Eagles at War

by Boyne, Walter J.

  "Comrade Scriabin, could you arrange to have some windows opened? I find myself getting very sleepy after that excellent lunch."

  Scriabin's nose described a horizontal arc as he shook his head no.

  "I'm sorry, General Caldwell, I cannot, for security reasons."

  They smiled at each other as Caldwell cursed him under his breath, wondering what security risk could be locked away in the Kremlin.

  His point made, Scriabin continued. "So, my American friends, we are agreed upon the bombers. Douglas A-20s, 'Bostons' you call them, and North American B-25s, 'Mitchells.' Now back to the pursuits, P-47s and P-38s."

  Caldwell leaned forward, trying to will circulation to his legs and buttocks, speaking with increased forcefulness. "I've explained to you that while our desire to be generous is unlimited, our resources are not. We will send Curtiss Warhawks and McNaughton Sidewinders as fast as we can produce them. We don't have enough P-47s or P-38s for our own training units yet."

  "When can we get P-47s and P-38s?" It was the fourth time that Scriabin had asked.

  "As soon as possible—I don't know when. But we will have two hundred Sidewinders ready for acceptance by the end of this month."

  Scriabin leaned back. He liked this man, and he hoped that he could trust him. The Germans were flying Messerschmitts, fine, deadly airplanes; he didn't know if the McNaughton was a worthy opponent. Some of his advisors said that it was not. Yet two hundred airplanes of any sort were better than none.

  His voice was pleasant as he asked, "General Caldwell, are these the same airplanes you offered Finland last April?"

  Caldwell steadied himself, emptying a little of the foul Russian makhorka into a pipe, to give himself time to prepare an answer.

  "Why yes, Comrade Scriabin. You'll recall that in those days—they seem so distant now, don't they?—we were concerned about the millions of rubles of war supplies that Russia was sending Germany; in fact, the general consensus was that the Soviet Union was going to enter the war on the German side. It was only natural that we would wish to help a possible ally. Now all that has changed, of course."

  Scriabin sputtered and Caldwell continued. "We have our intelligence sources, too. I can assure you that the McNaughton fighter will be at least as good as your LaGG-3. Please forgive my pronunciation, but I believe your pilots say it takes its initials from 'lakirovanny garantirovanny grob'—the 'varnished wooden coffin'?"

  It had been the right tack. Scriabin's fair skin gleamed red as he shouted to change the subject. "General Caldwell, what our pilots say or don't say is none of your damn business. Russia is in danger. Kiev has fallen. By tonight the Germans will have cut off the Crimea. I don't believe we can hold Leningrad. I ask you how you would like it if the Germans had taken New York, Chicago, and New Orleans, and were two hundred miles from Washington?"

  "We wouldn't like it. But it wouldn't change the production situation. We'll give you McNaughtons because they are excellent aircraft and they are available. More no one can do."

  When the meeting had ended, most of the others left swiftly. Scriabin grinned at Caldwell like an accomplice, tacit recognition that they had taken each other's measure. "Cut the makhorka a little finer for your pipe. It's an acquired taste, but if you smoke it for a while it makes other tobacco insipid."

  *

  Berlin/November 21, 1941

  Helmut Josten was lying quietly by Lyra in bed, the first frantic desires sated; his arm was about her as she nestled into his side, her left leg slung over his right, her toes resting on his, tapping them lightly. But something was wrong—he was angry. Did he know something?

  They were on the fourth floor of a block of flats, in the "apartment" that the von Hatzfeldt family had offered Lyra on her arrival. It was tiny, no more than a bedroom, bath, and little kitchen, but it was free. The proprietors were grateful to have someone there, keeping their eyes on things, while they sat out the war in their apartment in Rome.

  "What's the matter?"

  Without a word, he took her hand and pulled her out of bed and along the long hallway. At the end was a window set high in the wall; beneath it was a stout table.

  "Climb up here and tell me what you see."

  She did as he asked.

  "I see the street in front of the apartment." She realized immediately what the trouble must be. "Do you spend your time spying on me when I'm gone?"

  "I didn't think I was spying. I thought I was an eager lover, watching for your return so that I could open the champagne and have a glass waiting. And what do I see? A huge big touring sedan, a Maybach, no less, pulls up, and who pops out? You."

  "And what of it?"

  "Well, to begin, you hadn't mentioned it. I know that if I'd been given a ride in a Maybach, I'd tell the world about it. They only make a few hundred cars a year, and each one costs perhaps fifty thousand marks. And only the most elite people have them."

  She led the way back down the hall. Even though he was hurt and angry, he could not keep from admiring the delicate ease with which she walked, the symmetry of her hips and buttocks.

  "Further, my little anti-Nazi provocateuse, I don't think anyone owns a Maybach unless he is a top Party member."

  "I notice you didn't let your anger interfere with your lust. I guess you needed a quick tumble before you lectured me."

  He ignored the point, a valid one. "Let me see. It couldn't be Hitler; he is above sex, and anyway, he's a Mercedes man. It couldn't be Goering; Emma wouldn't let him. It couldn't be Himmler; it's common knowledge that his secretary keeps him fully occupied in bed. So who does that leave? Our own dwarf, Joseph Goebbels."

  She poured the Henkell champagne, a gift from Goebbels, angrily splashing it about, then lay down on the bed, crossing her legs firmly.

  He persisted. "So, please, fault my logic. Prove to me I'm wrong about this mysterious man who owns a Maybach."

  "What makes you think it is a man?"

  Embarrassment flooded him; he had made a fool out of himself. Josten remembered immediately that Magda Goebbels had befriended Lyra. He stuttered, "Well, not many women ..."

  "What an evil little mind you have, Helmut. That's the real Nazi in you, believing the worst, never even giving me a chance to explain, virtually accusing me of sleeping with that disgusting dwarf. Magda is always good to me—she gave me this champagne we're drinking."

  "I'm sorry, Lyra; I was stupidly jealous. Forgive me."

  "Of course. It's flattering that a decorated fighter pilot can make such a fool of himself over me."

  He moved up, kissing her as he went, till he sought her mouth in a deep kiss. She kissed him passionately.

  "I'm sorry, Lyra, to be such a fool. It's just that we see each other so little. It's the strain of Udet's funeral, too."

  Josten had been brought back to serve as a honor guard at the funeral of Ernst Udet. Officially, Udet had been killed "testing a new air weapon." The truth was that he'd committed suicide, unable to bear the pressures of being Inspector General of the Luftwaffe.

  Opening another bottle of champagne, Josten said, "I've brought some Veuve Clicquot; it's in the refrigerator."

  "Plenty of room; God knows there's little enough food there." "I've brought things to eat, too; pate, a really good salami, some

  bread, and some sardines. We'll have a feast."

  "Later, my love. Come sing a song of love to me."

  "I can't sing to you, but just lie still and let the Gieseking of the

  mattress play a Klavierkonzerte, a little sweet night music, upon you.

  "Play as you've never played before, Maestro ..."

  Afterward, they lay closely together, feeling each other's heartbeats begin to subside from the racing crescendo of passion.

  "Lovemaking is so wonderfully sticky, isn't it?" she asked.

  "That was tremendous. Do you know, at times I felt that I was somehow out of my body, just watching us?"

  "A voyeur, too, eh? That's having your cake and eating it, isn't it?"


  "No cake, but salami, champagne, and a full ten hours ahead of us before we part. What could be better than that?"

  "Eleven hours."

  "Eleven years. Why won't you marry me?"

  "God, Helmut, don't ruin this. We can't get married because I'm Jewish and you're a Nazi. That's pretty clear. And pour me some champagne."

  Having just plunged through one patch of thin ice, he skirted this one.

  "Sorry. Poor timing. But I will prevail. We will get married. That's the last I'll say about it."

  "Good. There's nothing I want more, and there's nothing more improbable. Let's just enjoy what we have."

  "I'll drink to that; not many people have so much."

  *

  Wheeler Field, Hawaii/December 5, 1941

  Frank and Patty Bandfield lay on the golden sands of Waimea Beach, locked in that self-congratulatory postcoital embrace long-married couples feel when a sudden flame of excitement has swept over them and they have more than measured up to the challenge. It was long past sunset on the deserted beach, and they'd taken an illicit delight in their passion. The trip to Hawaii was in part a reward, but Bandfield's mission was to solve some engine-cooling problems on the new Curtiss P-40s that had just arrived in the islands.

  The couple lazed together, watching a yellow-green phosphorescence burbling at the water's edge, more relaxed than they'd been in years. They'd arrived in Oahu in early November, surprised to find the island beautiful even in the rainy season. The trip was proving to be wonderful for Charlotte, who had become somewhat shy as George began to take attention away from her. It was good for George, too. He'd been a late walker—almost fourteen months before he was really on his own—and now he was making up for lost time, padding up and down the beach, plopping in the water.

  Sometimes Patty and Bandy would steal away to explore the island in a rusty 1933 De Soto sedan the Maintenance Squadron commander had loaned them, exploring the rough back roads, farm wagon-worn ruts between the fields of pineapple or sugar cane. Other times they would take long walks around Kahana Bay. People told them that they were missing the real beauty of spring and summer, but they found more than enough to admire, from the blatantly sexual antherium to nameless tiny white flowers. And, best of all, the kids slept soundly at the other end of their spartan, lanai-style open guest quarters. At sunup, the outrageously feathered birds would begin an aria competition, birdy opera stars practicing voice exercises. The chorus would start off low, building in volume until it sounded like an explosion in an aviary. It was a lovely way to awaken, and for the first time in years they had time for leisurely, familiarly conjugal lovemaking, touching and playing affectionately, telling each other with gestures how good it was to be together, how foolish all the arguments were, building to a mellow satisfaction that still left a little edge of appetite. There were quiet talks and little courtesies afterward—getting the coffee, bringing a magazine—gestures more important than the joining. Their life took on a new domesticity; in Hawaii, twenty-four hundred miles from the States, they achieved a closeness and a sense of family that had eluded them in California or in Ohio. Patty knew that most of the problem had been her own flying career—it was time that she put it behind her.

  The happy tone for the entire trip had been set at their initial reception at Wheeler Field. Bandfield had been briefed—warned—that Willie Westerfield was the commander of the 19th Air Base Group, overseeing the two maintenance squadrons with which Bandy would be working. Their last meeting had been many years ago, when Westerfield had scuttled Bandfield's flying career—or so they had thought. As tall and thin as Ichabod Crane, Westerfield had been the senior officer of the board investigating the mid-air collision between Bandfield and his fellow cadet Charles Lindbergh. Bandfield still stirred with resentment when he remembered Westerfield, in a cleft-palate Kentucky twang marshalling the "evidence," his thin-slit alligator eyes staring unblinking at the board as he recommended that Bandfield be washed out. Lindbergh got off scot-free.

  What the review board didn't know, and Bandfield was too young and scared to tell them, was that Westerfield's recommendation was influenced by another matter—Bandfield's brief, chaste romance with a lovely Mexican girl named Maria. Captain Westerfield was very interested in Maria himself.

  Time and Patty had long since healed Bandfield's wounds, and he had probably gone further in flying out of the Air Service than he would have in it, so he was prepared to be friendly. Still, he was a little apprehensive as he stood opposite the main barracks, Building 102, to face the row of family quarters. Like their guesthouse, the houses were of undistinguished island architecture, but the grounds were studded with impressive barrel-bottomed coconut palms and breathtaking foliage, all held together with the drafting table neatness of a white-washed peacetime permanent station. A young adjutant, Lieutenant Dunning, puppy-eager to please, escorted them through Westerfield's quarters toward the sound of ukulele music and laughter. At Army flier gatherings, the celebration—that is, the pouring of drinks—started the moment the first person showed up.

  The Bandfields followed Dunning over mat-scattered polished teakwood floors toward the garden, where a forest of leis served as a backdrop for Westerfield, Adam's apple bobbing, his tanned face betraying both years of drinking and many hours of flying. Bandfield felt a little squeeze of apprehension when he realized that the woman next to him was a slightly plumper but still beautiful Maria.

  Westerfield stepped forward, leis in hand, twanging, "Aloha! Welcome to Wheeler Field!"

  Bandfield didn't know how to salute a major carrying flowers, so he stuck out his hand instead. Westerfield enfolded it, pulling him to him, and boomed out again, "You may remember my wife—Maria, Major Bandfield."

  Maria slid toward him, throwing first her leis and then her arms around his neck, kissing him as she said, "Oh, Bandy, you've come for me at last!"

  Bandfield shot an agonized glance at Patty as Westerfield burst into wild laughter.

  "Got you that time, Major! You thought I'd forget, didn't you?"

  The rest of the party was a little less stressful. Maria ruefully apologized to Patty for the trick.

  "He made me do it. That's the sort of thing that keeps him from being promoted, that and his drinking, but I love him anyway." With a few words the two women established that they were married to equally goofy mates, always a basis for instant inter-wife friendship.

  Pilot reunions are a little different than most; instead of recounting old friends' successes and failures, they tend to run to who has crashed and how, with the best stories being foolish survived accidents. Underneath lay the tacit understanding that those who crashed were somehow at fault to a degree the speakers could never be. Instead of "Did you hear old So-and-so got divorced," it was "Old So-and-so propped his old Jenny and it got away from him! He grabbed hold of the elevator, and the damned thing dragged him from Clover Field to Long Beach," or "Remember 'Downwind' Faulkner? Always drunk? Bailed out of a B-10 over Cleveland, chute didn't open, went right through the roof of a saloon, landed on the bar! Talk about poetic justice."

  When they got down to business, Bandfield found that Westerfield had invited all the key people he'd be working with. He had been worried that he might be viewed as a feather-merchant expert from out of town, but the pilots were as concerned as he was about the overheating problems of their new P-40s and welcomed Bandfield's experience. The most interesting among them was Lieutenant James Curtiss Lee, affable, ingratiating, yet somehow disturbing to Bandfield.

  Lee was just back from China, where Chennault's newly formed Flying Tigers were experiencing exactly the same P-40 engine-cooling problem that Bandfield was in Hawaii to solve. Chennault, now a brigadier general in the Chinese Air Force, had directed Lee to go wherever he had to—Hawaii, Wright Field, the Curtiss plant in Buffalo—but to solve the problem. Lee was happy to have a chance to do it on Oahu and glad to work with Bandfield. Bandfield knew he needed Lee's help, but by the end of the party h
e had figured out his unease with the man. Like of lot of up-and-coming young officers, Lee's charm masked an implicit message: be nice to me now, because you're going to be working for me later.

  *

  Wheeler Field Flight Line/December 7, 1941

  Bandfield left a pot of coffee for Patty when he went to meet Jim Lee at six o'clock—the two men were both early risers. The line chief, Master Sergeant Norman Higbee, was on deck as always; he resolutely refused to let anyone work on "his" airplanes without being present. Higbee was old Army, broad-shouldered and big-bellied, a hillbilly with sun-bleached hair that stood white against skin that burned but never tanned. He was suspicious of everyone, officers, the native Hawaiians, and especially the new troops filling up the tents between the ramp and the runway. Equally devoted to work and to booze, he divided his days and nights between them. He didn't get along with many people; he did get along with Bandfield and, to a lesser extent, with Lee.

  In the last two weeks, the three men had pretty well isolated the engine-cooling problem. The task of forcing enough air through the radiator was enormously difficult. The designers always wished to minimize the size and frontal areas of the radiators to reduce drag and were always optimistic about the resulting cooling effectiveness. Then, as other factors forced changes—higher power settings, cowling modifications, operation in different climates—the engines would overheat just as they always had in the past.

  Higbee had watched doubtfully when Bandfield removed the cowling and drilled holes in it. He was even more dubious when tufted strings were inserted through the holes. No one had authorized the modification, and he hated to see a flatland foreigner, even a good Joe like Bandfield, punching holes in one of his airplanes. But Bandy conned him along, and when they ran the airplane up on the ground, letting it roar at full power while the temperature indicator climbed, all three stood close together observing how the tufted flows danced, peering through the shimmering lethal disc of the propeller. Once, for comparison, they had run the engine with only a few of the strings in the holes, and the remaining tufts lay perfectly flat, with the temperature leveled off well within the normal operating range. It told them that there was some sort of pressure disturbance around the lip of the intake, one that might be cured by drilling more holes. They would test the theory this morning.