CHAPTER TWO
THE RATE OF
ATTRITION

A woolly blanket of late winter fog, which had been lingering over the British Isles for two weeks, grounding the bombers, had finally moved east.

At Army Air Force headquarters in the suburbs of London, behind a broad glass-topped desk on which was a polished name plaque with the words, lettered in gold, . . .

MAJ. GEN. PATRICK E. PRITCHARD, sat a grizzled, sharp-eyed man who did not need the Command Pilot’s wings on his chest to identify him as a veteran airman. He was nearly bald, from wearing a flight helmet, and he had the look that accrues to some men after thousands of hours spent in a cockpit - hours that have instilled the habit of meeting emergen- cies, resourcefully. He was dictating an official report to his boss in Washington, D.C.

“By all rights”, he was concluding, “there should have been a constant morale problem this winter, because of losses, low re- placement rate, unflyable weather, and rugged living conditions. On the contrary, morale is strong, even in our Hard Luck Group, the 918th, where the rate of attrition has been higher than in the other Groups.”

Some eighty miles away, while the general was dictating, the first of the B-17s returning to Archbury from the day’s mission, to the submarine pens at Lorient, was banking into its final approach. Two ambulances sped toward the end of the runway in response to a red flare fired from the bomber, signifying that there were wounded aboard.

At one of the hard-stands, a crew chief and his assistant shaded their eyes toward the gliding Fortress with special con- cern, for they had identified the number on the tail. This was their ship.

With his free hand, the crew chief was holding the leash of a mournful-eyed Dachshund named Corporal Kesselring. His mas- ter, Lieutenant McKesson, the pilot of the incoming B-17, had started the Dachshund out as a private, but had recently promoted it to corporal, whereupon the animal had run away. The crew chief had found it that morning living with the mess sergeant.

“Boy! Will Lieutenant McKesson be glad to see Corporal Kesselring”, he said to the assistant crew chief. “But”, he con- tinued, squatting down and petting the Dachshund. “I’m afraid he’s going to bust you back to private, old fellow.”

The dog rolled its sad eyes up to the sergeant, then returned its eager attention to the runway. The sergeant lifted the animal up to the crew chief’s stand, where he hoped the pilot would spot his mascot sooner.

The Flying Fort settle down into a bumpy landing, rolling clean to the end of the strip, and taxied off a few yards along the perimeter track, to clear the way for the other returning B-17s in the landing pattern. Before the propellers had stopped turning over, both ambulances were alongside the nose, on which had been painted eleven bombs, one for each mission the aircraft had flown since the 918th’s first operation, two months earlier. While, over the waist hatch was the legend:

WHERE ANGELS AND GENERALS FEAR TO TREAD

Major Don Kaiser, Group Flight Surgeon, motioned the stret- cher bearers under the nose hatch and reached up to assist as the body of the pilot, Lieutenant McKesson, was lowered through the opening. The job was complicated by the fact that the man was a beefy six-footer and that he was resisting violently, the back of his head having been blown away and exposing his brain.

Examining the wound quickly, while strong but tender hands restrained the pilot on the stretcher, Major Kaiser turned to the navigator, Lieutenant Zimmermann, who had just dropped out through the hatch.

“How long since he was hit?”

“Over two hours ago”, replied Zimmermann. “Feels more like two hundred to me.” The flight surgeon whistled and shook his head.

“I wouldn’t believed it if I wasn’t looking at it”, he said.

“Easy with his right leg”, snapped Zimmermann, to a medical corpsman as the stretcher was being lifted into one of the waiting ambulances! “It’s broken below the knee. And, Major - some- body’d better sit on him. I’ve been holding him down for the past hour.”

Unheeded by the cluster of men around the ambulances, the second B-17 to land came hurtling down the runway with its brakes and flaps shot out, and approached the far end with no apparent deceleration. At the last moment, the pilot cut his port side engines, gunned his starboard engines, and ground-looped the big airplane off the concrete and onto the muddy turf, oppos- ite the first B-17, where it spun completely around before coming to rest, with its right wing crumpled. In a jiffy, all ten members of the crew, including Colonel Davenport, emerged.

“Everybody’s in one piece”, Davenport shouted to Major Kaiser! “Don’t bother about us!”

Kaiser waved back and was about to climb aboard the ambu- lance when Lieutenant Zimmermann put a detaining hand on his arm. To the flight surgeon’s practiced eye, which had noted and been impressed by the navigator’s stolid calm up to this point, it was obvious that something was now happening to the young man’s composure.

The Doc observed the color draining from Zimmermann’s swarthy cheeks and a suffering expression in his eyes, deep-set under jutting black brows and a low forehead.

“What do we do with an arm, Major”, he asked, as though the words couldn’t possibly be making sense? “We’ve got an arm in there - the top turret gunner’s.”

“Where’s the rest of him?”

“In a French hospital, I hope, sir. I bailed him out.”

The flight surgeon turned to a medical corpsman in the ambu- lance. “Give me a blanket”, he said, then to Zimmermann, “I’ll take care of it.”

He climbed up into the nose of the airplane and, in a few mo- ments, he reappeared. Zimmermann turned his back and looked the other way as the flight surgeon carried a long, slender object, wrapped in the blanket, over to the ambulance.

Then the ambulance pulled away and headed for the hospital, followed by the second ambulance, which had picked up three frostbitten gunners from the waist hatch.

In the B-17’s cockpit, Lieutenant Jesse Bishop, co-pilot at the take-off, but the airplane commander at the finish, was starting up the inboard engines in order to taxi the airplane to it’s hard-stand, when the assistant engineer tapped him on the shoulder.

“The truck’s waiting, sir”, he said. “Why don’t you let me taxi her in for you.” Bishop shook his head and said. “I’ve got it sergeant.”

At the hard-stand, Bishop remained in the cockpit for several minutes, laboriously filling out the Form One, ignoring the shrill barking of Corporal Kesselring below, where the crew chief still held him by the leash. Then Bishop made his way aft from the blood soaked flight deck, through the bomb bay, past the clutter of spent shell casings in the waist, tossed his parachute out the waist hatch, to the ground, and clambered out after it.

Zimmermann, his coveralls spattered with the drying, dark stains of another man’s blood, stood waiting for Bishop. Neither flyer said a word as they walked with deathlike lethargy to a jeep, which Zimmermann had flagged down.

“Let me off at the hospital”, said Bishop, then, noticing the chaplain’s cross on the driver’s collar, he added. “Excuse me, Captain. Could you please drop me there?”

“That’s right where I’m headed for myself”, responded Chap- lain Twombly, a strong featured officer who looked more like a squadron commander than a man of the cloth. He had made a point of being accepted as one of the guys and had succeeded rather well.

“You’re always the first person I spot”, said Zimmermann, as they drove off, “out there on the perimeter track when we’re on final approach.”

“I believe that’s where I ought to be”, said the chaplain.

He pointedly avoided any questions about the mission, wait- ing for his passengers to talk of their own accord.

“How did you make out in the poker game last night”, inquir- ed Zimmermann, after a pause? “The church”, responded the Chaplain, “won three pounds ten.”

He smiled as he replied, but his thoughts were grim.

Before leaving the perimeter track, the jeep passed a B-17 that was just disgorging its crew. The first man out kneeled down and kissed the ground.

Glancing back at Bishop, Chaplain Twombley said:

“The ground feels pretty good after a mission, doesn’t it?”

Bishop ignored the question. He had removed his flight helmet and the wind was ruffling thought his thick yellow hair, matted above his forehead with sweat. His vividly blue eyes had a glazed stare and his young face was a gaunt mask, as if from a sudden encroachment of old age.

He passed his fingers through his hair, rubbed his eyes with his balled fists, and stroked the skin of his cheeks where the re- cent grip of the oxygen mask still itched. When he pulled a cigarette from a pocket of his flying coveralls he tried to light it from a book of matches.

The Chaplain noticed that the young man’s hands began shak- ing with a course tremor, as he failed to get a light after three tries, merely burning the side of the cigarette paper.

“High octane”, said the Chaplain, as he slowed the jeep down and produced a storm light that flamed like a blow torch.

Bishop got his cigarette lighted and continued to stare blankly ahead, without thanking him, but Twombley felt rewarded that he had been able to do something, anything, for this pilot, who’s terrifying day’s work had so visibly congealed him. To the Chap- lain, this disheveled, unutterably weary twenty-one-year-old boy was a sacred thing - a tragic human sacrifice, condemned by the proved superiority of his body and character, to bear the maxi- mum load that could be placed upon each.

When the jeep reached the site of a group of large, intercon- necting Nissens that comprised the station hospital, Bishop jump- ed out and walked quickly to the door with the Chaplain, disapp- earing inside. And then, in less than a minute, he reappeared and nodded to Zimmermann.

“He’s had it, Heinz”, he said, with simple irrelevance. “Son-of-a-bitch”, said Zimmermann.

The words were reverent the way he spoke them.

Bishop started off down the road, his hands in his pockets, his feet shuffling.

“Hey, Jesse”, called out Zimmermann! “Where you going?” Bishop didn’t turn around and just shot back, “the club.”

“What about Interrogation”, called out Zimmermann, again, in a tone which declared that a man didn’t skip Interrogation any more than he would skip a Briefing for a mission.

“To hell with it”, shouted Bishop, over his shoulder.

He entered the lounge of the Officers’ Club, which was empty except for a corporal, who was setting out glasses at one end of the bar. As Bishop approached, the corporal smiled apologetical-ly.

“I’m sorry, sir”, he said. “Bar’s not open for half an hour.”

“Give me a Scotch. A double one.”

“I’d like to, Lieutenant. But those are my orders.”

“On second thought”, said Bishop, as if he hadn’t heard the corporal, or didn’t care, “make it a double-double.”

“You’ll have to wait, sir”, persisted the soldier, who was anxious not to antagonize the officer. “It won’t be long”, he added.

But Bishop showed no irritation, nor any awareness of his surroundings. He leaned one elbow on the bar.

“I heard it snap - like a dry stick”, he said, dreamily. “How’s that, sir”, asked the corporal, puzzled.

“His leg”, said Bishop.

The corporal scrutinized Bishop with uncertainty. He couldn’t help noticing the resemblance between the features of this dog- tired combat man in front of him, and the pilot in a colored post- er on the wall by the bar. The poster showed a rosy cheeked, al- most girlishly handsome, smiling youth, posing in flying clothes for an aircraft manufacture’s ad, which bore the slogan:

“Who’s afraid of the New Focke Wulf?”

Underneath was the penciled notation: “I AM”, followed by the signatures of all the pilots in the 918th, with Colonel Daven- port’s at the top. The corporal, glancing again at the sweet-faced boy in the ad, thought: That’s the way this guy must have looked back home. But look at him now.

“Pour the drink”, said Bishop, suddenly, in a flat voice.” The corporal squinted at the clock.

“That clock’s been slow - once before, that I know of”, he said. “I guess I can take a chance.” He went over and set the clock ahead a half hour.

“Soda?”

Bishop nodded and watched closely while the bartender pour- ed a double-shot into a glass, filled it with soda, and handed it to him. He took a swallow.

“I sure wish you could get ice over here”, remarked Bishop, absently. “You could hear it snap, like a stick”, he continued. “I had to yank hard.”

“I just came from the sack, sir”, the corporal said. “Did we lose any this afternoon?”

“Any? Don’t you mean how many did we lose! Are you new around here? He took a second swallow of his whiskey and soda.

“We lost four”, he said, “four that I know of. The usual num- ber. And everybody else caught a working over.”

“Four”, said the corporal, shaking his head. “It don’t hardly seem right.”

Bishop carried his drink across the room and set it on top of a scarred, upright piano. He ran his fingers over the yellowed key- board, then struck the opening crashing chords of the Warsaw Concerto, a new favorite in England. While the room began to fill with the music spurting from Bishop’s fingers, a captain came in, stood and listened for a moment, then went over to the bar.

“I’m looking for Lieutenant Jesse Bishop”, he said. “Couldn’t find him at Interrogation.” “I guess that’s him”, said the corporal.

The captain ordered a mug of beer.

“From what his crew told me”, the captain continued, “he’s due for a Medal of Honor. Boy, what a story!”

He paused to listen to Bishop’s playing. “And he’s some musician, too.”

“Yeah. You ought to see it when the place is full. They even turn off the radio and everybody shuts up”, said the corporal.

The captain walked over to Bishop and placed a hand on the young lieutenant’s shoulder. “Mind if I interrupt you for a minute”, he asked?

Bishop struck a sharp chord in an off key, stopped playing, and looked up. The captain stuck out his hand.

“Reynolds, Public Relations, Bomber Command”, he said. Bishop made no move to shake the man’s hand.

“I know this is no time to bother you, but they gave me a hell of a story on you at Interrogation, and if you can spare me just five minutes, I can button it up. Incidentally, congratulations -”

“We’ve got a Group P.R.O.”, said Bishop. “Go talk to him.”

“That’s not the same. Believe me, these personal-interest stories do more good back home than -”

“We’ve still got a Group P.R.O.” The two locked eyes.

“Listen, Lieutenant, I hate this job. But, just the same, it is my job to get your story.” Bishop reached for his glass, took a drink, and swung around on his stool.

“Okay”, he said, “I’ll give you a story. This Group has been shot to hell. We’ve got a swell Group Commander, but can he turn fog, rain and clouds into weather good enough to fly format- ions through, and bomb through? Can he order up new aircraft and fresh crews when nobody gives him any? According to my home town newspaper we’re making fifty-thousand aircraft a year. Where are they?”

He interrupted himself to glance, with some irritation, at the beer mug which the captain had rested on the mantelpiece.

“Would you mind taking that beer mug off the mantel?” “Sure.”

The captain shrugged, swallow some beer, and put the mug on top of the piano.

“Give us another month”, continued Bishop, resuming his out- burst, “and we’ll put up a maximum effort of one B-17.”

The captain sipped his beer “You know that’s not the story I want”, he said. “I understand how you feel, but -”

“You do, do you? That’s fine. Then go down and have a look at the battle damage from today’s strike. Talk to the line chief, Sergeant Nero, and ask him how long it’s going to take to patch up holes you can drive a cleat track through - without enough parts, or tools, or maintenance men. Just plenty of mud, Then go to the other bases and ask them if they’re any better off. And then go back to your boss and ask him who dreamed up the cockeyed idea that we can bomb Europe from this cranberry bog. If you don’t believe me, you ought to hear Colonel Daven- port, off the record. He feels the same way.”

“I’ll tell you what”, said the captain, in a soothing tone. “I’ve got a photographer right outside. We’ll forget the story for now, but let me get just one shot of you.”

“Why don’t you drive over to the hospital and get just one shot of the back of Lieutenant McKesson’s head?”

The captain absentmindedly placed his beer mug back up on the mantelpiece.

“I asked you before”, said Bishop, “to set that beer mug down somewhere else.”

“For God’s sake”, responded the captain, anger beginning to get the better of him, “what is this mantel? An alter, or some- thing?”

“Just put it down somewhere else.”

“You like to give orders, don’t you, Lieutenant?”

“Haven’t you desk-jockeys got anything better to do than come down here and heckle people? Why don’t you go back to PINETREE and start a softball tournament, or something.”

“Any other suggestions, Lieutenant?”

“Yes. Take a powder, before you miss the high-tea hour at Bomber Command.”

“All right, Lieutenant. I can get piss’d off, too. I didn’t come down here to ask you guys for anything. I’m trying to do some- thing for you - to get you the recognition you deserve. But, if you don’t have enough pride in your own outfit to co-operate with -”

Bishop sprang to his feet at the word “outfit”.

“You’ve said enough”, he cried, “you silly-looking son-of-a- bitch.”

He drove his fist hard into the captain’s jaw, knocking him back several feet. The captain absorbed the punch without going down, flushed deep red, he raised his own fists, and then slowly dropped them to his sides.

“Thanks”, he said, slowly, “Mister Combat Fatigue.”

He held Bishop’s burning stare for a moment before turning on his heel and walking out the door, all the while rubbing his chin. Bishop reached for his glass with a shaking hand, noted that it was empty and walked to the bar where he ordered another drink from the wide-eyed corporal.

As Bishop was swallowing the first sip, the 918th’s Air Exec., Lieutenant Colonel Ben Gately, entered the lounge. He went over and picked up Colonel Davenport’s green Toby from the radio cabinet and carried it to the mantelpiece, where he carefully placed it in the center.

Bishop stared across the top of his glass at the Toby and then, in one lunging motion, he swept his hand down the whole length of the short bar, sending glasses and bottles crashing to the floor. Gately, too startled to move, watched as Bishop lurch past him and out of the club.

Lieutenant Heinz Zimmermann, still in his flying coveralls and leather jacket, but with his black hair slicked down with water in testimony of a hasty effort to tidy up after his summons over the Tannoy loudspeaker system to the Group Adjutant’s office, braked himself to a halt before Major Stovall’s desk, and uncorked a vehement salute. Stovall returned the salute, but did not motion the apprehensive lieutenant to an empty chair, an omission which, even more than the Adjutant’s icy expression, told Zimmermann that his superior was boiling mad.

“Well, Zimmermann”, he demanded, removing his glasses, “what’s behind that brawl at the Officers’ Club?’

The lieutenant’s face, with its heavy Germanic bone structure, was capable, at times, of looking stupid. But now he looked pos- itively oafish, as he glowered back at Stovall.

“You mean last night, sir”, he groped. “Between Major Cobb and Dean?” “No, I don’t. I mean your roommate, Lieutenant Bishop. A half hour ago.”

Zimmermann stared back, disbelievingly, at Stovall, as the latter continued. “He called a visiting superior officer a dirty name and socked him.” Zimmermann looked bewildered and amazed.

“Why, I can hardly believe that, sir”, he said. “I’ve never heard Jesse use a cuss word. He doesn’t know any. He’s a clean kid in every way.”

His voice assumed a confidential note as he sought to regain his ordinarily friendly footing with the Adjutant.

“Fact is, Major”, he continued, “I don’t think he’s ever even had a piece in his life.” Stovall harrumphed, then frowned.

“I’m not interested in his sex life”, he said. “But I am inter- ested in why he blew his top.” “I can’t understand Jesse doing a thing like that. It’s not like him, sir.”

“I’m getting sick and tired of these fights in the club”, said Stovall. “Half a dozen in the past week. If necessary, I’m going to close that goddamn bar permanently.”

He picked up a paper clip and bent it back and forth several times, angrily, between his fingers. “This one”, he resumed, “I’d like to settle without bothering the colonel. He’s got enough grief.” He stared at Zimmermann’s honest, troubled features, as he felt his hot temper beginning to cool.

“I don’t know why I’m taking things out on you, Heinz”, he said. “You didn’t have anything to do with it - I just thought you could help me. Bishop flatly refused to say a word. I finally had to send him back to his quarters.”

“Then that’s where I’d better go”, responded Zimmermann. “I never should have left him alone.” He moved as if to leave.

“Not so fast, Lieutenant”, said Stovall. “Here, have a seat. Tell me what’s behind that kind of outburst, from the gentlest person in this Group.”

Zimmermann sat down, reluctantly.

“Jesse’s had three rugged ones in a row, sir”, said the naviga- tor, hesitantly. “And today’s was the worst.”

“The topper?”

“That’s what I mean, sir.”

“I heard that McKesson got it today”, said Stovall. “But I don’t know any of the details.”

“Well, sir”, started Zimmermann, in a dull, tired voice, “we were crossing the enemy coast when a bunch of 190s hit us out of the sun, from TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH. I thought they’d got- ten us on the first pass, because there was an explosion in the cockpit, just above my head, that shook the whole ship. I turned around just in time to see the top-turret gunner slip down through the flight deck hatch and fall to the floor at the rear of the nose compartment, screaming at the pilot to land - right now.”

He gulped, then continued.

“His right arm was blown off at the shoulder and he was spouting blood all over himself, and on the inside of the ship. I tried to give him a shot of morphine, but it was forty below zero at twenty-five thousand feet when I took my gloves off. I bent the needle and couldn’t get it in. I couldn’t tie a tourniquet on him, either, because the arm was off too close to the shoulder. I bandaged him the best that I could, but he had to have medical attention right away.

With no oxygen and three hours of flying ahead, I knew he wouldn’t make it. So I put his parachute on with the ripcord in his good hand and I dumped him out the nose hatch, hopeing that the French would rush him to a doctor. His chute opened okay.

“Did he know what it was all about?”

“Yes, he knew, but he was game. Do you mind if I smoke, sir?”

The Adjutant handed him a cigarette, which Zimmermann lit with steady fingers. Then Stovall waited patiently for him to continue.

“What about Bishop”, he inquired finally?

“I’m getting to that, sir”, said Zimmermann. “All this time the ship was gyrating around in the formation, but I figured it was violent evasive action. The bombardier had been busy with the nose guns and then he was getting set to toggle his bombs. The target area was pouring up smoke and we clobbered it with a few more eggs, right down the middle.

Then we went back to our nose guns, but most of the attacks were coming from the rear. The innercomm was shot out, but I learned latter that all the gunners, except the ball turret, had passed out from lack of oxygen when the system was shot out in the first attack. Finally, when we were starting back across the Channel, I went up to check with the pilot and look things over.”

Zimmermann took a deep drag out of his cigarette.

“I found Lieutenant McKesson slumped down in his seat with one foot jammed in the damaged pedals. He was sitting in a mess of blood and the back of his head was shot off. It had happened almost two hours previously, when the FWs made their first pass.

A 20 millimeter had entered the right side of the windshield in front of Lieutenant Bishop, shattering it. It missed Jesse but split open the back of Lieutenant McKesson’s skull. We were flying number two in the formation, so he would have been looking to his left.

What Jesse told me was that McKesson fell forward over the controls, wrapping his arms around the wheel, and causing the ship to nose down sharply, smack into the middle of the low squadron. Bishop grabbed the controls from his side, avoided a collision, and pulled back into formation. He did it by brute force against the struggling of McKesson, who was half conscious - and Mac had plenty of muscle.

With no innercomm Jesse couldn’t call for help. And he thought that the waist gunners, the radio, and the tail gunner had bailed out because their guns had ceased firing, but he kept on to the target.

McKesson couldn’t see, and he didn’t know what was going on, but he never stopped fighting the controls by instinct. Bishop couldn’t see out, either, thought the shattered windshield, except straight up and out to the sides. He had been keeping one arm crooked through his own control wheel to fly the ship and stay in formation. Meanwhile, he’d been continually pulling McKesson off the controls with his other hand.”

Zimmermann paused, took another drag from his cigarette, then continued. “Jesse told me he couldn’t see well enough to land from his side and we’d have to move Mac out of his seat. It took at least fifteen minutes, with McKesson fighting us all the way. Bishop finally had to reach down and jerk Mac’s leg sideways to pull it free. He couldn’t help breaking the leg.

Finally, one of the gunners revived enough to help me get McKesson down into the nose compartment. Where I had to hold him down until we got back to the field. Another gunner helped Bishop by lowering the gear and flaps, and we landed okay. Now I guess I’d better get back to the quarters and see how Jesse’s making out.”

Zimmermann stood up and saluted the major. Stovall cleared his throat twice before he could speak.

“I’ve been spending too much time behind this desk, Heinz”, he said, returning the young man’s salute. “Tell Bishop not to worry. I’ll cook up some kind of official reply that should sat- isfy those bastards up at PINETREE.”

After Zimmermann had left, Stovall leaned back in his chair, feeling numb and a little nauseated. His mind tried to cope with the enormity of what he had just heard.

He projected himself back to the familiar surroundings of his home in Columbus, Ohio. To a world where a man who could knock a baseball out of the park was a hero, and where the collis- ion of an auto and a streetcar was of front page interest. And then he tried to reconcile the coexistence of that normal world he had left, with this strange world of Archbury. Where the same breed of human beings lived through such utterly fantastic exper- iences as Bishop’s, this morning.

He recalled the occasion during World War One, when he had driven his bayonet through a German soldier. And how he felt at the time, that he had survived a supreme test of his moral fiber under stress. But how could he compare that act with the feats of Bishop, during his hours long ordeal?

He found himself thinking about Colonel Davenport in a kinder light. For some time now he had been increasingly critical in his own mind, of the colonel’s leadership. From his standpoint as the adjutant, ever conscious of the regulations and immersed in reports, the 918th had been steadily sliding downhill. Salutes were a rarity, quarters were dirty, uniforms slovenly, discipline lax, and griping universal. And Davenport seemed to overlook it, failing to call the Squadron Commanders in and rack them back. But how could Colonel Davenport be expected to be bothered about things like that when he was concentrating on operations, on the desperate struggle for survival in the air?

A flood of shame came over Stovall, as he recalled how suc- cessfully he had insulated his thinking from the realities of oper- ations, content to plug along in his own rut. Little wonder that the crews switched the conversations to nonflying topics when- ever he, the ground-pounder, the retread ground officer from another war, joined a group at the club. He told himself that he must do better.

He picked up his pen and began signing a new batch of Per- sonal Effects inventories, nearly all of which had omitted certain small items: a love letter from a girl in London, overlooked in a back pants pocket, which could stab a young widow’s already broken heart. A contraceptive, in the side pocket of a nineteen- year-old gunner’s blouse, which could further sadden a mother’s tragedy. These things Stovall always scrupulously removed.

Then, at the sound of crunching tires near his window, he glanced out in time to watch Colonel Davenport climb out from his car, his face darker than usual with dejected exhaustion.

Davenport had just finished a quick tour of the station, after Interrogation, during which he had inspected the bomb dumps, the worst of the battle damaged aircraft, and the repair hangers. He scraped the mud off his shoes with a stick, then went directly to his office, where he found the Air Exec and the Flight Surgeon waiting for him.

“The warning order just came down”, said Gately. “Snafu’d as usual. It says that we’re the low Group at nine thousand feet.”

Davenport looked at the sheet of teletype and frowned.

“They must mean nineteen thousand”, he said. “That’s bad enough, but nine thousand is what those flak gunners dream about. I’ll call PINETREE about it. Any other good news?”

“Yes”, said Gately.

He was a slender, spruced up uniformed West Pointer, with a thin mustache, brown eyes, and a dissipated look.

“I broke your number three iron”

He indicated the golf club on the colonel’s desk.

“Nice going”, said Davenport. “When did you find time to do that?” “You know me”, remarked Gately, casually, “I always get in my one hour of physical training, as per orders. I busted the club after Pamela beat me on the last hole this morning.”

Davenport controlled his annoyance.

“I’ve just come from the line”, he said. “Sergeant Nero thinks we can put up eighteen tomorrow, with some luck. But there won’t be any spares. How about crews?”

“We’ve got twenty-three”, said the Air Exec, “but half of ‘em have been going for the last four days in a row. They’ll be asleep at the Briefing tomorrow. Isn’t that right, Don?”

He turned to Major Kaiser.

“Can’t be helped”, said Kaiser, a little curtly.

Davenport glanced from his Flight Surgeon back to Gately.

“Better get back to Ops, Ben”, he said. “I’ll be over as soon as I find out about that altitude.” After the Air Exec had gone, Davenport asked Kaiser.

“You think Gately’s all right to fly tomorrow?”

“Yes, sir”, said Kaiser. “His cold is no worse than plenty of others that are going to fly, but he asked to be grounded again”, his voice was eloquent with disapproval.

Davenport scratched his head and tapped a pencil on his desk, striving to reach a decision. “What did you tell him”, he asked?

“Frankly, sir, I couldn’t justify excusing him on any medical grounds.”

Davenport sat down heavily behind his desk, his mind busy with a battle he had fought many times. He had ample reasons for firing Gately. The man was trying to coast through an easy war, crowding in all the tennis, golf, women, and social life that were consistent with a nominal discharge of his duties.

Since the Group’s arrival in England, he had logged more hours at a card table in the Officers’ Club, cleaning up off junior officers, than at the controls of a B-17. Whenever Gately led a mission, he usually aborted with mechanical trouble or turned back on account of weather.

But, on the other hand, Davenport always recoiled from the prospect of relieving him. As an experienced staff officer, he was useful in many ways.

Davenport admitted, to himself, that he didn’t like to delegate much authority where operations were concerned, and Gately wasn’t the aggressive type of Air Exec who might have gotten in his hair. Furthermore, there was the matter of Gately’s three-star general father on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This war wasn’t go- ing to last forever, and there was the future to think about.

He looked up and saw the Flight Surgeon’s eyes on him, questioning.

“Well, Don”, he started, “I honestly don’t know why I haven’t relieved him. He’s only led two missions that counted. He’s weak in the air and, what’s more, he knows it. But he’s a good staff officer and he takes a big load of the details off me on the ground. Hell, if I asked for a replacement, I’d probably get some cast-off that was even worse.”

“If you keep him, Colonel”, said Kaiser, “I don’t believe it’s advisable to condone his grounding himself against my repeated recommendations.”

“I’ll have to be the final judge of that”, responded Davenport. The stocky Flight Surgeon braced himself.

“Colonel”, he said, “you and I have got to wrestle this thing out. May I speak bluntly, sir?” “Go ahead.”

“I’m a doctor and a psychiatrist. As such, I am responsible to you for the mental and physical health of your combat crews. All of them are suffering from a greater or lesser degree of anxiety and stress. Acting only as a doctor, it would be simple for me to remove the cause of the emotional disturbance immediately . . . by grounding the lot of them.

But, I am also an Army officer and I am obligated to the fur- therance of the military mission. Therefore, I cannot ground a man until I am convinced that he has reached the limit of his cap- acity - or that a very little further stress will make him dangerous to the success of the next mission, or to the lives and safety of his crew and aircraft.

There is only one honorable way out for most of these men, except the completion of a full tour of duty. And that is injury or death..”

“I’m aware of all that”, said the colonel. “What’s your point?”

“Briefly, this. I believe that the policy in this Group has given too many individuals an out. They have learned that even after I have certified them fit to fly, they can trot around to the front office and be excused. As a result, we have too many men in the hospital or sick in quarters.

Too many men who think they can’t fly above ten-thousand feet. Too many cases of frostbite and, incidentally, I am opposed to awarding any more Purple Hearts for frostbitten hands. It’s too much of a temptation to a gunner, who’s getting shaky, and sees an easy way to hospitalize himself for several months. I don’t believe that my viewpoint is cold-blooded. I just believe that the colonel has been over lenient.

Gately is the main case in point because he sets an example for the others. And I feel that it is my duty to make a stand about him.”

Davenport, spots of color on his cheekbones, stood and paced back and forth, hands thrust deep in his pockets. He turned to Kaiser.

“Gately is my business”, he said, “but Lieutenant Campbell is yours.” “What about Campbell, sir?”

“He did a swell job of leading the low squadron today”, said Davenport. “But he won’t ever lead it again. Somehow, nobody noticed that he wasn’t with his crew at Interrogation today, until it was almost over. They looked for him at his quarters and at the club, but couldn’t find him. Finally the bombardier went back to the aircraft, twenty minutes ago, and found him still sitting in the cockpit. He never left it.”

“Was he injured?”

“No. He was just sitting there, whistling and singing ‘Old Man River’. And he was just as happy and carefree as a bird.”

Gradually the words sank in on Kaiser. “Gone nuts”, he asked?

“Completely”, said Davenport. “His mind was gone.”

“I must take the blame for Campbell”, said Kaiser, in a crush- ed voice. “I should have seen it coming.”

“That’s just it”, shot back Davenport! “How can you tell?” He made another circuit of the floor.

“You think I’m too lenient. But somebody’s got to stand up for these boys. Up at PINETREE they’re just a bunch of num-

bers on a blackboard. To me they’re flesh and blood. How can the military mission succeed if you demand the impossible of human beings?”

There was knock on the door and then an enlisted man entered carrying a tray with a coffee pot and several cups on it. Daven- port eagerly poured two cups of black coffee and drank half of his own in one gulp.

“That’s getting to be your regular diet, isn’t it, Colonel”, com- mented Kaiser, glad for the interruption? “Coffee and cigarettes. Your diet last night and again tonight, And you haven’t had your clothes off for three nights.”

“I can take it”, said Davenport. “But how long do you think these boys can take it? Like Jesse Bishop. Operations tells me he flew unassisted for two hours today with a fatally wounded pilot fighting the controls - before that Heiny navigator, Zimmer- mann, went up to help him.”

“Yes, I know. I admit it was a miracle.”

“And that’s what they want up at Bomber Command, isn’t it”, said Davenport? “Miracles.” “They’re getting them, too”, said Kaiser. “We’re finding out every day that a man’s tolerance for severe stress is unbelievably high.”

“And I suppose you’d okay Bishop to go again tomorrow?”

“If he’s medically all right in the morning, yes. Because, once I start grounding a man after a rugged mission, you won’t be able to get a single aircraft off the runway. They’d all rather go to London than to Lorient.”

As Davenport listened to the Flight Surgeon his face grew bleaker and grayer. “You’re back on that same phonograph record”, he said.

“I can’t help it, Colonel. When we have enough replacements to keep the Group up to strength, I’ll favor more liberal use of rest homes. There’s a lot about combat fatigue we’re still learn- ing. But, if we go soft now, when we need every crew, the 918th will be out of the fight.”

“I know, I know”, said Davenport, beginning to lose his pati- ence again. “I’m tired of arguing with you. And I’ve got to get on the phone. So, if you’ll excuse me.”

“Yes, sir”, said Kaiser.

As he started to walk out, the doctor stopped halfway to the door for one more try. “You’ll rest up tomorrow”, he said, hopefully, “and send Gately?”

“Goddamit, NO”, yelled Davenport! “It’s a target I can’t del- egate to anyone else - certainly not Gately. Now beat it and let me run this Group.”

Davenport picked up his scrambler phone and called Colonel Savage at PINETREE. “Do you mean GENERAL SAVAGE”, asked the clerk at the other end?

“Since when?”

“Since yesterday, sir. One moment.” Savage came on.

“How’s it feel to be a general, Frank?”

“It worries me plenty. I must have bitched something up royally to get a star for it.”

“Not necessarily. But anyway, nice going. Say, Frank, I want to check an error in the Field Order. It said nine thousand.”

“That’s right. It’s no error.”

“But crimeny, Frank, that’s murder. Which side are you guys fighting for?”

“We haven’t been getting enough hits from high altitude.. So, just once, we’ve got to go in low. Then we can say we’ve tried everything.”

“You sure can.”

“We agree with you that it sounds like non-habit-forming tactics. But there’s only one way to find out.”

“And another thing - why are we the low Group again?” “A toss of the coin.”

“Well, maybe you need to get a new coin”, said Davenport, with exasperation. Davenport paused to pour himself another cup of coffee.

“You know we took a beating again today”, he continued. “I can’t even put a full Group in the air tomorrow.”

His voice rose out of control, so that Stovall, in the next room, couldn’t help overhearing him. “When are you going to give us a break? Nobody can keep this up. I’m asking you right now to let us stand down for a few days.”

Savage didn’t answer immediately. Then he said:

“I admit I’d be unhappy in your shoes, Keith. But do you realize what your saying?”

“Yes. I’m telling you that there’s a limit! This maximum effort business has already gone to far!” “Look, Keith”, said Savage, in a conciliatory tone, “in this kind of a deal, if we ever get down to one B-17, and one crew left - we’ll have to send it.”

“That’s brave talk from someone sitting behind a desk.”

“Now just a minute, Keith. You’re talking hysterically - you don’t sound like yourself.” “I’m not - ”, responded Davenport.

“Look, Keith . . . I’ll call you back.”

Savage hung up before Davenport could finish. With his lips quivering, the colonel placed the phone slowly back into its cradle, then picked up the instrument and slammed it down into the wastebasket beside his desk.

Ben Gately stuck his head in through the doorway, perceived the colonel’s agitation, and started to withdraw.

“Now what”, snapped Davenport?

“I just wanted to ask who the colonel will fly with tomorrow”, asked Gately, lapsing into the formal third person?

Davenport flung himself wearily back into his chair, trying to regain his composure. He considered his answer, for a moment, while the unaccustomed flush in his cheeks receded, leaving the former gray pallor to accentuate the dark bags under his eyes.

“I’ll lead the mission with Jesse Bishop’s crew.” “Very well, sir.”

Gately left and, after a few moments, Stovall appeared, stand- ing respectfully just inside the office door.

“Colonel”, he said. “If you should happen to have a pint in your desk, I’d like a - a snort.” Davenport looked at Stovall in amazement, then he reached down, pulled open a drawer, and produced a bottle of whiskey. He smiled sadly at the Adjutant’s timid expression.

“So, you finally caught a cold, Harvey”, he said, opening the pint bottle and handing it to Stovall. Stovall took a swallow, coughed explosively, and wiped his smarting eyes.

“Just a slight sore throat coming on”, he replied. He tilted the pint up again - a smaller sip this time.

“Heap good medicine”, he said. “Better have one yourself, Colonel.”

In General Henderson’s office at Bomber Command, where Frank Savage had just concluded his telephone conversation with Keith Davenport, there was an uneasy silence. Major General Pat Pritchard, the third officer present, puffed on his cigar and peered intently through the smoke. First looking at Henderson and then at Savage, observing that the brand new brigadier general had not yet exchanged his eagles for stars.

“Keith’s been under a hell of a strain”, said Savage, finally. “Looked ninety years old the last time I saw him.”

Pritchard removed his cigar and turned to Henderson.

“I’ve kept out of this, Ed”, he said. “But after hearing one end of that conversation, I can’t keep out of it any longer. The 918th has been a sick Group - you and Frank have called it a “Hard Luck Group”

- for a long time now. Perhaps you still feel that you can justify keeping Davenport, but I can’t justify a weak Group to my bosses forever, when no remedial action has been taken.

Something is basically wrong down there, and in my book that’s always meant the commander.”

“With the general’s permission”, said Henderson, “I’d like to give Colonel Davenport just a little more time. Make absolutely sure it hasn’t been a long streak of bad breaks.

We haven’t got a Group Commander that works harder, or flies more missions - and frankly, I’d be stumped to try and find a replacement.

Also, Keith is popular in the Group. The air crews worship him. I’m afraid of what could happen to the morale if I had to relieve him.”

“What morale”, asked Pritchard, dryly? “We’re not staging popularity contests over here. Maybe what we need is more Group Commanders who aren’t so popular. What do you think, Frank?”

Savage looked uncomfortably over at Henderson, who stared back noncommittally. The easiest thing, he knew, would be to agree with Henderson and duck the issue. The latter’s defense of his friend had not surprised Savage, but it had disgusted him.

Ostensibly, he reflected, Henderson was being loyal. But act- ually he was betraying a dangerously harmful flaw in his capabil- ities as a commander. He was demonstrating that he was incap- able of admitting a mistake, or of rectifying it.

Pritchard, on the other hand, he told himself, was a more typi- cal kind of West Pointer. One who could rise above his personal loyalties, and think as a man fighting for his country.

Savage watched as Pritchard stared through rings of cigar smoke at the ceiling. This was the cagey old boy whom you had to get up early in the morning to fool. This was the general who had startled his West Point colleagues by bringing over a staff largely composed of newly commissioned civilians,

because he believed that you could teach an intelligent man the Army, faster than you could teach some professional Army man an ability.

They had been dubbed “Pritchard’s Amateurs”. But in this new kind of war, where conditions changed every day and you had to throw away the book, the amateurs had been confounding the critics. This was the general who, behind that benevolent ex- pression of his, excelled at guessing what the other fellow was thinking.

Savage braced himself to answer the general’s question.

“If we leave Davenport down there much longer”, he said, earnestly, “I’m afraid he’s going to crack up. Whether it’s his fault or not, the fact remains that his Group always suffers the worst losses. I like Keith, . . . but I don’t think it’s fair to him, or the Group, to postpone putting him out of his misery until it’s too late.”

He glanced, anxiously, back and forth between his two listen- ers. Pritchard noticed Henderson’s face growing reddish.

“Ed, . . I realize”, he said, “that Davenport is an old friend of yours, and that you have a lot of confidence in him. That makes it hard.”

“I’m not going to let that sway me for a moment, sir”, replied Henderson, smoothly shifting gears into the voice of the model commander. “But there are so many factors. For instance, I have to ask myself, am I partly at fault? Has my staff given the 918th all the support and co-operation its needed? Are there conflicting personalities involved? I don’t believe so.

I think we’ve done our part. But just the same. I’d like to do a little soul searching before I kick a man out and break his neck.”

Now it was Savage’s face that was turning a bit red. The op- erations of the Groups were his direct responsibility, as head of A-3. And it struck him that Henderson’s remarks were calculated to raise a subtle question in Pritchard’s mind.

“I still have confidence”, concluded Henderson, “that Daven- port can pull the 918th out of its hole. If anybody can.”

Pritchard sent a puff of cigar smoke toward Henderson and watched it dissolve.

“We’ll see how things work out tomorrow over St. Nazaire”, he said. “A couple of good missions. With no losses. Might put them back on their feet.”

Pritchard stood up.

“Meanwhile, I’d better get some sleep for an early start, if we’re going to visit all the stations tomorrow.”

The general needed rest. It was a rare night that he had been able to sleep for five uninterrupted hours since the day he had landed in England. Arriving with no bases, no crews, and no aircraft. All he carried with him was an order in his pocket, which boiled down to: “Build an Air Force!”

At 0230 hours many lights were burning behind the black-out curtains at Archbury Field. At Operations. At Intelligence.

In the combat mess hall the cooks were already unpacking crates of oranges, and preparing eggs for breakfast (special pre -mission fare) before the 0330 briefing. But most of the station was still sleeping, heavily.

Heinz Zimmermann lay awake in the dark, listening to Jesse Bishop, who was tossing and mumbling in the next bed.

“Pull up”, cried Bishop, sharply jerking to a sitting position!

Zimmermann thought that Bishop had awakened, but Jesse simply slumped back, turned over, and clawed at his pillow.

“Flak”, he called out! “Flak! . . Bail out, Johnny, bail out! . . . Sure, Mac, I heard you. I see him. A yellow-nose 190 at two o’ clock low . . . Watch your leg, Mac. Easy now, I’ve got it . . Oh, gawd, I didn’t mean to snap it. It snapped, Mac . . . I’m your friend, Mac. You know I’m your best friend . . . There’s the Channel. I swear, it’s the Channel.”

Zimmermann smoked a cigarette, tried to doze off in spite of his roommate’s mumbling, then gave it up. He walked over and sat down on the edge of Bishop’s bed, then shook the tortured boy’s shoulder.

Bishop awoke with an instant startled reaction, almost leaping from the bed. “Okay”, he groaned, “I’m coming.”

“No, Jesse, it’s not time yet. You were having nightmares. Turning twenty-five-hundred R.P.M. That’s why I woke you.”

“Pulling a mission, I guess.”

“You’ve been flying a lot of night missions lately.”

“Ah, let a guy sleep, will ya?”

“All right. But I’ve been thinking. I can fix it with the Flight Surgeon if you don’t think you ought to -”

Bishop sat up, fully awake.

“Are you crazy”, he asked? “Crazy in the head?” “Okay, okay”, said Zimmermann, soothingly.

He returned to his own bed and pulled his blankets over his chunky body. Clad in his flight coveralls, and normally a heavy sleeper, Zimmermann always made it a point to retire completely dressed before a mission. With his flight gear piled neatly on a chair beside him, he wouldn’t have to grope around in the dark after being awakened.

On top of the pile was his pearl handled revolver, which he always carried with him. “They won’t capture me alive”, was the way he put it.

Bishop laid quietly now, but still Zimmermann couldn’t drown his mind to sleep. He got up and stepped outside onto the boardwalk, which was slippery with frost. His breath exhaled in plumes as he looked up at the few stars that were visible through rifts in the gauzelike cirrus clouds.

“What are you doing up, Heinz”, asked a voice behind him?

He turned and recognized Lieutenant Butch Roby, his crew’s bombardier, who lived in the next room. Roby flicked away a glowing cigarette.

“Can’t sleep, I guess”, said Heinz.

“You’re slipping”, remarked Roby, moving over towards Zimmermann. “And I thought you were one of those guys, with rocks in their head, that liked combat.

“I can’t say that I like it”, replied Heinz. “I just hate those damn Nazi bastards.”

“Me”, said Roby, “I don’t hate anybody. The way I see it is - this is just a job - to get over with.” “A lot of guys feel that way. Sweating out their twenty-five missions. But if it takes a hundred,

that’s okay with me. I never told you, but I’ve got German blood in me on both sides.” “Everybody knows that.”

“Yeah?”

Zimmermann was genuinely surprised. “Just what do you know?”

The pair walked in silence for awhile. When suddenly Roby remembered something.

“Say”, he said, “you forget to pick up your personal bomb loading last night. I’ll go get it.”

When the bombardier returned from his quarters, he was carrying a cluster of tiny incendiary bombs, which Zimmermann was in the habit of tossing out over the targets, as a little extra dividend.