“Believe you me, you ain’t the only one. But c’mon into the barracks. Got something for you there, speaking of eagles.” Red waved towards a Nissen hut not far away.
“You didn’t even know I was coming.” But A.E. followed him.
When he opened the door at the end, she saw Shorty and Andy playing cards with a couple of men she hadn’t met before. “Look what the cat dragged in,” Red said.
Her friends jumped up to shake her hand and clap her on the back. She got introduced to the others. They’d been scattered through the RAF before being gathered together here. Most of them seemed to have mixed feelings about the whole business, too. “I’d rather be doing something than doing nothing,” one said.
The CO was an English flight lieutenant named Walter Churchill. The first thing he did was deny any relation to Winston. The next was to ask, “You knocked down a plane with 609 Squadron, is that right?”
“Two, sir,” she replied.
“Jolly good. We can use you, sure enough,” he said.
“Give her a patch!” Red said.
“One thing at a time, old man. One thing at a time.” Churchill handed A.E. a round cloth patch a couple of inches across. It was of RAF dark blue, with a white eagle embroidered on it. The eagle held olive branches in one claw and arrows in the other, like the one on the Great Seal of the United States. Above its head and between its upraised wings were the letters ES.
Looking around, she saw that all the Eagles wore the patch near the top of their left sleeve. “Good to be one of the gang. Officially one of the gang,” she said. Everybody whooped and clapped.
“Good to have you,” Flight Lieutenant Churchill said. “The next question, now that you are one of the gang, is where shall we put you?”
“I slept in a tent at OTU and down at Middle Wallop,” A.E. said, and thought of Amy. She wanted to blush. Instead, she went on, “That may not work so well, though, with the weather getting colder.”
“No, likely not. If we give you a corner cot and rig blankets around it, will that do?” Churchill asked.
“I think so, sir. I hope so.” A.E. wasn’t about to say no. She knew her privacy wouldn’t be perfect. She also knew the flyers were unlikely to be overwhelmed by whatever they saw. She was in good shape for her age, but her age was twice that of the barmaids and other women they were used to chasing.
“All right, then,” Churchill said with a that’s-settled smile.
But A.E. asked, “Sir, when will the squadron get some planes we can actually use?”
“We all want to know that,” Shorty said.
Walter Churchill’s smile disappeared. “I want to know that as much as anyone else. All I can tell you now is, I’m working on it.” He sounded harassed. From her own brushes with RAF bureaucracy, A.E. could guess why.
Chapter Twelve
As summer gave way to autumn, days shortened fast. 71 Squadron continued to have everything it needed to become a functioning part of the RAF except planes. To say the Americans didn’t take it well would have been one of the bigger understatements in the history of understatements. They drank. They gambled. Stacks of greenbacks and British banknotes changed hands at bridge, at poker, at craps. Then the winners drank some more to celebrate, the losers to drown their sorrows.
Americans didn’t respect authority at the best of times. As week followed planeless week, the times got worse and worse. Walter Churchill was in something like genteel despair, trying to ride herd on men who had no use for him or anyone else connected to the RAF.
“I can talk to you,” he said to A.E. one night when the other Yanks were out carousing. “You’ve got more sense than they do. What am I supposed to do with them?”
“Look, I’m as fed up as they are. Only difference is, I don’t think drinking myself blind is fun,” she answered. “You want to solve everything in a hurry? Get us Spitfires, or even Hurricanes. Give us something worth doing.”
He sent her an Et tu, Brute? look. “I’m trying. By God, I am. But we’re stretched rather thin these days. You may possibly have noticed.”
“You should have known better than to plop pilots down somewhere with nothing to fly—and nothing else to do, either.”
“No doubt,” Churchill said, and let it alone. He didn’t confide in her again, not like that. If he’d wanted a shoulder to cry on, he hadn’t got one.
She defended her fellow Yanks to the flight lieutenant, but she had trouble with them, too. She didn’t like seeing Shorty, Andy, and Red as foul-mouthed and sodden as the rest of the Americans in the Eagle Squadron. But they at least knew her and respected her as a person and as a pilot. The others …
She woke in the wee small hours one morning with weight pressing against the edge of the cot and a hand reaching under the blankets to grab her in places it had no business going. She wasn’t surprised, even if she wished she would have been. She’d expected something of the sort for a couple of weeks now. She was ready if not eager.
Twisting away, she swung open-handed at where she guessed the groper’s head would be. She made a good guess, and connected squarely. She didn’t scream. Instead, she shouted as loud as she could, “Get out of here, you son of a bitch! Get away from me! What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
All the snores and little nighttime noises in the Nissen hut cut off as if sliced by a knife. A startled, confused babble replaced them. In the blackness, someone beat a hasty, fumbling retreat.
Somebody’s cot creaked as whoever it was hopped back into it. A.E. had an idea whose it was, but she wasn’t sure. Part of her wanted to know, so she could either punch the bastard or swear out charges against him. Part of her insisted ignorance would be better. These kinds of problems were part of the reason fighting forces didn’t want to let women join them.
She lay awake till the barracks roused at 0600. Then she looked to see whether anyone had a fresh mouse under one eye or a badly cleaned up bloody nose. She didn’t see any evidence to make her grab someone and drag him up before the squadron. Maybe that was just as well. Maybe.
None of the American men said a word to her about what had happened during the night. The dogs did nothing in the daylight, she thought, mangling her Sherlock Holmes. That disappointed her but didn’t much surprise her.
Even the thwarted assault didn’t much surprise her. Like the powers that be, she’d known such things might happen, and she’d crossed the Atlantic anyhow. “Which makes me a fool or an optimist, one,” she muttered under her breath, and headed to the mess hall for breakfast.
Chapter Thirteen
A new liaison man joined the Eagles to give Walter Churchill a hand. Flying Officer Robbie Robertson was more than a bit of a toff. Some of the Yanks already seemed to know him, and he them. He was genial and quick with money when they ran dry. He seemed impossible to dislike, surely an asset for someone trying to keep some kind of rein on the American broncos.
And his name rang a bell with A.E., if only a vague one. She needed a couple of days before she figured out where she’d heard it. “You were an MP!” she blurted, adding, “Uh, sir”—he outranked her.
His smile, as usual, had charm to spare. “Well, yes, but it doesn’t make me a bad person,” he said. “Everyone agreed I’d do less damage in uniform than in the House of Commons, so here I am.”
She didn’t let his offhand manner deflect her. “You weren’t just any old MP, though. You were the one who helped persuade the RAF to let me serve … and other foreigners … and Amy Johnson and those other women with her. Thank you, sir!”
“It wanted doing, so I did it,” he said, and turned the subject.
A.E., by now, had got used to insistent English modesty. She didn’t care for it—hiding your light under a bushel had never been an American virtue—but she’d come to grant it a certain reluctant respect. The people here who had most to brag about commonly bragged least. So she didn’t push Robertson. Instead, she asked, “Can you do anything about getting us planes? I’ve heard fighter
pilots do better with them.”
His eyes twinkled. “Have you indeed? I confess, that same rumor’s come to me.”
“Well, then?”
“I’m doing whatever I can. Believe me, so is Flight Lieutenant Churchill. But 71 Squadron seems to lie well down the priority listing. I fear some Yanks’ cowboy reputation doesn’t improve matters. Some Yanks’ reputation—present company very much excluded.”
“Thanks,” A.E. said dryly. Were you a cowboy if you stuck your hand between a fellow officer’s legs? Were you a cowboy—or rather, a cowgirl—if you resented that and smacked the stupid, drunk, horny bastard, whoever he was? A.E. didn’t care. As Robbie Robertson said, it wanted doing.
“Quite,” he murmured, and then, “Do excuse me, please,” which let him slip away. A.E. knew she wasn’t the only American bending his ear about getting fighters. Andy called it banging on a teakettle when he didn’t call it the same thing in Yiddish.
The Eagle Squadron’s wings stayed clipped till the day after Halloween. Then, in its infinite wisdom and mercy, the RAF suffered seven Hurricane IIs to be delivered to Church Fenton. They were better than nothing. Not a great deal better than nothing, but enough. Spotting one would make a Luftwaffe bomber pilot think twice. A bastard in a 109, on the other hand … You had a chance against the top German fighter in a Hurricane, but not a good chance.
Familiarizing herself with the Hurricane didn’t take A.E. long. It reminded her of the Miles Master she’d flown at the OTU. She’d even heard a story that England had mounted half a dozen machine guns apiece on some Masters, to use them as emergency fighters and ground-attack planes if the Nazis invaded. She was damn glad it hadn’t come to that; they lacked the performance to be anything but flying coffins.
A couple of days after the Hurricanes arrived, so did a letter from Amy. She’d passed fighter training and was posted to a squadron not far from Dover. She had a Spitfire, and gushed at its power. About her fellow pilots, she observed, Well, we always did know men were rotters, and let it go at that.
Remembering her own horrified awakening there in the darkness, A.E. could only nod. Amy closed the letter Love and kisses, which might mean anything or nothing. One of these days, if they ever got leave at the same time, they might find out.
Meanwhile, the squadron moved south to Kirton Lindsey, outside of Scunthorpe. Kirton Lindsey was no duller than Church Fenton, but it wasn’t much more exciting, either. The Eagles went to London whenever they could. They had a hard time buying their drinks, though they likely would have got just as smashed spending their own money.
Important people made much of them. “Quentin Reynolds wants to know what I think about how the war’s going,” Red Tobin told A.E. “Is that crazy or what?”
“That’s crazy,” she agreed. She knew she ought to go down to London herself and publicize the Eagle Squadron, but combat—with the Germans, with the RAF, and with her fellow Americans—had left her without the enthusiasm she needed to do a proper job.
Andy Mamedoff caught the eye of a cigarette manufacturer’s daughter named Penny Craven. “Her family’s got stacks—I mean, stacks,” he reported. “She knows I’m broke, but she thinks I’m wonderful anyway.”
“Good for you,” A.E. said. She wouldn’t have if he hadn’t seemed smitten himself, but he did. The only thing about love she was sure of was that she wasn’t sure of anything about love. Some people did make it work, though. Maybe Andy and Penny would.
Or maybe they wouldn’t get the chance to. 71 Squadron was flying patrols over the North Sea now. It was hard, demanding, dangerous work. German 109s weren’t the problem; they were still far enough north to be out of range of Luftwaffe fighters. But flying over the cold gray sea in weather that kept getting worse took everything a pilot had. Some didn’t have enough.
A.E. mourned with the other Eagles when somebody didn’t make it back to the airstrip, though she didn’t get savagely drunk at wakes the way they did. But the memory of a hand in the dark kept her from being as sorrowful as she might have been otherwise.
As 1940 passed into 1941, she got another letter from Amy. Still down near the south coast, the English flyer was scooting across the Channel to shoot up German installations in France. It’s mad fun, she wrote. They did it to us. Now we get to pay them back. I hope they like it even less than we did.
A.E. wanted to be doing something like that, wanted it enough to taste it. She understood the need for the job she was doing. She understood better by the day the exacting care it took to fly mission after mission and come back safe to base every time. Not everyone could do it. The wakes they’d held proved that. Bad luck, a dumb mistake, a breakdown …
But she’d never felt more alive than in those September days when she battled the Luftwaffe high above burning London. What was that Cole Porter line? I get no kick from champagne / Mere alcohol doesn’t thrill me at all—that was it. She’d got a kick from machine guns, though, and another one because the Germans had machine guns and cannon of their own.
Amy sounded as if she was getting the same kick now, taking the air war to the Nazis. Well, she deserved it. She’d been green with envy that night at Middle Wallop, that night when mad things happened. And she was fighting to defend her own homeland, not borrowing someone else’s cause.
“Good for her,” A.E. murmured, and then, “Lord, I hope she makes it.” It was as close to a prayer as she’d come in many years. She had a small box with a lock. A hammer could smash it open, but it was the best she could do. She tucked the letter in there and locked it away from the world.
Chapter Fourteen
Just into the new year, Walter Churchill got promoted to wing commander and sent to a new post. A Yank, an ex-Navy man turned RAF flight leader named William Taylor, took over for him. 71 Squadron was all-American at last. Taylor was a much tougher disciplinarian than Churchill had been, so not all the Eagles were thrilled with the change.
They lost a pilot in early February. Combat had nothing to do with it. He made a mistake flying low and hit the ground before he could correct it. Back in the States, the news would make winter even colder for his family.
A week later, a section from 71 Squadron scrambled in response to something out on the North Sea. It wasn’t A.E.’s section, so she didn’t worry about what it was. They’d do whatever needed doing or they’d find out it was a false alarm, then they’d fly back.
Only one of them didn’t. Shorty Keough wasn’t at the mess table that night.
“He and another guy dove into a cloudbank,” one of the other pilots said glumly. “I don’t think he pulled out of it. Straight into the drink, fast as a Hurricane can go. He never knew what hit him, that’s for goddamn sure.”
A.E. didn’t know what had hit her. She and Shorty had been part of this mad venture together since the very first day, in the hotel at Montreal. Andy and Red looked poleaxed, too. You didn’t want to believe, you couldn’t make yourself believe, it could happen to somebody with whom you’d been through so much.
Robert Ripley’s words tolled in her head like the mourning bell in a church steeple. Believe It or Not.
Shorty’d made people notice him. There wasn’t much of him, but what there was was full of life. Nobody wanted to think he’d died so pointlessly. But then the Coast Guard found wreckage off the coast. Floating on the cold, merciless sea were, among other things, a pair of size five flying boots. Shorty might have been the only pilot in the RAF to wear boots so small. No doubt could be left.
Everyone got very drunk, A.E. with the rest of the Eagles. Red and Andy, in particular, were stunned the same way she was. “He could have been my brother,” Red kept saying over and over.
“Life’s a bastard,” Andy said. “You go up in a crate, you have to pray everything works just the way it’s supposed to. If it doesn’t, you ain’t coming back.”
“Life’s a bastard,” A.E. said. “Leave it right there.”
“Yeah.” Mamedoff shook his head. “Shorty and his stupid
cushions. You’d see him in the cockpit with just the top of his head poking up and you’d want to bust a gut laughing, but he could fly.”
“He could fly,” A.E. agreed. That was the best epitaph Shorty Keough was likely to get. She admired Andy for summing him up so perfectly in three words. She put an arm around him about the same time he put an arm around her.
“I’m gonna go outside and have a cigarette,” he said, though the air in the officers’ mess was blue with smoke. “Wanna come out with me and we can talk for a little bit?”
“Sure,” she said.
It was chilly out there, and damp with the threat of rain. In the blackout, the brief flare of his match seemed like a flashbulb. He took two fierce drags on the Woodbine, then threw it down and stepped on it. “Ah, hell,” he said. “Nothing’s any goddamn good anymore.”
“I know,” A.E. said softly.
He reached for her then. She squeezed him back. They were about the same height; they fit together well. His mouth tasted of whiskey and tobacco. When they separated, he whispered, “Let’s find somewhere.”
“What about Penny?”
“What about her? She doesn’t know Shorty. She’s met him, but she doesn’t know him. She doesn’t know about any of … this. She’s lucky.”
A.E. understood exactly what he meant. She slipped away from the Nissen hut with him. It was more a catharsis than a rapture, but catharsis was what they both needed. Afterwards, she said, “You’re squashing me.”
“Sorry,” he replied, and took his weight on knees and elbows. He started putting himself back together with what seemed to A.E. like practiced ease. A little more slowly, she followed suit. He said, “Maybe we should go on to the barracks instead of back to the bash. Then nobody’ll be able to pin anything on us for sure.”
“Good idea,” she said, running fingers through her hair to make sure she had no leaves stuck in it. She added, “I bet Shorty’s laughing, wherever he is.”
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