Green Flight, Out!

This story, written before the United States entered World War II, was sent to American Eagle in August of 1941, and was sold in September, but it did not see print in that magazine; it would first appear in the Fall 1943 issue of American Eagle’s companion magazine, Army-Navy Flying Stories. Apparently, there was a market for war stories in the United States even before Pearl Harbor, probably arising out of the sympathy many Americans had for Great Britain, then battling Nazi Germany as the lone survivor of the allies of the western front—a sympathy that led some Americans to volunteer with British and Canadian forces. Cliff was paid twenty-five dollars for the story.

—dww

The afternoon shadows were slanting across London when Flight Lieutenant Kermit Cary came out of the hospital.

But Cary did not see the shadows. Inside his brain was the picture of a head swathed in bandages. And hands, also bandage-wrapped, like huge white, clumsy boxing gloves. That and the smell of antiseptics, the lingering fumes of ether, the half-guessed aroma of pain.

He couldn’t wipe from his brain the mumbling voice that came from the swollen lips framed by the bandages, the futile, blinded groping of the awkward hands.

But more than that, he could not forget the half resentment, half embarrassment he had sensed from the figure that lay there in the room. Resentment that he, Kermit Cary, should have dared to come. Embarrassment—the embarrassment of a man shorn of physical abilities.

Cary shook his head, trying to shake away the things that lingered there, but they refused to leave. Perhaps he shouldn’t have gone. Perhaps he should have forgotten Reggie, the way he had forced himself to forget all the others. The others were dead, and Reggie still was alive, but—

He forced himself to say it. Reggie would have been better dead. Reggie already was dead as far as the things worth doing, the things worth thinking were concerned. Cary shuddered to think of what might be behind those shielding bandages.

A man who is pulled from a flaming plane usually doesn’t have much left to live for. People, Kermit Cary told himself, shouldn’t pull men from flaming planes.

He quickened his step, watching for a cab or some driver who might give him a lift to the airdrome. But there were no cabs, and the cars that threaded their way through the littered streets were loaded down.

Probably it had been wrong for him to go and see Reggie. If he hadn’t gone, Reggie would have understood that he was busy. A message would have done as well. But, no, he’d had to go—

For he and Reggie were all that were left—the last two men of the original roll of Number Six Fighter Squadron. The “Mad Yank,” they had called him back in those days, but no more. To these youngsters who had filled the places of those others, he was simply “Cary.” They were respectful, a little distant even, and they watched him too much.

Cary knew why they watched. He had caught scraps of conversation when he suddenly came into the mess.

“How long can Cary take it? Even if a man were made of steel—”

Things like that. Wondering when he would crack up. How long his luck would hold. How long his nerve could stay.

They guessed a little of it, of course. But they couldn’t guess it all. They didn’t know how it felt to be the last survivor of the original squadron. They didn’t know how it felt to see the others go down, one by one.

O’Malley over Dunkerque. Smythe and Chittenden blazing torches in the sky above Dover. Flight Lieutenant Welsh screaming down into the Thames. They didn’t know what it was like to see new faces taking the places of the old, hearing new voices where the old had been.

And above all, they could not guess the haunting terror the squadron’s last man must feel. The black nights of wondering if he himself might not have been the jinx that had sent the others plummeting to death. The all-gone sensation of knowing that one’s own luck is running thin. That one literally is living on borrowed time—

Brakes screamed beside Cary.

“Want a lift?” a voice said.

Cary suddenly came to life.

“Why, yes.”

“Which way?”

Cary told him.

“Take you right past it,” said the man.

Cary studied the driver. Obviously he was a clerk of some sort. Neatly but not too well dressed, a bit on the oldish side. Gray around his temples. Coat collar a little worn and shirt cuffs slightly frayed.

He could picture the man at home before the bombers came. A small house of his own with a flower garden. Probably roses. Yes, Cary decided, it would be roses.

“Have to hurry,” said the man. “Going to take the old woman and the kids out into the country again tonight.”

Cary nodded. “Might be wise at that.”

“A little hard sleeping,” said the man, “but we get along all right.”

The motor droned softly, sputtering a little now and then. Twice they stopped to pick up other pedestrians. Several times they were detoured by roped-off areas protecting time-bombs and debris-filled streets.

Cary relaxed, thinking, scarcely hearing the talk of the other three in the car. He was remembering the mumbled words that had come out of the bandage-wrapped face, the puffed lips scarcely moving.

“It was von Rausnig. I got one of his decoys, but he flamed me—”

He hadn’t asked Reggie why he hadn’t taken to the silk. There must have been a reason. Probably he’d tried to beat a crash. Probably he had tried to save the ship.

So it had been von Rausnig!

“They ought to start coming over in another couple of hours,” said the driver.

“Who?” asked Cary.

“The Jerries.”

“Oh, yes,” Cary agreed. “Undoubtedly they will.”

The driver left him off at his field a few minutes later. His flying mates had eaten when Cary walked in, and were lined up at the bar. They greeted him vociferously.

“Come on, Cary! Have a double. Looks like another night.”

“There’ll be a moon,” said young Harvey.

“Wonder if von Rausnig will be out tonight?” asked Derek.

There were sounds of disgust.

“Von Rausnig, the dirty coward! Always flies with two men on his tail so you can’t get at him.”

“Decorated by Hitler,” jeered Harvey. “For what?”

“Look, men,” declared Cary. “Von Rausnig is a good fighter. He knows his stuff. He doesn’t take the chances you chaps do. He always plays it safe. He doesn’t go batting off on hair-brained hero stunts.”

They hooted him good-naturedly and the mess corporal shoved a double brandy across the bar. Cary picked it up and drank, his mind whirling.

Von Rausnig, with twenty-three planes to his credit, the only Nazi flyer who carried distinctive markings on his plane. A cold, calculating fighter, a squadron leader. True, he always was tailed by two other flyers, but that was the smart way. No use of taking chances.

After all, no matter what the newspapers or the writers or anyone else might say, this Battle for Britain was no medieval war, no jousting of chivalric knights. It was cool, deliberate fighting with no holds barred, no quarter asked or given.

Von Rausnig, with twenty-three planes to his credit; no, twenty-four now. For it had been the Nazi ace who had shot down Reggie—

A batman was at Cary’s side.

“Pardon me, sir, but the dinner’s getting cold.”

Cary flared. “Throw it out the window.”

He shoved the empty glass across the bar.

“Another double,” he ordered.

He saw them looking at him for just a moment, and then their eyes moved away.

“Don’t you think you ought to have a bite?” suggested Derek softly.

“I know what I want,” snarled Cary. “I don’t want dinner. I want another drink.”

“Take it easy, old man,” urged Derek.

“Derek,” snapped Cary, “if you ever say that to me again, I’ll smack you flat.”

He seized the brandy glass and the liquor splashed upon the bar.

“I’ve been taking it easy for months now,” he said, and did not realize he was almost shouting. “I too it easy in France and over Dunkerque. I took it easy at Dover and between here and the Coast, when we fought the Jerries back from London. I took it easy when they came over and blasted the guts out of us here. And I’m still taking it easy!”

He realized there was silence in the room, an unnerving silence. He saw their faces, all their faces, uneasy and a bit embarrassed, staring at him.

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I don’t want a single one of you feeling sorry for me.”

He drained the brandy and, turning on his heel, marched off to his cubicle.

The rest stared at him in dull silence.

Darkness was sifting through the city outside the windows when the inter-squadron speaker blared its first orders of the night.

“Red Flight, all out! Red Flight, all out! Pilots of Red Flight! Green Flight stand by! Green Flight stand by!”

Cary hoisted himself from his bunk and stepped hurriedly into the mess. Green Flight was his.

The three members of Red Flight already were going out the door into the briefing room. Harvey and Derek were struggling into flying togs.

“Jerry’s starting early,” Derek grinned.

Cary grunted and sat down on an empty bomb-box, began pulling on his outfit. Outside, on the cab rank, he heard the thunder of the Spitfires. And far away, somewhere down in London’s East End, he heard the first rumble of the Ack-Acks.

The speaker gurgled and blared.

“Green Flight, all out! Green Flight, all out!”

The Red Flight Spitfires were now splitting the night wide open on the take-off.

“Come on, men,” snapped Cary and led the way into the briefing room.

Behind the desk sat the squadron leader, the three rings of gold braid on his sleeve gleaming dully in the lamplight.

“How are you feeling, Cary?” he asked.

“I’m feeling all right,” Cary growled and clumped outside.

Green Flight’s three Spitfires were waiting, trembling like great hounds held on the leash. The exhausts flamed softly, throwing a faint radiance on the ground.

The recording officer shoved papers into Cary’s hand, shouting to make himself heard above the blasting of the Merlins.

“Wave coming up the river,” he summarized. “High. Probably will shut off their motors and glide in. Watch sharp for them.”

Cary nodded.

Inside the ship, he pushed the hatch cover back into position and fastened his safety-belt.

“Ready, Derek?” he asked into the flap mike.

“Ready,” acknowledged Derek, his voice carrying the sharp edge of tension that Cary had heard so often before from so many other men. From O’Malley and Smythe and Chittenden. Reggie, too.

“Ready, Harvey?”

Harvey was ready.

The floodlight slapped down the field and the shadow bar was there to line up the take-off. Clearance flashed from the Aldis lamp. Cary shoved up the throttle knob and the Spitfire moved. Gaining speed, the three fighters thundered down the turf, fled into the black.

Cary, handling the ship almost by instinct, headed through the Notch, that narrow lane of clearance between the swinging cables of the barrage balloons.

“Keep tight,” he warned into the flap mike. “Stay close. Watch out for the kite strings.”

“We’re right on your tail,” said Harvey crisply.

A faint glimmer in the east told of the rising moon. A Nazi hunting moon.

Cary bared his teeth and rammed the throttle up the gate. The Merlin talked, talked with all its thousand thundering horses.

Cary’s altimeter said they were through the Notch, above the balloons. He glanced at the map strapped to his thigh and spoke into the mike, calling for an area. Observer corps gave it to him.

He snapped directions to Harvey and Derek and swung in an arc for Limehouse. The Thames embankment guns were barking, and the blackness of the sky was pricked with the sheet lightning of rifled Ack-Ack shells.

From far away came the crump, crump of exploding bombs. The phones in Cary’s helmet barked swift, terse orders at him.

The Spitfire was a little pool of light and instruments in a dark immensity. Far below, London was blacked out, but with gleams of light showing here and there. The guns still coughed and the crump, crump of the bombs continued. Man-made lightning flicked and flashed across the sky. Searchlights slashed up, crisscrossed, centered and held.

Under Cary’s hand the plane slashed across the night.

Then he saw them. Three, four, five dark shapes spotted by the lights. He screamed into the mike, and Derek and Harvey whooped back.

The Spitfire now was no more than a thing of tremendous power to hurl at those black shapes netted by the lights. More lights came up and ringed the invaders, sliding across them, keeping them marked.

Cary snapped off the safety and held his finger over the gun button on the stick. There were eight guns in the wings, eight deadly Brownings waiting for the signal.

One of the Dorniers loomed up in the stabbing light, nose pointed high, straining for altitude. Cary snapped the Spitfire at it and tightened his finger on the button. He saw his tracers flicker and spatter along one wing. Then the Dornier was gone, the Spitfire was tearing under it. Cary swung the plane into a stiff climb and looped.

Moonlight filled the cockpit and threw dancing shadows on the hatch cover. To the east, Cary could see the golden orb just creeping over the channel. Behind him a Dornier was flaming, writhing in a fiery death.

The rest of the Nazis were gone.

Thrumming through the night somewhere, heading for the French coast. Cary peered through the glass, trying to make them out. But they were nowhere to be seen.

Blind rage and humiliation shook Cary. He should have had that Dornier cold, yet all he had done was pepper a wing. The lights had set it up for him and he had missed.

“Cary! Green Flight! Cary!” said the phones.

“Here,” said Cary. “Who got that ship?”

“Derek did,” said Harvey.

Out of the corner of his eye he caught the sudden silvered gleam of the propeller coming at him from above. Instinctively he dived and rolled, then jerked the Spitfire into a climb. Here, far above the city, the air was molten moonlight, so white it seemed to have actual substance.

Cary wheeled his ship and saw the Messerschmitt climbing toward him. With teeth clamped shut, he nosed down, maneuvering for an attacking point. The Nazi dropped off and fled, Cary after him.

The Spitfire shivered to a sudden impact. The Merlin stuttered, and the instrument panel all at once was a mangled piece of wreckage. Instinctively Cary swerved, the stuttering engine screaming as if in pain.

Staring at the smashed dials, Flight Lieutenant Kermit Cary knew that he had fallen for a trick he should have recognized. The first Messerschmitt, after missing him, had not even tried to fight, had turned and fled, drawing his attention while another Nazi, from above, had dived and riveted itself on his tail.

Fighting in the moonlight is tricky under the best conditions. But, Cary told himself, he should have noticed that second ship, should not have fallen for the lure.

The Merlin was still stammering. When Cary tried to lift the Spitfire’s nose, it failed to respond properly. Its loggishness sent his heart into his boots. Swiftly craning his neck, he saw the Messerschmitt above and behind, straightening out for another burst.

Terror tightening his throat, Cary hauled the ship almost straight down, shoved the throttle to its limit. With the engine misbehaving, he knew the chance he took; knew that he might be unable to pull it out of the dive. But it was one way, the quickest way, to shake off the attacker. Once he dipped into the darkness untouched by the moon, he and his crippled ship would be hard to find.

But the realization of this possible danger was cut short by the abrupt presence of a greater one.

Flame licked out from under the engine cowling. First a tiny flicker, then a blinding sheet that swept over the hatch cover, curling and flaring at the paint.

With almost superhuman strength, Cary fought to bring the Spitfire out of the dive, protect the cockpit from the blasting fire. Under his frantic efforts the plane leveled slightly. With one hand still holding the stick, he shoved back the hatch cover with the other, and clawed loose the safety-belt.

Wind whipped at him furiously. Once the hot breath of flame washed toward him as he crouched for one split second, ready for the leap.

Then Cary jumped, far out, to clear the falling ship.

He plunged out of moonlight into blackness. Below him he heard the whining scream of the corkscrewing Spitfire, saw it burst into a gout of flame that trailed swiftly earthward.

He jerked the ripcord. The straps of the parachute rocked him when they took hold, and Cary swung in sickening arcs. Then he was wafting down, alone in the blackness of the night.

The Ack-Acks were quiet for the moment. The blast of the bombs was gone. But that, he knew, was only a breather. The Jerries would be back again. A moon like the one coming up over the channel couldn’t be wasted. Later in the night the lunar light would reveal every rooftop, every chimney pot in London.

The Spitfire was gone now, crashed to earth minutes ago, a molten wreck.

Cary shivered when he realized how close his escape had been. This had not been the first time the breath of death had blown past him. Once over Dunkerque, once at Dover—and other times. But each time of late, each time it had blown past, he had asked himself how much longer he could dodge its fury.

It seemed uncanny. Uncanny that he, Kermit Cary, should be living when all the rest had died. That shell splinter and bullet and aerial cannon had failed to spell his end. It seemed positively indecent he should continue to live—

In his mind’s eye he saw those others now. O’Malley, who deliberately had rammed a Nazi bomber when his ship had burst into flames, and carried the Jerry to earth with him. Chittenden, who had worn a silk stocking instead of a scarf around his throat. Welsh, who knew all the latest stories about Hitler, Goebbels and Goering.

And Reggie—Reggie, who lay in a hospital now, his head a ball of white, his hands huge, awkward boxing gloves.

Cary shut his eyes, in order to quit seeing them. Because he had to stop seeing them, had to stop thinking about them. He was slipping. He knew that. And some of the others knew, too. Or at least suspected.

He should have speared that Dornier. But he hadn’t. He should not have fallen into the Messerschmitt trap. But he had.

He was running to nerves. His liquor slopped on the bar whenever he lifted the glass. And he was snappish with the other men. That outburst tonight, for example. Maybe they would lay that to his being an American. Good Englishmen simply didn’t do things like that.

Shutting his eyes, however, did no good. The old ones were still there. Welsh, chuckling at his own jokes; O’Malley, clutching his pony of brandy with both hands; Chittenden laughing, the backwash from the prop whipping that ridiculous bit of silk about his throat.

Derek and Harvey lounged in the mess. Gray dawn was tinting the walls, spreading its wings over a battered, smoking London. Outside the last of the Spitfires was coming in. Yellow Flight.

They counted audibly as the ships came down. One. Two—There wasn’t any three.

The two fliers looked at one another, still waiting for the third. But it didn’t come.

“We had a bright moon,” Derek said wearily.

Harvey said nothing. After a moment, Derek lowered his voice.

“Are you sure about Cary? Sure he didn’t take to the silk?”

“I didn’t see him,” Harvey answered. “But the moonlight, you know. One can’t see so well.”

Derek nodded. “His Spitfire exploded. They found no sign of him.”

“It’s been coming on,” said Harvey. “He missed that Dornier clean.”

“He hit the wings.”

“Wings don’t count,” said Harvey, sourly.

Heavy footsteps slogged across the briefing room.

“Cary!” the squadron leader cried.

There was no answer and the feet slogged on. Cary stood reeling in the doorway, his parachute bundled under his arm.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he said. “I suppose you’ve been holding a post mortem. Premature, I would say.”

“That’s unfair, Cary,” snapped Derek.

Cary ignored the protest.

“How many times were you up tonight?” he asked instead.

“Five times,” Harvey told him.

“It was the worst night yet,” said Derek, in a mollifying tone.

“Who flew with you?”

“Saunders.”

Cary laid the parachute on the bar.

“Well, Saunders isn’t flying with you now. I’m flying with you. I tramped across the whole city of London—a city filled with bombs—so that I could. I even brought back the silk.”

“Sure, sure you’re flying with us,” Harvey assured him quickly. “We don’t want to fly with anyone else.”

“You know I missed the Dornier,” said Cary bleakly. “You know the Messerschmitts took me for a ride. Are you sure you want to?”

“Please,” evaded Derek, “stop being foolish, man. Everyone has his off nights.”

The speaker blared. “Green Flight, out! Green Flight, out!”

“That’s us,” snapped Cary. “Just let me grab another ’chute.”

“Good Lord, they expect us to go up again!”

“Sure, they expect us to go up again.” Cary wheeled on Harvey. “Haven’t you heard that we are short of pilots, short of planes?”

Harvey nodded tightly and started for the door. The squadron leader stopped Cary.

“Don’t you think you’d better—”

“Better let Saunders take them up?” said Cary bitterly. “You think I’m—”

“It’s his flight, sir,” said a voice. That was Saunders, standing by the desk.

“If you think you’re all right—” said the squadron leader uncertainly.

“Thanks, Saunders,” said Cary.

Outside the planes squatted in the pearly light of fast approaching day, their Rolls-Royce Merlins turning over.

“They’re out to break us today,” the recording officer shouted at Cary, shoving him the papers. “No let-up at all. They know we’re still short of men. They think they’ll wear us down.”

“Where are they?” Cary shouted back.

“Coming over the Thames Estuary. The boys along the coast had a go at them, but they broke through.”

Cary’s legs ached as he climbed into the cockpit. The long march across the city, detouring street after street where bombs had spattered buildings, crouching in doorways while H.E. rained down, had taken a heavy toll. And he was hungry. He needed a drink and a smoke, but there was no time for either. The Nazis were coming up the river. Someone had to stop them. Or at least try to stop them.

The Spitfires sprang down the turf and leaped into the air. In daylight, when one could see what he was dong, it was easy enough to take the notch.

Up they roared into the brightening sky. Once over the balloons they straightened out, streaking southeast. From other points other planes were rising, swift defenders bulleting to meet the invader.

Cary spoke briefly into his flap mike, was assured by the other two that everything was well. Below them the city still smoked. A few fires still burned redly, and a gray pall hung heavily over certain sectors where bombs had rained the thickest.

It was Derek, not Cary, who sighted the Nazis first, a mass of black dots outlined against the lemon and white of the morning sky. Savagely his Spitfire roared into a climb.

Cary watched the Nazis closely, satisfied at the altitude his flight had gained above them. The wave was not as large as some he had seen. Probably the boys along the coast had thinned it out.

Through the sky other Spitfires were burning up the air. Several flights were coming from the south and others from the north.

Cary rapped instructions into the flap mike, suddenly slid down the sky, his plane a silver streak of vengeance. Behind him came the other two.

The fighter formation below them broke and streaked in all directions, but Cary had marked one plane. Relentlessly he thundered down upon it. With two others, it tried frantically to dodge away.

The safety catch was up and Cary’s finger hovered on the button. Without checking his dive, he depressed the firing mechanism and the eight Brownings whipped leaden streams of hate into the Messerschmitt.

Below him the Nazi virtually exploded in mid-air, flying apart, hammered into bits by the slashing bullets. For a single instant it had seemed to shiver, then burst into a blast of flame.

Shrieking past the burning, smoking debris, Cary fought his ship out of its dive and streaked for altitude. But even as he did, he saw something that brought a cry of frosty anger from his lips.

One of the two remaining ships in the group of three he had attacked bore the flame-red death’s-head—the personal insignia of the dreaded Nazi ace, von Rausnig!

Thoughts screamed through Cary’s brain. Von Rausnig! The man who had sent Reggie down in fiery ruin. The man who had turned Reggie’s head into a ball of bandages. Who had robbed Reggie of sight and face and hands.

Black hate rose up to choke Cary, lay bitter in his mouth. One of van Rausnig’s defenders now was gone. Perhaps—

Cary whipped the Spitfire through the air with vicious purpose, until the ship groaned and protested at the handling. Another Messerschmitt screeched past him. Even above the roar of engines Cary could hear the pounding chatter of many guns as Luftwaffe and R.A.F. battled in the sky.

Von Rausnig was climbing now. Cary climbed with him. But through his hate of the man who rode the death’s-head plane sounded a warning, a memory of what had happened the night before.

Tossing a glance over his shoulder, Cary saw a Jerry diving at him. He rolled the Spitfire and snapped into a climb again. The Messerschmitt, undoubtedly the second of von Rausnig’s flight, plunged past and was lost in the shuttling battle below.

But the maneuver had lost Cary precious height. Von Rausnig’s plane was leveling off now, circling for position.

Then the Nazi was coming at him. Cary saw smoke drift from the guns, felt the storm of bullets strike the Spitfire. But there were no shattered instruments, no stutter in the motor. The blast had drilled his left wing. From where he sat, Cary could see the neatly bored holes the fusillade had made.

Von Rausnig’s ship snapped under him and up in a swooping arc. There was no room, no time now to turn for an attack, for the German had lost but little altitude.

Cary grinned tensely. Here was a man who knew how to fly a ship, a man who would not pass by a challenge. No matter what anyone might say of him, von Rausnig was no coward.

The sound of battle drifted up but faintly now. Cary and the death’s-head plane had climbed far above it, there to fight out their duel.

Cary swung to the east and spiraled up, watching the other closely. It was like a game of chess, he told himself. Maneuver and maneuver and maneuver. Get set for one blow, one good blow, for that was all it took. A battle for position, trying to set the opponent up for the final knockout punch.

How von Rausnig did it Cary never exactly knew, but suddenly the Messerschmitt was coming at him again, directly on his tail. Guns yammered thinly. The Spitfire shivered as slugs slammed into its tail and along the fuselage. Cary sideslipped, losing altitude but fighting to keep the nose of his plane well up.

His breath came out in a gasping sigh of relief as the machine handled to the slightest touch. None of the Nazi’s bullets had taken effect!

Von Rausnig screamed past and Cary, jaw tight shut, shrieked after him. With throttle all the way up, he plummeted after the Nazi ace’s ship, heart hammering in his throat, finger on the gun control.

Now he was in the right position, but at too long a range. If he didn’t get that blast in soon, von Rausnig would pull out of his dive and the chance would be lost.

The Merlin howled in fiendish glee as it hurtled the Spitfire down upon the Nazi. The wind screamed and whistled piercingly along the streamlined plane.

Cary felt blackness sliding in upon him. He sucked in his breath and tightened his stomach muscles. He simply couldn’t black out now. He had to hang onto his consciousness for a few more seconds until he was close enough.

The Nazi ship grew before his straining eyes, but not quite enough—

In the savage wind Cary seemed to hear a chuckling—the way Welsh used to chuckle at his Hitler jokes. The scream of split-open air no longer was a scream. It was the healthy laughter of a man who wore a stocking for a scarf.

Words seemed to ride with Cary in the cockpit now. Words with O’Malley’s old familiar brogue.

“Faith, and ye got him now, Yank! Ye got him where ye want him. Dip the nose a little lower and that will build the speed of ye—”

Only, of course, the words weren’t really there. They were just something that rang through a mist-filled memory—

Things were getting blurred and fuzzy, but the Nazi ship was larger now and directly ahead.

“Now’s the time, my lad,” said O’Malley’s quiet voice—and Cary clamped down the firing button and held it there.

Darkness rose to suffocate him but he fought it back, holding his finger down, remembering a head that was a ball of bandages, remembering flaming planes over Dunkerque and over Dover.

“That’s for O’Malley!” his mind was shrieking. “And that’s for Chittenden and that’s for Reggie—especially for Reggie—”

He heard faintly, as if from far away, the growling of the Brownings, the hammer of their bark. And suddenly where there had been a Messerschmitt, there was a gush of fire.

Only then did Cary release the button and jerk back the stick.

He blacked out, but only momentarily. When he fought his way back to consciousness, the Spitfire was zooming skyward and the battle was far away.

But below him, far below, a wavering plume of black smoke trickled down to earth. Cary waved a suddenly feeble hand at it.

The scream of the wind was gone now, and so was Welsh’s chuckle and his laughter. But it had been there and so had the voice in his ear—the old familiar voice of O’Malley, who had died long days ago.

Kermit Cary laughed at himself a little unsteadily. Funny ideas a man picks up at times, he thought. Or were they funny ideas?

He scowled slightly as he swung the ship for home.

“Thanks, fellows,” he said, to no one in particular.

But Cary knew, deep within himself, whom he was talking to. To those other men who had come out of bitter memory to ride the blazing sky with him.

He knew, with sudden clarity, that never again would he spend black nights wondering why he lived, while they had died. Never again would he try to forget them, and what had happened to them.

It wasn’t every flyer who had those who would come and help him when he needed them most.