No mission had been scheduled, but Savage and the combat crews were wearing their flying clothes, when the general walk- ed into the Briefing room, two mornings later, at 10 A.M.. Even to the men in the front row, the general did not appear to be suff- ering any ill effects from the mission to Hambrucken.
He was freshly shaved, his eyes were clear, and his whole manner exuded drive and energy, somewhat of a contrast with most of the crews, many of whom were suffering from a reaction that left them hollowed-eyed.
“Well, men”, began Savage. “We’ve got a job in front of us. I want you to start looking ahead . . . not back, at what happened the day before yesterday. We lost a few. Other Groups lost more. And for a day on which the Eighth Air Force, as a whole, lost sixty-six bombers, we got off fairly light.
The bombing should have been better, and that’s what I want to talk to you about.”
He glanced down, organizing his thoughts. And when he looked up, the men experienced that familiar illusion that he was talking to each of them individually.
“We have a good Group, in the 918th”, he continued. “But I’m not satisfied. We have got to make it better, and we will.
Half of our low squadron was taken right out of the play on the first pass, and I feel that better gunnery might have prevented it. So, -” he was speaking sharply now - “we are going to have better gunnery.
To start, no one present will be permitted to leave the station until further notice. After this Briefing, when you gunners check your bulletin boards, you’ll find that, when you’re not eating, sleeping, using the latrine, or flying, you’ll be sweating out your time on the gunnery trainers and at the target range.
Pilots. We’re going back to school. Practice missions and fundamentals. Our formation flying isn’t perfect, . . . yet!
Navigators. Frankly, I am fairly well satisfied with your navi- gation. But some of you weren’t so hot with your nose guns, and that’s got to change. What I said about the gunners goes for all of you, too. You’re going to fire a lot of practice rounds.
Bombardiers. All lead bombardiers will drop at least one stick of practice bombs a day, up at the Wash, until further notice. That means you will stand by in cockpit-readiness, when the weather is doubtful, in order to take advantage of even an hour- and-a- half’s break in the weather. Understood?”
He paused, briefly. “Gately”, he said! “Yes, sir.”
“I’ll hold you responsible for the lead crews.” “Yes, sir.”
Savage looked at the floor again, unhurried, thinking.
“One more thing”, he said. “I don’t want any of you getting the idea that the Old Man is bearing down on training all of a sudden, just because he’s got some kind of wild hair up his butt! And, I don’t want anyone merely going through the motions!
It’s no secret that you’ll walk in here some morning, before long, and see a string stretching to Berlin.”
He paused.
“So, now’s the time to start getting ready. Dismissed!”
During the next few days, Colonel Stovall marveled at the way the general, always tireless, drove himself and all of the men at Archbury Field. Savage, he reflected, had the resilience of a rubber ball.
The harder you slammed him against the wall, the harder he bounced back.
No combat missions were scheduled. But the station was see- thing with such a constant uproar of training activity, that only a hardy few showed up at the Officers’ C lub any more, before hit- ting the sack early.
Pamela had called twice. On one occasion, the general had been in the air. On the other, after a messenger had interrupted him lecturing a group of new replacement crews, he had sent word that he could not come to the phone.
Even General Henderson, who called to notify Savage, per- sonally, that higher headquarters had just approved a Distinguish- ed Service Cross, for his leadership of the Hambrucken mission, had to wait for more than an hour, before the general could be located.
Savage was at the wheel of a jeep, with Gately sitting beside him, as they drove toward Savage’s hard-stand. Stovall shared the rear seat with the flight gear of the two fliers.
Shedding red light across the airfield, the rising sun filtered through the remains of a thin mist. Pamela had wired him that she would coming home for a week’s leave, but Savage had thrust the thought from his mind, as it had the sting of pouring salt on an open wound.
With an equal effort of will, he had previously dismissed McIllhenny from his thoughts, except for a brief moment in his office, when he had signed two papers. Sergeant McIllhenny had missed his Air Medal by only one mission, of the five usually considered a minimum. But Savage had signed a recommend- ation for the Air Medal, anyway - in addition to his recommend- ation for a posthumous Congressional Medal of Honor.
For now, Savage was concentrating on the larger thought. BERLIN This was the day he had lived for. This was the culmination of seventeen years of training as a military pilot and commander.
Furthermore, he believed that this day would mark the beginning of the end for Adolf Hitler, and his blood-smeared henchmen.
Harvey Stovell sneaked a look at the general’s face. His eyes looked calm, but dangerous, and his features had the solidity of granite.
Stovall knew that he was looking at a man living the supreme hour of his life. He felt profoundly confident that all the minions of hell could not stop Frank Savage from leading the Eighth Air Force to Berlin, and getting home safely, on this day.
“Six minutes before start-engine time”, said Gately, after they had unloaded the general’s gear at the hard-stand. “Time for a smoke, sir.”
Gately lit a cigarette with a steady hand, as Savage drew a few last puffs on his cigar, before throwing it down and stepping on it. And then, for a moment, he stood there and stared, at his brand new B-17, sinister looking and complacent, squatting on its fat tires.
“Might as well get started”, he said, smiling at Gately. “Good luck, Ben.” Then, he winked at Stovall.
“I’ll try to get home this time, Harvey”, he said, “without get- ting my feet wet.”
He picked up his parachute bag and walked purposefully to- ward the Flying Fortress, until he was standing beneath the nose hatch. He tossed his chute bag inside the nose, then reached up and gripped the edge of the hatch to hoist himself up, his biceps standing out, below his rolled up sleeves.
And then, Gately and Stovall, watching him, saw a strange thing happen. Savage didn’t pull himself up, he just continued to stand there with his hands gripping the hatch edge, his arms straining.
The two men hurried over and saw that the general’s face was an ashen gray. Sweat was pouring down Savage’s face and, invisible to the two men, sweat was also streaming down his shoulder blades and the back of his legs.
His body shivered and his teeth chattered. His eyes, still fixed upward toward the nose hatch, were stricken, despairing, strugg- ling, like those of a drowning man. He made another attempt to pull himself up, against the unseen weight of some crushing load.
As Stovall and Gately hurried to his side, scarcely believing their eyes, both men understood, in a flash, what was wrong. The incredible had happened. Brigadier General Frank Savage, the man everyone looked up to for support, had mentally broken down.
Too many missions. Too many near misses from flak and cannon shells, buried in the subconscious. Too many drains on the adrenaline discharged into the bloodstream, to enable a man to cope with dire emergencies. Too many hours spent sitting helplessly, unable to retaliate, against the airborne firing squads of the Luftwaffe. Too many sleepless hours spent staring at the ceiling of the bedroom, under the pressure of his responsibilities. Too incessant and excessive a demand on the physical resources of even the strongest human body, when deprived of the opport- unity for recuperation. Too much emotional stress, from the perpetual denial to himself, that he and his men were only flesh and blood, with a right to live. And too long a residence in the halls of the living dead.
But even in this final crisis, Savage’s heart and mind had not failed him. All of the old determination was still there, and all to no avail, against the paralysis of nerves and muscles.
Glowing with false brilliance in the days since the Hambruc- ken mission, like a light bulb just prior to its burning out, his fac- ulties had failed him, simultaneously, under the nose hatch. His body ignored the commands from his brain, and he was literally incapable of climbing into that aircraft again.
Fighting to compose his features, as he labored to walk away from the aircraft’s nose, with Gately’s assistance, the general turned to him, with tortured eyes, leaned on his shoulder, and said, barely audibly.
“You take it, Ben.”
Without a word, Gately reached out and put Savage’s quiver- ing arm over Stovall’s shoulder, then went back and quickly hoisted himself up through the nose hatch.
With his friend, who was too stunned to utter a syllable, help- ing him, the general staggered back to the jeep. Then, after climbing onto a seat he simply collapsed and slumped back.
Leaving Savage in the jeep, but feeling instinctively that the best thing was to leave him alone, Stovall hurried over to the operations jeep, parked nearby, which always stayed around until the general had taken off.
“Get a pilot from a spare crew over to Colonel Gately’s plane, now”, said Stovall, to a somewhat startled lieutenant!
“YES, SIR”, said the lieutenant, as he sped away, down the perimeter track.
Stovall walked slowly, back to Savage’s jeep, and climbed in beside him, just as Gately’s engines began exploding into life. Savage was staring straight ahead, unseeing, until Gately taxied out.
Then he turned his head, wearily, and watched the long pro- cession of bombers, jockeying along the perimeter track, toward the head of the runway, behind Gately, like a clumsy herd of elephants, their heads to their tails. Soon, a red flare streaked out over the grass from the Control Tower.
Gately’s B-17 began to roll forward, accelerating slowly with its overload of fuel and bombs, and finally, after covering almost the entire length of the runway, it lifted itself from the ground and roared straight ahead in a flat climb, with its wheels curling up into the inboard engine nacelles. At thirty second intervals, another B-17 was airborne, until all of the bombers had cleared the airfield.
They circled at one thousand feet, asembling with the precis- ion of veterans, into their squadrons, and then into a single group. Returning directly across the field, with the Group closed up in solid battle order, Gately rocked his wings three times.
Then the 918th Bombardment Group set course for the Wing assembly point, to assume the lead, once more, of the Eighth Air Force, and rapidly faded from sight. Savage watched until the last speck was no longer visible Arriving at Savage’s living quarters, Stovall helped the gen- eral to his room and then called for Doc Kaiser. When the Flight Surgeon entered the room, Savage was sitting in a chair, quiet, and not moving. He was sitting as if he were in the cock- pit of his aircraft, and just staring at a wall.
“What happened to him?”
You know what happened, Don, . . . he broke down”, said Stovall.
“Yeah, I’ve been expecting it for some time now. The way he’s been pushing the Group, and himself, it was inevitable.”
“Well, what can we do?”
“Nothing, . . yet. We’ll just have to see what happens in the next few hours.”
Waiting, . . that’s the hard part, but that’s what they did. They stayed there and waited. They waited for the Group to come back from the mission, and they waited to see if Savage would come back too. However, waiting wasn’t always good enough for Harvey Stovall and he’d decided that he wasn’t going to just sit there and watch his friend fold up.
“Frank”, said the colonel. “Frank, I know what you’re going through. You think you’ve failed. You think you’ve failed your men, and you feel that you’ve failed yourself. Well, you’re wrong, Frank. I’ll tell you what a failure you turned out to be!”
His voice became impassioned.
The only thing you’ve done is that you failed to realize that your boys have grown up. They’re good at their jobs, Frank, and that’s because of you. You think that because you’re not leading the Group to Berlin today, you’ve failed. Well, hell, Frank, who do you think is leading it? A no good loafer you pulled out of the wastebasket, and turned into a man! A combat leader. And that’s because of you. You, Frank.”
He stopped to take a breath.
And he’s not the only one. Frank, . . . you’re in every aircraft up there. You’re riding up there right now, in every cockpit and every crew position. Those men up there are young and tough, and they’re the ones who’re going to win this war.
And, that’s because of you.”
Savage didn’t move a muscle. It was as if he hadn’t hear a thing. Then, Harvey Stovall’s voice hardened.
“Frank, . . don’t you see, it’s over? You’ve done your job, and you’ve done it well. But, Frank, . . you’re fighting after the bell.”
Stovall was surprised at what he had just said, but he knew he had had to say it. Savage still didn’t move. But, he did seem to relax just a bit, and some color seemed to come back into his face.
Now that he had discharged his outburst from his system, Stovall was beginning to feel awed. He felt humbled in the pres- ence of greatness.
For all these many months, he had thought of Brigadier Gen- eral Frank Savage as a superman, Now, he knew that Savage wasn’t a superman . . . that he never had been.
Rather, he saw Savage as a man who had made a superhuman effort. A man capable of giving everything that was him . . . and then giving some more.
Furthermore, he knew that it would be useless to try to tell Savage that he wasn’t a failure. Men like Savage would always be failures . . . in their own eyes, always short of the level of attainment toward which they strove.
After about an hour, or so, Keith Davenport came into the room. “How is he, Harvey?”
“No change since I called you”, said Stovall. Davenport turned to Doc Kaiser, and asked. “Well, Doc, what’s your prognosis?”
“It’s unknown. Some people call it combat fatigue, but I call it ‘maximum effort’. It could last a few hours, a few days, or . . . . . who knows? Who will ever know?”
The three men stood around their friend and hoped for the best.
A short time later the phone rang. Harvey Stovall picked up the receiver and after a few minutes he put it back down. Turning to Davenport and Kaiser, he said.
“The results from the mission are starting to come in, and so far it’s looking really good. Fighters and flak were both as heavy as expected going in, but the 918th is keeping its forma- tions tight and no losses have been reported. Ben reported that they plastered the target area and that they’re on their way home.”
Davenport turned to Savage and put his hand on the gen- eral’s shoulder. Leaning over, he half whispered to his friend.
“Did you hear that, Frank? Ben said the 918th is doing great.” Savage didn’t move.
After a few hours, for what seemed like an eternity, a distant droning could be heard. Slowly it grew in intensity until it felt like the whole room was vibrating. Stovall was standing by an open window, looking out, as Keith Davenport and Doc Kaiser went outside to watch. Standing outside and near the same win- dow as Stovall, they looked up and began counting the aircraft.
Flying low, but not quite in the tight formation that it had left in, the 918th Bomb Group was returning. And, as they flew over the base, Davenport started counting, aloud, “Three, . . . seven, . . . ten, . . . twelve, . . . . fourteen”, muttering more to himself than to the others.
“Sixteen, . . . eighteen, nineteen, . . . . . twenty, twenty-one”, continued Kaiser. “They’re all back, Harvey”, said Davenport.
“Good”, said Stovall.
Turning to tell the general that all his men had come home, Stovall was surprised to see Savage standing at the telephone, the receiver in his hand.
“Operations”, he said, and then pausing for someone on the other end to answer. “Operations, . . this is Savage, what’s the count?”
After a long pause, Savage said thanks and then hung up the phone. By this time Davenport and Kaiser had re-entered the room and, standing with Stovall, they watched as the general turned and sat on his bed. Then, Davenport asked.
“Frank, . . are you okay?”
Doc Kaiser moved over next to him and asked. “General Savage, how do you feel?”
Almost as if he didn’t notice the doctor, Savage looked at his Ground Exec., and said. “The boys did good, Harvey. A few wounded, but that’s all.”
“How do you feel, General”, asked the doctor, once more? “I’m fine, Doc, it’s just that, . . . . I’m awfully tired.”
And with that, Savage laid down.
“Okay then”, said Kaiser, “I’d better get over to the hospital and check on the wounded.”
Turning to leave, the “Doc” told Davenport and Stovall that, for now, the best thing to do was just to let the general sleep, and that he would check on him later. With that, Kaiser left to tend to his duties at the hospital.
Then, both Harvey Stovall and Keith Davenport walked over to where Savage lay. Stovall went to the end of the bed and proceeded to remove the general’s flight boots, while Davenport took a blanket and covered his friend.
The general awoke to a room darkened by the black-out cur- tains covering the windows. He turned on the light that sat on the small table next to his bed, and looked at the clock that sat under the lamp.
It read two o’clock. He didn’t know if it was morning or afternoon, but he did know that he felt better than he had for some time. He also felt hungry. So he got up, then noticed that he still had on his flight suit and jacket.
Taking off his jacket, he went over to the windows to look out- side. When he parted the curtains a bit, the light from outside just about blinded him. Closing his eyes because of the bright- ness, he opened the curtains all the way and then turn around. With his eyes quickly adjusting to the light, he walked over to the table and turned off the lamp. Wiping his hands across his face, Savage felt the stubble of a beard and decided it was time for a shave and a shower.
After stopping by the Officer’s Mess for a bite to eat, the gen-
eral headed for his office. And when he entered the outer office he noticed Colonel Stovall sitting behind his desk, engrossed in something that he was reading.
“Afternoon, Harvey”, said Savage.
Startled, Stovall stood up and looked at Savage in wonder. “Good afternoon, General, how are you feeling?”
“Just fine, . . . . thanks.”
Turning to go into his own office, Savage stopped and asked. “How’s the Group doing?”
“Everything’s going just fine, sir. We’re on a stand-down for the next few days, and getting some replacements for the ships that were too badly shot up on the Berlin mission. The wounded have been cared for, of course, and I took it upon myself to issue some forty-eight hour passes.”
“That’s good, Harvey”, said Savage, where upon he went inside his office.
Closing the door behind him, the general walked over to his desk. On the desk was a mission report, but Savage ignored it, for the time being, and opened a side drawer in the desk. He pulled out a letter that he had received a while back, and read it again.
SUBJECT: O.T.U. training in the Continental United States, Zone of the Interior.
TO: Commanding Officer, 918th Bombardment Group (H)
1. Effective immediately, you will refrain from further partici- pation in any combat action (missions) without specific prior authorization from this Headquarters.
2. The Commanding General, United States Army Air Forces, Eighth U.S. Army Air Force, has been requested to return a suitable General Officer, qualified by outstanding experience in combat, to the United States, Zone of the Interior, for urgently important duties in connection with the training of heavy bombardment groups for combat. You are here- by advised that in the opinion of this Headquarters, no officer, other than yourself, can meet these subject require- ments.
3. Pursuant to para. 2, above, you will consider yourself in readiness for re-assignment to this important duty, to which you will be ordered as soon as practicable. Mean- while, you will take appropriate action relative to term- ination of your present duties at a reasonably early date, of which you will be advised in due course.
SIGNED: Henderson, Brigadier General, U.S.A.A.F.
Headquarters, Eighth U.S. Army Air Force Although he had fought the order before, he now felt that it was time to move on. He picked up the phone and told the oper- ator to get General Henderson on the line. When Ed Henderson came on the phone Savage said, calmly.
“Ed, Frank Savage, here. you can go ahead and cut that order on me. Yes . . . that’s what I said.” Before Henderson could really say anything, Savage hung up, while Henderson was still talking.
He then pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a glass from a bottom drawer of the desk, poured himself a shot, and swallowed it all in one gulp. After placing the bottle back in the drawer he stood up, then headed out the door.
“Harvey”, he said, “I’m going to take one of those forty-eight hour passes you’ve been handing out and go over to visit Desborough Hall. If anything comes up, you take care of it.”
“Yes, sir”, replied the colonel. “And, sir, . . . . good luck.” “Thank you, Harvey, thanks very much.”
Both men smiled as Savage left the room. And, a short time after leaving the base in his jeep, the general turned off the highway and onto the old road leading to Desborough Hall.
Savage started up the road to Desborough Hall, riding with the windshield down, beneath the arching elm trees. He still saw the trees and fields around him in the dead, gray hues, in which they had registered in his brain for months.
And then, gradually, subtly, he began to see color. In the fad- ing sunlight, he saw the greens of early spring on the hedges, and on the tips of tree branches. He heard the tinkle of a cow-bell and smelled the fresh pungency of the earth, and he detected the scent of wood smoke.
He had never noticed, before, how beautiful the moss was, growing from the cracks, of that tiny stone bridge, across the creek. Or that doe, with the two fawns following her. Or that flock of pheasant, with their brilliant, shiny plumage, ignoring the jeep’s approach, as they leisurely cross the road. Why hadn’t he seen any of them before?
Dimly, Savage commenced to realize that the world of living things about him was transforming from black and white, into Technicolor. His senses of sight, hearing, and smell, were awake- ning from their long hibernation, into acute awareness.
Almost physically, Savage’s burden began to grow lighter by the second. His face broke out into a smile, that mirrored the sense of almost intolerable relief that suddenly buoyed him.
Three lines, from an old Northhumberland fighting song, which he had memorized during a convivial evening at a British bomber station, crossed his mind once more.
I am hurt, but I am not slain.
I’ll lay me down and bleed awhile And then I’ll rise and fight again.
Savage gripped the wheel tighter, pressed down harder on the accelerator, and opened his mouth wide to gulp the rushing wind In a cloud of rising dust, the jeep vanished around the next bend in the road.