stared up at the night sky. Overhead the stars were dimly visible through the mist covering the blacked-out bomber field. He was a long way from Acme, Texas.
He was in Britain and he hadn’t been to London, yet. Almost two years ago he had upped and left Acme, Texas, to go out into the wide open world, only to find his own shrunk down to the confining cockpit of a B-17 bomber.
He laughed at the irony of it. Charley . . . Charley. She would laugh when he told her that. Whenever he looked up at the stars, he thought about her, thought about a cool pond in Texas, and a hot night that changed him forever.
She was here in England. They had written to each other. But her base wasn’t nearby. The ATA bases were scattered all over the place. His group had been here for three months, and he’d had almost no time off. They flew mission after mission, and when they weren’t flying around at twenty thousand feet, they were waiting to fly around at twenty thousand feet.
He’d had no time to track her down. But he would. Soon.
Back at Randolph Field, when there had been nothing to do at night but think, he would lie there in his cot, his hands folded behind his head, and look out the open louvered window above him at the clear Texas sky and a thousand stars. He’d played a game, telling himself that maybe she was looking at them, too. That was what carried him through those empty nights alone with only the men in the unit, times when home and the memory of a girl were all you had to hang on to.
The mist grew thicker, colder, condensed and dripped off his hat. The English weather; the damp air here seeped clear into your bones. He tugged down on the bill of his cap and made his way to the Ops office to check out his Fortress assignment. Once inside, he skimmed the crew sheet on the bulletin board. It listed the lead, low, and high squadrons. He was listed for a copilot’s seat in the lead group. The first ones to run the target.
Someone clapped him on the shoulder. Red turned.
Squadron Commander O’Malley was an Irishman from Hoboken who was well-liked and had a reputation for steady-nerved flying. “Hey, Walker. You on the Canterbury Mary tomorrow?”
“No, sir. Looks like I’m on the U.S.O. Flo. With Lambert.”
O’Malley turned to the operations officer. “Sid! Come here, will ya? And bring your pencil.”
A couple of minutes later, with a few strokes of an eraser, Red was moved to high squadron as copilot on O’Malley’s Mary.
At five-thirty the next morning Red sat with the crew underneath the sinister shadow of their crouching B-17 as they waited for the weather to clear. The postponement ratcheted up tension about tenfold. For something to do, he checked over his gear—Mae West, oxygen mask, and parachute. He made certain his escape kit was pinned securely to the knee pocket of his flight suit, checked his .45 pistol, ammo, and slid a hunting knife between his shoe and flying boot.
O’Malley calmly walked around the plane, running a hand over the cool metal skin, giving it a pat here and there, checking oxygen and ammo, bomb bay and tires. The gunners field-stripped their .50-calibers again and oiled the bolts. The turret gunner lay on the damp grass, his head resting on his chute and canvas pack, eerily quiet and sweat beading on his face. He’d been worried all week. This was his thirteenth mission.
By seven-thirty that morning Red was in the Mary’s copilot’s seat, watching the other B-17s below him break like huge silver bullets through the white cloud deck, their glass noses aimed upward for the long climb to twenty thousand feet.
Red looked at his logs: “FT—Flight Time 6:45, ET—Time over Enemy Territory 3:35, Altitude—24K, Bomb Load, 10,500 # of HE— High Explosive.” He checked the dials, then played with the heating units on his gloves. The temperature gauge read minus 23 degrees.
They circled for over an hour above the weather in the clear blue sky, until the arrowhead formations, a thousand feet apart, followed the lead group away from the south of England and out over the blue-green waters of the Channel, then on to the golden, sun-glittered surface of the North Sea.
Red looked out to see a smattering of blue smoke ahead from the gunners testing their guns while they still had the chance. He tightened his oxygen mask and watched the glass tube on the instrument panel; the ball inside it moved up and down with each breath he took, exactly the way it was supposed to, like a life monitor, a heartbeat.
Fifteen minutes later the first flak blossom exploded in the sky from the batteries along the north coast; it was too low and inaccurate. He barely felt the kick of it when it exploded in the air well below them.
They flew on toward the target, three formations of Flying Fortresses all loaded for bear. Along the way they released bundles of metal paper and foil to muck up the enemy radar. Subsequent flak was low and off enough that the paper must have worked.
Red made a note on his logs.
More than an hour into the flight, the tail gunner got the bends. You could hear him yelling in the earphones and destroying communications until one of the crew pulled him into the plane’s belly and took his position. The flak grew solid and accurate as they flew over the eastern edges of France, over the Rhine, and into southern Germany.
He checked the temperature gauge. It was minus 41 degrees. The heaters were working, but he was still cold as hell. The closer they got to the target, the worse the flak. Concussion drove the plane down. Antiaircraft fire exploded near the engine. The ship shook.
Number two engine went bad. They feathered it. He heard someone swear. A gunner called out, “Fighters at two o’clock low!”
Two FW-190s dove into the front formation. They fired, tracers flashing. Almost as suddenly they peeled away in half rolls, then sped low over Red’s group. One fighter flashed by, its yellow nose smoking.
The Mary’s turret gunner blasted it. Pieces of plane flew past. A yellow German chute opened below. More fighters came in. Within seconds all the Mary’s gunners were firing. The smell of burnt cordite filled the cockpit. Now he was sweating.
Ahead, he could see smoke trailing from three B-17s that were hit, but still keeping formation toward the target. One of them had lost an engine. A piece of the tail was missing from another.
Flak exploded around them and shook the plane, rattled his teeth; they struggled with the controls, the reality of war around them, in front of them, and shaking the hell out of them.
A new squad of MEs came soaring in.
You could hear the shouts, “Bandits! Three o’clock!”
“Look out! Twelve o’clock high!”
The navigator gave Red the coordinates. He contacted the bombardier.
“Two minutes to target.”
Ahead of them the forts began dropping their loads. The flak was so thick you could walk on it. The gunners worked hard and furiously. Tracers were everywhere, green and fiery.
Two ships broke up, and they counted the chutes, eight from one, five from the other. The fighters were still around, soon the air was full of smoke and plenty of parachutes, German and Allied. Then it got bad. Real bad.
Red watched the Flo in the front formation take a direct hit from a blazing ME and break in half, flaming as it spiraled down and then exploded.
There were no chutes.
No chutes. He took deep breaths from his oxygen. The smell of flak blasts came through with the oxygen. He felt sick, like he might vomit in the mask. He turned and met O’Malley’s sharp-eyed gaze, but neither of them said anything. Red turned back and stared ahead. He owed his life to the man next to him and to an eraser on the end of a pencil.
The blasts kept coming. The noise inside, the sheer cacophony of it, was the true sound of war. He kept his eyes ahead, then watched the lead formation, stunned motionless, as the bomb load from one fort dropped throug
h the wings of another ship.
“Shit!” O’Malley saw it. “Look. It’s the Lucky 13.”
“My God . . . he’s still flying.”
The plane was in the air. Together, except for part of the wing. No sign of chutes; it struggled to stay in formation in a sky ablaze with smoke and tracers and planes.
“Damn . . . look at that. He’s holding his own.”
Just then an ME came at them, guns blazing. They took a hit in the wing. Number three engine quit, the oil line severed. Red watched the dials, shouting readings.
The bombardier dropped their load. They flew another two minutes. A blast from starboard sent the ship down. Number four engine was on fire.
Another enemy fighter was on them. The tail gunner was screaming and firing.
Like angels from heaven their own fighter escort finally came speeding in from out of the sun, dropped their belly tanks, and went to work, dogfights breaking out all over the skies, the Allied fighters shooting past to the whistles of the crew, and the Luftwaffe diving into the bomber formations to avoid fire from the P-47S.
There was a huge noise, then the sickening sound of chunks of steel ripping into the ship. Men screamed. Smoke was everywhere inside. The navigator went back with some of the crew; they were working to put out the flames. When they did, there was a huge hole in the ship and it was vibrating like it was going to break up.
“Walker!” O’Malley pulled one hand away from his side. He was bleeding.
Red took over, struggling to hold the plane. Ten more minutes and they were losing altitude. It was more and more difficult to stay with the group. Finally they dropped and dropped, the plane shuddering. O’Malley couldn’t bail. Red refused to. The plane dropped again.
He couldn’t get her up, so he headed for a grass field. Down and down. They hit hard, with a horrible sound, and he gripped the controls with everything he had. The plane was sliding. There was a horrible cracking sound. It broke in half and the front spun around, the tail catching the nose and the windows blew out.
The plane stopped spinning. Smoke was everywhere. It took Red a minute to realize he was alive.
O’Malley was swearing.
“Shit! Fucking shit!”
Everyone was swearing.
Some of the men were wounded and bleeding, screaming names and voices answering as they tried to find everyone.
“Get out! Get out fast!”
Red grabbed O’Malley and pulled him toward the hole. The ball gunner dropped down, blood covering his right eye, but he helped drag O’Malley, and they all tumbled out onto the soaking wet ground, sinking into mud so thick and deep it was like quicksand. It was the mud that probably saved them, slowing the plane’s momentum.
Rounds of rifle fire shot into the air.
The bombardier dropped, his thigh bleeding.
“Achtungl Hande hoch!”
Then silence.
“Surrender!” Someone shouted in accented English. “Come out! Now! Hands up!”
Red looked at the men. Dolan, the navigator, had passed out, and the tail gunner looked dead.
Another shot came in from the left.
Red ducked and pulled O’Malley back and under the protection of part of the fuselage and wing. Two of the crew crawled over.
“Stay here,” Red told them. “Watch the commander.”
“What are you doing?”
“Surrender and you will live!”
Of the Mary’s crew: three wounded, one possibly dead, and three others beside Red.
“Lieutenant?”
Red turned back.
“They’re going to shoot us if we don’t give up.”
“From what I hear, they might shoot us if we do. Besides, I’m not going to let them take me that easily, and not O’Malley either. This is war we’re here for. Let’s damn well fight it.” Red pulled his .45.
O’Malley fumbled to find his gun, winced, then pulled it out. Dolan already had his pistol drawn.
A second later a bullet took Dolan out with a shoulder wound. Red crawled under the wing, moving toward the nose. He drew no fire, so his position must not have been visible. He picked up a broken tree branch and squatted there a moment, took off his flight helmet and slipped it on the branch, then slowly raised it into view.
A bullet cut right through the branch; the helmet went flying.
Whoa . . . that was some shooting.
Another shot rang out from the trees across from them. They were moving in from east and west, trying to get them in cross fire.
Red shifted back and found a space between the plane, a crack that was about six inches of open view. He took aim and waited for the sure shot, the way his granddaddy had taught him.
He watched for the glint of the rifle in the trees beyond, watched until he saw it, fired, and moved on to another spot before he heard the man fall.
Two rifles fired back from similar positions. “Surrender! Or we will shoot you. All of you.”
Red picked off another one and rolled away, then another, and another. Shots began coming from all over the woods.
Crap . . . How many of them are there?
The crew members who could were exchanging fire. Pistols versus rifles gave the enemy the edge.
Red took aim, then heard a rifle report about a hundred feet away. A bullet slammed through the metal of the plane, a few inches from his head. He ducked away into the brush, pulled his knife from his boot, and waited, then slowly got up and moved through the trees.
A few minutes later, there was one less enemy. He had a German rifle along with a few rounds of Mauser ammo.
Things had evened up a bit: a handful of us and twenty some-odd of them? Hell, it was a cakewalk.
“PRAISE THE LORD AND PASS THE AMMUNITION”
Skip secured the explosive pack on the train car and set the timers. He looked over to the next railcar at Cassidy, who gave him the okay sign. His charges were set, too. They had been in Germany for almost sixty hours and were now just outside the last bend in the track near the train station where they had started.
Jean-Luc came up from his position near the engine and signaled to jump now. Skip stood as the train rattled down the tracks. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cassidy do the same. The train whistled as it turned the bend. All three jumped off the railroad cars simultaneously.
Skip hit hard, tucked and rolled down the embankment, over some hard rocks and into a ravine. He lay there as still as the stone that gouged him.
The train sped past. Not a shot was fired.
He stood and brushed off the grass and leaves as Cassidy came to his side, limping.
Skip glanced at his leg. “Are you hurt?”
“No. I pulled a muscle. I’m okay.”
“Too much time on your duff, old chap. We’ll fix you up fine. Just send you back to Achnacarry for a solid week on the assault course.”
Cassidy gave a low groan. “No. Please . . . shoot off my balls instead. It’s gotta be less painful.”
Jean-Luc climbed out of a clump of bushes nearby. He slung his gun strap over his shoulder and gave a sharp nod of his head. “Come. This way.”
They followed him down and out of the ravine, across an icy cold stream, and into the woods that sloped downward and covered a steep hillside thick with spindle-like birches that cracked and broke if you hit them wrong. It was a tricky exercise to get through quietly.
After a few hundred yards of damp, shoulder-high brush, they came to the edge of an open meadow, where the Frenchman stopped, crouched down, surveyed the area, then sat, leaning his rifle against a tree trunk. “It is not safe to cross. We will wait here.” He took out a knife, picked up a broken piece of a branch, and began to skin the bark off with his knife.
A quarter of an hour later they heard the distant, faint blasts of the charges they had planted on the train.
Cassidy checked his watch. “Right on time.”
Skip nodded, and from then on, all they did was wait. For two hours. He checked
his watch about half as often as Cassidy did. After a while, even Jean-Luc was becoming edgy.
Then the Frenchman froze. Skip had heard it, too. The breaking of a twig from the west. Cassidy had crouched down and pulled his gun.
There was the quiet call of a loon; the notes wavered in the air. Jean-Luc held up his hand, then made a similar sound. Like ciphers, three dark-clothed Frenchmen came out of the trees.
One was Jean-Luc’s youngest brother, Eduard. “There is trouble. The Germans found your plane and have tripled their patrols in the area. We were afraid to come here until we were certain they had gone past. But now they have moved to another target.”
“What target?” Jean-Luc asked.
“A bomber went down in the fields outside of the village.”
Skip looked at him. “An Allied bomber?”
Eduard nodded. “A B-17.”
Cassidy swore.
“Show us. Vite, vite.”
They took off, running through more woods and down another hillside. Before long they could hear the distant gunfire. It grew louder and sharper the closer they got.
Still hidden by the trees, Eduard and Jean-Luc slowed, then signaled and stopped. Skip and the others took positions about a hundred feet away from the open field.
The bomber sat cracked apart in the middle of the field. But the crew was returning fire at the enemy hidden in another cluster of trees. There were shots from three positions. From the sound, he was certain one was a rifle and the other two were pistol fire.
Skip spotted some motion to the south. Two enemy soldiers were stealthily moving into position, maybe a hundred feet from sparks of fire coming from a spot under the plane’s belly.
Skip took aim. Cassidy did, too.
But a deadly shot dropped one man like a broken puppet before Skip could pull the trigger on his revolver. Two seconds later, the other enemy soldier went down.
Neither he nor Cassidy nor the Frenchman had fired a shot.
“Holy shit . . . That’s some shooting.” Cassidy scanned the perimeter, then nodded. “Over there. Near that rock. To the west of the tail. See?”