To Kingdom Come (22 page)

It was the little Hindu guy with the Lord Haw Haw accent. Like Reb, he had apparently never heard the order to bail out. When Redwing tried to stand, he slipped on the bloody catwalk and fell forward on his hands.

Taking in Reb’s gruesome wound, Redwing’s eyes registered the same shock as Daudelin’s. It didn’t last more than a few moments. Seeing the parachute pack lying next to Reb, Redwing clipped it to his chest harness, and pulled the rip cord on it. The parachute would open on its own as soon as he dropped Reb out of the plane.

After putting on his own chute, Redwing began dragging him across the compartment to the open doorway. Reb tried to tell him to get out, to save himself, but his voice was gone. He knew Redwing was trying to give him a chance to survive. He deserved a medal.

Redwing had reached the doorway when one of the Fw 190s came back for another pass, spraying the fuselage with machine-gun fire. Redwing jerked upward, hit in the chest. Letting Reb go, he collapsed to the deck. The bomber was pitching and rolling as it continued its final plunge to earth. As Reb watched, Redwing rolled out into space.

Reb was now closer to the doorway, but it was still too far to make it. There were only seconds left before the plane went down. He felt himself going. I’m going to die, he thought. He discovered he wasn’t afraid. He would go down with the plane. That would be the end.

Still floating in his parachute, Jimmy watched
Yankee Raider
plow heavily into an open field outside a small French village. As soon as it hit, the bomber was enveloped in a huge cloud of smoke and dust. He waited for the wreck to explode, but it didn’t. There was no gas left to ignite.

A minute later, Jimmy hit the ground. He felt a brutal jolt of pain in his right ankle and tumbled backward. While lying on his back, he unclipped his parachute harness and rolled free.

When he tried to stand up, his right leg gave way and he fell down again.

SLIPSTREAMS

Generals Arnold and Eaker (far left) inspecting an air base, September 1943.

A clearly angry Ira Eaker lets it be known, 1943.

General Robert Travis (left) with General and Mrs. Maurice Preston, England, 1943.

Olen Grant relaxes with fellow sergeants, 1943.

False identity photograph taken of Jimmy Armstrong by the French underground, 1943.

Warren Laws, 1942.

Braxton Wilken, 1942.

Ted and Braxton Wilken, 1942.

Braxton and her daughter, Kathy, 1943.

Warren Laws’s false identity papers prepared by the French underground, 1943.

Joseph Schwartzkopf’s false identity papers prepared by the French underground, 1943.