Stan turned his gaze toward the door, which had swung inward revealing a tall youth.
“There,” said Allison, “comes Bill O’Malley.”
Bill O’Malley was long and lank, with an Adam’s apple that bobbed up and down his throat. His bony shoulders were stooped in a most unmilitary manner, and his head boasted a thatch of flaming red hair. He was about the last person in the world Stan would have picked as a daredevil flier. His homely face and his sloppy figure would not have inspired fear or confidence in anyone. Allison waved to him.
“Hi, old fellow, come over and meet a pal.”
Bill O’Malley grinned as he slouched across the room. As soon as his big mouth cracked into a smile Stan knew he was going to like this big Irisher.
Allison arose. He was acting with deliberate and mock politeness. “O’Malley, meet Wilson,” he said with a sweep of his arm. Then the derisive mask slipped over his face and he seated himself again.
“Sure, ’tis a quiet an’ homelike place ye have here, Commander,” O’Malley said. “Wilson, me boy, I’m right glad to meet up with ye.”
“Nothing ever happens around here,” Allison agreed. “It’s a peaceful place.”
“Snug as a clambake,” O’Malley agreed. “But much more dead. Now when I gave me word I’d come in with you boys the O.C. made quite a talk about how tough the job was. Here we sit like auld friends at a picnic.” He scowled bleakly at Allison.
“I’ll send over for a flight of Jerries,” Allison said with a grin.
“’Twill be a pleasure, me foine fellow,” O’Malley answered. “I came over here to see some action.”
Both Stan and Allison knew Bill O’Malley meant just what he said. He was wild as any crazy hare, but he had a name that was already on the tongues of ground men when spectacular stunts were talked about. Stan guessed that Allison had not had much trouble in getting the Irisher away from whatever flight he was with. Few Flight Lieutenants would have cared to be responsible for him.
The loud-speaker began to blare. “Red Flight, all out! Green Flight, all out! Yellow Flight, all out!”
“Sounds like the whole Jerry outfit is on the way,” O’Malley said as he unwound himself from a stool and made for the door.
There was no mistaking the fact that O’Malley was a first-class fighting man. Stan knew it by the way he got into his Spitfire and rammed the hatch cover home. By the time they had zoomed up and away, he was sure of it. Allison was chuckling over the radio.
“Cuddle in, Red Flight. We pick up Bristols and Blenheims at 10,000.”
“’Tis no wet nurse I’ll be,” came the Irish brogue of O’Malley. “I resign this minnit.”
“Headquarters says the Jerries have two dozen Messer One-Nines on a reception committee,” Allison droned back.
“The spalpeens! Why such a measly little bunch?” O’Malley demanded indignantly.
Stan gave his attention to flying. The squadron droned into a thick bank of clouds and was swallowed. Nine demons bored ahead to take a bombing flight through.
“Rose Raid, take position. Rose Raid, take position,” came a voice over the air from the tactics group gathered around a big map at headquarters.
Stan grinned. The British were odd in many ways. For no good reason, they called this raid Rose Raid instead of B-7 or some other businesslike tabulation. Then he sighted the bombers 1,000 feet below. Three heavily loaded Bristols and three Blenheims. Stan remembered the fast-flying Consolidateds and the B-19’s of the United States Army. Soon, if he was lucky enough to stay alive, he might be escorting B-19’s.
Up and up they went into the clouds, with the bombers droning steadily southeast and the Spitfires cruising above and below and around.
The radios were all strangely silent now. There was no talk and Stan let his ears fill with the pleasant roar of his Merlin. He bent forward and stared at his instrument panel. That gauge couldn’t be right, it must be jammed or something. If the needle was reading right he had less than a half tank of gas. He bent forward and rapped the panel. The needle did not change, except to surge a bit further toward the empty side. Stan’s mouth drew into a grim line. He could believe that gauge and turn tail—or he could figure it was wrong and go on.
If it was right, he was short of gas for the trip. A hard gleam shone in his eyes. Regardless of the gauge, his tank should have been filled full. If it hadn’t been filled there was dirty work somewhere. He thought of Garret. Allison had said Garret had been put on the ground. Stan wondered what job Garret had been given.
Then he snorted. He was letting himself go. Just because he was sore at Garret he was imagining things. He rapped the dial sharply and the needle jumped, then settled back. If he went on he would run out of gas over German territory and have to go down. In spite of himself, he couldn’t help muttering:
“That would be a nice way of getting rid of me.”
He shrugged his shoulders. Allison was dipping his wings in a signal. They were going down to have a look below. He couldn’t use his flap mike. If he cut and ran he would have to prove he hadn’t drained his tank to get out of a hot odds-on battle; he’d have to have proof that the tank wasn’t filled when he took off. But he had to decide at once.
A guarded voice spoke. It was Allison’s. “Peel off and dive by position. Come up after a check below clouds.”
The Flight Lieutenant’s Spitfire lanced over on its side and streaked down like a rocket. O’Malley followed. Stan’s lips pulled into a hard line. He flipped the Spitfire over on its side and went roaring down the chute. The air speed and altimeter were going insane. The shriek of the dive shook every nerve in Stan’s body, and set him back against the crash pad, holding him there with a powerful grip. The three Spitfires roared out of the clouds at the same instant. They streaked into the clear blue for a moment, then shot upward and ducked back into the cloud again.
They had seen nothing except a low and rocky coastline with white lines of breakers beating against it. Not a plane in the world, except the squadron, so it seemed.
And then the clouds broke away and a harbor was in the frame of their windscreens. It looked like a toy harbor with its oblong breakwater. A great hangar with a black painted roof looked out upon the gently rolling waters. There were seaplanes in the picture somewhere. Stan craned his neck and saw what was holding the eyes of the men in the Blenheims and the Bristols. Three toy boats rode at anchor beside a dock. Those were supply ships that had slipped through the blockade. Headquarters was taking a last desperate chance of keeping that valuable cargo from getting through.
Then the Rose Raid actually started. The radio began to crackle. “Rose Raid at targets! Rose Raid over targets!” That was the squadron leader telling headquarters they were going down.
The nine light Spitfires went down in a screaming dive to cover the Blenheims and the Bristols. The big Bristols swung into line-astern formation and bashed through the first upheaval of Flak-88 shells. Black and white blooms of bursting shells bracketed them as their leader slid into the curtain of fire. The next instant the big Bristol disappeared in a mass of smoke and flame.
A Blenheim on Stan’s right twisted upward, threw away a wing and went down in a dizzy spin, ramming its nose into the roof of the black hangar.
The remaining four bombers plunged down upon their objective with the Spitfires doing dizzy stunts alongside them and the air seemingly filled with Heinkel single-seaters which had slashed into the picture from nowhere. A darting Heinkel dived upon Stan. Stan opened up and saw an aileron flutter away from the plummeting fighter. The formation of Spitfires had broken up now. It was everybody into the dogfight to keep the Heinkels from getting at the four precious bombers.
The slashing, whirling Spitfires did the job. They tore into the Heinkels and their deadly eight-gun combinations showed at once what superior fire power they had. Stan watched O’Malley send a fighter down and slide over on his back, out of the path of three more, to get another before his first burst of fire had c
eased smoking. O’Malley was a demon of the sky. He was in and out and up and down and his trail was a trail of death. Allison was up there, too, doing just about as well but doing it with cold precision rather than by sheer recklessness.
Stan knifed into a wedge of Heinkels darting down to drop upon one of the Bristols. The Heinkels scattered before his fire, twisting and ducking and darting. Stan laid over and looked down. The bombers had unloaded. Below him the three ships, big now, and dirty in their streaked gray and black paint, were very close. Men were running wildly about on their decks or leaping into the water. One of them burst into flame amidship, another seemed to explode, the third listed far over and her stern sank slowly down.
Stan’s radio was shouting at him. “Rose Raid! Rose Raid! Ten bandits down. Two bombers have left formation. Two fighters have left formation. Rose Raid, come in. Rose Raid, come in!”
The Spitfires could not come in. While the bombers slipped away under full throttle, free of their loads and faster than they had been, the Spitfires slashed and blasted and ducked. Stan watched a Spitfire go into the bay, twisting and spinning. He wondered if it could be Allison or O’Malley.
“Red Flight, come in.” That was Allison’s voice.
“Comin’ soon as I get me another spalpeen,” O’Malley’s brogue burred.
Stan glanced at his gas gauge. It showed empty, but the Merlin was still hammering away. He nosed her up as he cuddled his flap mike.
“Wilson coming in.”
Up and up the Spitfire roared, shaking the Heinkels off her tail as she twisted and banked, her 1,000 horses tossing her toward the ceiling. Stan held his breath as he headed her home. Was that gas gauge a liar?
He heard the Merlin cough and knew the gauge had not lied. Looking back he saw the dim outline of the enemy shore. Back there he could cripple down and they would not shoot him. They would be glad to get a sound Spitfire and they would keep him locked up for the rest of the war. Ahead lay the gray waters of the English channel, rough and sullen, cold as ice.
“Wilson out of gas. Making a try for home,” he shouted into his flap mike.
Above him he saw that Messerschmitt One-Tens had joined the Heinkels in trying to finish off the Spitfires. He leveled off as the Merlin gave its last gasp of power and sent the ship gliding toward home.
For a time Stan thought the Jerries had missed him, they were so busy up above. Eight thousand feet below his wings the rough waters of the channel were moving up to meet him. The first warning Stan had that he was not to escape without a fight was a terrific jolting and ripping that almost shook him loose from his seat; the next was the staccato rattle of a rapid-fire cannon that was ripping great chunks out of his right wing.
The Spitfire writhed up on her side, then rolled over on her back and shot seaward. Stan pulled the stick back against his stomach and kicked the right rudder viciously. He looked up just as the Jerry loosed another broadside which missed the ship. The Jerry zoomed back up, satisfied he had finished the Spitfire that was trying to slip away.
Stan gave the Jerry but a glance. He was battling to pull the Spitfire out of the spin he had jammed her into. He soon realized that there was no control left in the ship, so he unbuckled his belt and rammed back what was left of the hatch cover. He squirmed out of the cockpit and dived. As he slid away from the ship he felt himself caught and held. His chute bellied out and the shoulder straps wrenched at him. A second later he was ripped loose and whirled away from the crumpled wreck. As he leveled off he saw that he was about 3,000 feet from the water.
It appeared also that Stan had the channel to himself. Overhead he could hear the faint drone of motors; otherwise there was no sound except the cries of a half-dozen excited gulls that swooped down about him curiously as the chute let him drift downward toward the gray sea.
An inshore wind whipped at his clothing, twisting him dizzily as he dangled there in mid-air, and he had a brief, crazy hope that it might carry him in to land before he went down. But that wild hope died at once when he realized the shore was miles away.
There was nothing for it but to take his wetting and hope the R.A.F. life jacket was as good as it was supposed to be. He stared downward at the choppy surface that seemed to sweep upward to meet him, gritting his teeth to drive fear away. This was a chance every channel flier took… and sometimes they were rescued.
He handled the chute controls skillfully, easing himself down with the wind while he fought to loosen the buckles that held the straps tightly about him. If he went into the water with that chute dragging him down there wouldn’t be any chance of eventual rescue.
As his numbed fingers tore at the buckles he wondered what it felt like to drown. The sea was close now. A bleak gray expanse of waves that reached hungry arms upward to receive another human sacrifice. One buckle came free, then another. He ripped himself out of the harness and plummeted down the last ten feet, his body driving deep into the icy cold water.
He came to the surface sputtering and beating the water madly, then remembered the life jacket he wore, and let its buoyancy support him while he took stock of the situation.
It looked hopeless. He was a single tiny speck floating on a vast expanse of sea where every surface craft was subject to attack and more intent on making port than searching for downed fliers. The sky overhead was clear of planes now. He wondered if anyone had seen him bailing out. He had reported he was short of gas. If either Allison or O’Malley made it back safely, he had a hunch they wouldn’t rest until they returned to search the sea for him or the wreckage of his plane.
That was his only hope. Any other rescue would be purely accidental. The icy fingers of the water were eating into his flesh. The heavy flying togs were becoming water-soaked, dragging him down. He didn’t know how long he could hold out. He tried to swim toward the dimly distant shore line, but the waves battered him back and the numbing cold stole away his strength.
He forced himself to relax, let the life jacket support him. It might be hours before rescue came. It looked hopeless, but a man never gave up hope while life remained in his body. If he could keep his head above water, keep from swallowing too much of the salt sea, he could last a few hours at least.
And he clung to the belief that Allison or O’Malley would return to look for him. Though he didn’t know just what either of them could do if they did spot him from the sky. If one of them could get hold of a seaplane he didn’t doubt that they’d try to set it down on the rough surface to rescue him. He tried to recall whether he’d seen any seaplanes since arriving in England.
Things were getting hazy in his mind. He gave up trying to move his limbs. The blood was congealing in his veins. He had a strange feeling that his flesh was becoming brittle with cold, that he would break into pieces if he tried to move an arm or leg.
A delightful sensation of helpless lethargy crept over him. This was the sort of thing he had read happened to people when death was very close and inevitable. It was Nature’s kind way of drugging the perceptions against the impact of death.
He began to hear a buzzing in his ears, and he decided that was the beginning of the end. It didn’t matter now. Nothing mattered. Not even the war.
The buzzing grew louder and became a distinct annoyance. He tried to shut it away from his consciousness, but it persisted. He felt himself being dragged back from the coma into which he had sunk. The buzzing became a loud drone, then smashed at his ear drums with a shattering roar.
He came to life again, and fought to blink his salt-encrusted eyelids open. He recognized that roar of a Spitfire motor. It was zooming over him, flattening out in a crazy reckless pancake dangerously close to the surface of the water.
He got one eye open and caught a flashing glimpse of a grinning Irish face leaning over the side of the plane and shouting something to him. The plane lifted swiftly and swept away and Stan found himself waving a numbed hand after it.
The ice in his veins was transformed into tongues of flame that licked through hi
s body. O’Malley had come, just as he had known the Irishman would. He would bring a rescue ship back. All Stan had to do was stay alive a little longer.
He grinned happily as he watched the Spitfire become a dim speck in the sky and then disappear. He began beating the water with his arms and legs, and he jeered good-naturedly at the sea that had sought to engulf him.
The plane was coming back, circling high overhead to spot the floating pilot for a fishing boat that was putting out from shore. As the small craft drew near Stan saw two men in oilskins waving to him. He waved back, and then a strange thing happened. It was as though someone had struck him on the head with a sledge hammer. He was unconscious when the boat reached him, and he stayed unconscious for a full twenty-four hours.
He woke up in a strange new world that was utterly different from anything he had known before. A clean, white, antiseptic world with narrow beds and pretty girls in white uniforms. He was tucked in one of those beds, and one of the pretty girls in a white uniform was bending over him solicitously.
“Where am I?” he demanded.
“This is a hospital. You are very sick,” the nurse said soothingly.
“Hospital!” Stan sputtered. “I’m not staying in any hospital. I was never in a hospital in my life!” He got to his feet as orderlies and a head nurse came running.
“Lie down or I will report you,” the head nurse said severely. “You are sick.”
“How long do you think it takes me to get over a bath?” Stan shot at the nurse.
“You’ll be here two weeks,” the head nurse informed him.
Stan had visions of Allison sending out for another man to fill the trio on Red Flight. He wrapped the blanket tighter around him.
“Get my clothes,” he ordered.
“Get an officer,” the head nurse snapped to an orderly.
Stan knew it was time for action. He swept the blanket ends off the floor and dived down the hall with the nurses running after him. A doctor came out of a room, looked at Stan, then ducked back quickly. Stan bounded down a wide stairway and out through a pair of open doors. People stared at him as he rushed up the street in his bare feet looking for a cab.
A Yankee Flier with the R.A.F. (a yankee flier) Page 3