Sentimental Journey (57 page)

After a long and intense briefing, Red filed out of the room early, while most of the others stayed there discussing the mission. They were wound up tight as springs. This was their first mission into
Germany
.

Once outside, Red stood with his hands in the pockets of his leather flight jacket, and stared up at the night sky. Overhead the stars were dimly visible through the mist covering the blacked-out bomber field. He was a long way from Acme,
Texas
.

He was in
Britain
and he hadn’t been to
London
, yet. Almost two years ago he had upped and left Acme, Texas, to go out into the wide open world, only to find his own shrunk down to the confining cockpit of a B-17 bomber.

He laughed at the irony of it. Charley . . . Charley. She would laugh when he told her that. Whenever he looked up at the stars, he thought about her, thought about a cool pond in
Texas
, and a hot night that changed him forever.

She was here in
England
. They had written to each other. But her base wasn’t nearby. The ATA bases were scattered all over the place. His group had been here for three months, and he’d had almost no time off. They flew mission after mission, and when they weren’t flying around at twenty thousand feet, they were waiting to fly around at twenty thousand feet.

He’d had no time to track her down. But he would. Soon.

Back at Randolph Field, when there had been nothing to do at night but think, he would lie there in his cot, his hands folded behind his head, and look out the open louvered window above him at the clear Texas sky and a thousand stars. He’d played a game, telling himself that maybe she was looking at them, too. That was what carried him through those empty nights alone with only the men in the unit, times when home and the memory of a girl were all you had to hang on to.

The mist grew thicker, colder, condensed and dripped off his hat. The English weather; the damp air here seeped clear into your bones. He tugged down on the bill of his cap and made his way to the Ops office to check out his Fortress assignment. Once inside, he skimmed the crew sheet on the bulletin board. It listed the lead, low, and high squadrons. He was listed for a copilot’s seat in the lead group. The first ones to run the target.

Someone clapped him on the shoulder. Red turned.

Squadron Commander O’Malley was an Irishman from
Hoboken
who was well-liked and had a reputation for steady-nerved flying. “Hey,
Walker
. You on the
Canterbury Mary
tomorrow?”

“No, sir. Looks like I’m on the
U.S.O. Flo.
With Lambert.”

O’Malley turned to the operations officer. “Sid! Come here, will ya? And bring your pencil.”

A couple of minutes later, with a few strokes of an eraser, Red was moved to high squadron as copilot on O’Malley’s
Mary.

At five-thirty the next morning Red sat with the crew underneath the sinister shadow of their crouching B-17 as they waited for the weather to clear. The postponement ratcheted up tension about tenfold. For something to do, he checked over his gear—Mae West, oxygen mask, and parachute. He made certain his escape kit was pinned securely to the knee pocket of his flight suit, checked his .45 pistol, ammo, and slid a hunting knife between his shoe and flying boot.

O’Malley calmly walked around the plane, running a hand over the cool metal skin, giving it a pat here and there, checking oxygen and ammo, bomb bay and tires. The gunners field-stripped their .50-calibers again and oiled the bolts. The turret gunner lay on the damp grass, his head resting on his chute and canvas pack, eerily quiet and sweat beading on his face. He’d been worried all week. This was his thirteenth mission.

By seven-thirty that morning Red was in the
Mary’s
copilot’s seat, watching the other B-17s below him break like huge silver bullets through the white cloud deck, their glass noses aimed upward for the long climb to twenty thousand feet.

Red looked at his logs: “FT—Flight Time
6:45
, ET—Time over Enemy Territory
3:35
, Altitude—24K, Bomb Load, 10,500 # of HE— High Explosive.” He checked the dials, then played with the heating units on his gloves. The temperature gauge read minus 23 degrees.

They circled for over an hour above the weather in the clear blue sky, until the arrowhead formations, a thousand feet apart, followed the lead group away from the south of England and out over the blue-green waters of the Channel, then on to the golden, sun-glittered surface of the North Sea.

Red looked out to see a smattering of blue smoke ahead from the gunners testing their guns while they still had the chance. He tightened his oxygen mask and watched the glass tube on the instrument panel; the ball inside it moved up and down with each breath he took, exactly the way it was supposed to, like a life monitor, a heartbeat.

Fifteen minutes later the first flak blossom exploded in the sky from the batteries along the north coast; it was too low and inaccurate. He barely felt the kick of it when it exploded in the air well below them.

They flew on toward the target, three formations of Flying Fortresses all loaded for bear. Along the way they released bundles of metal paper and foil to muck up the enemy radar. Subsequent flak was low and off enough that the paper must have worked.

Red made a note on his logs.

More than an hour into the flight, the tail gunner got the bends. You could hear him yelling in the earphones and destroying communications until one of the crew pulled him into the plane’s belly and took his position. The flak grew solid and accurate as they flew over the eastern edges of France, over the Rhine, and into southern Germany.

He checked the temperature gauge. It was minus 41 degrees. The heaters were working, but he was still cold as hell. The closer they got to the target, the worse the flak. Concussion drove the plane down. Antiaircraft fire exploded near the engine. The ship shook.

Number two engine went bad. They feathered it. He heard someone swear. A gunner called out, “Fighters at two o’clock low!”

Two FW-190s dove into the front formation. They fired, tracers flashing. Almost as suddenly they peeled away in half rolls, then sped low over Red’s group. One fighter flashed by, its yellow nose smoking.

The
Mary’s
turret gunner blasted it. Pieces of plane flew past. A yellow German chute opened below. More fighters came in. Within seconds all the
Mary’s
gunners were firing. The smell of burnt cordite filled the cockpit. Now he was sweating.

Ahead, he could see smoke trailing from three B-17s that were hit, but still keeping formation toward the target. One of them had lost an engine. A piece of the tail was missing from another.

Flak exploded around them and shook the plane, rattled his teeth; they struggled with the controls, the reality of war around them, in front of them, and shaking the hell out of them.

A new squad of MEs came soaring in.

You could hear the shouts, “Bandits! Three o’clock!”

“Look out! Twelve o’clock high!”

The navigator gave Red the coordinates. He contacted the bombardier.

“Two minutes to target.”

Ahead of them the forts began dropping their loads. The flak was so thick you could walk on it. The gunners worked hard and furiously. Tracers were everywhere, green and fiery.

Two ships broke up, and they counted the chutes, eight from one, five from the other. The fighters were still around, soon the air was full of smoke and plenty of parachutes, German and Allied. Then it got bad. Real bad.

Red watched the
Flo
in the front formation take a direct hit from a blazing ME and break in half, flaming as it spiraled down and then exploded.

There were no chutes.

No chutes. He took deep breaths from his oxygen. The smell of flak blasts came through with the oxygen. He felt sick, like he might vomit in the mask. He turned and met O’Malley’s sharp-eyed gaze, but neither of them said anything. Red turned back and stared ahead. He owed his life to the man next to him and to an eraser on the end of a pencil.

The blasts kept coming. The noise inside, the sheer cacophony of it, was the true sound of war. He kept his eyes ahead, then watched the lead formation, stunned motionless, as the bomb load from one fort dropped through the wings of another ship.

“Shit!” O’Malley saw it. “Look. It’s the
Lucky 13.”

“My God . . . he’s still flying.”

The plane was in the air. Together, except for part of the wing. No sign of chutes; it struggled to stay in formation in a sky ablaze with smoke and tracers and planes.

“Damn . . . look at that. He’s holding his own.”

Just then an ME came at them, guns blazing. They took a hit in the wing. Number three engine quit, the oil line severed. Red watched the dials, shouting readings.

The bombardier dropped their load. They flew another two minutes. A blast from starboard sent the ship down. Number four engine was on fire.

Another enemy fighter was on them. The tail gunner was screaming and firing.

Like angels from heaven their own fighter escort finally came speeding in from out of the sun, dropped their belly tanks, and went to work, dogfights breaking out all over the skies, the Allied fighters shooting past to the whistles of the crew, and the Luftwaffe diving into the bomber formations to avoid fire from the P-47S.

There was a huge noise, then the sickening sound of chunks of steel ripping into the ship. Men screamed. Smoke was everywhere inside. The navigator went back with some of the crew; they were working to put out the flames. When they did, there was a huge hole in the ship and it was vibrating like it was going to break up.

“Walker!” O’Malley pulled one hand away from his side. He was bleeding.

Red took over, struggling to hold the plane. Ten more minutes and they were losing altitude. It was more and more difficult to stay with the group. Finally they dropped and dropped, the plane shuddering. O’Malley couldn’t bail. Red refused to. The plane dropped again.

He couldn’t get her up, so he headed for a grass field. Down and down. They hit hard, with a horrible sound, and he gripped the controls with everything he had. The plane was sliding. There was a horrible cracking sound. It broke in half and the front spun around, the tail catching the nose and the windows blew out.

The plane stopped spinning. Smoke was everywhere. It took Red a minute to realize he was alive.

O’Malley was swearing.

“Shit! Fucking shit!”

Everyone was swearing.

Some of the men were wounded and bleeding, screaming names and voices answering as they tried to find everyone.

“Get out! Get out fast!”

Red grabbed O’Malley and pulled him toward the hole. The ball gunner dropped down, blood covering his right eye, but he helped drag O’Malley, and they all tumbled out onto the soaking wet ground, sinking into mud so thick and deep it was like quicksand. It was the mud that probably saved them, slowing the plane’s momentum.

Rounds of rifle fire shot into the air.

The bombardier dropped, his thigh bleeding.

“Achtungl Hande hoch!”