A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II

by Adam Makos

  That morning they had been assigned spare gunners and a temporary B-17 called Anita Marie. Soon after takeoff they had lost an engine and returned to base. Now the group was away, bombing the German ports at Kiel, without them.

  Charlie and his officers had just wanted to log another mission to put December 20 behind them. Charlie had broken the news to them about their heroics being quashed. The men couldn’t care less. Russian and Pechout had survived and were going home. Rumor had it that Blackie was coming back. What bothered them was that they had been stuck in limbo for fourteen days. Three times they had gone to bed expecting to fly the next day. Three times they had tossed and turned all night only to wake up beneath the orderly’s flashlight beam and to hear his voice: “Sorry, sir, mission’s scrubbed.”

  Now, instead of talking with one another, they talked to themselves and thought themselves in circles, pondering the odds against their survival. They imagined what they could do to improve their chances, like sitting on a flak vest, finding a new lucky charm, or going to the chapel more. They had become mentally rattled or what the combat crews called “flak happy.”

  Colonel Preston’s policies had failed to help the Quiet Ones. Whenever Preston knew a crew had come back from a bad mission, he tried to put them back into the air as soon as possible. Preston had learned to do this from an earlier mistake. Several months prior a crew had come back with wounded and dead men aboard. Preston gave them a week off at a rest home to calm their nerves. A 379th navigator would remember what happened: “They had used their week off to mull over their collective past and unpromising future. On their return they announced their unanimous decision to quit the war.”1 After that crew resigned from flying duty, Preston and the group’s flight surgeon instituted a new policy to get a flak happy crew back into the air and off the ground. But even Preston could not un-scrub a mission or prevent an abort.

  Looking at his men, Charlie wondered if they were having nightmares like he had. Every night he had been dreaming of the red flak orchids and of German pilots flying along his wingtips like devils. After December 20, Charlie had come to conclude that his survival rested not in his hands, but in the hands of his enemy. Had the German flak gunner paid attention in gunnery school? Had he miscalculated the wind? Had the enemy fighter pilot been drinking the night before? Had his girlfriend visited him? To Charlie, this realization was devastating.

  Someone whistled a tune that echoed throughout the mess hall. The sound floated from behind the buffet, where cooks wore white aprons as they scrubbed pans. Charlie and his officers looked at one another. They all had heard the story of the cook, Snuffy, who was so happy to be in the mess hall that he whistled all the time. Snuffy had been a gunner once. The legend went that Snuffy was so certain his “number was up” that he had declared one day, “I ain’t a’flying anymore,”2 and tore off his sergeant stripes. He volunteered to work in the kitchen, and Colonel Preston allowed this.

  When Charlie dumped his tray in the trash, he looked across the buffet for Snuffy, but the whistling had stopped. Instead, all he saw were cooks who all looked the same, with healthy faces and rosy cheeks. Charlie did not want to ask which man was Snuffy because he knew that to know Snuffy was to know defeat. Snuffy’s whistling was a horrible siren, a lure to an airman to quit flying and follow him. Snuffy’s only promise was the guarantee of life.

  ONE DAY LATER, JANUARY 5, 1944, AROUND 5:15 A.M.

  Charlie’s breath fogged up the mirror as he tried to shave in the freezing cold latrine. He wore a T-shirt and a towel around his waist. Down a hallway behind him, showers poured hot steam that swirled against the door’s cold draft. Every time Charlie splashed the sink’s freezing water against his cheeks he grimaced. He hated shaving but knew it was necessary to ensure a good seal of his oxygen mask against his face. Charlie saw his likeness in the mirror. His face was pale and his eyes hung sad. He could not smile. Sixteen days after December 20th he knew he had to get back over Germany or throw in the towel.

  Dale greeted Charlie as he stepped up to a sink a few mirrors over. Charlie grunted a greeting between swipes of the razor. Dale seemed alert, as if he had been up for hours. Charlie marveled at his happy-go-lucky attitude.

  “Shoot!” Dale said, pulling his razor away. Charlie glanced over and saw a crimson splotch through the shaving cream on Dale’s cheek. When Dale placed the razor back to his face, Charlie saw his hand trembling. Dale nicked himself again. He looked over at Charlie with just his eyes, without turning his head. Charlie looked away.

  Dale was to fly his fourth mission that day, and the prevailing rumor was that an airman stood a 25 percent chance of completing his tour. By those odds, after mission five, every flight was on borrowed time.

  Charlie wanted to shout to Dale, Why are we doing this to ourselves? But he said nothing.* Charlie knew that no pilot wanted to fly tight formation with someone rattled, shaky, or flak happy. The third time Dale nicked himself, Charlie could not take it anymore and departed, pretending he’d never noticed.

  Inside the officer’s mess, amid the smells of fried SPAM and coffee, Charlie followed Dale through the chow line. Scrawled across the back of Dale’s jacket was the name of his plane, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi II, in jungle leaf letters. Below the letters, someone had painted a likeness of the smiling black mongoose, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, a character from Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. In the book, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi defends a British family from two poisonous cobras, at great risk and suffering to himself. Alongside the mongoose on Dale’s jacket, someone had painted three yellow bombs that signified Dale’s completed missions, his commitment to his tour. The back of Charlie’s jacket, like those of his remaining crew, was blank.

  A cook behind the chow line, maybe Snuffy himself, ladled eggs onto Charlie’s plate. The man grinned politely. Before a mission, the ground personnel restrained their smiles, projecting quiet respect until the flyboys were in the air. They never whistled or joked or said “Go get ’em.” Most of the cooks could imagine where the airmen were headed, a place Snuffy knew too well. Why did I volunteer for this? Charlie thought, as he looked from the cook in his dirty apron to the scared pilot ahead of him, his face nicked up, and the mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi beckoning: “Follow me.”

  THE B-17S TAXIED one behind the other through the ground fog, the lights in the bombers’ wings glowing like lanterns on a ship’s bow. Every time a bomber launched down the main runway, the others rolled forward a plane length, then stopped.

  Far back in the snaking line, Charlie and Pinky sat behind the controls of another borrowed B-17, this one named Duffy’s Tavern. Charlie steered the bomber while Pinky leaned outside his window and shouted corrections to him so Charlie could keep the plane on the narrow taxiway. Charlie squinted at the two small white taillights of the bomber ahead, trying to maintain a safe distance while trusting the pilot behind him to do the same.

  It was 7:45 A.M., but a sinister dark fog had turned morning at Kimbolton Air Base into night. The chilly fog floated in through Pinky’s window. A few degrees colder and it would have snowed. The runway lights passed by like tiny lighthouses on a foggy coastline. Bombers named Lakanuki, Deacon’s Sinners, and Polly launched one after another toward the northwest, their red and green wingtip lights streaking through the fog. “This is idiotic,” Pinky said as he watched. Instead of agreeing, Charlie gripped the yoke more tightly, his eyes darting with intensity. He was certain that nothing would stop him from logging this mission, another to Kiel, Germany.

  Soon just a few planes sat between Charlie’s bomber and the right-hand turn onto the runway. Through Pinky’s side window, Charlie saw a bomber launch and disappear into the fog at the runway’s halfway point. Suddenly, a yellow flash cut through the fog followed by the sound of a thunderclap.

  “Oh shit!” Pinky said as he recoiled. Charlie stomped on the plane’s brakes. Flashes blinked from the end of the runway, each followed by an explosion like two fogbound ships trading broadside cannon bursts.

 
“Dear Lord!” Charlie said. He knew that one of their planes had just crashed on takeoff. The bomber ahead of them sat still. The radio was silent. Pinky said halfheartedly that the mission would be scrubbed now. Then the shortwave radio squawked with a call from the tower and a terse message: “Continue takeoff sequence.” Pinky looked at Charlie with alarm. “What about the wreckage?” he asked. Charlie just shook his head, his fists trembling on the controls.

  The bomber ahead of them moved up a spot, and Charlie knew another plane had launched. Charlie released the brakes and let his bomber crawl a few steps. He and Pinky could see the orange glow of the wreckage but had no sense of depth or distance.

  Two planes ahead of Charlie, Rikki-Tikki-Tavi II turned onto the runway with Dale at the controls. The bomber revved its engines, sucking the fog around its body and blowing gray wisps from its tail. The lights of the bomber behind it lit Rikki-Tikki-Tavi II’s tail as it rolled forward and launched, vanishing like the others into the fog.

  After the bomber ahead of them had begun its takeoff roll, Charlie revved the engines on the left wing and began swinging his plane onto the runway. It was his turn—finally. He leaned forward, trying to see the white marks of the runway’s centerline. An explosion, a bigger one, erupted in the sky ahead. Its orange tentacles of fire curled among the clouds.

  “Holy shit!” Pinky yelled.

  “That has to be another one of ours!” Charlie said, his eyes fixed on the orange glow as it fell through the clouds to earth.

  “There goes another midair collision,” someone said calmly over the radio.

  A heavy thump, thump, thump drew Charlie’s attention forward. His eyes widened as his bomber rolled off the runway and onto the grass. Distracted, he had forgotten to complete the turn. He stomped on the brakes and cursed. Gunning the engine, Charlie tried to swing the bomber back onto the concrete, but it had dug into the soggy ground and would not budge.

  Charlie ripped off his headphones and slapped them against the instrument panel. His cursing increased when he felt his bomber shake as the planes behind him took off, leaving him and his crew behind.

  Pinky leaned back in his seat and held his face in his hands. He looked like he wanted to cry.

  “Is everything okay up there?” a crewman’s shaky voice asked over the intercom.

  Charlie slumped over the control yoke in disbelief. Pinky turned to Charlie and asked if he should call for the aircraft’s evacuation.

  “No—we’re flying this goddamn mission!” Charlie shouted, his eyes turning wild. He pushed the throttles full forward. The bomber’s wheels trembled but would not budge. When Charlie pulled back on the throttles, the plane seemed to rock back on its heels. Revving the engines again, Charlie cursed like a madman. Pinky shouted, imploring him to stop, telling Charlie the bomber would never move with a full bomb load. The bomber shook from the engine’s fury. Its wheels vibrated, wanting to break free of the mud. Pinky reached and pulled the throttles back, shouting, “Let’s wait for the ground crew!” Charlie shoved Pinky’s hand away and pushed the throttles forward. The bomber trembled then broke free. Its tires rolled up and over the troughs in the mud then onto the concrete runway. Charlie pulled the throttles back to align the bomber’s nose with the centerline then rammed the throttles forward again. The bomber roared down the runway and leapt into the skies, soaring over the first burning bomber that had crashed in the field beyond the runway and over two others that had collided barely three miles from the runway. Charlie flew the bomber blindly up through the clouds, looking for the group.

  Ten minutes later, Charlie flew in the clear, above the clouds. He was still over England when Doc told him over the intercom that they stood no chance of catching up with the formation. “We either turn back or go to Germany alone,” Doc said.

  Charlie scowled as he stared ahead as if he could see Germany. Pinky turned to Charlie, with fear in his eyes, and said, “For God’s sake, don’t.” Charlie’s scowl softened and dropped into a look of defeat as he banked the control yoke left and turned back for Kimbolton. He flew tight-lipped, without asking Doc for a heading. Charlie knew the fires on the ground would guide him home.

  THAT SAME MORNING, AN HOUR LATER

  In the quiet warmth of the officer’s club, Charlie sat at a square cocktail table and sipped from a glass of Scotch. Two shot glasses sat before him, empty. On a sign above the club’s door, red letters spelled, DUFFY’S TAVERN, the club’s nickname. The B-17 Charlie had flown that day had been named in the club’s honor. A few officers sat around the bar and drank bloody Marys beneath a red-and-white striped awning that gave the bar a poolside flare. Someone had painted a beautiful blonde in a white bathing suit on the bar, and another reclining, with her back turned, over the club’s entrance.

  Charlie glanced at his watch with glassy eyes, following the group’s progress in his mind. He knew they were approaching the German coast. When anyone entered the club, Charlie looked up at them with guilt. With two aborts in a row on his record, he knew he had become what the pilots called an outcast—a “pariah.” The real reasons behind the aborts—a bad engine and getting mired in the mud—didn’t matter. What mattered was that he had done it twice. Every pilot knew that one abort was common because B-17s were complex machines that often broke. But two aborts in a row was a pattern that would give rise to suspicions of cowardice. The officers ignored Charlie. Instead, they ordered coffee and sat down around him to read newspapers. With the group gone, word of Charlie’s abort had not yet traveled back, so the officers did not yet know that they had a pariah in their midst.

  Charlie was not the only pariah in Duffy’s Tavern. The club’s manager was a major who had been a pilot in the group until he covered his eyes during a German fighter attack. Preston had grounded the major but allowed him to run the officer’s club. Ashamed for letting the group down, the major now managed the club with vigor, turning it into a contender for the best-stocked bar in England. The other pilots had come to respect the major once again because they no longer had to fly with him.

  Between drinks, Charlie reached inside of his brown jacket and unfolded a letter from Marjorie. Since December 20 he had fast become a drinker and justified it, telling himself it was medication for his nerves.* Charlie had carried Marjorie’s letter with him that morning as a good luck charm. Now he read the letter with cold eyes. As a joke, Marjorie had written that she wanted to apply to be his copilot. She also made Charlie grit his teeth when she asked: “Is it as bad as you thought it would be?”

  Charlie wanted to tell her so much. He wanted to tell her about watching Dale Killion’s hand shaking as he shaved that morning. He wanted to tell her about how Ecky’s chubby little boots pointed up from the stretcher. He wanted to tell her that he had just watched thirty young men die an hour prior. Their lives ended in a series of flashes. They were young men who had spent twenty or twenty-two years on earth, growing and learning and living, just to die fewer than three lousy miles from their base, planted into an English field. Charlie crumpled Marjorie’s letter. He wanted to ask her, Would you have wanted to be the copilot on any of those planes?

  Charlie was angry at Marjorie only because he was angry with himself. He had realized that morning that his fate rested not in the hands of his enemy. The enemy had not killed the thirty men that morning. The odds had killed them. Charlie had decided that the odds were going to get him, too—if he kept flying.

  Shuffling toward his barracks, Charlie passed the squadron operations hut. He knew all he had to do was walk into the hut, fill out a form, and his flying days could be over. The clerk who worked there had once been a waist gunner. Rather than resign from combat duties, the man had taken his gloves off at high altitude and held his hands out in the slipstream until his fingers were severely frostbitten. Charlie knew he didn’t have to freeze his fingers to achieve the same result. He could do it with the swipe of a pen. He knew shame. He had grown up a poor farm kid unable to afford a comic book at the local drugstore. He
could live with it.

  Then, Charlie saw him. A man was walking toward Charlie’s hut with a brown box between his arms. Charlie knew the man, the orderly who gutted men’s footlockers when they went missing. The man opened the hut’s door and slipped inside. Charlie’s eyes bulged with alarm. He ran across the field after him.

  Charlie entered the hut and found the orderly walking from bunk to bunk looking for someone’s footlocker.

  “Can I help you?” Charlie asked, defensively.

  “No, sir, I don’t mean to be a bother,” the orderly said as he opened a footlocker, sorted through some papers, and shut it. Charlie folded his arms.

  Turning to Charlie, he asked, “Sir, maybe you can help me. Do you know which locker is Lieutenant Killion’s?”

  Charlie’s face turned white. He dropped his arms.

  “Why?” Charlie asked.

  “Lieutenant Dale Killion and his crew were killed this morning,” the orderly said, shaking his head. “The midair.” Charlie sat heavily on the edge of a nearby cot as the orderly gave him the details.

  Dale’s plane had collided with a B-17 from the 303rd Bomb Group. Charlie knew the 303rd was based just six miles to the northwest, at Molesworth—the flash he had seen in the clouds had been Dale’s death.*

  Seeing Charlie’s face twist with emotion, the orderly apologized for bearing such news. Without a word, Charlie pointed to the bunk opposite his. The orderly knelt and opened the footlocker. He told Charlie he had to empty the lieutenant’s locker of his belongings. “It’s a shitty job, sir,” he said. “And I’ve got nine more to go.”

  Charlie nodded, afraid to speak for fear of breaking down. The orderly gave Charlie permission to sort through Lieutenant Killion’s belongings first, if he wished.