The gunner looked at Jake stupidly. “I got orders, Mac.”
Someone else said, “Who is this guy?”
The officer jumped to his feet, said, “Get down here right now, soldier.”
The gunner made a move to re-grip the trigger and Jake punched him. While the gunner was still stunned Jake unhooked his harness and grabbed him. With strength only realized when adrenaline fuses with pure rage, Jake tossed the gunner from the rear compartment of the gun carriage. The gunner landed on the officer and they both hit the ground.
Jake looked out at the two of them. “Nobody is firing these guns any more tonight!”
The officer pulled out his .45-caliber sidearm and pointed it at Jake. “Get down right now, Private or I’ll shoot.”
“I believe you would, sir.” Jake was enraged. “You’ve already killed some paratroopers tonight. Why not me too?” Jake stood defiantly in the vehicle.
The officer looked confused. He was certain he was firing at German bombers. He had no word American transports would be dropping paratroopers that night. He cocked the hammer of the .45 and pointed it directly at Jake’s head. “If I don’t kill you, you’ll be court-martialed for sure. Now, get out of my vehicle, soldier.”
“No fucking way, sir!”
Before the officer could react, he felt a cold steel rifle barrel poked under his ear. Johnny held his M-1 Garand with the stock under his armpit. “I would just slowly lower that forty-five if I were you…sir!”
Chapter Thirty-Three
L’Enfant Plaza Hotel - January 13, 1997
“Things that were hard to bear are sweet to remember.”
Lucius Annaeus Seneca (4 BC - 65 AD)
“The main problem was, they just didn’t know how to use us.” Sky Johnson stabbed at a piece of apple pie on his plate. His mood slowly shifted from affable to morose. J.P. suspected many older veterans went through the same metamorphosis while discussing their war experiences. He decided to let Sky talk his way through this mood swing.
“Who didn’t know?” J.P. asked.
“The brass, the big shots, the leaders who were supposed to know better. They made a lot of bad decisions that hurt us and got men killed.”
J.P. didn’t want to sound unsympathetic but he felt he had to draw out more information. “Well, it was an all volunteer outfit with highly spirited men. It stands to reason you would get the difficult missions.”
“Sure.” Sky put down his fork and clasped his hands under his chin. “That’s not what I’m talking about. Take Sicily for example. First, they don’t have enough planes to drop the whole division at one time. Ike gave too many of our planes to the Limeys. Then we take the long flight path to Sicily, get lost and drop us in thirty-five mile an hour winds when we never practiced in anything over fifteen. Then they scatter us all over the freakin’ island and we find out later that only twelve percent of the guys actually dropped on target.” Sky picked up his fork and poked another piece of pie into his mouth. “And then they shoot at our own planes. But the real killer was they knew the Hermann Goering Panzer Division was on the island with Tiger tanks but they told us there were no Germans and no tanks.”
“They knew? Why didn’t they tell you?” J.P. interrupted.
“It was Ultra,” explained Frank. “The Allies broke the German High Command’s code. The brass figured if they warned the airborne troops there were tanks on the island, and they were captured and talked, the Germans might figure out we were reading their mail. So they told the airborne there were no tanks on the island.”
“That’s ridiculous,” commented J.P. “What the hell good is that kind of intelligence if you can’t actually use it?”
“Exactly!” Sky agreed, pointing his fork at J.P. “They didn’t need to tell us where they got the intel from. They could have told us they spotted the tanks from the air.” Sky paused for a moment. “Another thing. When the Five-oh-four was sent in and got shot up, there were over three hundred casualties.” Sky’s eyes clouded up. “We had eighty-one paratroopers and sixty aircrew killed. After all that hard work and training, to be shot down by your own guys…” Sky let the words hang in the air and just shook his head. The table fell into an awkward silence.
Sky continued after a few moments. “The men deserved better leadership than that.” He paused. “The whole incident became top secret and not made public until the following spring.”
“They kept it under wraps that long?” J.P. asked.
“If that happened today,” Frank interjected, “it would be all over the Nightly News!”
Sky nodded in agreement. “What’s the use in complaining now? Sorry, but it makes me feel better to get it out.” He paused for a moment and resumed his narrative. “The day after Biazza Ridge we patrolled to the west and came to the Acate River. There were no Krauts. They all retreated. We crossed over a bridge named Ponte Dirillo. There is a marker there today, a memorial with the engraved names of the guys we lost. Angelo, Boothe, Lieutenant Klee and a whole bunch more.” Sky shook his head in a gesture of deep regret. “They called the rest of the Sicilian Campaign a road march but we still took casualties.” Sky collected the props from the table that he used to explain the airborne dispositions. “The Italians would fire a volley for honor and then surrender. We lost Lieutenant Klee on one of those honorable surrenders.”
Sky choked up again. Cynthia reached across the table and covered his hand with hers. She shook it gently.
Sky continued through the painful memories. “It took us only about five weeks to secure the entire island. Patton beat Montgomery to Messina but most of the Germans got away to the mainland. Another mistake! We would hear from the Hermann Goering Division again.”
The waitress approached the table. “Here are your special order drinks.” She placed one in front of each of them. No one reached for his or her drink right away.
“Let me see,” Sky went on. “After that we flew back to Kairouan to take on replacements. Bob Hope and Francis Langford put on a USO show for the troops.” Sky wiped his mouth and brushed away a small tear.
“God bless Bob Hope,” Frank added. “The troops loved him.”
Sky persevered. “After a few weeks we flew back to Sicily to a place called Castelvetrano. It had an airfield and we were preparing for a jump somewhere into Italy. That came close to being another disaster.”
Harley joined the conversation. “There were plenty of ‘cluster-fucks’ made by the brass during the War.” Harley glanced around to see if his words carried beyond their table. He looked at Cynthia. “Sorry, ma’am.” He continued. “Omaha Beach was the worst, then there was the Huertgen Forest, the intelligence failure of the Bulge…the list goes on and on. Some generals had no damn clue.” Harley tossed his napkin on the table and leaned back in his chair.
“Also, our own officers were reluctant to put us in for medals,” Sky interrupted. “Since we were better than the rest we were expected to perform better than the rest.”
“Right,” agreed Frank. “And that stupid point system that allowed for rotation back to the States. And the dumb replacement system. Terrible mistakes!”
Harley gave Frank a curious stare. J.P. wasn’t sure what Frank said to evoke such a reaction. He surmised it had something to do with the replacement system or the point system.
J.P. decided to provoke the men just a little to prolong the discussion. “What was this near-disaster jump into Italy?”
Sky put his head down and then looked up at J.P. “That was another one the brass came this close to screwing up royally.” He held his thumb and forefinger about a quarter inch apart. “They were reckless with us and came that close to getting most of the division slaughtered. Just to drop us on Rome for political reasons. It would have been better if they just dropped us on Berlin and let us try to hunt down and kill that rat-bastard, son of a bitch, Hitler. Not one of us would have survived but maybe we could have ended the War a year earlier.”
Sky’s face softened. He coughed
and wiped his nose on his napkin. He slowly composed himself. “Don’t mind the ramblings of an old man,” he said to J.P. “I’m set in my ways and happen to have strong opinions. It was the men, the grunts, the boots on the ground that won that damned War. And most of them were just boys. They made the difference. Not the damn generals! And if the generals were smarter and had listened and learned, we wouldn’t have left so many of our guys over there in foreign cemeteries.”
It was also clear to J.P. these men revered their fallen brothers as much as they resented many of their superiors. They also had great pride in what they accomplished and strong opinions about how it should have been done. And what was this about Rome? J.P asked himself.
J.P. looked directly at Harley. “So I guess my father’s buddy Jake, your cousin, is buried somewhere over there?”
Harley returned his stare. As J.P. waited for a reply, he could see in his peripheral vision the other men were staring at Harley too.
“At the Henri-Chapelle Military Cemetery in Belgium with eight thousand of his brothers.”
Everyone sat in stunned silence. J.P. knew many Americans were buried in foreign cemeteries in distant lands but the detailed reference to a specific place complete with that huge number took him completely off guard. He turned to Sky to get the conversation back on track. “So the Eighty-second went back to Sicily in,” J.P. looked up at the ceiling, “had to be September by then, for a drop on Rome?”
“Early September,” Sky agreed. “And just before we made our next jump, Jake and Johnny disappeared.”
J.P. shook his head. “What?”
“They were pulled out of camp and sent off on a top-secret mission.”
Top-secret mission? J.P. wondered. Could this possibly be it? “What was the mission?” he asked innocently.
“I couldn’t tell you the details.” Sky lied. “We didn’t see much of each other after Sicily and the few times we did, we never got into it. I do know that it was classified…very hush-hush.”
J.P. looked at Harley who shrugged his shoulders. Then he looked at Frank.
“I know some of the details and I can share them with you.”
“Thanks Frank,” J.P. replied. He looked around the dining room. It was nearly empty. Their waitress was standing near the kitchen with her eye on the table. She had the bill in her hand and would come as soon as he signaled. There certainly wouldn’t be enough time for Frank to tell his story tonight. J.P. would have to make arrangements to speak to him soon. He also had to listen to his covert tape recording. This classified mission story may actually be the break he was waiting for. As much as he enjoyed the conversation, he knew time had run out.
He reached for his Prop-Blast and lifted the glass. “To the fallen.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
Newport News, Virginia – August 15, 1943
“If we mean to have heroes, statesmen and philosophers,
we should have learned women.”
Abigail Adams (1744 - 1818)
Macie Vance left the movie in conversation with Derek Edson. They had just seen the newly released film Action in the North Atlantic starring Humphrey Bogart with Raymond Massey, Alan Hale and Dane Clark. The movie, released to theatres in June, was primarily a tribute to the contribution made by the Merchant Marine. Bogart was her favorite actor ever since she saw him in the 1942 film Casablanca with Ingrid Bergman. That movie became her all-time favorite.
She was a bit disappointed there wasn’t much romance in the film – Julie Bishop had a small part - but enjoyed watching Bogart just the same.
Besides, she thought, not only was the movie exciting but the Movietone Newsreel contained some upbeat new developments as well. In the Pacific the Americans had secured Guadalcanal and recaptured the Aleutian Island of Attu. Kiska would be next. In the Mediterranean, the news was also good. The Allies surrounded and defeated a large army in Tunisia. North Africa was finally free of Axis forces. Macie was glad the fighting ended there since that’s where she believed Jake was.
Since the launching of the Yorktown (CV-10) in January, Macie worked on the USS Intrepid (CV-11) until her launching in April. After the Intrepid was launched on 26 April 1943, Macie went to work on the new USS Hornet (CV-12). This aircraft carrier was originally named Kearsarge, but after the original Hornet (CV-8) was lost at the battle of Santa Cruz the prior October, the Navy Department decided to honor another lost ship with a namesake, just as they had done with Yorktown.
By this time there were five Essex-class aircraft carriers under construction at the busy Newport News Shipyard. Another five were being built in other shipyards around the country to add to the four that had already been commissioned since Pearl Harbor. The ranks of workers and laborers at Newport News had swelled to immense numbers. Macie was promoted to supervise a team of ten welders, mostly women her junior in experience although not necessarily in age. She was conscientious and was gaining more self-confidence each day, especially as others were showing respect for her. She wondered if Derek had anything to do with her promotion.
Macie and Derek, along with Nora and a sailor named Jesse, walked the crowded Saturday night streets of Norfolk to Harry’s Drug Store and Fountain. Macie always enjoyed a chocolate malted or banana split after the movies. It reminded her of home. Derek always cheerfully deferred to her wishes.
Nora leaned over to Macie and said, “Will you be here for an hour or so?”
Macie smiled, “I’m sure we will. Have a good time.”
“We’re going for a walk, you kids enjoy your ice cream,” Nora announced. She swung Jesse back in the other direction and waved goodbye.
Derek raised his eyebrows. Macie smiled, cocked her head and did the same in return. “She’s a grown woman. She knows what she’s doing.”
“Personally, I think she’s getting a little khaki-wacky,” Derek used the popular term for women who went a bit overboard for men in uniform.
They walked into the drug store and took the only two empty stools at the end of the counter. Derek was his usual amiable self. He was hopelessly smitten with Macie but accepted that he was the other guy. The better he came to know her, the deeper in love he fell. He had been careful for more than a year, not risking any overt advances. As much as he wanted more out of their relationship, he was not willing to jeopardize their friendship by making his move.
She was an unusual young woman. He particularly liked the fact that she was beautiful despite not wearing makeup most of the time. The small mole on her lip punctuated her fine looks. At the same time, she was not vain. She didn’t mind being seen in shabby work clothes or with her hair wet. He was also impressed that all of the women who knew her liked her. He watched her grow in her job and while she may not have always been confident, she was comfortable with herself and fearless when it came to trying new things. Macie was mature well beyond her years and Derek had to often remind himself that she was just twenty years old.
His best opportunity to be with her and make something more of their relationship was to bide his time, be ever-present and available. It may never work out, but he would rather be just a friend than not be anything at all.
Macie looked at his face as he leaned over to suck his malted through a straw. How could someone so young look so much older? Derek was only twenty-three but was aged by what he witnessed in life. He glanced sideways with his green-gray eyes and smiled.
“Did you have anything to do with my promotion?” she asked.
“Not one bit,” he lied. “You earned it. You work hard and you’re good at what you do.”
That part was the truth. Macie was diligent. All Derek had to do was convince management that women would eventually have to be used in supervisory roles as the number of female shipyard workers increased so dramatically. The mathematics was undeniable. After that, it was easy to point Macie out as a candidate for supervisor.
She gave him a skeptical look. “I know I work hard but I just don’t know if I can believe you had nothing to do with
it. But if you did, thanks. You’re a good friend.” She stared at his face for a reaction.
“It was all your doing,” he countered without changing his expression. “You need to believe in yourself more, like Roxie.”
Macie pondered that suggestion. “You’re right, Derek. She is a very confident woman.”
“Speaking of Roxie,” he reached into his pocket. “I just got this letter today. You should read it.” He handed the letter to Macie and she read it between bites of her banana split.
Dear Derek,
I hope and trust this letter finds you well. I’m doing fine. I love this job and I’m making a real difference in the war effort. My sister pilots and I have been part of the Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron, the WAFS, since last year. In one month all women service pilots will become WASPs (Women’s Air Force Service Pilots). Don’t you just love the cute little names they create for us?
I hope the women we recruited for the yard are working out. We need them so badly in the labor force. Just as we need women pilots to free up men for combat.
I must say this job certainly has its moments. Last year I qualified to fly the B- (blacked out). They really need those planes in England so I volunteered to fly one over. Nancy sold it as part of the evaluation to see if women could do the job. I was the co-pilot. We were in a flight of 8 planes, with another B- (blacked out) and 6 P- (blacked out). We flew from Seattle to Long Island and on to Goose (blacked out).
Macie couldn’t decipher the blacked out words. Derek knew from the reference to Seattle Roxie was flying a Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. He also deduced she meant the huge new airbase at Goose Bay, Newfoundland.
Those fighters are beautiful little airplanes with their twin booms and dual engines. I’m already checked out in that type and hope to be able to ferry them someday. That would be a rush!
The Last Jump: A Novel of World War II Page 29