To Kingdom Come

by Robert J. Mrazek

  By any description, it was a disaster.

  If even a few of the Fortresses in the two bomb wings had managed to hit the principal targets, he could at least make a case that the heavy losses were worth it. In truth, the majority of the B-17s had bombed “targets of opportunity,” which in many instances were identified as “a forest” or “a farm community.” Most of the bomber crews had no idea where their bombs went.

  The one positive element of the report was that the crews claimed to have destroyed ninety-eight enemy fighters along with twenty probable kills. It was a good result, although fighter claims had to be discounted because more than one machine gunner would usually be firing at the same fighter at the time it was destroyed, and they would both naturally claim to have shot it down.

  Before the dinner at Claridge’s, Anderson needed guidance on how to characterize the mission results to General Arnold. It was no exaggeration to conclude that his future might be on the line.

  Entrépagny, France

  384th Bomb Group

  Second Lieutenant James Armstrong

  1830

  It was damp and cold in the briar patch.

  While lying there, he considered a number of different strategies for making his escape from occupied France. The problem was that all of them required an ability to walk.

  That didn’t seem to be a likely possibility anytime soon. Since making his hard parachute landing, Jimmy’s right ankle had swollen to twice its normal size. He could only hope it wasn’t broken. When he had tried to stand up after hitting the ground, he fell over on his face.

  Yankee Raider had gone down only a mile or two away from where he had landed. He knew that after the Germans searched the plane, they would immediately start looking for the missing crew members. He needed a place to hide until the pain in his ankle receded enough for him to walk on it.

  Next to the field where he had landed was a small copse of woods. He had crawled to it on his hands and knees. Near the edge of the tree line, he had spied a massive thicket of briars, intertwining vines and stems that rose almost five feet high and extended a hundred feet into the woods. He doubted that the Germans would be thrilled about going in there to search for him. He could only hope they didn’t have bloodhounds. The dogs wouldn’t care.

  As he began to wriggle and burrow into the briar patch, he remembered that this was Labor Day, the first Monday in September. Back in his hometown of Bradenton, Florida, they celebrated the holiday with picnics and an air show.

  Well, he had participated in an air show all right, but this was no picnic. He didn’t have any food, and he kept being stuck with painful pricks from the nettles and thorns inside the patch.

  It took a long time for the six-foot, two-hundred-pound pilot to penetrate halfway in. He finally stopped to take stock of his situation. He was bareheaded, wearing a leather A-2 jacket over woolen trousers, khaki uniform blouse, and high-top shoes. He hadn’t bothered to bring his army-issue Colt .45.

  Among the few things he found of possible use in his pockets were the little compass he carried on each mission and a small escape handkerchief on which was printed a map of France. He knew he was northwest of Paris. If he walked far enough southeast he would hit the Seine River and could follow it straight into Paris. Paris was supposed to be full of resistance fighters.

  Even if the pain in his ankle subsided, he was worried about drawing unwanted attention after starting the journey. He knew his face was badly swollen from the burning cockpit. That would be sure to attract notice, along with his badly burned hands. He would need help from somebody.

  Above all, Jimmy didn’t want to be captured and spend the rest of the war in a German prisoner-of-war camp. The way things were going, the war was bound to go on for a long time.

  Through the rest of the afternoon, he lay quietly in his lair and waited. Aside from birdsong, he couldn’t hear a thing. No German search parties, no bloodhounds, no vehicles, no human voices.

  As night fell, he became hungry and thirsty. He hadn’t had anything to eat or drink since around five that morning back at the officers’ mess in Grafton Underwood. He wished he was back there now, sinking his teeth into a ham sandwich and enjoying a glass of beer. He thought about leaving the lair to try to find water, but then became worried he might not find his way back.

  The moon came up, allowing him to see the dense assemblage of vines and stems surrounding him in the thicket. His ankle was hurting worse than ever, and the damp cold made his burns ache. He seemed to be a magnet for spiders, ants, and other tiny creatures, but they didn’t bother him.

  In the morning he knew he had to find water. He hoped he would be able to walk far enough on his bad ankle to reach it. There was nothing else he could do for now but rest. He fell into a fitful sleep.

  London, England

  Claridge’s Hotel

  General Henry Arnold

  2200

  The mahogany table was fifty feet long. Its starched, white damask linen tablecloth was covered with an array of Claridge’s best china and flatware. Sterling silver candelabras threw off warm cones of candlelight every five feet along the spine of the table.

  The elegant supper had been absolutely splendid, with each course prepared by Claridge’s superb chefs with the provisions supplied by the dog robbers on Eaker’s headquarters staff.

  The guest of honor appeared to be enjoying himself immensely.

  In the spirit of Allied cooperation, the thirty-six British and American guests were intermingled. No French commanders had been invited. Air Chief Marshal Sir Charles Portal sat on Arnold’s right, with Ira Eaker on Arnold’s left. Marshal of the RAF: the Viscount Hugh Trenchard and Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris were also close by. He had easy access to his closest intimates, both English and American.

  Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory was sitting at the end of the opposite side of the table next to Brigadier General Fred Anderson. Leigh-Mallory had just been chosen to become commander of the Allied Expeditionary Air Force, which included both RAF units and the U.S. Ninth Air Force. He was immensely proud to be commanding American medium bombers.

  Leigh-Mallory found himself increasingly charmed with Arnold, whose self-deprecating personal style was in stark contrast to some of Leigh-Mallory’s English colleagues. He thought Arnold was a “grand” raconteur and storyteller.

  Sitting next to him, Fred Anderson was nervously waiting for Hap Arnold to ask him about the Stuttgart mission. When the question came his way, he was ready with his answer, but there was at least some hope that the subject wouldn’t even come up. Arnold and the senior commanders were covering far more important strategic issues. Maybe the Stuttgart mission would be forgotten under their weight.

  Arnold was having a particularly frank discussion with Lord Trenchard, who had been just as instrumental in establishing the Royal Air Force in its infancy as Arnold had been in creating the modern U.S. Army Air Forces.

  They were both known as the “fathers” of their respective air forces, and Arnold admired him greatly. Trenchard had been an early advocate of strategic bombing, and his words at the dinner were sweet music to Arnold’s ears. At seventy, the old man hadn’t seemed to have lost his edge.

  During a lull in the general conversation, Arnold turned and asked Fred Anderson how the day’s mission had gone.

  Anderson smiled and said, “The bombing results were excellent, sir.”

  He had decided not to provide specifics. Thankfully, Arnold didn’t ask for any.

  General Anderson added that the excellent results had come at high cost.

  “We lost over thirty planes,” he said.

  Strictly speaking, he was telling the truth. Eighth Air Force Bomber Command had lost more than thirty Fortresses that day. The actual number was forty-five, which Anderson well knew.

  Arnold did not press him on the point. Losses were inevitable, especially now that they were going after Germany’s industrial base. To Arnold, excellent results mea
nt the Eighth Air Force had pasted the ball-bearing factories in Stuttgart, and were that much closer to destroying Germany’s capacity to wage war.

  Later, over Ira Eaker’s excellent cigars, there were toasts to General Arnold, to Prime Minister Churchill, and to President Roosevelt. At 2230, General Arnold excused himself from the gathering and headed upstairs to his suite.

  All in all, he had found the inspection trip a profitable use of his time. Most important, he had lit a fire under Eaker and his staff. Back in Washington, he could never rely on the information and reports that came up through regular channels. He needed to be there to get the full story.

  After retiring to bed, he was briefly awakened by something he hadn’t heard in London since his visit in April 1941 at the height of the blitz. It was pitch dark in the suite, but through the thick blackout curtains he could hear the mournful wail of air raid sirens. Unlike 1941, they were not followed by the roar of exploding bombs and the bark of antiaircraft fire.

  They didn’t disturb his dreams.

  The Day After

  Tuesday, 7 September 1943

  Magadino, Switzerland

  First Lieutenant Martin Andrews

  0830

  Andy Andrews found himself tormented with guilt at what had ensued after he had landed Est Nulla Via Invia Virtuti in the grass airfield at the edge of Lago Maggiore. For one thing, none of the four British thermite bombs he and his crew had ignited to destroy the plane had worked. They were all duds. A serviceable B-17 was now in another country’s hands.

  He had failed.

  He felt even greater guilt at having taken the plane out of combat. His copilot, Keith Rich, attempted to reassure him that he had made the right decision. With two engines out along with most of their fuel, they would probably have gone down over Germany. The crew was grateful, Rich told him. He had heard them cheering after Est Nulla Via Invia Virtuti touched down alongside the lake.

  None of it relieved Andy’s gloom.

  After they were arrested by the Swiss troops, the crew had been brought to a Swiss military installation. In response to a question from a Swiss intelligence officer about the details of their combat mission, Andy told him that he had no idea what the man was talking about.

  “Then what are you doing in our country?” demanded the Swiss officer.

  “We’re tourists,” said Andy.

  This appeared to amuse the Swiss, but they continued to demand answers.

  “I can tell you nothing until I’ve spoken to a U.S. military attaché,” he said finally.

  That evening they were transported under guard to an empty school in the nearby town of Bellinzona. They were each given blankets, and they spent the night sleeping on the floor.

  The following morning they were put on a train to Zurich. Andy was told by a Swiss officer that they would be questioned further at Dübendorf Air Base, the headquarters of the Swiss Air Force.

  He was sharing a compartment with the other three officers in his crew. The train had just left the station when the interior door of the compartment slid open, and a portly, middle-aged man stepped inside. Gray-haired with a trim mustache, he was wearing an expensive European-style suit.

  “May I speak to the pilot of the U.S. plane that landed yesterday in Magadino?” he asked.

  The Swiss had evidently agreed to allow the man to have access to them. Why? He appeared to have a refined American accent. Andy suspected that the man might be a spy.

  When Andy said that he was the pilot, the man introduced himself as Allen Dulles, a fellow American, and shook his hand. He asked Andy to join him in his compartment for a private conversation. Intrigued, Andy went with him.

  When they were alone, Dulles told Andy that he was the station chief of the United States Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the American spy network in Europe. He was using neutral Switzerland as his base of operations for intelligence gathering on the Continent. His operatives ranged across Germany, France, and Italy, seeking the latest data on Axis military operations.

  A cautious Andy responded by saying, “Look, Mr. Dulles, I’m sure you’re for real and I’ve heard of your brother John Foster Dulles, but until I meet the military attaché here in Switzerland, I can’t tell you anything about what I was doing yesterday. I’m perfectly willing to talk about my boyhood in Wisconsin or about my days in college, but not about what I did yesterday.”

  He could tell from Dulles’s smile that the old man liked that. Andy didn’t know that Dulles was already considering using him as an undercover agent for a secret mission that would be as important as any Andy had flown with the Eighth Air Force.

  Dulles wanted to know more about his personal background, and Andy spoke about his classical education at St. John’s College. Dulles seemed impressed with Andy’s facility with languages, and his ability to recall the long passages in Latin and Greek that Dulles asked him to recite.

  For his part, Dulles began talking about his childhood in Auburn, New York, and his own student days at Princeton. He confided to Andy that he was returning to Bern after a clandestine meeting with Allied agents in Locarno.

  In Zurich, the two men shook hands. Dulles wished him luck.

  Tuesday, 7 September 1943

  Entrepagny, France

  384th Bomb Group

  Jimmy Armstrong

  0600

  Jimmy awoke desperately thirsty.

  It had been twenty-four hours since he had a cup of coffee in the officers’ mess at Grafton Underwood shortly before the mission briefing. Almost a lifetime ago, as it turned out.

  With the first hint of dawn, he began wriggling out of the briar patch. Reaching the end of the thicket of vines and thorns, he attempted to stand up again. The pain in his right ankle was searing, but he found he could make forward progress by taking one step at a time with his left foot, while keeping as little weight as possible on the right.

  He searched the landscape for a stream or a farmer’s well. There was nothing promising as far as he could see. He began crossing the wide field. There was no one about. He wondered how a Frenchman would react to seeing him dressed in his flight suit with burned face and hands, and hobbling along like a crippled old man. Would he help or turn him over to the Germans?

  A building slowly emerged from the haze at the far end of the field. It was an imposing-looking château, and he decided not to approach it. Jimmy had attended escape training classes at Grafton Underwood, and he remembered one of the instructors telling them to stay away from rich landowners, because they had more to lose and were more likely to turn him in.

  His ankle was breaking down again, and he decided to head back to the protection of the briar patch while he could still make it. The sky was much lighter now. While recrossing the field, he spotted what appeared to be a shallow drainage ditch. Coming closer, he saw there was water in it. The flow was less than two inches deep, but it was welcome just the same.

  Jimmy followed the ditch back to the protection of the tree line and sat down to drink. He was greedily swallowing the brackish water when he heard someone coming through the woods. His immediate thought was that it might be a German soldier who had seen him crossing the field.

  When the figure emerged through the trees, Jimmy saw it was an old white-haired man wearing a black beret and knickers. He appeared to be just as startled as Jimmy.

  The man took in his flight jacket and burned face.

  “Allez,” he said loudly, pointing deeper into the woods. Jimmy sensed that “allez” meant go. He stood up again and hobbled deeper into the woods. With the pain in his ankle, he didn’t make it far before stopping.

  Turning around, he saw that the man had disappeared. He sat down with his back to a tree and waited. If the man had gone to turn him in, there was no way he could escape anyway.

  Less than an hour later, the old man was back. He was carrying a pan of beef stew in brown sauce with carrots and potatoes. It was accompanied by a chunk of bread and a jug of red wine. Nothing had eve
r tasted better to him.

  Through a combination of sign language and a few common words, Jimmy understood that the Germans were still looking for him, and had searched all the houses in the area. Taking the empty pan, the man indicated he would bring more food the next day.

  Jimmy nodded and said, “Mersey bo-coop.” The man went away again.

  He spent the rest of the day making a crude bed of leaves and branches. His pillow was a tree root covered by his A-2 jacket. He had another night of fitful sleep. The next morning, the man came back with more food.

  His name was Gaston Viguier, and he was a French army veteran from World War I who had fought at Verdun. He detested the German occupiers. He made it clear that he would continue to bring food as long as he could.

  Although Jimmy was anxious to get moving, he decided that the respite in the woods was a good thing. He would probably need to walk a long distance, and he developed a daily regimen to slowly strengthen it by walking short distances in the woods. Each day his ankle would feel a little stronger.

  On the second night, he awoke to the slow, steady patter of raindrops. Soon, it became a downpour, washing away the little umbrella of branches and leaves he had erected over his sleeping place. He could only pull the collar of his leather A-2 jacket tightly around his neck and endure it for the rest of the night.

  The hours passed with agonizing slowness. Apart from the old man and an occasional glimpse of another villager passing along a nearby country road, Jimmy saw no one.

  He missed the familiar sound patterns of his former life. The woods were silent except for birdsong and the occasional rustling of leaves by small forest creatures. His only other stimulation was the chimes from a bell tower in the nearby village. They tolled every hour and had a calming effect on him, particularly through the long nights.

  Twelve o’clock and all’s well.

  Solitude wasn’t all bad, he eventually decided. He just wasn’t used to it. For all of his twenty-one years, he had been part of a family, or an athletic team, or a college club, or the air force. This was the first time he had ever been truly alone.