In the Shadow of Alabama

by Judy Reene Singer

  “Wonder if I have a home left,” Jink added ruefully. “I haven’t had too many posts from my family. They were getting bombed pretty badly when I left.” He sat quietly for a few minutes. “Last I read, me mum was worried. Thinks I got too thin.” He patted his stomach. “She should see me now, after eating all this Yank food.”

  “Too bad you can’t send her a picture,” Willie said, and Jink shot him a thoughtful look.

  “I would,” he said. “If I had a camera.”

  “I have a camera,” said Fleischer. “Got it in payment for fixing a radio. It’s pretty old, but I tinkered with it and got it working. We could set you up in one of the planes.”

  “Brass hats will put me on jankers if I get caught doing something wrong again,” Jink replied glumly. He already had been disciplined a few times for infractions.

  “As I was saying”—Fleischer seemed not to hear him—“right after it comes out of the wash rack. We could use someone to rev the engines, so I could do some diagnostics. I’ll write up a request for a pilot. Come by tomorrow around seventeen-hundred.” He leaned over and clicked Jink’s bottle. “And don’t forget to smile.”

  * * *

  Night training always started out from Montgomery. The cadets would fly from Maxwell Field to Jacksonville in broad daylight, then back to Montgomery under the blanket of night. It was a simple trip, even flying blind; the Americans had breezed through it, followed by the Canadians and the Greeks. And Fleischer had been right; the Brits were up on the schedule, twenty-four of them scheduled to fly the next night. A simple trip.

  * * *

  Hogarth bounced into the wash rack early the next afternoon, cheerful as a Christmas display.

  “Looks like you get to use that technical talent y’all keep bragging about.” He waved a set of orders over Fleischer’s head. “The rest of us will be tucked nice and cozy in our bunks while y’all get all the fun of pulling night duty in the swamp.” He giggled at the thought, his upper lip pulling back to reveal large white teeth, which, with his pug nose, made him look like one of the guard dogs.

  Fleischer looked over the orders. He, and one assistant of his choosing, were being assigned to support the RAF radio specialists in setting up and monitoring the field radios during the Brits’ return flight, which was scheduled for twenty-one hundred hours.

  “Don’t know where you’re gonna pull an assistant from.” Hogarth made an exaggerated effort to scrutinize the men working in the hangar. “You know how the nigras get spooked at night.”

  “I’ll take any one of my men over a piece of Southern shit, anytime,” Fleischer snapped.

  Hogarth drew himself up to his full five-foot-five height and pushed his face into Fleischer’s. “I’ve got a fist with your name on it,” he snarled. “It’s just aching to fix your big Jew nose.”

  “I think I hear your wet nurse calling,” Fleischer growled back. “Her titty is getting cold.” Hogarth pulled his fist up, so did Fleischer, and for one raging moment, Willie thought they were going to slug each other. He quickly looked away. It was safer.

  The men were faced off like two bull terriers. “You ain’t worth the three seconds it would take to lay you flat,” Hogarth rasped.

  “You ain’t worth the piece of toilet paper they would need to wipe you up,” Fleischer replied.

  Their bodies arched in fury, faces red, veins standing out like maps in bas-relief.

  “You ain’t worth a court-martial,” Hogarth finally declared, and after a final glare at the entire platoon, left.

  The tension in the wash rack dropped about thirty notches. Fleischer straightened his shirt and readjusted his pants. He ran his hand through his curly black hair as he watched Hogarth pull away in his jeep. Then he turned to his men, who had stopped working to stare at him like a group of cats.

  “Back to work,” he ordered. “Back to work. There’s a war on, don’t you know?”

  Willie practically threw himself against the side of the Vultee they were cleaning, hoping he’d blend into the gray paint, but it was too late.

  “Jackson,” Fleischer called Willie over. “Don’t want you to think I’m getting romantic, but we got a date for tonight.”

  Chapter 25

  Orders were to set up a small radio tower in a deserted cow pasture about two miles from Maxwell Field. The pasture, really a desolate swamp of dried sedge and saturated peat, was strategically located. Since the radios on the planes were not powerful enough to reach the base as they flew up from Jacksonville, the tower’s job was to relay radio transmissions from the planes to the main control tower in Montgomery, and to relay orders back.

  Four men were assigned: Fleischer, Jackson, an American corporal who looked to be about twelve, and an RAF sergeant from Scotland whose speech was totally unintelligible to everyone. “Sergeant Parker” was all they caught when he introduced himself; maybe he said it was getting darker.

  * * *

  November nights were wretchedly cold; that part was predictable. What wasn’t predictable was the rain that started moving into Montgomery during the early evening. A sudden sweep of north winds dropped the temperature to thirty-three degrees and turned the cold drizzle into stinging sleet. The frozen drops glistened in the yellow glow of the truck headlights, clung to the yellow stalk weeds, then turned to vapor as they rose from the hot metal flood lamps like ghosts.

  The men managed to ignore the conditions as they assembled the portable tower under a large black tarp, then secured it to a wooden platform. Willie’s job was to illuminate the operation from several angles with the flood lamps on the back of the truck, while Fleischer wired the transmitter and receiver together. The baby-faced corporal was in charge of running the generators still in the bed of the truck, and Sergeant Parker “oversaw British interests,” which meant that he offered useless suggestions and mostly got in everyone’s way.

  No one was particularly worried about the rain. Planes could fly in rain, flew in it all the time, their wings slicing through wet gray clouds like fish gliding through a pond. The men just pulled their ponchos up around their necks and dug in, anxious to get the work finished.

  “Base to Field Station One.” Colonel Fairchild’s voice boomed over the radio as soon as Fleischer connected the generator. “Formation left Jacksonville at twenty-one hundred hours. They should be over Hurstboro by now. Are you getting anything yet? Over.”

  “Nothing, sir,” Fleischer replied into his microphone. “Over.”

  “We have twenty-four planes up there.” Fairchild sounded exasperated. “There’s got to be something coming in, over.”

  The men looked up, searching the sky for incoming lights. As if in reply, the rain and sleet grew heavier, sheets of it streaming against their faces and into their eyes. A white tear of lightning illuminated the black clouds. A burst of wind blew their small tower sideways. As Willie walked to the truck, the wind lifted the corner of the tarp he was carrying and plastered it across his back. He peeled it off and draped it over the equipment, then searched the truck bed for any wire, thinking he could sling up two corners of the tarp to the back fender and fashion a protective tent.

  “Witzic wit’ t’bloody wither? S’ Baltic,” Parker complained from the front seat of the truck.

  “What?” Fleischer asked. Parker repeated himself.

  “Baltic,” Willie yelled over the wind. “He said Baltic.”

  “Aye,” said Parker.

  “Poor guy, sitting and complaining from inside the truck,” said Fleischer, his voice dripping with mock sympathy. “Hope he doesn’t get his tonsils wet from the rain.”

  The baby-faced corporal laughed, but Willie only gave a tight smile. He wasn’t going to laugh at a white man in public. And white was white, no matter where they came from.

  Another strong gust of wind whipped the tarp straight up in the air, where it flapped wildly for a moment before settling on their heads. There was a loud crackle from the radio.

  “Any word?” Fairchild’s v
oice boomed over the noise. Fleischer handed off the mike to the Scotsman in the cab. “Here. Your job is to stay in contact with the colonel,” he said, then thought better of it. “Wait, we need someone who speaks English.” He turned to the corporal, who had been checking on the fuel levels of the generators. “Corporal, stay in contact with the colonel while we secure this thing. The Scot here can roll up the windows and keep the seats dry.”

  The corporal took the mike, and Fleischer grabbed the end of the flapping tarp. He and Willie pulled against it, fighting the wind, leaning backward until their full weight brought it again to the ground so that Willie could secure it with the wires.

  The sleet grew heavier, torrential; hail big as eggs bounced across their ponchos and cascaded down their sides, creating slippery piles around their feet.

  The radio squawked a few more words, then went dead. Willie scrambled onto the bed of the truck and adjusted a spotlight to illuminate the back of the receiver, as Fleischer squatted in the mud in order to tighten the connections.

  The Scottish sergeant rolled his window down to complain that the coffee in his American-made thermos had gotten cold. He complained about American technology in general as he emptied the coffee out the window with a look of disgust. It blew back against the truck.

  Fairchild’s words broke and fizzled from the radio. The lightning split the sky like Morse code, bolt upon vicious bolt, flashing out deadly rhythms around them. They couldn’t hear what the colonel was saying through the thunder.

  “Try to keep in contact,” Fleischer roared at the corporal, who looked scared of the lightning.

  “Base,” shouted the corporal, “this is Field Station One. Can you read me? Over.”

  “Read you,” the colonel shouted back. “Over.” The lightning reached across the sky, trying to grab at them with crackling fingers. “—contact—” Fairchild’s words were coming in pieces. “Make contact, one thousand feet. Keep this channel—”

  Willie could barely make out Fleischer’s form in the driving rain. The tower was slipping sideways, floating on a sheen of mud and marbles of ice. The men righted it, dug it deeper into the slick ground, and secured it with ropes Willie had found in the truck bed. Fleischer took the mike while the corporal and Willie secured the tarps to the back of the truck, pushing the radio tower under them. The sleet grew more furious; the headlights from the truck barely made a path across the field, into the night.

  “Divert them to Birmingham,” the colonel was saying. “Maxwell’s socked in.”

  “Naw!” The Scot suddenly came to life, shouting over Fleischer’s shoulders, toward the mike. “Ay new hoo mooch they kerry. T’won’t have enough petrol.” Somehow Fleischer understood that.

  “There’s an RAF cadet here says they won’t have enough fuel,” Fleischer yelled against the thunder.

  “—checking that,” Fairchild yelled back. “Stay at your stations.” There was a long, noisy pause filled with static. The men waited. Willie rechecked the knots in the ropes, then, with aching arms, used all his strength to hold the tarps in place as the wind tried peeling them from the truck. Fleischer was still kneeling in the mud, rolling on the ice balls, scanning the receiver.

  “—less than a hundred-feet visibility,” Fairchild’s words finally broke through again. “We’re adding extra emergency lights on a makeshift runway. If you can reach them, order them to Gunter.”

  “Those Brits probably won’t listen to orders anyway,” Fleischer muttered under his breath, and the Scotsman laughed at the truth of this. Fleischer wiped the transmitter clean with a small corner of his shirt that was still dry.

  “Sarge.” Willie nudged Fleischer a few minutes later. “Look.” Flickering along the horizon was a feeble, glittering line of yellow dots moving together, two by two. They stared at the apparition, trying to figure it out.

  “Trucks,” Fleischer yelled through the rain. “Headlights. Looks like they’re setting up a runway out there.” But there was no way to confirm it; they had lost radio contact again. Fleischer pointed to the receiver. “Pull the tarp directly over the back of this,” he ordered Willie, “and jam the spotlight real close; maybe the heat will dry the wires.”

  Willie pulled hard at the tarp, but it fought like a man, blowing sideways through his fingers. Fleischer pulled his poncho up around his head, hunching forward, to cover the front of the receiver and transmitter, and picked at a few wires, wiping them under his armpit before pushing them back into the radio. There was a loud hiss of static.

  “Field Station One to Bee Tee Squadron Leader,” Fleischer yelled into the mike, hoping to raise an answer from one of the planes. “Do you read me?” He waited, then tried again, to no avail. Willie held the tarp in place for what felt like hours. He was soaked, beyond soaked; his blood had become cold rain, his breath gray clouds, his heart the towering thunder.

  “I might redo the wires,” Fleischer yelled, pulling some strands together with his fingers, weaving them into a knot, and pinching them tight.

  “Sir, gi’ me that.” The Scotsman leaned out of the truck window and pointed to the mike. Fleischer gladly handed it up to him.

  “’Tis’s Field Tower One to ana Royal cadet. We wont a bloody ahnswer.” The Scotsman yelled into the mike. “Over. Over. Over. Can y’rid me?”

  There was a faint crackling that slipped between the shrieking wind and the loud gashes of lightning.

  A voice burst through the static. “Aye, laddie, I read you.”

  It was Jink. The four men cheered.

  “Hope you’re not wearing your kilts on a night like this,” Jink said. “Your arse is going to freeze. Over.”

  “Tell him to stay on this channel,” Fleischer shouted from behind the transmitter, huffing on his fingers, then flexing them to warm them up before he pinched the wires together for another try.

  “Stay on tis chennel,” the Scotsman relayed his words.

  “He is to proceed to Gunter,” Fleischer continued, forcing his voice over the wind. “Tell them there’s a makeshift runway out here, if he can’t make the airfield. Base’ll talk him in through us.”

  “They want’ye t’ proceed t’ Gunter,” Sergeant Parker repeated Fleischer’s words. “But tere’s a runway oot in t’ swamps. When you’re ten miles from t’ field, Base will talk y’and t’ others in.”

  “There aren’t many others.” Jink’s voice came back. “Twelve down so far. Navigation went all right, the bloody planes—” His voice was lost to the crackle.

  “Jesus Lord Almighty.” Willie gasped. “Did he say twelve planes down?”

  “Naw, can’t have,” said the Scotsman. Fleischer pulled the mike from his hands.

  “Jink, Jink, can you read me? Repeat what you said. Over.”

  “I said what I said,” Jink answered grimly. There was a long pause of static and drone, then, “I see lights. That you, mates?” The men looked up, and the sleet stung against their faces. They strained to see through the low-blowing clouds. Was there anything there? They strained to find something, anything visual in the godforsaken night.

  They finally saw a glint. Flying through the storm, bouncing on waves of sleet and thunder with flashes of lightning illuminating its silver body, the Vultee was almost overhead.

  “There he is,” Willie shouted into Fleischer’s ear. “Directly above us.”

  “He’s off course,” the Scotsman yelled and jumped from the truck. “T’ere’s no place for him t’ land ’ere.”

  “Jink! Where the hell are you going?” Fleischer roared into the mike. “Thirty degrees left! They set up a strip.”

  “I won’t make it,” Jink replied. His voice was calm, flat.

  “It’s only three miles,” the Scotsman yelled behind Fleischer.

  “Can’t get enough airspeed. She’s dying on me.”

  “I’m patching you through to the colonel.” Fleischer’s fingers pulled at wires, pushed little black pins into dark spots in the back of the receiver. He turned dials frantically unt
il there was a soft hum.

  “I can’t even see me bloody wings,” Jink said, his voice sounding flat, desperate. “Can’t maintain airspeed. What the hell good is the colonel? Jesus, I’m going to hit those bloody trees.”

  The Scotsman jumped from the truck and ran like a madman toward the careening silver body above. “No,” he was screaming, waving his hat at the plane. “No, no, no. Pull up! Y’ive got t’pull up! Oh God, no!” He sank to his knees into the mud and dropped his palms to the ground, his head between them, as the plane swung by him, swaying in the wind like a wounded bird. It tipped sharply to one side, then lay across the rain before nosing hard down.

  The men watched helplessly. The engine screamed in protest as the plane veered in a crazy angle to the ground, maybe an attempt to turn around, Willie couldn’t be sure. The wind seemed to blow the nose up for a moment, before the plane suddenly fell to the earth, like an elevator with its lift gone, the speed continuing to push it across the mud and slip of ice marbles into the waiting trees. They could hear Davies gasp from the radio, then his last words. “Say a prayer for me, laddies, looks like I’m going to die in bloody Alabama.”

  There was the sound. Willie knew he would never forget the sound, the crush, a different kind of thunder, the deadly, ugly pounding of metal against trees, a splintering crash, the sound of swamp grass ripped from its roots and moaning under the burden of a broken plane as it fell to earth, slid across its slippy face, and embedded itself in the trees. And then nothing. Just the deadly drumming of sleet that ended the night.

  Chapter 26

  They were draped in Union Jacks, thirteen coffins. Thirteen coffins carried down through a line of RAF cadets who were standing at rigid attention. A formation of crisp blue uniforms, their young, undeveloped, boy-faces looking stunned, not ready for death, not ready to lose to death like this when they were all getting ready to fight at home. The boxes were carried down through their ranks, and they could barely look at them, their mates, dead, thirteen in one night.

  Everyone was attending, the French cadets, the Canadians, the Greeks, the Americans, all of them somberly paying tribute to the casualties of war. Except it wasn’t war. They didn’t know what it was. Planes flew in miserable weather all the time; could it really have been the weather? Wars didn’t stop for rainstorms. Or sleet and snow. It couldn’t have just been the weather. Could it?