On Wings of the Morning
Table of Contents
A Change Comes to Pioneer Lake—August, 1934
Pioneer Lake Airport—September, 1934
High School Days—November, 1935
The End of High School—May, 1938
Good Fences Make Good Neighbors—July, 1938
Remember Pearl Harbor—December, 1941
Primary Flight Training—September, 1942
Basic Flight training—December, 1942
Advanced Flight Training—March, 1943
First Blood—Late September, 1943
Building Time—Early February, 1944
Day In and Day Out—Late February, 1944
Come Live with Me and Be My Love—Mid-March, 1944
Mission 23: 0603 hours Zulu, Late March, 1944
Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else But Me
A Letter Arrives—February, 1945
A Chance Encounter—early March, 1945
Teach Me Tonight—Late March, 1945
Unexpected News—Early April, 1945
Northwest Airlines—November, 1945
On the Wings of Eagles—December 14, 1946
On Wimgs of the Morning
By Dan Verner
Copyright © 2013 by Dan Verner
Cover Copyright © 2013 by eLectio Publishing
The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (eLectio Publishing) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.
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This eBook is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
eLectio Publishing wishes to thank the following people who helped make these publications possible through their generous contributions:
Chuck & Connie Greever
Jay Hartman
Darrel & Kimberly Hathcock
Tamera Jahnke
Amanda Lynch
Pamela Minnick
James & Andrea Norby
Gwendolyn Pitts
Margie Quillen
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Flying—July, 1928
Otto was flying. Seated erect in the co-pilot’s seat, he rested his left hand loosely on the throttles of the Ryan twin, peering into the darkness of the Pacific night. He caught flashes of lightning among the towering thunderheads, which illuminated the biggest storm cells well enough for him to steer away from them.
In the pilot’s seat, Colonel Charles Lindbergh slept, exhausted from preflight preparations and rounds of interviews and picture sessions with the international press eager to get the story of the most famous aviator in the world and his attempt to cross the Pacific. This time Lindbergh was in a twin engine craft, and this time he had a co-pilot. Otto smiled as he remembered the questions about his qualifications.
“Colonel Lindberg, why are you taking along an eight-year-old co-pilot?”
Lindberg fixed the reporter with his eagle eye. “Because Otto Kerchner is the best pilot available to help me make this historic trip.”
That silenced all questions. There was only the pop and flare of flash bulbs as the photographers took pictures of the two aviators.
A close cloud-to-cloud lightning flash brought Otto back to the present. He must maintain his alertness. Colonel Lindberg depended on him, and he would not fail.
“Otto! Otto!”
Someone called his name in a heavy German accent. He glanced over his shoulder down the fuselage filled with the giant fuel tanks which kept the twin Wright Cyclone radials running at full bore. There was no one there.
“Otto! Otto Kerchner!”
The voice came from somewhere below him, but that was impossible. There were only thousands of feet of turbulent air and storm down there. No human being could be suspended below their racing aircraft.
“Otto! Answer me! It is your vater!”
The night sky through the windscreen wavered and disappeared, replaced by the dusty dimness of a barn hay loft, illuminated by shafts of late afternoon sunlight. Otto knew where he was. He was on his father’s farm, hiding from the chores he detested, reading in the loft about his hero Charles Lindbergh. He must have been dreaming about flying with “Lucky Lindy.” He had to answer his father and quickly, or his father would take his books away from him.
“Ja, Papa, I am in the hayloft,” he called.
“Vell, come down here, you lazy kinder. There is much for us to do!”
Otto sighed, and with his book in his hand, leaped to his feet and ran the short distance to the edge of the loft. He launched himself into the air. He was flying once again. At least for a while.
Otto had jumped from the hay loft dozens of times before. He had not counted on the floor of the barn, packed by thousands of cattle hooves, being harder than usual because of the drought. It was, in fact, like concrete.
He landed with one leg extended and both heard and felt it break. Something like an electric shock ran up his broken leg and he thought he was going to faint for an instant. The shock was like the one he received when he moistened his fingertips and stuck them on the terminals of the battery that powered their radio, only much, much worse. He lay there, unable to move, almost unable to breathe.
His father ran over from the barnyard where he had been standing, calling to Otto. He knelt by his son, but he knew from his service in the German army during the Great War that the leg was broken. He held Otto down as the shock began to wear off, and the boy started squirming.
“Gott in Himmel,
Otto, how many times have I told you not to jump out of the hayloft? You’ve broken your leg. Some help you’ll be now! MARIA! MATA!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “It’s Otto! He has broken his leg. Come quick!”
Otto’s mother and sister came on a run, his mother dropping to her knees as she started to cradle her boy. Hans shoved her back. “No, don’t move him until I immobilize the leg. Mata, go tear a board off the fence! Maria, go get some strips of cloth and then bring the truck around. This will require a doctor.”
Otto lay there, staring up at the sky. His father put a hand on his shoulder. “The only thing we have to give you is whiskey and I can’t give that to a child. Doctor Carter will have something for the pain.”
Mata returned, holding one of the fence pickets about the same time her mother arrived carrying strips of cloth. Maria dropped them at Hans’ feet and tore off for the Model T parked at the side of the garage. She barely knew how to drive, but Hans had showed her how to crank the engine without breaking her arm or thumb. She set the spark and the throttle, ran to the front of the truck, pulled the choke wire and then gave the crank protruding from the radiator a half turn. The engine caught, and she leaped for the driver’s seat, retarding the spark and the throttle. She put the truck into gear and slowly pulled it near Otto and Hans. Mata stood there, wringing her hands, almost in tears.
