by Bill Mesce
“I saw their flight plan. If it was that easy, I don’t understand why they didn’t just zip in and zip out.”
Van Damm smiled tolerantly. “Because, my dear Voss, we are in a war, and the enemy looks unfavorably upon Allied aircraft ‘zipping’ around at will.” He spread the map out on the light table and started to sketch in the two course routes that had been planned to take Markham’s Thunderbolts to the target in Belgium and back home.
“Uh, Major?” Bennie had returned with a cup of black coffee. “You told me to warn you about drawing on the maps.”
Van Damm took the coffee and nodded without heeding.
“You’ve got a stack of them all marked up — ”
Van Damm irritably shooed him away. Bennie propped himself on a corner of a nearby desk and turned to the sympathetically nodding WAC sitting there. “I knew he’d get mad. He told me to stop him, but I knew he’d get mad.”
Van Damm took a sip of his coffee, grimaced, then nodded at the finished pencil lines on the map. “KISS,” he pronounced.
“Excuse me?” Harry asked.
“KISS. The primary rule of military strategy that almost everyone with brass on his collar ignores: Keep It Simple, Stupid. This is how it looks when you don’t ignore it. They head southeasterly out of Donophan, staying in the grass — below radar — and hit France just below Boulogne. Now, providing they make the coast without being spotted by the CAP’s — ”
“Caps?”
“Combat Air Patrols. The krauts run regular air patrols up and down the coastal corridor, plus they got E-boats crawling around all the time. OK, so providing our guys make the coast without one of these patrols spotting ’em, they’re certainly gonna be seen by the joes manning the coast defenses. In fact, Markham counts on it. The coast makes the call to the Luftwaffe sector controller that there’s five 47’s heading southeast. The Jerries alert their people all along this line.”
Harry brightened. “But Germans never find Markham and his men anywhere on that line.”
“Attaboy, Voss, you’re getting the hang of this. Twenty miles in, our guys hit their first IP. This is all open country here. Some farms, lotta swampland. The Jerries have let the Lys River flood as a ‘disincentive’ to paratroop and glider landings. The upshot is nobody’s gonna be there to see ’em make their pivot. So, when our 47’s get to Helsvagen, they show up unannounced. Surprise, fellas! Boom! Same thing on this dogleg home. If the krauts at Helsvagen get the word out, they report that the 47’s are withdrawing to the northwest — ”
“And as soon as Markham and company are out of sight of Helsvagen, they change course and hopefully get home without any problems.”
“Bingo.”
“Sounds like a good plan to me.”
“It had a nice, simple elegance, I think; very much a Markham trademark.” Van Damm turned to the chalkboard and found a thimble-sized stub of chalk on the sill. He drew an erratic circle up in the right-hand corner, labeling it “H.”
“Helsvagen?” Harry offered.
“You get any better at this and the union says I gotta pay you.” Van Damm next drew a rectangle southwest of “H,” then two circles along the southwest side of the rectangle. Harry recognized the fuel depot.
“Each of these tanks,” Van Damm tapped the circles, “carries about twenty thousand gallons of vehicular gasoline. Each of the planes is carrying twelve 3.24-inch rockets. One of those’ll open a Sherman tank like a can of sardines. Markham’s boys are fighter jockeys, not bombardiers. This way, they don’t have to finagle with the complexities of a bomb run and drop trajectories and all that malarkey. Rockets being a directional weapon, all our fellows gotta do is come in just like on a strafing run. They come up on the tanks just by holding their northeast approach, let go, and then its good night, Irene. Angel Blue makes the first approach while Markham takes Angel Red upstairs to fly top cover. Blue pumps their rockets into the tanks, then they fly cover while Red hits whatever’s left. If it took ’em three minutes to do the job, I’d be surprised. Since the krauts were considerate enough to build this place a coupla hundred yards away from the town, there’s no worries about incidental damage to the people and property of the good town of Helsvagen. Those two hundred Krauts shoulda been sitting ducks.”
“So, what went wrong?” Harry asked. “Something did.” He pointed to a spot on the English coast. “This is where O’Connell went down.”
Van Damm moved Harry’s fingertip a few millimeters. “More like there.”
“Which is nowhere near where they should’ve been coming back.”
Van Damm nodded, his brooding eyes fixed to the spot on the map. “Well, according to their debriefing — Dell’ll go over all that with you — when the tanks went up, O’Connell got his nose a little too close to the fire. Took a piece of something in the engine. O’Connell panicked — which, I’m told, is no big surprise coming from him — and scrammed outta there. I guess he was worried about his engine holding up, so he beelined his way home. Now, even if his buddies thought he had what you might call an intestinal-fortitude problem, you still don’t leave one of your own open like that. The others lit out after him to cover him.”
“So they aborted their part of — ”
Van Damm waved carelessly. “Those tanks were the first things hit and once they went up, that place was gone! One big barbecue. Even if they’d stayed, there wasn’t anything left for them to shoot at. It was that easy. That’s why I put it on the list for Halverson.”
“And what happened to the other two pilots? Jacobs and — ”
“McLagen?” Van Damm frowned. “That’s what I was worried about from the get-go. That’s why I was so steamed at Halverson for letting — ” Belatedly, he realized Harry had no clue what he was talking about. “They got jumped,” he explained, pointing to another spot on the map approximately halfway between Helsvagen and the French coast. “Gaggle of kraut fighters bounced Angel Red around here, somewhere between Waregem and the Schelde. We’re not sure, exactly. They were coming out the way they’d gone in — low — which didn’t give ’em any maneuvering room. The Jerries had ’em nailed to the floor. With just five of ’em — and one of ’em a cripple — well, Markham did well to come home with as many as he did. SNAFU, Voss: Situation Normal: All Fucked Up. Pardon my French.”
Van Damm stood back from the light table, studying the points and lines on the map. He took a few meditative puffs on his cigar, then shook his head. “Whatever else happened yesterday, you got two cases of negligence on top of it: Markham and Halverson. I hope you string ’em both up by their balls. Pardon my French, again.”
The Spy Brigade tutorial over, Harry gathered up the photographs and followed Van Damm back to his acrid sanctum. “Am I cleared for this stuff?” Harry thumbed through the target files on his chair.
“You get higher priority poop on bubba gum cards. Just sign a chit for ’em at the desk outside, don’t mess ’em up, and remember to bring ’em back.”
“This looks pretty technical.”
“The important stuff is clear enough. You have a problem with anything, gimme a blast.”
Van Damm snuffed out the remains of his cigar. He reached for a desk drawer and a fresh Tampa Nugget. At that, Harry crammed the files into his briefcase posthaste.
“I want to thank you, Major.”
“For what?” Van Damm asked blithely.
“You underrate yourself.” Harry buckled his case and patted it like a stuffed treasure chest. “It’s been a very informative visit.”
Van Damm stood and shook Harry’s hand. “If you had fun, tell your friends, bring ’em by. Were open all day, every day, all year round.”
*
Back at the Annex, Captain James Dell was sitting in Harry’s outside office, sipping on a bottle of Coca-Cola. At Harry’s entrance, the young captain set down his soda and his briefcase, and got to his feet. His arm came up in a nicely deferential salute.
Nagel, however, did not stand or salute. Instea
d, he whined: “You didn’t say you were going to be so long. You should have told me — ”
“Thank you for your concern, Corporal,” Harry said and turned to Dell. “Sorry I kept you waiting, Captain. At ease. Hope you weren’t here too long?”
“No bother, sir.” He was young, polite, a moon-face sitting awkwardly atop a thin neck, his complexion spotted along his collar line.
Harry had Dell drag his chair into the inner office, then took a moment to steel himself before turning back to Nagel. “I take it Maintenance hasn’t seen fit to come up here and fix that thing.”
“They told me they were coming right up,” Nagel said, gesturing at his dismembered intercom. “They told me that when you left.”
“Call them again.”
“That just gets them mad.”
“Call them again.”
“Yessir.”
“And hold all my calls.”
Dell was standing by his chair in Harry’s office, briefcase under one arm, his Coca-Cola bottle at Present Arms. Harry squeezed by him to get behind his desk.
“Relax, Captain. Sit. Just give me a second to get settled. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t expecting somebody from Major Van Damm’s section to be so...formal.”
Dell had a little shock of hair on his forehead. He set his briefcase on the floor and brushed the hair away from his eyes as he sat. “I guess the major is a bit of a character.”
Harry peeled off his jacket. “A bit.”
“But he knows his stuff.”
Harry grunted in agreement as he wrestled with his window.
“You want me to try that, sir?” the captain volunteered.
“Forget it. I think they built it that way.” Harry gave up on the window. His attention focused on a phone message taped to his chair stating that Joe Ryan had rung him. “One more second, Captain. Nagel! Is this a new message?”
“Sir?”
“This message about Colonel Ryan. This isn’t the same one from this morning, is it? I talked to him this morning, remember?”
“Oh, no, sir, that’s a new one. He called again right after you left — ”
“I told you about putting the times on these things, didn’t I?”
“Should I get him on the — ”
“No!” Harry smiled apologetically at Dell, and the captain offered a politely sympathetic one in return as he took another sip of his Coca-Cola. “Captain, you know what this is about, don’t you?”
Dell squirmed in his seat. “I guess.”
“Don’t be self-conscious, Captain. If you’d said no, you would’ve been the only guy in London who didn’t know.” Harry took his place at his desk and drew out his package of Lucky Strikes, proffering them to Dell. Dell nodded a no-thanks. Harry lit one for himself, drew a clean pad of foolscap in front of him, pulled on his glasses, and picked up a pencil. “There was one thing in particular that Major Van Damm thought you could help me with.”
“Do my best, sir.”
“Van Damm says that you know the men out at the 351st better than he does, that you deal with them personally.”
“Yes, sir, I’m their G-2 liaison. I bring mission information out to them, maybe conduct part of the briefing, handle the debriefing...I see them pretty regularly. Or I did till the krauts hit ’em. You know about that, don’t you, sir?”
Harry nodded. “How long have you been working with the 351st?”
“Since I came over. That’d be June, mid-June. Not really that long after they were activated.” A Coca-Cola burp snuck out of the captain’s lips. “Sorry, sir.”
Harry let it pass with a smile. “Know the men well?”
“Sort of. Some. Not many, not real personal. I’d see them before they went up, and talk to them when they got back. A debriefing...well, a fella’s not always at his best sometimes, a time like that. I guess that doesn’t really answer your question.” He stared down into the neck of his Coca-Cola bottle.
“How about Major Markham? Did you know him well?”
Dell shrugged. Harry could read the signs; there was something on the young man’s mind. Dell saw the way Harry was looking at him, waiting, and made the plunge. “I should tell you,” he began. “When I went out there...”
“Yes?”
“This last time,” Dell said, sounding puzzled. “I went out there yesterday to debrief them.” He reached into his briefcase and set two folders on Harry’s desk. “Those are the debriefing reports.”
“And you turned the gun films over to Colonel Ryan.”
“What there was. Lieutenant O’Connell’s film was ruined by the seawater. I gave Colonel Ryan Captain Anderson’s.”
“What about Major Markham’s?”
“I don’t know. I mean, that’s the thing. It wasn’t there.”
“Define ‘wasn’t there.’”
“The film magazines were waiting for my pickup. I didn’t check them until I got back to London. There was no need to. Like I said, we cracked O’Connell’s and — ”
“Never mind O’Connell’s.”
“The magazine for Markham’s was empty.”
“How often does something like that happen?”
“It’s not supposed to happen at all.”
“Did Markham have an explanation?”
“Like I said, I didn’t know until I got back to London. By then, the MP’s were already holding Markham and I couldn’t get through to him. So, we only had Anderson’s film to go on instead of a BDA run and — ”
“BDA run?”
“Bomb Damage Assessment. Post-strike aerial-photo reconnaisance,” Dell explained.
“OK. Is that a standard kind of thing?”
“Depends on how bad you want to know what kind of damage you did.”
“And Markham hadn’t scheduled one of these BDA things to follow yesterday’s mission to Helsvagen?”
“I don’t know who made the decision, but the order came down from General Halverson that they didn’t want a BDA run. The general said the target was such a low priority, and since we did have Anderson’s film, it didn’t make much sense to risk a recon plane on it.”
“I see. Who normally removes the film magazines from the planes?”
“The ground crews.”
“And where does the film go from there?”
“I usually pick the magazines up at the admin building. Maybe the CO’s got them, maybe the adjutant is holding them — ”
“This time.”
“The films were waiting for me in the admin building, like always.”
“Who had access to them?”
“I don’t know. Anybody, I think. It’s been a little loose out there since...well, you know about the Germans — ”
“Yes.” Harry stared down at his desk, tapping his pencil point on the pad.
“I guess that doesn’t make Major Markham look too good,” Dell said. It saddened him to say it.
Harry cleared his throat and looked up at Dell. “Major Van Damm tells me Markham reported his flight was jumped on the trip back.”
“Yes, sir. The major reported they were bounced by a gaggle of enemy fighters — Do you have a map, sir?” He used the small map Harry fished out of the attack-profile folder. “Somewhere about here,” and he pointed to the same general area Van Damm had designated. “Major Markham really wasn’t too sure, though. Nobody was sighting landmarks when it happened. The krauts sixed ’em, coming down out of the sun. The major says he didn’t even know they were on ’em until Jacobs’s plane flamed. Markham’s guys mixed it up with ’em, tried to fight ’em off. Him, O’Connell, and Anderson made it out. McLagen didn’t.” Dell stared pensively off. The name seemed to bring up a memory.
“Markham say anything about...what happened to O’Connell?”
“No. ‘Course, we didn’t know about what happened when we had the debriefing. I mean, the major didn’t know anybody else knew. Just said O’Connell splashed near the coast. Said he tried to radio Air/Sea Rescue but couldn’t raise ’em. Interfer
ence. I didn’t think much of it then, but looking back on it, I guess that sounds pretty lame, huh?”
“Were you friends with these men? The five that went out yesterday?”
“Not really.” Dell frowned, trying to puzzle out a proper description. “If they were going to fly, if they were even planning to fly, I sat with them. Before and after. You don’t become friends or anything, but you start getting...you know. Like doing business with the same people.”
“What can you tell me about them? What about McLagen?”
Dell nodded hopelessly. “I don’t know, Major. He was one of thirty-odd fellas. What I remember is he was a nice guy. Jacobs? Another familiar face sitting around the debriefing table. Hi, how’d it go? Was it rough? That’s all.”
“You must’ve known Major Markham better than that.”
Dell smiled, clearly relieved to have something firm to offer. “A really good joe. A helluva fella, if you don’t mind my saying.”
Harry nodded at him to go on.
“Everybody’s nuts about the major. His men, Colonel Adams, Wing staff Terrific pilot, too. Loves to fly. I mean, this fella loves to fly! Up in the air all the time, joyriding between missions, he likes it that much. I think the major has more flight time logged than anybody in the group, including Colonel Adams. That was sad about him, about the colonel. He was a right guy, too. You heard what happened to him? He was a little more GI than the major, but he was an OK guy.”
“Major Van Damm was of the opinion that Colonel Adams thought quite highly of Major Markham.”
“That’s no surprise. The colonel and the major were pretty close. You could see it.”
“Pals?”
Dell nodded. “Anyhow, when I’d be doing the debriefing interviews, I always had to do Markham last. That’s the kind of guy he is; the minute he’s down and out of his plane, he’s all over the place, checking on each man, running over to the hospital with the wounded, checking in with Rescue if somebody splashed...I don’t want to get too corny or anything, Major, but he really loves those guys. It’s not like Colonel Adams didn’t care, but Major Markham shows it more. And when somebody doesn’t come home...Well, you can see it hurts. Every time.”