Under a War-Torn Sky Page 2

  They all looked up at the black sky, trying to assess the clouds. No stars visible and no sunrise yet. The only lights were on the distant airfield. Out there, the ground crews were loading bombs and fuelling the aircraft. If it wasn’t mechanically perfect, a B-24 loaded with two thousand pounds of bombs and glutted with gasoline was a flying deathtrap. “God bless the ground crew,” murmured Henry aloud, without thinking.

  Then he wanted to kick himself for opening the door to a put-down. He’d been dismissed as “a Boy Scout” before and knew some of the older fliers were merciless with a devout Baptist gunner who got down on his knees to pray before getting into his plane. Henry could see a jeer forming on Billy’s face and braced himself.

  But instead Billy agreed: “Amen to that.” The ground crew and their work were sacrosanct for everyone.

  “Hey, didya hear Lord Ha Ha last night?” asked Henry’s navigator, Fred Bennett, as they slogged across the mud-washed base.

  “Naw, I never listen to that guy,” said Henry, even though he did. “He’s full of baloney.” Broadcasting in English almost every night, Lord Ha Ha was a Nazi trying to unnerve the British and American fliers.

  “I don’t know, Hank,” said Fred. “He seemed to know we’d be flying today. He said the Luftwaffe would be waiting for us.”

  Fred was a small guy, a washout from flight school, a real worrier. He’d finished two years of an English literature major at Harvard before volunteering. He was always quoting some writer named Thomas Hardy – very depressing stuff. But he was a great navigator. He seemed to have a sixth sense for direction, even in heavy cloud cover. And Henry just liked him. “You know what we can do tonight when we get back, Fred?” said Henry.

  The navigator shook his head.

  “I’d love it if you’d read aloud some more of that Dickens, that Tale of Two Cities. I’ve got to keep up my studies, you know. Virginia said they’d keep my scholarship active for me for two years as long as I don’t go stupid on them.”

  “I didn’t know you were going to be a college boy, Hank,” said Dan.

  “When I get home. I promised Ma. It about killed her when I joined up two weeks after graduating high school. Schooling is real important to her. She’s the one who taught me there’s more to the world than chicken coops. She used to read to me even when I shelled peas and beans, so my mind was working too. The Bible, Sherlock Holmes, a poet named Emily Dickinson she loved. My personal favourite is Jules Verne, Around the World in Eighty Days.”

  “Good for you, Hank,” said Dan. “I dropped out of high school when the Depression hit. I needed to work to help Da. Seven kids need lots of shoes. Read to us, Fred. Gotta get me some book education to impress my baby girl when I get home. Rose wrote that she said her first word.”

  “What was it, Dad? Goo-goo blah-blah?” It was Henry’s turn to tease.

  “No,” said Dan goodnaturedly. “It was wa-wa.”

  “Wa-wa?” Henry laughed. “I don’t seem to have wa-wa in my vocabulary, Captain. What’s it mean?”

  “She was asking for water,” Dan said, laughing at himself. “A budding genius, she is.” Then he grew quiet. “I tell you what, though. The first word I’m going to work on her saying when I get home is Daddy.”

  “You guys are making me sick,” Billy interrupted. “You know what I did last night? Some important scientific research. I figured out that these flight get-ups have thirty-six feet of zippers. I’m getting mighty good at unzipping fast. That’ll come in real handy with the girls someday soon, boys, if you know what I mean. Do you have any idea what I mean, Hank?”

  Patsy’s pretty face came to Henry. He knew how much Billy’s off-colour jokes would insult her. And he was startled and mad with himself that for a few fleeting seconds Billy’s crude comment had sent Henry imagining Patsy in a vivid, not particularly respectful way.

  “Stow it, White,” Henry snapped. “I feel sorry for any girl who gets stuck with you.”

  The group had reached the operations building. Billy turned to ridicule Henry in a forced Southern twang: “And whom do you all date, farm boy? Some bucktoothed swamp queen?”

  Henry’s nightmare had left him feeling thin-skinned and homesick. He stepped in front of Billy to block his path. Leaning towards him, Henry whispered in a menacing manner, “Y’all want to see some swamp-boy boxing?”

  “Hey! Cut it out,” yelled Dan. He pushed them apart with a big, practised shove. “Remember what you’re here for. Shake hands.”

  “No way,” muttered Billy. “The guy’s a lunatic.”

  “Shake hands. That’s an order.”

  Reluctantly, Henry extended his.

  Reluctantly, Billy took it.

  As their hands touched, Henry regretted his outburst. That was the kind of threat his dad would have made. Henry had always promised himself that he’d never be like his volatile father. He took a deep breath and tried looking at things from Billy’s side, the way his ma forever told him to. Heck, Billy was probably just as nervous as he was. And what could you expect from such a jerk on a morning like this, anyway?

  “Tell you what,” Henry said as he let go of Billy’s hand. “When the war’s over, I’ll come to Philadelphia to meet those country-club lady friends of yours. Then you come to Richmond. My ma will fix a meal that’ll melt in your mouth and teach you some manners without your ever realizing she’s doing it.”

  Billy seemed to relax. “Done.” He opened the door and whistled as he walked through. “Off we go, into the wild blue yonder…”

  Dan followed behind Henry. “What’s the matter with you, Hank?”

  “Sorry, Captain.” Henry’s green eyes hit the ground. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me this morning. Got the jitters, I guess.”

  “Don’t get flak-happy on me, boy,” Dan said, putting his hand on Henry’s shoulder. “I mean it. You’re the steadiest copilot I’ve ever seen.”

  Henry nodded, bolstered.

  “I want to get home, too, Hank. I’ve only got four more to go. Let’s make sure we both get back today.”

  The pilots’ eyes held each other’s for a moment. Dan’s belief in him made Henry feel years older, stronger. He wasn’t just a scared farm boy away from home for the first time. He was someone Dan could trust. “I’m with you, Captain,” Henry answered.

  Dan smiled. Then he resumed his flyboy swagger. He called after the group, “Okay, boys, let’s see what part of hell we’re visiting today.”

  Chapter Two

  Henry followed Dan and Fred to the front of the briefing room. Their bombardier, Paul Sabatino, trotted up the aisle to squeeze in with them on the wooden bench. Paul was always late.

  “Nice of you to make it, Sabatino,” said Dan.

  “Aw, I was here before you guys.” Paul pointed his thumb towards the back of the room. “I wanted to get a doughnut from Abby.”

  Abby was one of the Red Cross girls at the door handing out doughnuts and coffee as the fliers filed in. Even at 4:30 in the morning she was fresh, her lips perfect with red lipstick, a ready smile, and a kind word. Half the base was sweet on her, especially Paul. But she had a beau in the 303rd, flying B-17s.

  Henry stared nervously at the wall ahead, covered with a white curtain. Behind the curtain hung a map of Europe. Henry knew that a red piece of yarn traced their flight to the day’s target. But the curtain still hid the map. Henry checked the position of the yarn pulley to the left of the curtain. If the pulley were near the top of the curtain, that would mean all the yarn was used up to point their way. It’d be a long mission deep into Germany. If the pulley were hanging pretty far down, they’d have a short flight, a “milk run”, into France or Belgium. Today the pulley was rammed up to the ceiling.

  Henry exhaled a low whistle and began fumbling in the flap pocket of his shirt. He jostled Dan.

  “What’s worrying you now, flyboy?” the captain asked.

  “Just looking for my good luck,” Henry said. He pulled out a beautiful marble. Swirls of red and
gold floated just under its surface.

  Dan smiled. “I had one of those when I was a kid.”

  Henry dropped it into the captain’s palm.

  “It’s a cloud, isn’t it?” Dan asked as he rolled it around his hand.

  “That’s right,” Henry nodded. A cloud was an “end-of-day” marble: a large, one-of-a-kind marble that glassblowers made from leftover glass. “It’s my shooter. I won it off my old man. He always played by the rules. Even before I was in grade school, I had to shoot knuckles down or I’d lose my turn. And he played for keeps. Whatever he knocked out of the circle, he kept. Even if it was my favourite marble. He’d say,” – Henry adopted a low, gruff drawl – “‘That’ll teach you to shoot better, boy.’”

  “Nice guy,” said Dan.

  Henry paused. “That’s Clayton Forester for you. Dad can be…well…kinda harsh. He has his own set of rules for right and wrong. You gotta be a man. When I was eleven years old, my dog, Skippy, got hit by a truck. Skip had been out on the road looking for me to come home from school. I’d told him and told him to stay by the house. He was the best dog, so loyal – a beautiful English setter – but he didn’t mind worth a dime.

  “That truck hit him hard enough to break both his back legs. Skip was in terrible pain, dragging himself along the ground. Dad said he was my dog, so it was my responsibility to stop his misery.” Henry’s voice cracked. “So I got my rifle. And I shot him. Skip died looking at me with those big, trusting brown eyes of his. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive that old bastard for making me do that.”

  Henry took the marble back and looked down at it. “Ma would try to sneak back the marbles Dad won off me when he was asleep. But what I really wanted more than anything was to beat him fair and square. When I was fourteen, I shot this out of the circle and claimed it. It had been Dad’s since he was a kid. I used it as my shooter for the rest of that game. And you know what?”

  “What?” Dan asked.

  “I knocked out every single one of my old man’s marbles on one turn. Even his steelies. He about had a fit.” Henry laughed. “So this is my good luck, my cloud. It’ll keep me up there in the blue.”

  Carefully, Henry put the marble back into his pocket and buttoned it in. He tried to wait patiently for the CO, the commanding officer, to arrive. The exact location of the target wouldn’t be revealed until then.

  “Tenn-hut!” The fliers stood up, straight and still, as the CO passed to the front podium.

  “Be seated, gentlemen,” the CO called out. “Before we show you today’s mission I want to congratulate you on the past month. You’ve done a hard job well. One that had to be done if we ever want to liberate ‘Fortress Europe’.” As he uttered the last two words, the CO stuck his finger under his nose and adopted a thick German accent to make fun of Hitler’s term for his empire. The fliers laughed appreciatively.

  “Here’s what you have accomplished: Air Intelligence tells us that during January, when weather kept us grounded, the Nazis increased their aircraft production to one plane every fifteen minutes. That’s four Luftwaffe killers an hour.” He paused to let that number sink in. “We had to break that production before it broke us. That’s what all those back-to-back missions in February were about.

  “I’d like to give all of you a week’s pass to London,” the CO concluded – he held up his hand to stop the men’s cheers – “God knows you deserve it. But it’s crucial that we weaken the Luftwaffe before General Eisenhower tries a land invasion. Otherwise, thousands and thousands of American boys will die for nothing. We have to push forward to keep the Luftwaffe from regathering its strength.” He sat down and nodded to his S-2, the intelligence officer. The S-2 pulled back the curtain with a flourish.

  The red yarn ran across the English Channel to the Belgian coast, took a sharp turn down to France, and ran a long diagonal across it. From there, the yarn skipped along the northern edge of Switzerland to a point in southern Germany. It would be a long, long flight.

  Henry and the other airmen shifted in their seats. “Is this trip really necessary?” shouted a smart-mouthed pilot, quoting a gas-conservation slogan well known back in the States.

  “Yes, it is, men,” said the S-2. “And let’s do it right. Drop the bombs right in the pickle barrel.” He slapped the map with his pointer. “Your target is a ball-bearing plant. Without ball bearings, Messerschmitts can’t fly, Rommel’s tanks can’t roll.”

  The S-2 put up a photograph of the factory. The Nazis had tried to hide it among homes, schools, and churches. Accuracy was critical or many civilians would die. The S-2 talked about the number of fighters and flak guns the crews could expect to come up against. It wasn’t pretty.

  Then the weather officer explained how to deal with the weather. The clouds would be low and broken up as they left England. Once they hit the European mainland, however, cumulus clouds billowed up solid to twenty thousand feet. They’d have to fly over them. The target was overcast but predicted to clear by the time the bombers arrived at 11 a.m. Everything was strategically timed: the moment they’d rally with other bomb groups taking off from bases all over England; the time they were to hit the target.

  “Gentlemen,” the CO stood up again to synchronize the men’s watches, “here’s our time-tick. It is now five-oh-five minus twenty seconds.” The fliers looked down at their watches and set them to 5:05, keeping the stem that started the watch pulled out, waiting for the CO to say, hack.

  “Five seconds…four…three…two…one, hack.” Henry and a hundred other men clicked in their watch stems. Whatever their various fates on this mission, they were tied together in time.

  “Let’s get some chow,” said Dan after the briefing. They headed to the flying officers’ mess hall. There were “combat eggs” this morning, real eggs, not the powdered, green-tinted ones. Henry took mounds of scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes. It would be night before he ate again.

  Billy crowded up behind Henry in the food line and banged his tray against Henry’s. “Hear you’re flying left wing to my plane, farm boy. Make sure you keep that formation tight. Close as I dance with village girls at the pub.”

  “Don’t worry, Romeo,” said Henry, keeping the tone friendly. “You’ll be able to play cards off my wing tip, I’ll keep it so close and steady.”

  Billy nodded and turned to go. Henry reached out to touch his arm. “Be careful out there in the lead, Billy. The shooting gets thick, you know?”

  “Yeah.” Billy tried to smile. “Thanks, Hank.”

  Henry sat down with his crew. His food was not inviting. He imagined the warm bacon smell and sizzling sound of his ma’s frying pan as she cooked breakfast. She always hummed something as she cooked. What was it? Amazing Grace, that was it.

  He checked his watch. 5:20. He thought about home at 5:20 a.m. The old man would be back in the house after feeding the chickens. Henry could smell Clayton’s cup of acid-strong coffee, hear him dump a spoonful of sugar and stir it rapidly. He’d be clinking the teaspoon against the cup loudly until Lilly gently reached over to still his hand.

  Henry thought about Patsy. At 5:20, Patsy would be getting up. Henry wondered how she did, walking to school on her own in the dawning light. They had always quizzed each other on spelling and maths as they walked. Who did that for her now? Her parents never had time for that.

  Stop thinking, Henry told himself. He forced down the rest of his breakfast and got up from the table. “Gotta get in line for the escape kits. I’ll see y’all at the plane.”

  That was one of Henry’s duties as copilot, to pick up and distribute the small packages meant to help fliers survive behind enemy lines if they had to bail out. The contents included: one candy bar, one can of food, three syringes of morphine, a compass, a silk map of France, bandages, pills for sterilizing water, and a little French money. There was also a pamphlet with a list of English phrases translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, and German. I am in a hurry and Heil Hitler were repeated across all four columns. Not
much to protect you against the Third Reich, thought Henry.

  He waved off a ride in a jeep already overflowing with fliers. He preferred to walk to the landing field and get his head straight. “‘We did it before and we can do it again,’” Henry sang. It was a song that had come out right after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour. We can do it again. Just another bomb run, Henry. No big deal.

  “Got any gum, chum?” asked a small voice.

  Henry turned around to see a young boy who lived on the farm next door. The base’s runways had been sliced right into the farm’s fields. The boy was constantly asking fliers for gum. Food was rationed in England. Meat went to the American and British fliers first. Gum helped trick civilian stomachs to stop rumbling.

  Henry knew what it was like to be a child feeling hungry. There had been many days he’d eaten nothing but boiled eggs and bread after the stock market crashed and crushed farm prices. His father and mother had such a hard time making their mortgage payments during the first year of the Depression, they’d only kill a chicken for Sunday dinner, and then only after she’d gotten too old to lay eggs for them to sell.

  Henry handed the English boy a stick of gum. “You’re not supposed to be on base, you know,” he said.

  “You going to tell on me, Yank?” said the boy with a mischievous grin. Henry watched him dart across the fence. The boy’s grandfather was already out trying to plough a field with his old carthorse.

  Henry reached their B-24 ahead of his crew. He stopped to look her over. The ground crews had patched the baseball-sized holes left by flak on their last run. The olive-coloured Liberator looked clean and ready. Out of the Blue was her name. Henry loved the picture painted on her: a fiery red-haired woman dressed in blue sitting atop a cloud and holding a bomb by the tail.

  When he had gone on a pass to London, Henry met a lot of B-17 pilots. They made fun of the B-24’s odd tail, the two fins popping up off a crossbeam. But the Liberator’s slim wing had better aerodynamics than the B-17s. A B-24 could fly faster and higher, with a heavier load of bombs. What Henry and other B-24 pilots didn’t like to admit, though, was that the wing’s design gave the Liberator a tendency to stall and spin. B-17s, the Flying Fortresses, held up better under battle damage, too. They could even make it back to base on just one of their four engines. If a B-24’s wing was hit, the plane went down fast.