by Bill Mesce
“Joe Ryan dropped a hint that maybe everybody isn’t happy with your particular brand of training.”
The captain smiled, shook a cigarette partly from the packet, plucked it free with his lips, then went back in his pocket for a light. Harry went for his own matches, but Ricks produced a Ronson and neatly struck it one–handed.
“Remember the infiltration courses back in basic?” Ricks asked. “You crawled under high–strung barbed wire, past charges going off in sandbagged pits. Machine guns were shooting over your head, but they were locked, so as long as you kept your head down… Well, the krauts don’t lock their guns, and they don’t always throw their grenades away into a pit. I have a half–dozen sharpshooters with Springfields and scopes. When these kids come over my course, I have my snipers put rounds so close to them they damn near crease their helmets. Their COs don’t like that. They think it’s too dangerous.” The captain’s smile took on a malevolent twist. “When they ship out, they’ll see what ‘dangerous’ is.”
“You knew Ryan was asking on my behalf, didn’t you?” Harry asked.
“You don’t need me.”
“I haven’t even been near a courtroom in over six months.”
“And I haven’t been in one for almost a year and a half. I’m not sure your friend Sisto’d be getting much of a bargain with either of us. You know, Harry, I figured the next time I ever saw a courtroom, it was going to be as a defendant. Is that the kind of guy you want in the second chair? Have you even thought about that?”
“No. And I’m not going to. Right now, I’m just thinking about one thing: Dominick Sisto. You’re a combat soldier – ”
“Was.”
“Dominick’s a combat soldier. You’re going to understand what’s in his head better than me. You’re going to understand what happened out there better than me.”
“I don’t understand shit these days.” Peter Ricks drained his whiskey glass, then the last of his pint. He sat for a moment with his head bowed, gritting his teeth, his good arm cradling his middle. When he looked up and saw the concern on Harry’s face he smiled grimly. “Ulcer.”
Harry nodded at the glasses. “Maybe you should lay off.”
“Can’t.” Ricks tapped the glass with his hook. “This keeps my mind off the ulcer.”
“Why didn’t you go home?”
Ricks slouched back on the booth bench and settled into himself with a long breath. “They won’t look at me the same way they used to any more. And I can’t look at them the way I used to any more.”
“Who?”
“Everybody. Anybody.”
Salisbury stands at the edge of the plain, and the pub stood at the edge of Salisbury, just past the Cathedral on the road running west. Standing outside the pub, Harry and Ricks could look out at the endless, undulating expanse of gorse and bracken and heather. The wind carried a dampness that laid an ache deep in one’s bones; that made one feel old.
Ricks pointed to the obelisks of Stonehenge standing along the horizon, silhouetted against the last mauve light that still haloed the rim of the world. “Ever see those?” he asked, hacking his way through the lighting of a fresh cigarette.
“What are they?”
“They’re not really sure. Or even who built them. They think maybe it was a place to pray.” Ricks turned to look behind them, and Harry twisted round to see what it was the captain was looking to.
Salisbury was gone: the gabled medieval houses; the limestone spires of the Cathedral that had floated ghostly white over the town in the dusk light; the ruins atop the hill marking Old Sarum. The darkness had taken it all.
It ends here, Harry thought, looking back out over the plain. This is where civilization stops. No more churches. Just the old gods.
Ricks felt the same touch of mysticism. Perhaps it was something the wind had picked up passing over the plain. The captain’s eyes went back to the open fields. “Look out there, Harry. This is just what it looked like then. That’s a picture of the world a couple thousand years ago. Nothing out there but those stones. The people who built it were already forgotten when the Romans got here.”
Another detonation from some place unseen in the murk rolling over the plain; they felt a tremor pass through the ground under their feet.
Peter Ricks shook his head. “I think all we’ll leave behind is a big, smoking hole. That’s what they call ‘progress.’” He tried to shrug himself deeper into his greatcoat, but his shivering didn’t stop. “I can’t seem to get warm these days.”
“I’ll give you a lift back to your barracks,” Harry offered and they walked across the cobbles to where he’d parked his jeep.
Ricks didn’t climb in immediately. He still faced the plain, watching the last color seep from the sky, watching the circle of stones in the distance disappear into the enveloping night. “Harry? The last time I saw you, you were on your way home. Why didn’t you stay there?”
Harry dropped heavily into the seat behind the wheel of the jeep. “I don’t know. I really don’t. Maybe for the same reason you won’t go home.”
“You ever see it so dark?”
“Pete, this is my first time out of my hole in five months. I don’t want to go over there by myself.”
Ricks slid into the passenger seat, his hands thrust deep in his coat pockets. “Jesus, I’m cold.” A finalizing, decisive sigh. “Let’s go get my toothbrush.”
*
“Colonel, I’d like to help you,” the lieutenant said though he didn’t seem to evidence much sympathy. He sounded rather bored with the request, and hadn’t bothered turning from the scribbling he was doing on the ever–changing schedule grid on the wall–mounted chalkboard behind the counter. “I really would. Honestly. But like I said – ”
“Lieutenant, do you see this travel authorization?”
Still, the lieutenant didn’t turn round. “Fine. You’re authorized. That doesn’t mean I have any place to put you.”
“This authorization says ‘priority’ – ”
The lieutenant finally turned about with a sigh. “Colonel, everything I’m moving out of here is priority.”
The American aerodrome at Lavenham was one of sixty freckled about East Anglia, and on the drive out from London it seemed as if each of them had been buzzing with outgoing and incoming flights of bombers, fighters, and – most notably – transport planes. The frantic pace on the Lavenham tarmac as ground crews hastened to re–fuel returning aircraft and re–fill empty cargo bays with crates of every size and description was reflected in the Operations center, a windowless room within a concrete, cube–shaped building near the main runway atop which sat the field’s control tower. The walls of Ops were covered with maps and chalkboards noting aircraft and personnel readiness, scheduled departures and arrivals, destinations, weather information, etc. A few short years earlier, the most prominent concern of most of the men staffing Ops had been persuading bobby–soxed damsels to accompany them to their high school graduation dance. Now, they juggled flights of dozens of combat and transport aircraft and their crews and cargoes to support the Allied offensive on the Continent.
Ricks leaned far over the counter and snagged the lieutenant’s blouse on his hook. “Listen, Junior, you look pretty busy and I know you have your problems…”
The lieutenant looked down at the hook too exhausted to be impressed. Like his mates, his face was unshaven and drawn, his eyes rimmed with red, his uniform rumpled and stained with the perspiration contributing to an atmosphere already rank with the stale smell of old coffee and cigarettes. Ricks removed his hook, careful not to damage the lieutenant’s blouse. “You’re right, Captain, I do have problems,” the lieutenant said. “I used to have to handle 18 bombers, and that was a handful. Then I wake up one day and I’ve got a dozen transports shoving their way onto my field, and if one of ‘em’s on the ground for more than an hour, somebody thinks I’m not doing my job.”
“And you’re trying to tell me that with all those planes going in and
out, you don’t have room – ”
“Captain, I’m telling you I’m sending planes out of here cargoed up to the cockpit. What am I supposed to do? Ask a pilot to put you on his lap? I don’t even have manifests on most of what goes out of here! The minute one touches down, they gas it up and start shoving cargo in the bay until they can barely get the hatch closed! Hell, I’d be scared shitless to go up in one of those things! We’ve got crates so overloaded, I’m surprised they get off the ground!”
“It doesn’t have to be Liege,” Harry said. “Anything close – ”
“Did you try Wattisham?” The lieutenant was eager to be rid of them. “That’s just a few miles – ”
“Yes, we tried Wattisham,” Ricks cut in.
“And Duxford,” said Harry, “and West Wickham, Steeple Morden, Wethersfield… We’ve been trying all night and all morning. We’ve been to half the fields between London and here, and on the horn to the other half.”
“And they all told you what I’m telling you.”
“Right.”
“Then I guess we all have the same problem.”
“Oh, hell!” came a deep, relaxed voice from behind them. “I think I can shoehorn these two gentlemen in.”
With comic synchronization, Harry and Ricks turned to each other, their faces simultaneously transforming from amazement to smiles, then turned to the bear of a man standing just behind them.
“Jim!” Harry burst out and clasped the paw of a hand extended to him.
“Nice seeing you again, Captain!” Ricks declared.
Jim Doheeny returned the greetings with equal warmth. He was Harry’s age, but big and broad enough that most who were introduced to him wondered how the flyer squeezed his intimidating bulk into the cramped cockpit of a C–47 Dakota transport. A year earlier, Doheeny had piloted an Air Transportation Command flight carrying Harry across the North Atlantic. One of the many civilian pilots who’d volunteered for the ATC, there had been nothing particularly military about Doheeny’s comportment. His hodge–podge of assorted clothing indicated this had not appreciably changed. He wore RAF flying boots, a pair of denims, and under his flight jacket, one of the checked lumberjack shirts he favored open enough at the collar to reveal the bright red flannel of his long underwear. Crowning the ensemble was the pilot’s cap he’d worn in his airline days, its crown crushed, its visor cracked.
As Doheeny shook hands with Ricks, he glanced down and noticed the hook. A poignant look quickly passed across his face. “Sorry about the hand.”
Ricks shrugged.
Gratified to find something positive to bring up, Doheeny nodded at Ricks’ captain’s bars: “Weren’t you a lieutenant last time? And Harry, what’s that on your shoulders? Lieutenant colonel now? And to think I knew you guys when!”
“What the hell’re you doing here?” Harry asked.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” Doheeny replied. “You said Liege, right? That’s where we’re slated for.”
“Just where do you think you’re going to fit these guys?” the Ops lieutenant interrupted.
“I’ll leave a crate of toilet paper behind. The boys at the front are just going to have to make do with old issues of Stars and Stripes. I hope you fellas are packed, because we’re off the ground in about ten minutes.”
The Ops lieutenant had exaggerated none of it. Harry and Ricks had literally to climb over stacked crates to worm into a small space just behind the C–47’s cockpit, crammed alongside the wireless operator and the gangly form of Doheeny’s flight mechanic. Come take–off, the overladen Dakota seemed to use every inch of the length of the runway to get airborne. Doheeny seemed to coax the ship up – as much verbally as with the control yoke – rather than pilot it.
Harry glanced out one of the half–obstructed windows to see the ground slipping by with uncomfortable closeness. Even the uually stolid Ricks was moved to comment wryly that, “The Wright Brothers did better than this.”
“As long as we clear the trees, I’m happy,” Doheeny replied blithely. Once the ship had settled on its course, Doheeny squeezed aft, sending the stringy flight mechanic forward into the pilot’s seat to make room.
“What the hell’s all this traffic?” Ricks asked.
“The supply routes to the front lines are all bottle–necked,” Doheeny explained. “So, the ATC asked for volunteers to fly cargo as close to the front as we can get. Some places up by the combat troops don’t even have regular airfields; the ships are setting down wherever they can find open country. The flying weather’s so bad this time of year that whenever they get a few good days, they run transport flights 24–hours a day to move as much tonnage as they can.”
Harry frowned in mock reprimand. “I thought you were the guy who swore not to take chances.”
“Trust me: if it was dangerous, I wouldn’t do it.”
“Still have the same crew,” Ricks observed, “except for that kid whose the mechanic. Didn’t you used to have somebody else?”
Harry smiled at the memory of the lad; a cherub–faced, personable little bloke.
Doheeny’s wide countenance softened in a mournful way. Harry and Ricks had been overseas long enough to immediately recognize what was becoming an all–too–common signal.
“When?” Ricks asked quietly.
“February. We were still on the North Atlantic route. Remember, Harry? Presque Isle to Goose Bay, then over to Greenland. We were supposed to lay over a day in Greenland, then fly back. There was another ship rushing to get out, beat a weather front coming down from the north. Their flight mechanic was on his back with pneumonia, so my boy volunteered. It was supposed to be a one–day round trip to Iceland and back. I told him he didn’t have to do it. Hell, the two flights back–to–back, then as soon as he landed we’d be off back to Goose Bay – the poor kid would’ve been dead on his feet. But you remember how he was. He didn’t feel good about that other ship going off without a mechanic.”
Doheeny set his face in his hands, massaged the furrows cut by hours of squinting into the sun. It was an image of weariness that indicated more than simple fatigue. Harry remembered that the flight mechanic had been about the same age as Doheeny’s son – a Navy flyer lost at the Battle of the Coral Sea.
“Well, you know how crazy the weather can be up there in the winter,” the flyer continued. “They never beat that front, got caught while they were still flying over the hump. We figure the pilot probably whited–out.”
“Whited out?” Harry queried.
“The snow’s blowing so hard you can’t tell where the ground ends and the air starts. It’s like trying to fly with your head in a pillowcase. And if you don’t have your altimeter’s set right… The mountains run three thousand, seven thousand, some of the highest are eleven thousand feet, then there’s another thousand feet of ice and snow on top of that. You don’t have to make much of a mistake to wind up with a kisser full of ice.
“We picked up a distress signal, but by the time the storm cleared out… Fresh snow on the ground, it’s still dark all day that time of year… No way to find the wreck.”
“I’m sorry, Jim,” Harry said after a moment. “I liked him.”
“Seemed like a good kid,” Ricks said.
“He was,” Doheeny said. “We were on a flight out to the Midwest back in the spring. I saw his folks. Very nice people. Came over from Sweden years ago, settled in Minnesota.” His face clouded. “They were dealing with it as well as anybody does, I guess.”
Harry shook his head. “You were ferrying me around for what, Jim? Two weeks? And I never knew that kid’s name.”
“Stromberg,” Doheeny said. “Gabriel Thure Stromberg. Thure. I never heard a name like that before.”
They sat quietly for a second, listening to the thrum of the Dakota’s twin engines, the creaking and squeaking of the wooden crates as they abraded each other in the snug confines of the cargo bay.
Finally, Doheeny sighed heavily and signalled the flight mechanic to mak
e way. “Foley, Minnestoa,” the pilot said meditatively. “God forbid I have to go through something like that again, next time I’m just writing a letter.”
*
Evening comes early in Northern Europe during the cold months. Though it was only four in the afternoon, the sun was almost gone by the time Jim Doheeny set his ship down at the aerodrome outside Liege. A jeep carrying a FOLLOW ME sign led the C–47 to a lollipop–shaped hardstand off the taxiway. Before the propellers had stopped windmilling, a fuel truck and cargo lorries had descended on the ship. The refueling crew was already pumping aviation petrol into the ship’s wing tanks by the time Harry, Ricks, and the flight crew had climbed past the cargo crates and the squad of handlers unloading the ship to set foot on the muddy field.
There I was, waiting for them.
It was a warm reunion; Doheeny and his crew, Peter Ricks, Harry and me. But the warmest part was when Harry and I clasped our four hands together; an ardent clutch of flesh on that windswept field.
“Good to see you again, Eddie!” Harry had to shout to be heard over the rising and falling din of incoming and outgoing aircraft.
“Hullo, Harry!”
“Just kiss the ugly son of a bitch and let’s get some place warm!” Ricks cracked. “How’re you, Mr. Owen?”
I noted the hook hanging at his side, but there was no awkward moment; no pained glance. “Ah, I see you’ve joined the fraternity.” I rapped my knuckles on my own artificial appendage.
“Well, let’s say I was drafted.”
“I must show you the secret handshake.”
“The what?”
With a movement so smooth one would have thought it practiced, gleaned from hours in the cine watching the antics of the Marx Brothers, I brought up Peter Ricks’ hook–tipped arm, set my wooden thigh on the hook, then forced his arm in a handshake–like pump.