When the Adjutant entered his office, he could see Savage al- ready at his desk, signing papers with a fierce concentration. Stovall sat down and went to work on the Morning Report, trying to check it in his usual methodical manner, but every few minutes his mind would wander and he found himself glancing apprehen- sively out the window.
Except for Sergeant McIllhenny, industriously polishing the general’s car, and the passing of an occasional bicycle or jeep, there was little activity in front of headquarters. No aircrew members had appeared, and Stovall began to breathe a little easi- er as he carried the Morning Report into Savage, who gave him a searching look.
“What are you sweating about. Harvey”, Savage asked? “For awhile, sir”, said Stovall, “I expected trouble.”
Savage merely snorted, then began going over the Morning Report. As Stovall returned to his desk, he was reconsidering his estimate of Savage’s psychological approach to the combat crews.
Apparently, he mused, a splash of ice water in the face has its uses - like the effect of a slap on an hysterical person. Then he heard footsteps coming down the hall. Lieutenant Jesse Bishop knocked, then entered.
“I’d like to see General Savage”, he said, firmly. “How about me”, asked Stovall. “Won’t I do?”
“The general said that he’d be in his office”, replied Bishop, pointedly.
The Adjutant leaned back in his chair and looked the young man over for a moment.
“You, Jesse”, he said, sadly?
Stovall fiddled with his pen, screwing and unscrewing the cap. Then he swiveled his chair around, toward the window behind his desk and, without turning back, told Bishop to go on in.
Bishop entered Savage’s office, walked up to his desk and saluted. “Lieutenant Bishop, sir.”
“Shoot, Bishop, what’s on your mind.”
“Sir, . . . the airplane commanders picked me as their spokes- man. They all want a transfer. The whole lot.”
Savage’s expression hardened. He gave Bishop a long stare. He had been primed to throw the book at a few malcontents, if necessary, but this was different. This was worse than anything he had foreseen. This was a total emergency.
Bishop stared right back at him.
“One of my final acts”, he said, “before I left PINETREE, was to forward a recommendation for your Congressional Medal of Honor - for the mission your pilot was killed on.”
Perhaps more than anyone in the world, Savage had been fully qualified to understand the magnitude of the deed described in the masterfully understated official language of Bishop’s citation. Never had he been more moved by the act of another human being.
“I can understand why they chose you to come here, Bishop”, he continued. “Maybe the recommendation did have something to do with it, sir.”
He could have truthfully added, except that he was unaware if the fact, that he was also the most popular man in the Group.
“We’re not quitters, General Savage. We just want transfers.” Savage drummed his fingers on his desk blotter.
“So, I wasted my breath this morning”, he said, firmly. “You think I was talking a lot of hot air.” “We’ve all heard better fight talks from football coaches”, re- sponded the lieutenant.
Savage stood up, his eyes glaring.
“All right, go back and tell them to put their requests through their squadron channels”, said Savage. “And tell them this, too. Until those requests are acted on, one way or another, all of you are still on combat duty. You all fly.”
“Yes, sir. We understand that.” “Is there anything else?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s all, then.”
Bishop saluted, and then left the room. Savage, his forehead creased, stood and slowly walked into the Adjutant’s office, sit- ting down on a corner of Stovall’s desk.
“There is trouble, Harvey”, he said.
“I couldn’t help overhearing”, said Stovall.
“That’s fine, I’m glad you did”, replied Savage, “because your reaction is important to me. I want to know how you feel about this situation - where your sympathies are?”
Stovall considered carefully before answering. He removed his glasses and began polishing the lenses with his handkerchief.
“My sympathies”, he professed, at length, “are where they’ve always been, and always will be. With the 918th Bomb Group.
He finished polishing his glasses and set them on his desk.
“I’m just a civilian”, he continued. “A lawyer, by trade, sir. I took on my biggest case when I came over here to England. The 918th is my client. And I aim to see my client win its case.”
His usually mild eyes showed slow fire.
“But, in any event, my sympathies don’t really matter! They sent you down here! And you can count on me as long as you’re in command.”
Stovall noted, with some surprise, the relief that began show- ing in the general’s face. It had never occurred to him that such an impregnably, self-confident type, as Frank Savage, should question the automatic loyalty of his gray-haired Adjutant, no matter how disturbed Savage might be about the young men of the combat crews.
He began to realize how deeply the general must have been shaken by Lieutenant Bishop’s visit.
“In any case, Harvey”, said Savage, “we’ll get down to cases, as you put it. Winning cases. A tough case takes a little time, doesn’t it?” “Yes, sir.”
“This one will take at least a week for preparation. Maybe a little more. And I’ll need some legal assistance.”
“That’s my specialty, General.”
“All right, then. How long will it take the Squadron Adjutants to submit all those requests for transfers?”
“It’s a lot of paper work, sir. Two or three days, at least.”
“And after the requests have reached you, how long before they’ll be ready for my signature?” Stovall’s eyes crinkled in a shrewd look.
“Well, let’s see, General”, he said. “I’ve got a stack of Month- ly Reports due about now. And I believe in thorough, method- ical work - taking things in order. Why, it might be three days before I could even get around to all those requests.”
He began filling his pipe.
“A couple of days more to check them over, thoroughly. You know, those Squadron Adjutants most always make mistakes. And we don’t want any papers going out from this headquarters that aren’t in the proper form. That would be a bad reflection on the Group. My guess is that all those requests will have to go back to the squadrons to be done over.”
“How long, then”, asked Savage, with a faint smile, “before you can have them ready for my signature?”
“Roughly, about ten days, sir”, replied Stovall.
“That”, stated Savage, “is a hell of a way to run a railroad. You red-tape Adjutants are all alike.” “Yes, sir”, said Stovall, with a bit of a grin.
He stood up and started back to his office. “But, why should I buck the system?”
There was a twinkle in Stovall’s eye as he reached for a mem- orandum to the four squadrons of the 918th, which he had just drafted, stipulating that all official communications were to be acted upon within twenty-four hours. He was tossing the memo- randum into his HOLD basket, instead of the OUT basket, when majors Cobb and Kaiser appeared.
Stovall ushered them into Savage’s office and introduced the Flight Surgeon to the general, then he withdrew back to his office.
“Good morning, Doc”, greeted Savage. “How healthy are we this morning? Any casualties besides Major Cobb, here?”
The new Air Exec looked sheepish, as an overnight shiner had bloomed to match the blue and yellow discoloration beneath his other eye. But Major Kaiser seemed to fine nothing amusing in the general’s question.
“Psychologically, General, the command is far from healthy”, said Kaiser, frowning earnestly. He hesitated before adding: “As I dare say the general will agree.”
Savage nodded.
“Do you know of any pills that might help”, he asked?
“At the moment”, said Kaiser, “I am somewhat too far out of my depth to venture a prognosis. But I shall observe the effect of the general’s recent shock treatment with close interest.” Savage considered this for a moment.
“How do we stand physically”, he asked?
“Nothing unusual to report, sir. We have thirty-two cases of mild inflammation of the upper respiratory tract.”
“You mean thirty-two colds.”
“Well”, Kaiser coughed gently, “yes, sir. Then there’s Lieu- tenant Colonel Brown, the Ground Exec, sir. I believe we had better ship him home. He has a lung condition that won’t respond to any of our treatments.”
“Okay, Doc, see to it. And see what you can do to clean out the hospital. In general, if a man is strong enough to blink his eyes, I want him returned to duty. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
Kaiser’s face brightened
“And before any flying personnel are grounded, I want you to bring each case to my personal attention.”
“Very well, sir.”
Kaiser noticed that Major Cobb was boiling with impatience. “I’ll be getting along, sir”, he added, saluting the general.
He left, hurriedly, like a man with an immediate purpose.
“General”, blurted Cobb, flushing with suppressed anger, “I did my best to cool off those hotheads after you left. I tried to stop Bishop.”
“Bishop spoke only of the airplane commanders”, interrupted Savage. “How about the Squadron Commanders?”
“They were in on it too, sir. The damn fools ought to be bust- ed down to privates.” “I want no talk of busting anybody. For the time being, we’ll just sit tight.”
“All right, sir”, said Cobb.
But he continued to radiate indignation.
“The chumps”, he continued. “I told them that you didn’t get that Silver Star of yours out of a Crackerjacks box, but for lead- ing the first Bomb Group over Europe. But, it was a waste of my time.”
“Let me do the worrying here, Joe”, said Savage, soothingly. “That’s what I get paid for.” He forced a smile, got up and walked with Cobb toward the door.
“I’ll join you in Ops in a few minutes. Go ahead and get the practice mission set up, and put me in the lead ship with Gately. You do the briefing - I’ll just be a spectator.”
“Yes, sir”, said Cobb.
Halfway through the door the Air Exec stopped and turned around.
“Oh, I forget to tell you about Gately”, he said. “He walked out of the meeting, Washed his hands of what was going on.”
“Okay”, said Savage, a little impatiently, as he continued on into Stovall’s office. Turning to his Adjutant, he said: “Harvey, I haven’t met all of the Group Staff yet. Call them in here at ten- hundred for a short meeting.”
“Yes, sir.”
Stovall summoned a clerk and instructed him to broadcast the order over the Tannoy system.
“Oh, and Major, there’s one other thing that needs attention right away”, continued Savage. “I’ll be needing a new Adjutant.”
Stovall looked at him like a ham actor giving an exaggerated double-take.
“You have any ideas for the right man?”
“Well, sir”, said Stovall, groping for something to say as though he had been clubbed on the head, “there’s Captain Snod- grass. He’s the best of the Squadron Adjutants. I think he could swing the job.”
He peered at Savage’s poker face in stricken bewilderment. “Fine! Cut an order assigning Snodgrass as Group Adjutant.” “Yes, sir.”
“And cut another order relieving Colonel Brown as Ground Exec. I’m sending him home. Replace him with the next senior officer.”
“But”, managed Stovall, seeing the light, and weak with relief, “but, that’s me, sir.” “I can’t help that”, said Savage.
He reached out and shook hands with his new Ground Exec.
“Now listen, Harvey”, he said, seriously, “Air discipline begins on the ground. That’s going to be your ball game. I want ground discipline on this station, until someone upstairs tells me the rules have been changed. You’re going to answer to me for a strictly military organization at Archbury Field, composed of soldiers - not sad sacks.”
“Very well, sir”, responded Stovall, grinning and involun- tarily sucking in his gut.
THE LEPER COLONY stood out, in freshly painted red letters on the nose of the B-17, squatting on Ben Gately’s hard-stand.
While waiting for Savage to show up, Gately was performing a final visual check of the aircraft. He twirled the turbo wheels of the four superchargers under the wings, testing the rim of each wheel with his fingertip for any unevenness of rotation.
He examined the landing gear tires for cracks, thrust his right hand against the landing gear strut, measuring the oleo piston for proper clearance, grabbed each propeller and shook it to check for any play in the engine mounts, and inspected the control sur- faces.
He had already checked everything inside the aircraft - guns, bomb bay, oxygen system, radio, fuel, ammunition. And double checked the previous final inspection of the co-pilot.
Finally satisfied, he called the crew together under the nose.
“Well, fellows”, began Gately, “we’re a fine looking collect- ion, aren’t we?”
To the sullen combat men who faced him, it was clear that Gately was a changed man, from the handsome, debonair, Air Exec to whom they were accustomed. He was still handsome, but there was nothing debonair in his expression. Baxter, the co-pilot, who knew him best, recognized that Gately had been suffering, but he had no means of gauging the intensity of the white heat which had consumed Gately since his interview with Savage the evening before.
Baxter noticed an unnatural quiver in Gately’s voice. “Are you wondering what this is all about?”
“We sure are”, said a gunner, amidst a general chorus of assent.
“I can’t tell you more than this”, stated Gately, “because I don’t know myself. We’re the 918th’s new leper colony - just like it says on the nose. We’re all considered deadbeats.”
The nine faces of the men around him stared with breathless curiosity.
“Each one of you was assigned to me on the assumption that you didn’t know your jobs. Or that, if you did know them, you hadn’t been cutting the mustard.”
There was more of a shake in Gately’s voice now, gripped as it was with bitter emotion. “How do you like it.”
Nobody answered.
“Well, I don’t like it”, he continued, after a pause. “And you won’t either - the first mistake you make with me. General Savage is all set to climb on our backs and ride us with a pair of spurs. There’s only one way to beat that kind of a deal, and The Leper Colony isn’t going to give him a chance. Understand? We’re going to keep that blowtorch turned the other way.”
He looked slowly at each man, at nine different expressions, all of which, however, told him that there was no need for any-thing more to be said.
As he left the group and walked to the edge of the hard-stand for a smoke, Gately’s mind was filled with the things he had not said. His fear was that he was playing right into Savage’s hands. What more could Savage ask than that he, Gately, should try to “show him”?
The thought had tortured him through half of a sleepless night, but where was the alternative? The trap was tight. For the first time in his life, Gately was obsessed with an ambition that blotted out all else - an ambition to get even with Savage, to con- trive a terrible revenge.
Everything must be sacrificed to that end, even if, on the sur- face, it should appear that Savage had succeeded, perfectly, in jacking up a weak officer. But, Gately had sworn to himself, this thing was going further than Savage had ever calculated. He would fight this upstart general with his own weapons, with a spotlessly clean record, with superior performance in combat. Waiting. Always waiting for the day to come when he could strike back. It was the only way.
At exactly one minute before time for “Stations”, a staff car drove up and Frank Savage emerged. He was wearing a flight cap and a flight suit, opened at the throat and with the sleeves rolled up above his tanned forearms.
Taking his flight gear from Sergeant McIllhenny, Savage walked up to Gately. Both men’s faces were expressionless.
“Everything set”, ask Savage?
“Yes, sir”, shot back Gately, with a little more than military sharpness.
“You fly this morning”, said Savage. “I’ll ride behind the seats or up in the top turret, where I can see.”
“Radio”, called out Gately. A sergeant sprang forward.
“Rig up an extension cord to the top turret so the general can talk on the Command Set.” “Yes, sir.”
The man hurried into the aircraft, followed by the rest of the crew. As Savage walked forward from the waist to the flight deck, his eyes took in everything.
Gately and Baxter were seated in the cockpit when the general assumed his position behind them. Savage was glancing at his wrist watch, from time to time, until it was twenty seconds before “Start Engines” time.
“Energize one”, ordered Gately.
Baxter pressed a switch and out on the right wing an inertia starter whined. Savage watched his sweep second hand.
“Five seconds”, said Gately, “four seconds, three. . . two . . . hit three!”
The Fort shook as the number three engine’s propeller spun and the engine caught.
In quick succession, Gately ordered: “Hit four . . . Hit two . . . Hit one!” The B-17 came alive, its four props pulling at the air.
A little impressed by the smooth teamwork between pilot and co-pilot, and by the dexterity with the switches and throttles of the co-pilot, whom Major Cobb had guaranteed to be all thumbs, Savage leaned forward toward Baxter’s ear.
“Been practicing”, he asked?
“Yes, sir”, said Baxter, blushing in spite of himself.
How, he wondered, did the general know that he and Gately had put in a half hour of cockpit drill after the Briefing?
The rumble of twenty-one Flying Forts, breaking into thunder directly above Archbury, brought Master Sergeant Tony Nero out of the Aircraft Repair Hanger at a lumbering trot. Swarthy, built down close to the ground, along the lines of Mister Five-by-Five, and clutching a spanner wrench in one hand, Nero shaded his eyes with the other hand.
He frowned, critically, as he watched the three boxes of the staggered formation, in which many of the B-17s were far out of position, until the 918th Group was out of sight.
“Lousy”, he said, aloud, spitting a stream of tobacco juice on the concrete!
Then he turned toward the hanger to resume supervising the removal of a wing tip assembly from the current Hanger Queen, which he was cannibalizing to keep other aircraft operational. But Nero’s dissatisfaction with the stragglers, who had made the Group formation look so ragged, was tempered with personal pride that all twenty-one aircraft had gotten off the ground with- out any mechanical trouble.
Give me a little more of this bad weather, he told himself, and I’ll have enough aircraft flyable to keep this new general off my neck. Two hours later, while helping with an engine change out on one of the hard-stands, Sergeant Nero, again, looked up to see the Group returning directly over the airfield from its practice mission, He rubbed his eyes.
“Hey you guys, look at that”, he cried out to the other mech- anics, as he watched the spectacle of every plane drawn up tight in position, even in the difficult third element of the high squad- ron. “Well, what do you know”, he added, with an ear-to-ear grin. “The layoff must’ve done ‘em some good.”
“More then likely”, said a crew chief, who had been one of the two men Savage had confronted for not saluting on the road to the gate, “that iron-assed general has been chewing their tails up there.”
The weather broke the following afternoon. And as Frank Savage was sitting in the bathtub in his quarters, with water swirling around his hunched-up knees, a shaft of red sunlight broke through the clouds in the west, Shortly afterwards, a jeep skidded to a halt outside the build- ing and Major Cobb hurried in. Savage, wiping himself down with a towel, met Cobb in the bedroom.
“We’re alerted, sir”, said Cobb.
Savage’s reaction was instantaneous, as though Cobb had ab- ruptly presented him with one million dollars. As if a surge of electricity seemed to pass through him, illuminating his eyes.
He held up his thumb and forefinger, as though he were meas- uring a one inch shot of whisky. “Jest right, Joe”, he said, “jest right! Start everything rolling. I’ll be right over.”
“Roger.”
Cobb hustled out to his jeep and drove off. And, by the time Savage was leaving his quarters, Cobb had already gotten the 918th’s machinery in motion.
Men at the bomb dumps, at the fuel trucks, in the kitchens, at the transportation section, of the military police, at the armament section, in engineering, at the control tower, in the intelligence and operations sections, were setting about their tasks with a will.
Even Chaplain Twombley was affected, as he made his usual arrangements to call in a prist for early morning Mass.
On his way to the Ops room, Savage stopped by the Officers’ Club to set the Green Toby on the mantel. The room was filled with fliers, in spite of the closed bar.
And as he walked through the lounge, and back to the door, past men reading, writing letters, and playing checkers or cards, he encountered no smiles of recognition, no sign of softening of the stubborn animosity in their faces, which glanced up or looked away. Nor had he seen any reaction of excitement to his signal that the 918th was once again alerted for a mission, “So what”, their faces seem to say!
After Savage left the lounge, Jesse Bishop turned to Baxter, with whom he had been discussing the Group’s second practice mission that morning. “Speaking of the devil”, remarked Baxter.
“The weather would have to break”, said Bishop, “before we had time to transfer out from under that hot rock.”
“Our requests went up from the Squadron today”, Baxter told him. “Don’t hold your breath till they’re approved”, advised Bishop. The pair fell silent.
“I wonder”, continued Bishop, “if Savage thinks he invented formation flying?”
“Stick your wing tip in the other fellow’s cockpit”, quoted Baxter, sarcastically. “Why doesn’t he try it himself for a few hours at twenty-five thousand feet, instead of riding in the top turret?”
Baxter and the rest of Gately’s crew had spared no effort in spreading the word that Savage had proved to be a non-flying general.
“Why did we have to get a guy who won’t even shoot a land- ing on a practice mission”, asked Bishop?
A thin mist hovered above the runways just before dawn the next morning, as Savage rode from hard-stand to hard-stand, where the tense crews huddled around small fires in empty 55 gallon drums, blowing on their hands.
To each pilot he said substantially the same thing: “I want all twenty-one ships to drop their bombs on those sub pens at La Pallice today. It’s likely we’ll get fighters going in and every straggler they pick off means fewer bombs on the target. So show me how close you can stack yourself in there.”
One pilot unwittingly summed it up for the rest when he turn- ed to his co-pilot, as Savage drove off, and said: “I’ll stick it in there, all right. But not for General Savage. How much of this mission is he going to see, anyway, hiding out in the radio com- partment?”
Savage’s last stop was at Jesse Bishop’s B-17, which had been assigned to lead the Group. It was shortly before time to “Take Stations” and the crew were already on board. Bishop was in the pilot’s seat, when Savage approached the waist door, noting the words painted above it.
WHERE ANGELS AND GENERALS FEAR TO TREAD
He squinted at the legend with a wry smile, then climbed in and made his way forward to the cockpit. When he got there he tapped Bishop on the shoulder.
“Move over Bishop”, he said. “That’s my seat.”
There was no real necessity for Harvey Stovall to attend the mission critique that took place in the Briefing room, four days later, but wild horses couldn’t have kept him away. He occupied his usual seat near the rear, keeping his eyes toward the door for Savage’s arrival.
“Ten-SHUN!”
The voice was not Stovall’s, for a pilot sitting closer to the door had beaten him to it. As one man, the crews stood up and came to attention.
Then, there was an immediate silence that was only broken, briefly, when everyone resumed seating while the general mount- ed the platform.
“Give me your attention”, said Savage. “I’m sorry that we haven’t been able to hold a critique after every mission. But, with missions three days in a row, like we’ve just had, we’ll just have to lump them together into one.” He paused. “And in case any of you guys are getting sleepy, you’ll be glad to know that we’re standing down tomorrow - everything’s socked in from here to Denmark. So, tonight the bar is open again.”
He stopped once again, waiting until a prolonged murmur of approval had died down.
“A word, first, about these critiques. I want them to be bitch- ing sessions”, he continued. “This is the place to bitch about any- thing that concerns the success of a mission, whether it’s your aircraft, your equipment, the tactics, what somebody else did or didn’t do, or whether you think I screwed up in the way I’ve been leading these missions.
Everything’s to be forgotten when we leave this room. Your beefs won’t do any good over in your quarters. Get them off your chests here - and anything goes. Then, maybe something useful can be done about them.”
He paused, as he waited for someone to say something.
“Okay, then”, he resumed. “The La Pallice mission first. I haven’t got much to say about that one. The bombing was good. All ships reached the target. No losses. Very little battle dam- age.”
He paused again.
“You know why? Because the formation looked like the pic- ture book. Those FWs passed us up and went after those three other Groups that were strung out.
They took one look at the 918th and they weren’t buying any. So, let’s keep it that way. Of course”, he added, as an after- thought, “that’s tough on you gunners. You didn’t get a chance for many claims that day, did you?”
There was a flutter of dry laughter from the enlisted men. “Okay, the Lille mission. Not so hot.”
He waited until a contagious cough, spreading to several other suffers of colds, subsided. Harvey Stovall leaned forward attent- ively.
“Bombing, . . just fair. And we didn’t lose any aircraft. But we picked up a lot of battle damage from fighters, when the high squadron lagged half a mile behind the Group, entering the target area.”
He paused.
“Pettingill”, he called out!
“Yes, sir”, a chubby-faced captain stood up.
“You were leading the high Squadron. Explain what happen- ed.”
“You see, General”, said Pettingill, “Bishop lost his number four engine when the FWs hit us near the I.P. He couldn’t keep up with his element, so I dropped back to his speed to cover him.”
“In other words”, said Savage, “you jeopardized the whole Group for one airplane. You violated Group Integrity for the sake of a buddy. To save ten men, you endangered all the rest.
What I mean by Group Integrity is that every gun on every aircraft is needed for the defensive fire power of the formation. We didn’t dream up the staggered formation because it looks pretty, but because it places every aircraft in a position where it is needed to defend the Group.
Crippled airplanes are expendable. Let them go. Let the Ger- mans shoot down your own brother, if need be. The thing that’s never expendable is your obligation to get bombs on the target.
From past mission reports, I’ve discovered that there had been too much of this buddy stuff, before I came here. Maybe you people think of it as commendable. Heroic, even. I think it’s un- forgivable.” Savage stopped to blow his nose.
“Ordinarily”, he resumed, “I’ll give a man a second chance. But not when Group Integrity is involved. Pettingill, I’m reliev- ing you of command of your Squadron, as of right now. And I’ll take action, on the spot, against any other man who puts his bud- dies, or his Squadron, ahead of this Group.
We’re going to operate this Group as one big Squadron.” Pettingill, red in the face, slowly sat down.
“Who is Colonel Gately’s co-pilot”, called Savage? “Here, sir. Lieutenant Baxter.”
“Baxter, you’re promoted out of the Leper Colony. Pettingill, you’re busted down to be Gately’s co-pilot.”
Amidst the buzz of comments that arose, Gately sat motion- less, his eyes fixed straight ahead. This was the first time that Savage had singled him out in public. But Gately felt no humili- ation. Only a deepening of the anger that glowed within him, day and night.
He had been waiting for Savage to lay it on, carrying out his threat, implementing the words - “I’ll hold your head down in the mud and trample it!”.
Now he felt vaguely relieved by the manner in which the whiplash had come. He couldn’t catch me off base on my job, thought Gately, so the dirty skunk had to hit me this way - from behind.
“Getting back to the mission”, said Savage, as he picked up a pointer and indicated a spot on a map behind him. “the high Squadron mistook the Brest Peninsula for Land’s End and started letting down into a lot of enemy flak. Luckily you all got home, but not without excessive, and unnecessary, flak damage. So now we’ve got seven men in the hospital having shrapnel pulled out of their butts with flak clippers.
I’ll admit that the weather was thick. But if you’d kept up with the rest of the Group, that navigation error could have been avoided. Whoever the navigator was, he gets another chance, this time. But next time, Gately will have a new navigator for the Leper Colony.”
He looked toward the back of the room. “Is the Ground Exec here”, he asked? Major Stovall stood up.
“Harvey”, said Savage, “the Lille mission concerns you, too. Have the Billeting Officer work up a complete reassignment of quarters. I want everybody to get a new roommate - somebody who isn’t their pal.
That ought to help each man here to get used to the idea that he has only one loyalty. And that’s to this Group.”
“Very well, sir.”
Then Stovall sat back down.
“All right. Today’s mission. St. Nazaire. Bombing good. No losses. Battle damage slight. Same story as La Pallice.
Our formation was tight so the fighters passed us by and con- centrated on the other Groups. Any comments? Any questions?”
No one spoke up.
“Well, I have”, continued Savage. “Bombardier trouble. Hathaway! The strike photos show that you’ve been toggling late three missions in a row. Your bombs have been way over, plow- ing up fields, instead of landing in the target area. What about that?”
Lieutenant Hathaway got up slowly, scratching his head. Em- barrassed and badly flustered, be stared at Savage for a moment.
Could I see the general about it after the critique”, he asked, finally? “What’s wrong with now?”
The man looked at the floor, still scratching his head, then faced the general with a trace of defiance.
“Well, General”, he said, “it’s those civilians that are around the targets - and most of them aren’t German, either. General . . . I don’t like killing civilians and smashing cathedrals.”
A silence followed the young bombardier’s confession, and more than one other bombardier, who secretly felt the same way, waited for Savage’s reaction.
“I’ll say this for you, Hathaway”, responded Savage, “you’re honest. But you’re also a goddamn fool. A hundred and forty million Americans, back home, are working twenty-four hours a day to manufacture bombs and bombers. Nine men risk their lives riding with you for the sole purpose of putting those bombs on enemy installations. And men who have spent their whole lives in the Air Force, have selected those installations for attack. Then you have the gall to nullify the whole thing by electing yourself as a committee of one, to select a corn field. Who gave you that right? Nobody did! Do you think of yourself as being a humanitarian? If everybody in the Eighth Air Force was your kind of humanitarian, we could save lots of time by turning the world over to those humanitarians in Berlin.
. . . Gately?”
Gately stood up, but without answering. “Here’s a new bombardier for you.”
Gately hesitated for a moment and then sat down, still without answering. “Now, does anybody have something to bring up?”
There was nothing but silence.
“All right, but next time I want there to be plenty of squawks. A real bitching session. Okay, then, that’s all.”
Savage gave Stovall and Cobb a lift in his car, after leaving the critique, for the Air and Ground Execs occupied adjoining quarters in the C.O.’s block. Stovall was the first to speak, as they drove through the rain.
“I’ve been waiting for the chance to tell you some news, sir”, he said. Savage, lost in thought, seemed to jerk his attention to Stovall.
“About those requests for transfers I sent back to the Squad- rons for correction, yesterday.” “They’re back on your desk again”, asked Savage, quickly?
“Well, no, sir”, smiled the Ground Exec. “Two of the Adjut- ants have notified me that several of the requests have been with- drawn.”
Savage broke into the widest grin that Stovall had seen the general permit himself, since coming to Archbury. Then Savage reached over and slapped Cobb on the shoulder. “How’re we doing, Joe”, he asked, with delight? “How’re we doing?” Cobb grinned back. Then, with his usual bluntness, he said.
“I wouldn’t exactly say you’re getting popular, General. But three missions without a loss, sure doesn’t hurt.”
“I’ll be happier yet”, said Savage, “when everybody around here stops being so loss conscious and they start getting more bombing conscious.”
Stovall thought to himself: I’ll be happier when they all start admiring this guy, instead of just giving him grudging respect.
He knew, from bull sessions at the club, that the crews had attributed the successes of the first two missions to luck. But there had been no mistaking their changing attitude in the Brief- ing room, after today’s mission. He glanced over at Savage, who looked ten years younger than on the day that he arrived at the station. He appeared intensely alive.
The phone was ringing when the three men entered Savage’s quarters. Stovall answered it, then turned, reluctantly, to Savage.
“I spoke a little to soon, sir”, he said. “One request for trans- fer just came back. Only one.” “Whose”, asked Savage?
“Jesse Bishop’s.”
The general’s exuberance evaporated. Some moodiness set in as he poured three drinks and handed one to Stovall and to Cobb.
“See if you can get hold of Bishop”, he said. “I’ll see him here.”
When Lieutenant Bishop appeared fifteen minutes later, Cobb and Stovall were just leaving. Bishop, completely at ease, his eyes watching Savage, calmly stood waiting.
“Have a drink”, asked Savage? “No, thank you, sir.”
“Have a seat, then”, said Savage.
Bishop sank into a chair, rather unwillingly.
“Your request for transfer just came back up to headquarters. And as several of the other officers have withdrawn theirs, it occurred to me that yours might have slipped through by mis- take.”
“There was no mistake, sir.”
Savage tossed a few lumps of coal on the grate and stirred up the fire. “Is it personal”, he asked? “Something you’ve got against me?”
“No, sir.”
The general waited for the young man to amplify his state- ment. But he began to see that it would be like pulling teeth to get Bishop to loosen up.
“What do you expect to gain”, asked Savage? “A pilot with your record ought to have a good future with this outfit. Why change to another? It’s all the same business.”
“That’s right, sir”, replied Bishop. “The same racket. That’s why I want out. Not just to another Group. They can put me in a tank, or a foxhole. Just so I’m out of the Air Force.” “You want to quit flying”, demanded Savage?
“Yes, sir.”
Savage took a sip of his drink and stared at the fire for a few seconds. “What’s so good about the ground forces”, he asked?
“When they fight, they fight Germans. Or Japs.”
“Now, wait a minute”, said Savage. “Don’t tell me you’re go- ing to start talking like that bombardier - Hathaway.”
“He’s got something”, responded Bishop. “I don’t like bomb- ing French civilians, either. My mother is French. Born in Lille. And I’ve bombed it twice. But that’s not the point.”
“What is the point?”
The young lieutenant tensed up.
“What’s the use in my trying to tell a general?” “You don’t like generals, do you?”
“No, sir, I don’t.”
“Did it ever occur to you that there are different kinds of generals? Or that I was once a lieutenant, like you?”
He took off his uniform jacket and threw it on a table.
“There aren’t any stars on me now”, he continued. “So forget I’m a general and tell me what’s eating you.”
“All right”, said Bishop. “I’m not afraid of flying, or combat, or generals. But, if I’m going to get killed, I want a good reason. I don’t believe the generals over here know what they’re doing.”
“How do you mean?”
“Take today. What good did we do? We bounced a bunch of bombs off the roof of some sub pens without hardly denting them. The crews know we’re not penetrating twelve feet of con- crete. Why can’t these generals figure that out too?”
“I’m beginning to see what you mean”, said Savage. “How many of you feel this way?”
“I’d say everyone. Officers and enlisted men. We came over here to bomb Germany. We‘d like to know why we’re not doing it? Instead of piddling around making phony headlines.”
Savage got up and passed a cigar to Bishop, which he declin- ed, lighting a cigarette instead.
“So, you want to bomb Germany”, he said. “I’ll bet you don’t want to half as much as I do. That day won’t come soon enough to suit me.”
He scratched the back of his head.
“But, let me ask you this. How many of our small formations, do you think, would get to the target? When we don’t have any fighter escorts, yet, to go all the way in with us? And how many, do you think, would get back?
Don’t you see, Bishop, we’ve got to walk before we can run? Shallow penetrations into France are teaching us to walk. And we are hurting the enemy, too. Why else would they put up their best fighters, and move in so many extra flak guns to try and stop us?”
Savage rose and stood before the fire.
“I’ll grant you that the sup pens are hard to hit. So we can’t penetrate the concrete. Still, we’re learning what kinds of bombs it will take. And, we’re doing plenty of damage to their machine shops and other installations around the pens.
Any damage we do reduces the ship sinkings on the Atlantic. If the subs win, England will be starved in two weeks, and we’ll be fresh out of aviation gasoline. Then where are we? Crimey, Bishop, give those dumb generals a little time.”
“Well, why haven’t we gotten enough crews and aircraft to go in deeper”, shot back Bishop? “Because we’re fighting all over the world. Because there just isn’t enough of everything to go around. And, because every theater commander thinks that the boil on the back of his own neck is the biggest.”
Savage walked over and laid his hand on Bishop’s shoulder.
“String along with me”, he said, his voice actually pleading. “You’ve done me a lot of good. I need to know how you feel. I need you in this outfit.”
He paused.
“Won’t you string along with us?”
Bishop looked away. He seemed about to say something, but then remained silent, staring at his knees.
“Look, Bishop”, said Savage. “Soon - sooner than you think, we’re going to be putting up a hundred B-17s for every ten we’ve got now. Then three times that. And we’ll be going to Germany. To Berlin, and every part of the Third Reich.
Before this war is over, you are going to look up and see the sky black with American bombers. A solid overcast of them.”
He moved away, towards his chair, then swung around.
“That’s a promise”, he said. “From me to you. And don’t ever forget that I told you.” Bishop suddenly rose to his feet.
“My mind’s made up, General”, he said. “I’m not going to go for any more promises. There have been too many made already. All I want is a transfer.”
Savage looked sadly over at him.
“Let’s be practical about this, Bishop”, responded Savage. “Even if I sent your request to higher authorities, there wouldn’t be a chance of it’s approval. They’re not going to spend thirty thousand dollars training a aircraft commander, only to ship him off to the infantry.
If you transfer, it’s bound to be just to another Group.”
“That’s no good”, exclaimed Bishop! “I’ll have to request to be grounded.” Savage made an effort to control himself.
“Damnit”, he said, almost shouting, “don’t you know where that would get you? You’d meet a Flying Evaluation Board and a Medical Board, and they’d find nothing wrong with you. So you’d wind up right back here for disciplinary action. And that’s an ugly, nasty business. A Congressional Medal of Honor man winding up with a Dishonorable Discharge.”
Bishop reached for his cap and started to leave. He stopped at the door, and said. “If that’s the only solution, sir, then I’ll take it.”
After Bishop disappeared into the rain-swept darkness, the general stood for a long minute at the open door. His eyes were troubled, but in his mind he was not yet discouraged. There was still an ace- in-the-hole, Bishop’s crew. Just wait, he told himself, until you try to face that crew of yours, Jesse!
Savage then closed the door and returned to the warmth of the fire.
Jesse Bishop confided his decision to no one, least of all to his new co-pilot, Baxter, or, as Savage had guessed, to the mem- bers of his crew. Nor, had he been able to make himself go and interview with the Flight Surgeon.
The simplest thing, he thought to himself, will be to just not show up for the next mission. And let matters take their course.
Two days later the issue faced him squarely, at four o’clock in the morning, in the form of Baxter’s flashlight shining in his face.
“Shake the lead out of your butt”, said Baxter. “Breakfast in fifteen minutes.”
Bishop, who had been only half asleep, struggled up onto his elbows. Now, he thought! He’d better tell him now, and get it over with. But the words wouldn’t come.
“Roger”, he said, yawning.
Baxter lingered near the door, insuring that Bishop didn’t drop back off to sleep.
“Damn him”, Bishop cursed, to himself. “Why doesn’t he go away and leave me alone!” But Baxter just winked his flashlight at him.
“Hit the deck, Jesse”, he said. “Plant both feet on the floor.”
Bishop swung his legs out of bed and sat up, whereupon Baxter disappeared. Having failed to make his decision known, Bishop now felt himself to be lost in a maze. There must be some way to postpone the inevitable a little longer. Suddenly he thought of a compromise.
Occasionally, when he hadn’t been sleeping well, he had gone to Briefings even though he wasn’t scheduled to fly. Okay, so, he’d get dressed, eat breakfast with the crew, sit in at the Brief- ing, and get himself excused afterwards. That would postpone having to tell Baxter for awhile.
In the combat mess, drinking coffee and eating eggs with the other crew members, Bishop’s mind focused more sharply on his problem. He’d skip the Briefing. It would be much less painful.
He tried to shut out of his mind the fact that Baxter would have to take over with a strange co-pilot. And Baxter was fairly new in the Group, still a bit green. What about that?
And the rest of the crew? They all believed that he, Jesse Bishop, could fly them safely back to base with four engines shot out.
Bishop was bucking what Flight Surgeons would come to recognize, during the war, as an American trait, which the Ger- mans most grossly underestimated, or failed entirely to anticipate in their analysis of the “decadent, undisciplined democracy”.
The trait was not courage, nor patriotism, nor mechanical know-how. It was the extraordinary, nearly incredible lengths, demonstrated time after time, which Americans would do some- thing or go somewhere rather than fail the other members of their team. Whether it was a combat crew, or called by some other name.
Torn with indecision, Bishop finished his breakfast and then followed the others out to the trucks, waiting in the darkness to transport the crews to the Briefing room. Quit vacillating, he told himself.
And then, purposely separating himself from Baxter in the confusion around the trucks, he set out, on foot, for his quarters. With each step he felt relief, now that his choice was irrevocably taken.
He stretched out on his bunk and tried to slow down the fast thumping of his heart. In spite of what he had done, he looked at the luminous dial of his wrist watch. It read 4:56. Four minutes until Briefing.
Presently, he looked again, feeling that ten minutes must have passed. But the minute hand had moved only two minutes. Why, he thought, couldn’t it already be an hour from now? Five hours? Tomorrow? The next time he looked, the hand was pointing straight up. The Briefing had begun Abruptly, Bishop sprang from his bed, made a frantic grab for his flight gear and rushed through the door. He jumped on a bi- cycle that was outside and pedaled madly through the darkness.
Dismounting from the bike, he hurried into the hall outside the Briefing room, where he could hear Savage’s voice calling the roll of airplane commanders. “Hammet?”
“Here, sir!” “Todd?” “Here, sir!” “Wieback?” “Here, sir!”
Jesse knew that the general was getting near his name in the roll call. He hesitated, just outside the door, panting from his exertion. He was still in time.
But, for some reason, he couldn’t move. His mind raced back and forth like an alternating current, between the pull of panicky emotion, which had catapulted him out of his quarters, and the pull of his convictions, of his mental resolve.
“Cottrell?” “Here, sir!” “Bishop?”
After a moment he heard Savage call out more sharply. “BISHOP!”
There was another pause. Bishop still stood paralyzed, his heart rising up into his throat. The sound of his name, and the timbre of Savage’s voice, burned him like a hot iron.
“Is Bishop’s co-pilot here?” “Here, sir”, said Baxter. “Where’s Bishop?”
“He’s a little late, sir.”
At Baxter’s next words, Bishop felt something explode inside him. “I know he’ll be here in a minute, sir.”
“Cobb”, said Savage, “have a standby ready, just in case.”
But Jesse’s hand was already on the doorknob. Then, after he turned it and stepped inside, he scanned the room with his eyes for the bench where his crew usually sat. Spotting Baxter, he walked down the side aisle and, as he slid into his seat, Savage caught his eye for a brief moment.
To Bishop, the general’s eyes said, as plainly as if Savage had shouted: “Thank Goodness!” But the rest of the crews only heard Savage say, with an uncharacteristic crack in his voice.
“Cancel the standby for Bishop.” “Lambert?”
“Here, sir!”
The Red Cross girls knew that something, unprecedented, was taking place, after the mission, when they began handing out doughnuts, coffee, and cigarettes to the boisterous combat crews that were trooping into the Interrogation Room. The men were slapping each other on the back and shouting to one another be- tween interrogation tables. So much so, that several Intelligence officers, grinning broadly, threw up their hands and temporarily postponed further questions.
They had been halfway across the English Channel, outward bound, with thick clouds forcing the bomber stream from base altitude down to only four thousand feet. And, they had heard the Recall order from higher headquarters.
They had watched as the four other Groups turn around and set course for their home bases. And they had seen General Savage, in the lead B-17 of the 918th, continue on, leading them towards the enemy coast and apparently ignoring the Recall.
They had seen the cloud ceiling lift, until Savage eventually climbed them back up to twenty-one thousand feet, in time for the bombing run over the railway marshaling yards at Liege. The target had opened up.
They had seen their bomb bursts mushroom all around the aiming point. And then they had all come safely home.
The 918th, all alone, had gotten through to the target.
Amidst all the jubilation, Savage was speaking on the tele- phone to the Operations officer at Bomber Command, giving him a flash report on the mission. He was leaning with his back against the wall, his hat tilted back on his head. His face was weary, but happy, and in his hand he held a drying print if the target strike photograph, which the Photo officer had just rushed over to him from the darkroom.
“From the first strike photo”, Savage was saying, “it looks like we clobbered the M.P.I. . . . Yeah, about six tenths cloud cover. Five minutes later would have been too late.”
He listened to a question from the other end.
“No, . . only half a dozen fighters, . . Me-109s. The soup was too thick for them, I guess.” He said “yes” several times, then hung up.
“Ten-SHUN!”
The clamor in the room died away as General Ed Henderson walked in. “Carry on”, he called out, then he went over to where Savage was.
The men who had been milling around near Savage drew back a bit. However, the noise did not resume its previous level.
“Well, Frank”, said Henderson, in a voice that could be over- heard, “I see you’ve got a picture there already.”
He eagerly examined the strike photo, which Savage had handed over to him.
“Beautiful”, he said. “Just beautiful. But for crying out loud, Frank, you shortened my life ten years! Didn’t you hear the Re- call?”
Savage looked Henderson straight in the eye without blinking. “No, Ed”, he said, “I didn’t hear any Recall.”
“Were you guarding Channel ‘B’?”
“Sure. And all I got was gibberish the whole way. My radio operator had trouble, too, on the Liaison set. Bad tube.”
Overhearing this, Savage’s radio operator-gunner recalled, with a bit of a smile, how the general had opened the receiver cabinet right after they landed and had accidentally, on purpose, broken a tube with his fist. Henderson glanced about the room.
“Did anybody here hear the Recall”, he asked in the direction of the men standing nearest to him? “No, sir”, answered several fliers, simultaneously, and shak- ing their heads. All of them regarding Henderson with wide-eyed innocence.
Then Lieutenant Colonel Ben Gately stepped forward.
“I heard the Recall, General”, he said. “Clear as a bell.” “What position were you flying?”
“Deputy Leader, sir. On General Savage’s wing.”
“Couldn’t you relay the message, Gately? Or attract his attention?”
“I tried to, sir, several times. But I could never get any re- sponse.”
During the conversation, Gately, purposely, avoided meeting Savage’s stare, which was aimed at him like gun barrels. Jesse Bishop, who was witnessing the scene from the background, real- ized that his coffee mug was shaking, when the hot liquid spilled over and stung the back of his hand.
“Well, Colonel Gately”, said Henderson, dropping his tone of interrogation, “I guess it’s just one of those things.”
He installed a beaming smile on his face, like a man putting on a hat, and confronted the sea of faces in the room.
“Congratulations to all of you”, he said. “Fine job today.” Then, turning back to Savage, he said.
“Can I give you a lift back to your office?”
Savage followed Henderson from the Interrogation room, looking back, when he reached the door, to casually wave to the crews. Most waved back with gleeful gestures, some clasping both hands above their heads. Savage could see overt proof that his deliberate gamble to ignore the Recall had paid off. Psycho- logically, the 918th had turned the corner.
Thirty minutes later, as he was approaching the Officers’ Club on his bicycle, Bishop changed his direction and rode across the Admin site to the headquarters building. Harvey Stovall greeted him outside the general’s office with a hearty handshake.
“What a day, Jesse”, he cried! “A real red-letter day in the history of the 918th, and the Eighth Air Force. Cripes, will those other Groups be burned up. I guess we showed them how to put this business on a paying basis!” He continued to pump Bishop’s hand, then said. “Great going there, boy!”
Bishop responded to the warmth in Stovall’s congratulations, but his smile had reservations in it. “Is the general busy”, he asked?
“Can’t you hear”, responded Stovall?
Even through the closed door to Savage’s office, Henderson’s raised voice was plainly audible. “Goddamnit, Frank”, he was angrily saying. “You might have lost the whole Group. Aside from that, what am I supposed to tell the other Group Commanders? They obeyed their orders. Then you made them look like chumps, while the 918th became heroes. General Pritchard called me four times from London - half out of his mind!”
Stovall and Bishop, exchanged glances, as they continued to eavesdrop from the outer office.
“I can’t be expected to run a big show”, continued Henderson, “if my commands are ignored by a grandstand artist.”
There was a considerable pause. Then Savage spoke.
“You have my official statement”, he said, “that I didn’t hear the Recall. And I’m getting tired of repeating it. But you might as well know this. Any time my judgment tells me that I can get through to a target, I’m going on through, Recall or no Recall.”
There was another long pause.
“Very interesting, Frank”, remarked Henderson, at last in a lower voice. “We’ll see about that”, he coughed, to himself. “And one more thing”, he continued. “What sort of a screwy ass deal is this that you’ve been giving Colonel Gately?”
“Did he call you up”, asked Savage, sharply?
“No”, said Henderson. “My Air Inspector reported to me that you’re carrying a regular Army lieutenant colonel in an airplane commander’s job.”
“Your Air Inspector has no kick coming”, said Savage, “as long as the Group, as a whole, has no overages in grade. If I want to get technical about it, I can carry him as temporarily un- assigned.”
“Your treatment of an officer of Colonel Gately’s rank and background, strikes me as being shortsighted. You know his father’s in a key position. There could be serious repercussions over it. We need aircraft! And, to get them, we need friends in Washington! Not enemies!”
“I’m responsible to you for results, am I not”, snapped Savage? “And as long as I give you results, my methods used in this Group are my own responsibility. You know that as well as I do.”
“I can use Gately up at my headquarters, if you’ll approve a transfer”, persisted Henderson. “Gately is not available to fly a desk. He’s got a job to do in this Group.”
The phone on the Ground Exec’s desk rang and, while Stovall talked, Bishop was unable to hear the conclusion of the conver- sation in the next room. But, a minute later, he watched as Henderson came striding out of the office and down the hall in, what seemed to be, extreme displeasure.
Without interrupting his phone conversation, Stovall motion- ed Bishop towards the general’s office. When Bishop knocked, Savage looked up from his desk with a swift transition, from the scowl on his face, to a quizzical look of eager anticipation.
“What’re you waiting on”, he called?
Bishop approached the desk, self-consciously, and saluted.
“General Savage”, he said, “would you mind, very much, if I asked you to kick me in the tail?”
With deliberation, he turned around and bent over. Savage immediately got up, moved around behind Bishop, swung his boot back and lightly touched him squarely on the seat of his pants. Bishop straightened up, turned around and faced Savage, with a flushed smile.
“Sir”, said Bishop, “I’m awfully hard to convince. I’ll never know why it took until today for you to convince me, and the rest of the guys. But, from now on, you can tell me black is white - and I’ll believe it.”
“Okay, Jesse”, Savage told him, “let’s start now. I want you to be the one guy in the Group that doesn’t believe I’m a general. That door is always opened to you. Any time you think that I’m not doing so hot, come in and tell me. Let me know what the others are thinking, too. I need you plenty, and I’ll count on you to keep me straightened out. All right?”
“All right, sir.”
At PINETREE, the Chief of Staff handed Henderson a tele- type message, which read in part: “. . . and convey my commen- dation to the Commander, and all members of the 918th Bomb- ardment Group, for a superb display of leadership, tenacity, and skill, in surmounting extremely adverse conditions, to reach and bomb today’s target. Signed, Pritchard.”
“Shall I add the usual congratulations from us”, asked the Chief of Staff? “Just forward it marked ‘noted’”, said Henderson.
When the officer had withdrawn, Henderson read the message once more. Then, he crumpled it up and threw it into the waste- basket.