The letter from home was postmarked December third, but it did not reach Danny Herodetzky until the second Monday morning in January. That kind of time lag for mail was usual for the military, Danny thought disgustedly as he huddled cross-legged on his bunk in the deserted barracks, his unopened letter on his lap and his extra blanket around his shoulders to ward off the morning chill. To be fair to the Army, however, his mail had been chasing him throughout his training. This latest letter from his father was addressed to him at the Army Air Corps Basic Flying School in Independence, Kansas. He’d graduated from there weeks ago and come to Eagle Pass, Texas, for advanced training.
The base was on the Rio Grande about a hundred miles north of Laredo. The grounds had long ago been cleared for airstrips, leaving the area nothing but a dark brown crust eternally baking beneath the Texas sun. In winter it was a pale ghost of itself but still one hell of a sun for a boy brought up in the canyons of New York City.
You didn’t have to travel far to appreciate the rugged grandeur of the landscape, to marvel at the distant ocher buttes shimmering in the heat, at the yucca and mesquite and all their twisted prickly brother cacti.
This was a place tailor-made to satisfy the fantasy of the fellow who dreamed of mounting up and riding the range with Hopalong Cassidy, spurs on his heels and a six-gun on his hip.
The thing was, there was nobody like that around here. The men dreamed of flying single-engine fighters. They didn’t want to ride; they wanted to soar through these flat gun-metal Texas skies with half a dozen fifty-cals spitting fire from beneath their eagles’ wings.
It was just eleven. Danny was not scheduled for his training flight until the afternoon. He’d brought his letter back to the barracks because nobody was ever around here at this hour of the day. Danny liked to savor his mail from home; sometimes he even liked to read certain passages out loud to capture the inflections. A guy couldn’t do something that screwy in front of the other cadets.
| Dear Son, | 12/2/44 |
Your letter of November tenth reached home safely and I read it out loud to all my friends. When I got to the part where you described the air maneuvers you are learning, those twists and turns and so forth, they all clapped for you and said how brave you were.
Here’s a good laugh. I’m sure you remember Leo Gorfine. He was here that day, and when I read aloud about how hard you found it to do an Immelmann loop in your airplane, Leo, who don’t hear so good anymore, says, “Immelmann? Tell Danny I knew a fellow named Immelmann. He was a ragpicker on Hester Street.” Well, son, as you can imagine, we all had a good laugh on him here at the store.
About the store, you wouldn’t recognize it these days. Gone are the meat case and the dairy cooler. We kept the little freezer so after the war we can maybe sell ice cream, and we kept the cooler for soda pop. But we tore out the old produce bins and the shelves are mostly cleared. I say good riddance. All that points stuff was giving me a headache. Now where the produce used to be, I got a card table and plenty of comfortable chairs bought second hand. Shumel and the others sit and read the papers or play a card game. I sit in my rocker behind the counter in case somebody should come in for some cigarettes or gum—recently I got plenty of gum and tobacco to sell. A good sign this terrible war is about over. Anyway, if you saw me you’d laugh. I got a pretty easy life, you’d say, and I’d have to agree. Oh well, your father has worked pretty hard in his day, I guess.
Your sister is doing well at her job. She tells me she has a boyfriend—imagine that. Thank God, I say. But she won’t tell me who it is. Well, she is entitled to her privacy. In answer to your question, I have not seen her apartment. She invites me plenty and offers to take me and bring me home in a taxi, but what we can’t figure is how to get me up those four flights of stairs. In my younger days it would have been no big deal, son, but now I can’t do it, I’m sorry to say. Maybe when you come home you can fly me in an airplane up there! What do you say?
Speaking of my health, I am feeling strong. It seems my heart attack was so long ago. Shumel (he sents his best regards, by the way) keeps an eye on me, I keep an eye on him, and we manage. About the you-know-what, I tell you it is a thing of the past for your father. I’ll never touch another drop of you-know-what except maybe a toast to my son when he comes home.
Well, I guess the big news is about the recent Presidential election. There was a little to-do about this being Roosevelt’s fourth term, but all the kvetching came to nothing. Most voters felt like me, that FDR has done right, and you don’t change horses in midstream. He’s done all right against that bastard Hitler and those Japs so far. Mark my words, son, now that he’s re-elected he will do something for the Jewish refugees, and all this tummel about how he is against us will vanish. He will act on the refugees’ behalf. He must.
It wasn’t until after you left us last summer that the newspapers began to let on about what the Russians discovered during their advance into Poland and that this horrible Majdanek extermination camp is only the beginning. They say to be prepared for what our own brave soldiers will discover as they push on into Germany.
It has taken me a long while to write about these things to you. I figured you had enough on your mind, but then I realized that you are probably reading the papers like everybody else. When I try to go to sleep at night I cannot because my mind dwells on the horror. During the day, in the store, I look at the old Coca-Cola clock on the wall, I straighten the stacks of Wrigley’s Spearmint and I think my sane, familiar world is as unreal to the concentration camp victims as theirs is to me.
So I cheer on the Russians, and believe me, they are no saints either. I just wish the Stalin bastards and the Nazi bastards would kill each other off. Then at last the Jews could live in peace.
Anyway, FDR will fix things up for the poor refugees like he fixed up the Depression, just as soon as he’s done with our country’s enemies. I’m praying that maybe it’ll end before more young men (not mentioning any names) have to fight.
Your loving father,
Abe Herodetsky
Danny carefully refolded the letter, slipped it back into its envelope and deposited it on top of the stack in a corner of his foot locker.
He began to gather up his flying gear prior to heading out to the airstrip. He put away his uniform and struggled into his overalls, boots and leather jacket. He paused a moment, as he always did, to ponder his goggles and snug leather helmet. Vivid boyhood memories of Smilin’ Jack and Scorchy Smith reverberated within.
Then and now, Danny thought, I’m becoming what I want to be. Goggles and a helmet were the pilot’s symbols, and they’d been issued to him by the United States Army.
Last summer Danny had reported to San Antonio Aviation Cadet Center, an enormous and bewildering complex. Right next door was the preflight school, but there were obstacles to be overcome before a would-be pilot could move over there.
Danny took a battery of physical and psychological exams and along with the others waited nervously for the results to be posted along with the dreaded G.D.O.—ground duty only—list. There were plenty of washouts. During this period of tests and endless marching drills the candidates were asked to list on a scale of one to ten their preferences for assignments: bombardier, navigator, pilot. Danny crossed out the first two categories and boldly underlined the last. He intended to be a fighter pilot, and he didn’t figure he’d get there by being reticent about his intentions.
The first round of tests was over and the considerably thinned ranks of recruits could officially call themselves aviation cadets. They were moved across the field to tackle nine weeks of preflight instruction.
Danny discovered that preflight was very much like boot camp, only worse. In addition to the physical drills, surprise inspections, guard duty and KP there was classroom work in science, math, and physics and on military protocol.
Danny worked hard, and when the numbers and facts began to blur together and failure tried to close in, he thought about himself in his fighter, skimming the tops-right off the clouds, and redoubled his efforts. He was smart. He could do it if he tried. His only real fear was that he would fail the physical tests—the high-altitude chamber, for instance. His brain would not betray him, but what about his body?
When the day for the altitude test came, Danny was shaking with nervousness. One of the technicians noticed and almost pulled him from the line, but he talked his way into the chamber, which very much resembled a huge steel oil drum turned on its side. He took his place on the hard wooden bench. His oxygen mask muffled his prayers.
Danny made it through the altitude test and a week later squeaked by on Morse code. Those two tests alone wiped out a fifth of his class.
The next stop was primary flying school, Girder Field near Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Danny arrived there in October and was issued his flying gear, sheepskin-lined leather pants, a jacket and a special helmet that would allow his flight instructor to communicate with him when they went up.
The Fairchild PT-19 was a big, beautiful brute with sleek, low laminated wooden wings, a fabric-covered fuselage, two open cockpits and a two-hundred horsepower six-cylinder Ranger engine. The cadets were given a parachute procedure briefing and then a familiarization ride.
Danny would never forget his first time. The instructor took in the rear cockpit and the cadet sat up front. The plane had no electrical system; it started up by hand cranking—the cadet’s job. As soon as the engine caught, Danny stowed the crank and climbed aboard.
He plugged in to the communication system and heard his instructor say, “Sit back and enjoy the ride.”
The PT-19 began to taxi, and then speedballed down the runway, wheels rumbling, engine screaming, and took off.
The wind tore at his goggles and pulled back the corners of his mouth into a mad dog’s grin. Danny was mewling with fearful exhilaration as they banked and rolled through thin air. He found himself hanging from his seat straps. Earth was the sky, and the clouds were at his feet. He found himself pressed down into the cockpit as the plane clawed its way toward the sun, and suddenly the laws of physics and aeronautics made sense to him in a way they never had as equations on a blackboard.
After they landed Danny didn’t want to leave the plane. How could he endure being earthbound after that?
“Well, what do you think?” his instructor asked slyly.
Danny’s goggles were tear-streaked and his lips were dry, stretched, cracked. “I love it.”
“Tomorrow you fly,” the instructor drawled, and strode away.
“By the numbers. Brakes?”
“Set.”
“Control?”
“Free.”
“Gas on fuller tank and pressure up. Crank her up until that prop begins to roll.
“Taxi by making s-turns, and don’t hit those brakes too hard or you’ll put her right on her nose. Check the sky and then take her up.
“By the numbers. Fly straight and level. Make those turns without slipping and sliding. Watch your turn and bank indicator, cadet. The little black ball in the glass tube stays right in the middle if you do it right.
By the numbers. Stalls, both with power on and power off. The instructor would throttle back until the engine was idling and haul the control stick right into his crotch to get the nose up. Meanwhile, he’d be tap-dancing on his rudder pedals to keep her from swinging right to left. As the aircraft slows and its nose rises, there is no longer sufficient lift to keep it airborne. The control stick and rudders begin to float, and the aircraft trembles as if in anticipation—and then the stall. Push the stick forward into a nose dive, and once air speed is reattained, level off.
And then the instructor drawled, “It’s your turn.”
Every man got eight to twelve hours of dual instruction, and after that if you didn’t wash out the day would come when you demonstrated everything you’d learned to your instructor. Then he’d mutter something like, “I could use a cup of joe, so if you want to take a little spin around on your own, you might as well.”
And then you did, and most made it, though somebody always didn’t. If that unfortunate managed to parachute out, if he managed to walk away from it, if he didn’t crash and burn, he’d be a washout. Everyone would shrug and pretend they weren’t all pale and stricken and thankful it wasn’t them and echo what the instructors always said. “He wasn’t flying the plane; the plane was flying him . . .”
Following that solo was training in flying by instruments and the aerobatic maneuvers that are a fighter pilot’s stock in trade. A lot of cadets decided to be bomber and transport pilots at that point, and there were more crashes and burns.
By then it was November and the sky was grey cotton-wool, the cold awesome. Danny liked it that way. Nobody wanted to go up in weather like that, which meant there was always a plane available for anyone who wanted to rack up double flight hours—guys like him, the crazy ones, the would-be fighter pilots.
In November, after seventy hours in PT-19s, Danny and his class moved on to Independence, Kansas, and basic flying school. Here they would log more hours in the air, this time in North American BT-14s, bigger than the PT-19 and twice as powerful. There was more aerobatics, far more satisfying in the heavier, more powerful BT-14. There were long cross-country solos and more classes in protocol.
At the end of basic came the final cut. There were hundreds more volunteers for single-engine advanced training than the army needed, and most cadets would be assigned to multi-engine training. Danny crossed his fingers, he prayed and he triumphed.
His orders read Eagle Pass, Texas, single-engine training. When he left there it would be in a box, as a washed-out former cadet—a new buck private in the Army—or as a fighter pilot with gold bars on his shoulders and silver wings pinned to his chest.
Danny wandered on down the airstrip, looking for his instructor and the plane he’d be taking up. As usual it was an AT-6, but with one vital difference. Today Danny drew one with a forward-firing machine gun in its nose. He was going to get his first opportunity to practice aerial gunnery.
There would be five other cadets taking turns blasting away at the banner target towed by airplane above an empty field. Scores could be sorted out because the bullet tips of each cadet’s belt of ammo were painted an individual color. The paint ring on a bullet hole would later identify the shooter.
“How’s your eye doing?” Danny’s instructor said by way of greeting.
“It’s just a shiner.” Danny shrugged. “I can see okay.” He got it in a fight last week with some Georgia cracker who cornered him in the latrine and demanded to see his Jew’s horns. The guy got in his lucky punch to Danny’s eye and Danny managed to land a right jab on the cracker’s nose before they went into a clinch. The guy lost his footing, slipped on the wet floor and knocked himself out against the rim of a sink. That ended the fight and Danny’s most recent experience of anti-Semitism. There’d not been as much of it as he’d feared, but then, he was coming into the military at a relatively late date.
Since the fight he and the cracker had stayed out of each other’s way. Danny guessed all that noble stuff about guys having it out with their fists and then becoming the best of friends only happened in the movies.
“Well, you just remember to keep that shiner of yours on the turn and bank indicator. I don’t want you forgetting everything you’ve learned just because you’ve got yourself a gunsight to look through.”
“Yes, sir.”
“And don’t forget that you’ve only got a few seconds to make your approach, squeeze off a volley and get under the target.”
“Yes, sir,” Danny repeated a bit more impatiently.
The instructor scowled. “It’s just that this here airplane cost Uncle Sam a pretty penny and I don’t want some damn cadet cracking her up.”
Danny grinned. His instructor was a real tiger in the air and a good teacher, even if he was something of a mother hen at times. The two men shook hands, and then Danny climbed into the cockpit and took off.
He had done as much ground training as possible in preparation for this day. They all became expert skeet-shooters, the theory being that shooting clay pigeons would hone their ability to hit fast-moving enemy fighters.
Danny took his position in the spread rectangular flight formation a thousand feet above the target and waited for it to be his turn to attack, thinking back on what his father had written.
It seemed ironic that his father was praying for the war to end before his son got a taste of it. Danny was praying for exactly the opposite.
He was following the news and worrying himself sick over the possibility that he would never get to see action. The papers were full of stories about the thousand bomber armadas escorted by long-range fighters that had pounded Germany. General Eisenhower proclaimed to his ground forces, “If you see fighting aircraft over you, they will be ours.” A GI might cheer such words, but they were not the sort of thing a fledging pilot with dreams of being an ace wanted to hear.
The Luftwaffe was far from being broken, Danny knew; on New Year’s Day hundreds of German fighter-bombers had hurled themselves at the Allied airfields of Holland, Belgium and northern France in an attempt to shore up the crumbling German ground forces battling in the Ardennes. Since last summer they’d been sending up a new kind of plane, a jet, which flew without a propeller.
Nevertheless, Danny was in a race against time and time was winning out. If the war in Europe ended, he’d be out of it for good. There was no chance of his going to the Pacific. The Navy had retaken the Philippines and the sky was clear of Jap Zeros. There were still kamikazes to worry the aircraft carriers closing in on Japan, but with a British carrier force expected to lend a hand, there’d be no call for green pilots.
He peeled out of the flight formation and began his firing pass, steepening his bank to move his gunsight ahead of the target. He squeezed the trigger, felt the recoil tremor as the gun chattered, and then he was slipping beneath the towline before climbing back up to the formation.
He made ten passes that afternoon, and each time he wondered if this was as close to aerial combat as he was going to get.
They had a lot more gunnery practice and night flying and flying blind. The instructor would ride in the front cockpit to line up the craft on the strip’s center line. The cadet would be in the rear under a hood. The lesson to be learned was how to take off using only your instruments.
On Sunday, January fourteenth, the Eighth Air Force resumed large-scale operations after a month-long interval during the Battle of the Bulge. Oil targets in Germany were attacked and heavy enemy fighter forces were encountered.
Solo cross-country night flights with nothing but the radium dials of the instruments and the dragon roar of the engine to keep you company against the endless velvety darkness lorded over by a leering sliver of moon. Then more ground school, more classes in protocol.
On January twenty-sixth the Russians isolated German forces in Prussia only a hundred sixty-one kilometers from Berlin.
On January thirty-first elements of the United States First Army crossed the German border.
Six-turn spins, slow rolls and flying upside down; more gunnery practice and at last graduation time drew near.
On February fourth Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin met at Yalta in the Crimea. Germany, it was decided, would be divided into four zones of occupation.
It was traditional for instructors to take a final ride with their students just before graduation. As Danny expertly flew through the crisp February sky, his instructor spoke to him over the intercom.
“You’re one hell of a flier, Dan.”
“You might have been one hell of an ace—”
Might have been? No! Oh, no! Danny pressed the button on his mike. “I’m gonna graduate, aren’t I?”
“Of course you are, kid. You’re gonna get your gold bars and your wings, and we’ll even give you guys some P-40 training for old time’s sake. But none of you are going to war, kid. We just got the word. Chances are you’ll be mustered out before those wings even get tarnished.”
On graduation day Danny and the rest exchanged their cadet’s uniforms for officer’s garb. They pinned their new second-lieutenant’s bars onto their epaulets and stood at attention as they were presented with their silver wings.
Daniel Herodetzky, not yet nineteen years old, was a rated pilot and an officer in the Army Air Corps. He was saluted by enlisted men. He moved from the cadets’ barracks to bachelor officers’ quarters. He ate in the officers’ mess and drank in the officers’ club. As his instructor had promised, he received some flight time with a P-40, the shark-nosed fighter made famous by the exploits of Chennault’s Flying Tigers, a volunteer group in China.
And it was ashes to Danny because now it was just play. He could continue to read about the winding down of the war in the newspapers; they didn’t need him. Thanks anyway, kid.
He would not be going home like Smilin’ Jack, or good old Scorchy, but untested, untried, a cherry.
He’d never know if he could have been a hero, if he had what it took. He’d missed his chance to find out and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do to get that chance back again.