Once a Warrior Read online

  John Brown took a drag on his cigarette and studied his wife’s latest picture, which he’d propped up against the wall in front of him. Last month, while on “stand-down” due to bad flying weather, the officers in his squadron had contracted with a builder in the nearby town of Altamura to replace their pyramidal tents with small houses made of white tufa block and tile roofs. A reporter from Stars and Stripes had dubbed it “Bomber City.”

  His crew had moved into their new quarters on April Fool’s Day. So for a couple of weeks now he’d had cement walls instead of canvas. Better yet, he was no longer tripping over five other men and their stuff all the time because he had a small single room with a door he could close when he wanted some privacy and a window he could open to let in fresh air.

  There wasn’t much space for anything besides a clothesline and the cot he was sitting on the edge of, but he’d scrounged up a couple of spare cement blocks and cut down a piece of raw lumber to make himself a crude writing desk. He kept Kitty’s letters with the Air Medal he’d earned after five missions in a locked metal box but had left her pictures out, lined up against the wall. That made them the last thing he saw every night before he turned out the lights.

  “I really like your new hairdo. Makes you look like Gene Tierney in Heaven Can Wait—only prettier. Now I know what I’ll dream about tonight . . .”

  He’d never told her or anyone else about the nightmares. About the planes that went up in brilliant but silent explosions in his sleep. Or the ones that were shot down and went spiraling at two hundred miles or more toward the earth. No, the nightmares were something he was going to have to deal with on his own. Either that, or ask to be grounded. Which seemed like the coward’s way out of this damned war.

  Exhaling smoke, John wondered what to say next. She already knew he was in Italy, but for security reasons he couldn’t tell her where. Nor was he allowed to tell her that he’d exercised his pilot’s prerogative and named his B-24 Liberator the “Kansas City Kitty” after her. And he damn sure wasn’t going to waste his precious V-mail paper trying to settle the ongoing dispute between his wife and his mother!

  As if he didn’t have enough to worry about, Emmagrace Brown had finally broken her frozen silence and written him a long letter criticizing the amount of money Kitty was spending on things like maternity clothes and gin. And that redheaded roommate of hers! Married or not, his mother had declared, that girl was a tramp.

  Kitty, on the other hand, complained that Emmagrace had started stopping by the apartment unannounced. She was always snooping around too, opening her closet door or checking the liquor cabinet under the sink. And would he please tell his mother to quit being so rude to her roommate, his wife had demanded.

  Just thinking about it, John ground his teeth in frustration. How either one of them expected him to settle their ongoing dispute from almost half a world away, he couldn’t imagine. So he simply ignored it, hoping for the best, and continued writing.

  “Did I tell you I got birthday cards from Charlie and Mike? Charlie graduated from cook’s school with sergeant’s stripes, and says Daisy has set their wedding day for May 6. Buy them a nice present from us, will you? Maybe one of those tea sets or some matching picture frames. Mike’s in England gearing up for the invasion of Europe, and seems to be getting along okay . . .”

  The last part of that sentence wasn’t exactly true. Mike had been assigned to a light armored artillery battalion that had already been through North Africa and Sicily. In the note he’d included in his birthday card, he’d said that the combat hardened “redlegs” weren’t all that receptive toward their new green “shavetail.” But he’d sworn that he was going to earn their respect, if not their friendship, in the practice firing missions he was observing for them later this month.

  John decided not to repeat the bawdy Latin pun Mike had coined regarding his encounter with an English prostitute. Kitty had enough on her mind, what with the baby coming and his mother driving her crazy. There was no sense in making her worry about whether her husband was remaining faithful to her when he hadn’t so much as looked at another woman in the two-plus months he’d been here.

  “It was swell hearing from the guys. I just wish we were all back together at Bully’s right now, having a beer. But we’ll do it again someday, I’m sure. (And the sooner the better!) Mike told me to tell you hi. 'Junior’, too . . .”

  Rereading the word “Junior,” he smiled. That was Kitty’s nickname for the baby. She wanted a boy, but he honestly didn’t care whether it was a boy or a girl, as long as it was healthy. But one thing for sure, he resolved as he resumed writing. Even if his son or daughter eventually married an atheist, he wouldn’t miss their wedding!

  “Better close now. I’ve got a busy day tomorrow . . .”

  His squadron had been put on alert this evening. A bombing mission was on for the next day, and wake-up time had been set for 3:30 A.M. He hated those early calls because they almost always meant an especially long mission. Which made him think they were probably going back to Bucharest.

  “I miss you, sweetheart, more than words can say. Sometimes I lie awake at night, remembering our first date or how beautiful you looked on our wedding day, and I could fly back into your arms without a plane. God, I can’t wait until I belong to you again instead of to Uncle Sam! Remember, I love you. Now and forever—”

  John signed his name, then set the unsealed letter atop the pile of folded clothes he planned to put on in the morning so he wouldn’t forget to drop it off at the censor’s desk on his way to breakfast.

  He sat back on his cot then and stretched, trying to get rid of the kinks in his neck and shoulders. Two months of intermittent rain and snow and overcast skies had finally broken, and tomorrow’s mission would be his fourth in six days—which would make a total of fifteen since his arrival in late January. With a schedule like that, he should have been exhausted. For some reason, though, he was too keyed-up to sleep just yet.

  When he’d finished formation training and started flying combat, he’d been told that after fifty missions, with a credit of two for one over Germany, he would be rotated home for a rest. He’d figured it out on a mathematical basis—how many months it would take him to finish his stint—and realized that he might well be home when Kitty had the baby.

  But Mother Nature had thrown a monkey wrench into the works. In addition to February’s bad flying weather, Mount Vesuvius had erupted in March for the first time in almost forty years and volcanic ash had drifted down with the snow. The grit had covered everything and everyone, even getting into the food. It had also forced the cancellation of all missions for a whole week because it could damage engines.

  So thirty-five, more or less, after tomorrow, John reminded himself as he butted out his cigarette, and he could go home.

  Right now, though, he was going to bed.

  * * * *

  “Let go of your cocks and put on your socks.”

  John sat up on his cot with a start when he heard the assistant operations officer in the hall. His chest was heaving and his mouth was dry from having silently screamed in his sleep. Another damned nightmare, he told himself, throwing off the covers and the vestiges of his bad dream in disgust.

  No sooner had he swung his legs over the side of the bed than the door creaked open and the Ops officer shone a flashlight in his eyes.

  John squinted against the flame and said, “I’m up.”

  “Breakfast at 4:30, sir, debriefing at 5:30.”

  The grumblings and the stirrings of the other men in the “Officer’s Quarters” filled the air as John reached for his own flashlight and headed for the latrine. No one spoke or joked. They just moved from the sinks, where they washed and shaved in the clammy water, to the urinals. Or vice versa.

  Back in his room, John turned on the overhead light but left the blackout curtain drawn as he started getting dressed. He’d slept in his woolen long underwear to ward off the chill. Spinnazola was he anklebone in the boot o
f Italy, which should have made for warm weather. But the mountain ridge that ran parallel to the landing strip often meant long cold days and even longer, colder nights.

  Over his long underwear he wore a dark Army shirt and trousers. Regulations required a tie. Sitting on the edge of his cot, he pulled a pair of heavy socks over his silk ones, then double-knotted the laces on his high-top combat shoes to keep them from snapping off his feet if he had to bail out. Later, in the equipment hut, he would put on a pair of fleece-lined boots over his shoes and zip into a flying suit, which he could heat electrically by plugging it into an outlet on his plane’s instrument panel.

  As always, he wore his leather A-2 flying jacket. He never carried a gun, though, because the Germans could treat him as a spy if they caught him with one. But he did have a Swiss pocketknife, with a blade under six inches to conform to the Geneva Convention. And a silk scarf, on which a map of the Balkans was printed to help him avoid capture, went into his other pocket.

  John couldn’t help but smile as he tucked the scarf away. He’d first become fascinated by the idea of flying in grade school, after Charles Lindbergh had flown to France by the seat of his pants. And in high school he’d been an avid reader of “G-8 and His Battle Aces,” a pulp magazine devoted to World War I aerial battles. In his dreams, he’d been Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, his white scarf streaming behind him in the wind as he flew over the trenches and maneuvered the enemy’s plane into his gun sights.

  Then the war had offered him a chance to make his dreams come true. His country needed flyers, thousands upon thousands of them. And now here he was, dressed to answer the call.

  His letter to Kitty in hand, John turned out the light and left the room. There was no sense in opening the blackout curtain. By the time he returned, it would probably be dark outside again.

  “Good morning.” He met his co-pilot at the censor’s desk by the door.

  Bob Kiefer hunched his shoulders against the first shock of cold as they headed outside. “What’s good about it?”

  “Thirty-five to go after today.”

  “Yeah, well, I missed a pass to Bari because of this damn mission.”

  John laughed. “Don’t worry, the wine will still be there when you get back.”

  Bob smiled crookedly. “It’s hard to say which is aging faster—the vino or me.”

  They crossed through the olive grove to the officer’s mess. The morning of his first mission, John had been struck by the irony of walking by olive branches—the symbol of peace—on his way to war. Now he just passed them without giving it a second thought.

  At the door of the mess, they put down one military lire each and picked up one orange and one egg apiece. Then, seeing that the navigator and bombardier of the “Kansas City Kitty” were seated and already eating, they joined them at the table.

  “Sunnyside up, Lieutenant?” the waiter asked as he took John’s egg to give it to the mess sergeant.

  He nodded, added Spam, pancakes, toast and coffee to his order, and then started peeling his orange.

  Bob seconded his order, but asked for a bowl of fresh figs in canned milk to finish it off.

  Their bombardier, Pat O’Toole, pulled a face at that last. “Figs give me the runs.”

  Norm Sandrich, the crew’s navigator, made a scoffing sound. “This from a guy who can’t wait to get home so he can have some of his mama’s greens?”

  “At least greens don’t have seeds,” the Arkansan drawled.

  John cleaned his plate when it came, knowing he probably wouldn’t eat again until tonight. Unlike some of his crew, who carried C-rations to warm on the heat vents and eat on the way back from a mission, he couldn’t stomach food until he was safely on the ground again. Sitting back, he lit a cigarette and had a second cup of coffee while the others finished.

  After breakfast, the four officers walked to the briefing room. They were early, but the two-by-sixes that had been laid across building blocks were almost full. A stage with a curtained wall behind it rose in front of the makeshift seats.

  From the doorway, John spotted the six enlisted members of his crew. Bob said he’d go save four places in front of them, Pat and Norm went to get their pre-flight materials, and John picked up a mission briefing card. On the way to his seat, he stopped to confer with the Ops officer.

  “You’ll fly deputy lead, in the number two position,” the officer told him.

  “Roger.” John accepted the assignment without question or complaint. If the mission lead dropped out of the formation for any reason, his crew’s job would be to assume the lead and complete the mission.

  Given the early hour, the six enlistees greeted him with more enthusiasm than he’d expected. He attributed it to the fact that all of them were younger than he. At age twenty-two, he was older than everyone in his crew.

  “Have you checked out the ship yet?” As flight engineer and top turret gunner, Dirk Ellington was worried about their plane, which had sustained some flak damage on their trip to Bucharest the day before yesterday and had been sent to the hangar for repair.

  “I walked over and talked to the ground crew after lunch yesterday,” John told him. “They promised to work all night if necessary to finish patching it up.”

  Dirk nodded, then turned his attention to the papers he’d picked up at the door.

  John grinned at his radio operator. “Got your Purple Heart on, Bill?”

  Crewman Bill Burnside had been burned in the groin area by a short in his electrical suit during a raid over Nis, Yugoslavia, and John never failed to kid him about the decoration he’d received while recuperating from his injury.

  “Right here.” Bill opened his jacket and flashed his brag rag.

  Pat came over, carrying a packet of evasion materials that the crew would use if they were shot down. In addition, Dirk had a box of hard candies and Bill a first-aid kit. After each mission Pat had to turn in his kit, but the crew usually ate up the candy on the way back to the base, and Bill always kept the medical supplies.

  “Ten-HUT!”

  Everyone stood at attention when the group commander and the briefing officers mounted the stage. After they resumed their seats, a junior officer opened the curtain to reveal a wall-map on which the flight track from base to target and back to base was plotted. Two days ago there’d been groans and grimaces all around when the aircrews saw that the target was Bucharest. But today, when the map showed the same target, silence settled over them like a shroud.

  “That’s right,” the group commander declared, “we’re going back to Bucharest.” He stuck the tip of the pointer he carried at the target. “As you all know, the master plan calls for stepped-up activity against the Germans’ Romanian oil refineries as well as their oil transportation capabilities. We’re an essential part of that plan. So we’re going to hit these railyards again and, this time, we’re going to wipe ’em out for good.”

  John noticed that he wasn’t alone in rolling his eyes. The commander seemed to have conveniently forgotten that their previous mission to Bucharest had been a toss-up as to which would be wiped out first—the bombardment group or the marshalling yards. Even worse, they’d lost two planes and their entire crews to antiaircraft fire.

  The flak officer came next. The munitions, weather, maintenance and taxi-control officers followed him. Finally, to the commander’s solemn countdown of “Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one . . . HACK!” the pilots all synchronized their watches.

  After the briefing, each crew huddled together to decide if there was anything special that needed to be done before they headed to the equipment hut.

  “Have we got enough ammo?” Technical Sergeant Larry Shaffer asked.

  “For all the good it’ll do us against the flak.” The expression on the face of the right waist gunner, Jerry Watson, was a grim reminder of the gauntlet of enemy gunfire they’d barely survived two days before.

  The crew split up then, some of them going to finish last-minute chores and ot
hers making a beeline for the rooms behind the stage where chaplains of all faiths were waiting to tend to their spiritual needs.

  After receiving Holy Communion and the Last Rites of the Roman Catholic Church, as he always did before going on a mission, John made the short walk over to operations to chat with the duty officer. He left encouraged by the news that his crew would probably be on an every-other-day schedule for the next couple of months. It was a killer rotation, no doubt about it. But the sooner he got this tour over with, he reminded himself, the sooner he’d be reunited with Kitty.

  In the equipment hut, he put on his electrically-heated flying suit and fleece-lined boots, then slipped a life preserver—jokingly called a Mae West—over his shoulders and checked both CO² cylinders to make sure they worked. Rumor had it that some of the guys had been using the cartridges to cool their beer and returning them empty. His were full. A parachute harness with tight leg straps and two chest straps went over the Mae West; white silk gloves would later go under his heavy leather mittens to ward off frostbite at high altitudes.

  His sandwich-board-shaped flak suit, which he regarded as almost useless because it left his arms and legs unprotected, would rest behind his seat during the mission.

  “Load ’er up!” Jerry had commandeered a truck and a driver to carry the crew, their equipment and the machine guns out to the plane.

  Over his personalized leather helmet, John put on his flak helmet. It contained earphones and snaps for his oxygen mask, which had to be tightened constantly. He didn’t like the helmets with built-in microphones because the water condensing from his breath froze the instruments at high altitudes. Instead, he used a throat mike—two hard rubber pill-shaped devices that fit against his larynx by a strap around his neck.

  Wearing the umbilical cords that would connect him to his crew and his aircraft, much the way his unborn child was connected to his wife’s body, he climbed into the truck with the other men.

  The priest stood on the shoulder of the taxi strip. As each truck passed, he made the sign of the cross and said, “Take care of yourselves, boys. And God go with you.”