Command Decision: A Novel of the Army Air Forces

A NOVEL

OF THE ARMY

AIR FORCES

BY WILLIAM WISTER HAINES

CHAPTERS XII-XXIV

Summary

The story opens in the Headquarters of Brigadier General Casey Dennis, who is in command of a Division of our heavy bombers based in England. On this cloudless afternoon the station is “sweating it out" awaiting the return of the B-17’s from their mission over Germany.

To the Headquarters comes Elmer Brockhurst, the war correspondent of a powerful American syndicate, whose suspicion has been aroused that this is no ordinary mission. To the Headquarters also comes Captain Lucius Malcolm Jenks, a Bomber pilot with a DFC and nineteen missions to his credit, who has refused to fly today.

While General Dennis is attempting to draw the boy out, they are interrupted by the arrival of Major General R, G. Kane, his superior officer. Kane is escorting Dennis’s classmate from West Point, Cliff Garnett, who is also a Brigadier and who has flown across the Atlantic as an emissary from the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Kane and his officious aide, Major Prescott, are shocked to discover that young Jenks is in the guardhouse. They remind General Dennis that Jenks’s uncle is Congressman Malcolm of the Military Affairs Committee. They are still more shocked when,

with Garnett fresh from Washington listening in, Casey bluntly describes the mission which Jenks refused to fly.

It is Operation Stitch, which Dennis has long planned and which Kane has approved (but not reported to Washington). It means three days of the deepest, most hazardous bombing they have yet attempted over Germany Posenleben the first day, Schweinhafen the second, Fendelhorst the third; it means sending the B-17’s nearly two hundred miles beyond the range of friendly fighter cover.

Today is the second leg, and a strike signal has already been received from Colonel Ted Martin, who is leading the Division. When General Garnett (Martin’s brother-in-law) hears that forty planes were lost over Posenleben yesterday, he can hardly contain himself. Such huge losses, he argues, will revolt the Joint Chiefs and may jeopardize the entire bombing program.

But General Dennis is not to be shaken. He explains grimly that a Czech mechanic has flown over to them, intact, one of the new German jet-propelled fighters, that he and Ted have tested it, and that it “can run us out of Europe in sixty days.” At that moment the roar of the returning bombers is heard overhead.

COMMAND DECISION

by WILLIAM WISTER HAINES

12

THE planes came fast and low. The first seemed to spring out of the treetops across the field. The sight of them steadied Dennis. Two others darting in from another direction were already above him now, bulky and ugly as they always appeared at these deceptive short angles. Both were yawing jerkily from the suction of gaping shot holes. But they had zigzagged that way from Germany and their motors were steady. They would make it to the ground. He dismissed them, extending his quick estimates to the next ones, with the hot familiar pain kneading his stomach as he did.

They were badly scattered. He knew that they usually broke formation about mid-Channel alter a run like this one, but more than drying gas tanks had spread them out today. As his eyes assessed the damage expertly, he realized that he had not yet seen two of them which could have flown closely enough to each other to make normal formation safe. Five — six — eight. He did not know that he was counting aloud unconsciously as every pair of lips on the station always counted. He could hear Garnett’s low exclamation distinctly: “Look at those props!”

Dennis wet his lips and knew with minor comfort that he was not going to puke today, bad as it was. “I made it eleven.”

“So did I,” said Garnett. “What’s Squadron strength ? ”

“Twelve, if it was a Squadron.”

Kane blenched visibly. “That isn’t the remains of a Group, is it, Casey?”

“I can’t tell yet, sir.”

Kane exploded: “Well, find out! Find out at once!”

Dennis had to check himself. Kane was not as used to this as he was. Without risking a reply, he strode rapidly through the Ops room door and closed it behind him. The room quieted; the vibration of this particular bunch was lost now in the gentle sea of lesser vibrations coming from every side as the remainder of the Division converged around the other near-by bases.

With the departure of Dennis, Kane took a conscious grip on himself and turned from the window to Garnett, who was still staring out, speechless at what he had seen. “Cliff, what will Washington think of this?”

It took Cliff several seconds to clear that spectacle from his mind. When he had done it he measured his words gravely. “I wish they’d had some preparation, sir.”

“I never dreamed Casey would he so — so impetuous.”

“Can you reach Washington by telephone, sir?”

“Not from here. I can by teleprinter conversation from Joe Endicott’s Division, forty miles from here. Cliff, you don’t, think a — a misfortune now could really affect over-all allocation, do you?”

Garnett thought aloud: “Two successive loss records—20 to 25 per cent—with no warning—”

“We’ll have claims though — record claims. The Chief loves those.”

“I’m not thinking of our Chief, sir.”

He was spared further consideration at the moment by Prescott, who hurried in, and by Brockhurst, who sauntered slowly alter.

“Sir, Brockie has some ideas I think you should hear,” Prescott said.

“All right, Brockie. Toll us frankly.”

Broekhurst studied Kane’s evident agitation and let him wait a little. He still resented his eviction from the military council. He had kept the secrets of bigger men than Kane and he was always infuriated by the Army’s assumption that no one out of uniform was trustworthy.

From Prescott he had learned all he needed to know about the Jenks case; but he was after bigger game. He needed Kane’s help, however, and he wanted Kane to understand that he was going to help. “You want it rough or smooth, R.G.?” he asked quietly.

“Let’s have it.”

“Your neck’s out a foot.”

“ My neck —”

“It’s your baby unless you can buck it up to the Hemisphere Commander. You’ve got a hero to court-martial and you’ve got losses that’ll sound like Verdun in America. You’ve let this secret security policy of yours keep the whole deal so dark it’s going 1o look like a cover for the worst blunder since Pearl Harbor. After all, the public makes these bombers and sends you these kids. It’s got a right, to know —”

He stopped as Dennis hurried in from the Ops room, still smoldering with suppressed anger. The very force of it made even Kane glance at him apprehensively; his voice was oddly conciliatory. “Casey, Elmer here is giving us his reaction. I want you to hear it.”

“He knows it,” said Brockhurst. “I tried to warn him that the press and public — ”

“Press and public be goddamned!” said Dennis. “Your syndicate would ambush a whole Division for one headline and then print enough crocodile tears to keep us from ever making a useful attack again.”

“ When did we ever—”

“After Bremfurt. Wo needed a second attack to finish that job. By the time you got done with our losses and Washington got done explaining your insinuations, we got an order that it was politically impossible to attack the place again. Politically impossible! Some of our boys were killed today with cannon made at Bremfurt since that attack.”

Brockhurst subsided. It was useless to explain now that he himself had been heartily ashamed of what his people had made of that unfortunate episode. Kane turned aside the Brigadier’s wrath. “Was that a Group or a Squadron, General?”

“The 641st Group, sir. Some stragglers are still coming.”

“ How many?”

“Three reported so far, sir.”

They were all thinking the same thing. Kane said it: “Fourteen out of thirty-six.”

“Thirty-four, sir; two aborted this morning.”

Kane shuddered. “That’s over 50 per cent.” “Nearly 59, sir,” said Major Prescott.

“Plow about the other Groups, General?” “Incomplete, so far, sir. Radio silence is still on except for serious cripples.”

They regarded each other through a short, heavy silence. The vibrations of the homing Forts were almost imperceptible. Kane cleared his throat. “See if you can get anything more, General.”

Dennis understood that this second dismissal from his own office was less a rebuke than a precaution. He was now ashamed of having lost his temper at that miserable reporter. He knew that his self-control was always overtaxed while Ted was out. He welcomed the excuse to hurry into the Ops room, where he could be that much nearer the teleprinter.

Kane waited to speak until the door was closed behind Dennis. “Of course, the other Groups may not be so bad.”

They better not be,” said Brockhurst.

“I’m afraid you’re right. I warned General Dennis —”

Dennis hell! Do you think a Brigadier’s a big enough burnt offering for a fiasco like this?”

Broekhurst could see Garnett stiffen with disapproval at this, but he didn’t care.

It s not a fiasco, Brockie. If the public realized — ”

I’m the public and I don’t realize a damned thing. Anything you say afterwards is just alibis, R.G.”

“We’ll have claims, record claims.”

All smoke clouds look alike. When there isn’t any story—”

Kane strode angrily to the wall and stripped back the curtain mask from the Operational map. Garnett almost spoke in protest and then, with a visible effort, checked himself.

“Story?” said Kane furiously. “Story? It’s the most audacious air operation in history. Two successive strikes at the most distant and dangerous targets ever attacked in daylight — the very guts and core of Germany’s new fighter program. Look at this!”

He jabbed a savage finger into the red cross over Posenleben and then, seizing a red crayon from the tray, made a heavy rod cross through Schweinhafen.

“Hold it,”said Brockhurst. “I want a shot of that.”

“We’ll get you a clean map, Brockie,” said Major Prescott.

“No. I want Kane himself, crossing it off — ”

His own interest had betrayed him. Covering his enthusiasm now, he concluded slowly, “—that is, if I do the story.”

“Now listen, Brockie—

“Or maybe there’s an inside story that I don’t see. But I’ d have to see it all, exclusively.”

They all turned to see that Dennis had paused in the doorway, his eyes hard at the sight of the correspondent peering at the uncovered Operational map. This time, however, he had his temper firmly in control. “Preliminary count thirty-five missing with one Group unreported as yet, sir.”

“About 32 per cent, sir,” said Major Prescott. And at that moment they were silenced by the rising vibrations of the last Group of returning Fortresses.

13

EVANS, waiting on call in the General’s anteroom, had decided it was about time to break up the meeting. Ordinarily he was delighted to doze at leisure through the brayings of the brass, but today other considerations were stirring him. He needed freedom of action to remove the musette bag full of whiskey from the non-secret filing cases in the crowded cubicle where he sat. Yet beyond even this consideration Evans found himself pondering whether the termination of the conference would be good for General Dennis. The discovery that he was concerned about the General’s welfare

disturbed him. . .

For the dozenth time he reassured himself indignantly that he didn’t give a damn what became of Dennis or any other General. If he didn’t like this Garnett he would move on. He had long since learned that, within reason, a resourceful man could do whatever he liked in the Army. Regulars made a fetish of doing things they did not like in the name of duty but Regulars liked being in the Army and enjoyed kicking each other around.

In civil life Evans had been a lineman. He had enjoyed beating the draft systematically until the morning after Pearl Harbor. That day the company superintendent had come out to the pole yard and told the men they were not to worry. Line work was a vital facet of national defense and the company would take care of all of them. That afternoon Evans enlisted.

He had known that his occupational experience would lead him straight to the Signal Corps, and Evans had no intention of climbing poles for the Government for sixty dollars a month. In the induction center he signed himself down as a clerk.

In the next six months three Lieutenants, two Captains, and one Major had eagerly approved his requests for transfer. The Major had debated between approving his request to go to gunners school and trying him for the willful mishandling of Government records. But the unit had to make up a quota of volunteer gunners. He had made an excellent gunner and, during his tour, an exemplary soldier. He knew that on at least two occasions he personally had saved the Government three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of airplanes, once over Miinster and once over the Channel.

He considered that he and the Government were now at honorable quits: they wouldn’t let him out of service of course, but neither would they make him climb poles for sixty bucks a month, if he kept his neck in.

Until today his post-tour life had been complicated by no deeper purpose than enjoying his leisure and keeping the Regulars in their place. Now against all reason and experience he found himself pondering whether or not it would help General Dennis to have him break up the jawing in the office.

14

CROSSING the anteroom toward the door, Evans, too, began to feel the rising roar of the last returning Group. One of them, his experienced ears told him, was having a hell of a time. The man had no more than two motors and was coming straight for them but he probably had altitude enough to clear the building. Evans hoped he had been able to get rid of his bombs.

Inside the office Evans found all three Generals, the Major, and the correspondent grouped tensely as they peered out of the window. The noise of the oncoming planes made it useless to speak. Evans took up his position by the door.

Dennis, even through the tension of his careful, habitual counting, had switched his eyes from their first glimpse of the crippled ship to the crash crews and ambulances waiting by the Ops tower. Everything was all right. The asbestos suits were buckled and steady streams of exhaust were pluming out of both vehicles. ,

Across the field he saw the long line of the Group’s noncombat personnel lined up against the barrier ropes, the long dark blur of their fatigues broken here and there by the white of cooks and mess helpers. Every man among them, he knew, was watching and counting as tensely as he was.

“—eighteen — twenty — twenty-one—” (it looked a little “better this time except for that one bad cripple and the fact that he still had not seen the uncorseted girl on the nose of the plane Ted was riding) “—twenty-three—”

“God, that one’s low!” said Garnett behind him.

It was the cripple, and even as Dennis was trying to see whether the man had any undercarriage, he could clearly hear Prescott’s fatuous remark: “ When a crew finishes a tour, sir, they always give the field a good buzz in spite of rules.”

The plane zoomed down at them. so low now thai even the men across the field threw themselves on the ground. In the room, its sound had become a continuous thunder. Through it Dennis could hear the shouts of the men behind him and then the thudding of their bodies on ihe floor but he was scarcely aware of them. He was trying to measure the boy’s chances. As the plane cleared them with a crescendo of thunder, perhaps two hundred feet above the building, Dennis saw that he had one sound motor, and heard a second one catch with a rough, protesting response to the momentum of the zoom. It was skipping, but as the noise re-

tured some of the pull in it.

Turning back now from the momentarily blank sky, he observed that Kane, Garnett, Brockhurst, and Prescott were still trying to get their noses into the floorboards, their elbows drawn tightly over their ears. Beyond them Evans was regarding the spectacle with a sardonic smile that vanished slowly from his face as they began to peer up into the relative quiet of the plane’s receding thunder.

“ Colonel Martin’s Group returning, sir,” said Evans dryly.

Kane gathered himself first and jumped up. The others followed sheepishly, the more chagrined to realize that neither Dennis nor Evans had left his feet. “I’ll have that man tried,” said Kane. “After my orders about buzzing —”

Dennis, his face glued to the window, had to speak over his shoulder. “He isn’t buzzing, sir. He’s in trouble,”

They had gathered again behind him and he could hear their dismay as the plane came back into sight on a wide, approaching circle.

“My God!” whispered Garnett. “Two feathered and one windmilling.”

“Half the tail’s gone,” said Prescott.

“How in God’s name is he turning it?” breathed Kane.

Dennis himself didn’t know. He was flying it in with his own tendons now. He could feel them flexing and giving with the yawing erratic course of the ship, even though his mind knew that the boy up there probably didn’t have a quarter of his controls left. Incredibly, though, he had not only turned but was actually managing to lift it a little as the increase in the vibrations began to hammer them again.

“ Why don’t they bail out ? She’s only salvage.” He felt a sudden fury that Garnett, of all people, should presume to question anything that boy was doing.

“Probably wounded aboard,” he grunted.

As if in confirmation, they suddenly saw the red rockets flowering out behind her and then, from the left waist gate, three black balls appeared against the blueness of the sky.

“Look! They are bailing—two, three—look, they’re opening all right. Jesus! They didn’t have three hundred feet!” shouted Garnett.

Dennis had felt with his whole body the lifting of the ship as those jumping figures lightened it. Now his tendons were taut again with the climbing curve that boy still, against all possibility, maintained. To the last possible second of the feud between gravity and momentum the boy held that bank. Then as gravity won and the ship had to sag heavily back to level or spin in, he saw her settling in a smooth straight glide and realized that, the pilot had succeeded in lining her up for the No. 2 strip with geometrical precision.

“Good boy,” he breathed, “he’s going to try it.” She was so close now that they could plainly see her markings. As her last motor throttled down a little for the final shaky glide, the growling of the gear in the ambulance beside the Ops tower broke through the slackening volume of sound.

“Urgent Virgin’!” said Garnett.

Why, that’s ( aptain Jenks’s ship! exclaimed Prescott.

Her struggle was almost over now. Gravity was claiming her with harsh jerks that slewed her savagely from side to side against the failing resistance of momentum, and the clutching suction of the cannon wounds. It was one of these helpless, sidewise flutterings that suddenly showed Dennis the condition of her right wheel. He shouted: “Pick her up, boy! Pick her up!”

He knew it was hopeless and knew that the boy himself must know it. He should be getting them away from the glass of the window but be stood immovable, watching. The “Urgent Virgin” seemed to settle very slowly now. With a final bird-like gentleness she leveled off perfectly, just as the broken wheel strut touched down. Game to the last, she even bounced a little as the strut sheered off, but the lame motor would not respond this time and the last one could not do it. As if in slow motion she teetered a little twice more at the crest of her bounce and then, at a long final angle, plowed herself in. The ripping, tearing noises faded slowly into silence and then the detonation fluttered the maps tacked on the wall. Fragments appeared, arcing lazily upward out of the expanding cloud of dust and smoke.

Dennis made himself listen intently a second more but he could hear no screaming through the brief interval before the roaring motors of the crash truck and ambulance punctured the silence. He turned from the window, shoulders sagging limply, to find himself looking into the green fixity of Major Prescott’s face. “There’s another statistic for you, Major,” he said harshly.

Haley appeared in the Ops room door. “Left main gas tank. Category E, sir.”

“Can you get the others down here?”

“We’re taking cripples on Strip 1 and sending everything with enough gas to the 641st. There’s lots of room over there now, sir.”

“Any count on this gang yet ?”

“Twenty-eight now, sir. There may be stragglers.”

He held Haley, with his eyes, knowing it was no oversight which kept the Colonel silent now. Haley would have spoken at once if he had anything more to say. But Dennis could not help asking him, “Anything on Ted himself?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Get an aggregate for tomorrow’s serviceability from all Groups as fast as possible.”

Haley vanished. Dennis faced Kane steadily. “Looks like forty-two, sir, with two in the ditch.”

” Worse than yesterday,” said Kane softly.

“They got their target, sir.”

15

EVANS decided this had gone far enough. Stepping forward he addressed himself with a bland face to General Kano. “Does the General want the photographers in here or outside, sir?”

Kane looked as nonplused as Evans had known he would. It was Prescott who saw his superior’s indecision and turned severely on Evans. “What photographers, Sergeant ? ”

from Division, Wing. and Groups Publicity, sir.”

“Who ordered them and on what authority?" “I did, sir. All Generals have their pictures taken wherever they go. They say it helps the boys morale, sir.”

Presentt was still wondering how to deal with this straight-faced insolence, when the General smiled appreciatively on Evans. “ Well, of course, if it helps morale.” He picked up his cap, straightened his blouse a little, and extended the smile to Dennis. “We’ll be going along, General — probably drop in on some of your interrogations at the Groups.

Dennis picked up his own cap. “As you say, sir.”

“No, no, my boy. I wouldn’t think of taking you away from here just now. Get me that claims total as soon as possible and be sure to get good pictures of the battle damage today.”

“As you say, sir.”

Kane ushered the rest of them ahead of him now rapidly, and as they paused at the door to let him go out first, he spoke hastily over his shoulder. “ Don’t send tomorrow’s field order until I gel back.

“Very well, sir.”

As the anteroom door closed on them, Dennis whirled and put his head into the Ops room. Haley had his eyes riveted on the teleprinter and headphones on his ears, but instinct brought him to rigid attention even before Dennis barked at him. Anything on Ted yet ?”

“Not yet, sir.”

Dennis slammed the door and began walking a tight tense circle around the office, consciously keeping away from the window with its view of the burning “Virgin.” He couldn’t help that now; he couldn’t help any of it. He had to get himself together against the night ‘s work. The return of Evans helped. He stopped in his tracks and regarded the Sergeant quizzically. He was going to speak to him about ins manners one day. Hut of course the boy was not a Regular, and some deep, warming instinct told Dennis that Evans’s manners this afternoon had been intentional. “One of these days you re going to wisecrack yourself right into the Infantry, Sergeant.”

“Sir, if I hadn’t told ‘em they was cameras outside we never would have got rid of them.”

The candor of the confession was completely disarming. This was plain, if sly, insubordination. Rebuking it would be ingratitude. Dennis tried to sound severely impersonal. “They’re coming back. Alert the cook and get the guest hut ready just in case.”

“Sir, maybe if I was to speak to the cook

“None of that. We’ll have to give them a good dinner.”

As Evans went out, Dennis reflected that tf the boy hadn’t been a combat gunner he really would have spoken to him. He heard the footsteps recede through the anteroom and then, apparently, turn back with a lighter, quicker approaching beat. He set his face and made up his mind that if Evans should be up to further deviltry, he would speak to him this time for his own good. Then, with the opening of the door he felt himself go a little limp and sat down quickly in the chair by the map table as Ted Martin walked in, grinning.

16

DENNIS had been through this often enough to recover rapidly. The first confirmation of Ted’s safety seemed always to paralyze him.

It was so now. Ted’s normal buoyancy was sagging. The deep grime on his face was powder smoke, slashed with an inverted V that outlined the sides of his nose with a telltale imprint of skin washed clean by sweat and tears along the edges of his oxygen mask. Then, for the first time, Dennis saw the large dark blotches of dried blood on the while silk scarf and dirty coveralls.

“You all right?”

“Not a scratch.”

“What’s that blood?”

The grin faded. “My radio man.

“Oh. Bad?”

“Dead.”

He saw now that the blood patches extended even to Ted’s hands. He must have taken off his gloves, but his fingers showed none of t he pufly discoloration of freezing.

“Anyone else.-1”

“Not in our plane. Got a drink?

Dennis fetched the bottle from his desk. “Aren’t they serving combat ration?

“Yeah, but I wanted to see you quick. Hell, Casey, this is your last and I’ve drunk nearly half of it already.”

“That’s what it’s for.”

Ted drank from the bottle with long greedy gulps, but Dennis knew that he could empty it, and probably would, without showing the effect. The fierce inner combustion that produced his unique vitality seemed to absorb alcohol for fuel. Dennis noticed that he was bloodstained all the way down to his socks, but the face that reappeared from behind the bottle was grinning again now.

“What happened?” _ %

“Twenty-millimeter right on the radio panel.”Ted poured some more whiskey right through his uptfiled throat. “M-m-m, that s better.

At that moment Haley walked in on them, his instant grin at the sight of Ted disappearing into a sober formality.

“Another straggler from the 693rd, sir. Landed away from base.”

“In a village, I suppose?”

“No, sir.” Haley permitted himself another smile. “Open field and no one injured. Category E, though.”

“Good.” The whole day was improving.

With his duty done, Haley now considered it permissible to express a personal feeling. “I’m glad yon got back today, Ted.”

So am T.”Mart in thrust the bottle forward. “Shot, Ernie?”

“Now Haley always took one Scotch and soda in the Officers’ Club bar before dinner on nights when the board was scrubbed, if there was Scotch. “Thanks, Ted. Maybe I 'II have one with you before dinner.”

He hurried out, a little embarrassed by Martin’s open laughter but eager to tell the Adjutant that Ted was back. He decided in fact to tell the whole office. It would cheer everyone up.

“Tell me about it,” said Dennis. “Rough all the way?”

Ted wiped his mouth on a bloody sleeve, stuck a cigarette into his face, sat down, and lifted his flying boots comfortably up onto the map table, nursing the bottle in his lap. “No. Milk run for thirty-four minutes after our fighters turned back. Then the whole damned GAF jumped us.” He laughed suddenly. “Those guys must have a new directive over there, too. From then back to our fighters it was almost continuous. Our fighters were swell today, too, Casey. From the way they hung on, I bet some of ‘em had to get out and push the last mile home.”

“When did you get yours?”

“Just after the strike flash. What about the rest?”

“Looks like forty-one now, with two in the ditch.” “I was afraid of that from what I saw.”

“Did you catch fire?”

“Yeah. We were having it hot. and heavy, so I stayed on the nose gun and Goldberg went back and put it out. He should get something for it, too. One of our waist, gunners took one look at that fire and went right out through the bomb bay. I bet he’s playing checkers with their Intelligence right now.”

Dennis considered the various pieces of ribbon and metal which they might give Goldberg for having successfully plied a fire extinguisher between two tankfuls of high-octane gasoline four and a half miles above Germany in a hail of incendiary bullets and explosive flak. “Goldberg can have what you recommend,” he said.

“ I’ll think it over. Then, after things quieted down we tried a tourniquet on the kid but it was too late.”

Martin shook his head, drank hard, and then put. the bottle on the table with an air of coming to business. “Didn’t I just see Percent and Cliff Garnett in a car?”

“Yeah,” said Dennis. “The joint’s full of big wheels today.”

“Did Cliff bring any news of Helen?”

“Letters; there’s no cable. I’ve been checking.” Thanks. Casey, what’s Cliff doing so far from home ? ”

“ Visit ing, he says.”

“ How long?” “Well,”Dennis hesitated, “he intimated just routine rubbernecking and high-level courier stuff.” “ Intimated?”

It was always useless to pretend with Ted. But before he had to say anything further Evans appeared in the anteroom door. “Sir, what do you want done with General Garnett’s footlocker and bedroll?”

Ted repeated after him, “Garnett’s footlocker and bedroll?”

“They just came in, sir. Glad you’re back. Colonel Martin.”

Put them in the Number 1 guest hut,” said Dennis.

As Evans closed the door Martin jumped up and faced Dennis, his habitual grin a little awry. “Turn around, Casey.”

Dennis did and felt fingers massaging his shoulder blades. He began to grin himself even before Martin spoke.

“Well, the handle doesn’t stick out, anyway.”

“Colonel,” said Dennis dryly, “you are speaking of your revered brother-in-law and a General Officer in the United States Army.”

Martin did not respond; his voice had become serious. “Any Brigadier in the Army would give his next star for your job, Casey.”

Dennis knew it was true. Incredible and remote as it all seemed now, he himself had dreamed of this job before getting it. “When I finish Stitch they can have it for Corporal’s stripes. Thank God we’re two-thirds done.”

Martin looked at the bottle. Then, turning away from it, he shook his head slowly to Dennis.

Casey, that, s the hell of it. We aren’t.”

“Aren’t what? You did Posenleben yesterday and Schweinhafen today — ”

“We didn’t touch Schweinhafen today.” Dennis could see that Ted was sober and struggling to force the words out . “ We plastered some goddamned place that looked exactly like it, forty miles from Schweinhafen.”

17

ENNIS arose from bis seat and glanced at the whiskey bottle. Then he circled the room slowly twice, stopping for a long look at the sky through the window before he broke the silence. “IIow did it happen?”

“Sighting mistake,” said Martin. “It was my fault, Casey. When we came to the I.P., there was little cloud and we were fighting hard. I got. one quick gander and it looked like Bindlegarsten, so I turned the column. When we came on our run, there sat a little town that looked more like Schweinhafen than Schweinhafen does; same confluence of rivers, railroad and highway, same cathedral a mile to the left, same airfield, same phoney road on the roof camouflage. I was st ill on the nose gun but I switched with Jake long enough for a look through the sight myself. We were both sure of it and Jake threw the whole load right down the chimney. The others

salvoed into our smoke. ” _

“How do you know it wasn’t Schweinhafen.?" Dennis knew that he was simply resisting this as Garnett’s mind had resisted that performance graph.

It was equally useless and he could see that it was hurting Ted to tell him but he needed time to face the whole thing.

“Because, when we got our fire out and I got time to look down again, there was Nurenover and we’d been rallying north.”

“Sure you weren’t turned around in the fighting.”

“I swung east, even with the fighting, to make sure. There was Schweinhafen without a scratch. I’m sorry, Casey.”

“Why didn’t you correct your strike signal?

“My radio man was dead and the radio was blown all over Bavaria. I’d sent the flash before I realized the mistake.”

Haley stuck his head into the doorway. “ Embassy in London calling General Kane, sir.

“He’s visiting Groups. Pick him up on a multiple. And put a red-line security stop to all Groups on any mention of today’s target; same for the Theater Censor.”

Ted nodded approval but he waited for Haley to close the door before speaking. “Did you tell Kane we’d hit it?”

“ Yes.”

“Has he announced it?”

“Not vet. This will stop it. What do you think you did hit?”

“Goldberg’s checking maps and photos and target folders now,” said Ted, shrugging. ” Whatever it was came apart like a powder mill.

They looked at each other through a short silence. Haley stuck his head through the door again. “Stop’s on, sir. And we 've found another straggler. That leaves forty unreported and two in the ditch, so far.”

“Battle damage?” ”

“They’re still estimating, sir. Looks rough.

As Haley vanished this time, Martin shook his head slowly. “ Why don’t you castrate me?” “You’ve had this coming. It’s averages, Ted.”“Maybe. But what’s it going to do to Stitch?" Dennis forced a smile which he hoped looked natural. “Set us back a day. We’ll do Schweinhafen tomorrow and Fendelhorst Monday. I think the weather will hold.”

“Will Kane?”

“He’ll have to.”

“Casey he had cold feet before we started. I doubt if he ever came clean with W ashington. What do you think he’s going to say to this?”

Dennis shrugged. “Just another casualty for Operation Stitch.”

“Casey!” Martin had come alive again now with hot, concerned protest. “Quit hurting about casualties. Most of these guys would be killed in a normal tour anyway. We’ve been through that before. I his way they’re doing something that counts instead of running up phoney statistics for that old “Ted, he’s our Chief.”

“Sure! Sure he’s our Chief. And a good soldier is loyal. It says so in the book. But what.’s he loyal to, anyway? To mortal, fallible men above him, half the time dopes and cowards with shelves full of rules they’ve made to protect themselves? Or is he loyal to his own common sense — and to guys who have to do things that aren’t in the books, like Stitch.? You better get your head out of the clouds before you lose it, Casey.”

It was an old argument between them.

“Kane didn’t forbid Si itch, red.

“Did he authorize it? Did he attend his weather conferences and go on record like a man? Not Kane. You’re the goat on this one.

“Other guys have been killed. If I get canned “If you get canned it’s the end of honest bombardment here and you know it! Well piddle away out planes building statistics over France while they build a defense over Germany that will make today’s losses look like a sprained ankle.

Even through the Ops room door Haley could heat the crackling fury of Martin’s voice and it made him shudder. He knew that the men had been inseparable friends for fifteen years but he considered that only the more reason why Martin should have been more discreet. It was true that Martin always behaved with correct subordination when the two were in public, but now half the building could hear his anger, if not his words. Most Major Generals would not have used that tone on Dennis. Some of the enlisted men were openly smiling now and Haley was glad of an excuse to enter Dennis’s office. He found the two deadlocked, but as always, they shut up in the presence of anyone else.

“The Hemisphere Commander’s Public Relations Officer is calling General Kane, sir.”

“I told you he’s at a Group, probably in an Interrogation hut. And let me speak to him before any PRO does.”

This time Martin’s heedless vehemence did not even await the full closing of the door. “You can’t tell him, Casey. You’re protecting him not to. And what about the guys we’ve already lost.’ If Kane quits now they’re wasted. We’ve either got to finish now or we might as well take this Air Army back to Arizona. It’s us or them, this week, boy, and vou re the only guy in the hemisphere with guts enough to see it through.”

“How — if we don’t tell him?” asked Dennis

warily.

“Let him be happy with today’s pictures, tomorrow we’ll knock off Fendelhorst. Then Monday, when he orders his usual month-end milk run to Calais or Dunkerque, we’ll go back and clean up

Schweinhafen.” . .

It was so exactly what Dennis had been thinking himself that he could not suppress a guilty start. Of course it was natural; his mind and Ted’s had been working together for fifteen years. Even now Ted was watching his, measuring it, following his clear understanding that it was a workable expedient. The return of Haley gave him a minute more.

“Sixty-sixth Wing reports both of today’s reconnaissance planes now four hours overdue, sir.”

Dennis cleared his head with a hard shake. “Keep that battle damage coming. I’ll call General Kane myself, Haley.”

This time, as Haley closed the door, Martin jumped up, placing himself between Dennis and the phones on the desk.

“Casey, today it’s recce planes; six weeks from now it will be whole Divisions unless we finish this job.”

“We’11 finish, Ted. We’ll make him finish.”

He confronted Martin a second more, his face muscles struggling with his effort to make them show more assurance than he felt. He knew that he should take mpre time to think this through but he did not dare. He stepped past Martin decisively now; he had to do it and he had to do it fast, before he did think am more. Martins face was aghast under its powder smoke as Dennis picked up the phone.

“You’re going to tell him?”

“He’s the Chief.”

18

LONG before the late nightfall of the British summer the Division Headquarters and its outlying stations again took on the accelerating pulsations of activity.

There was a rhythmic cycle in this life that began its slow rise once more from the final counting in after the mission. For the combat crews this was an ending; another mission checked off, another restorative interlude for the brief unreality of food and sleep, of music, games, or women. Especially after a second successive long mission pure fatigue claimed most of them.

Only a hardy few, those whose natural energy was inexhaustible, those whose nervous structures could not unwind, those who had taken Benzedrine too late, lingered on at the mess, thumbed through the records in the lounge, changing them after the first few bars of each tune, and then sat looking numbly at the barren expanse of the V-mail blanks or, taking their bicycles from the racks, wheeled out of the station in quest of different excitement.

Most of the men, with it headshake at that serene twilight sky, made straight for the sack, there to snore or lie tense, trying to evoke the smell of hamburgers in juke joints, or the dappling patterns of moonlight on country club terraces, as the fragments of the phonograph tunes echoed on the corrugated iron roofs.

In the villages around them, girls who had learned the new portents of peaceful heavens saw the hope vanishing and settled again to another twenty-four hours of dread. And through their ears, as through those of farmers and villagers, of crews tossing in their cots, of hares and partridge chicks and foxes prowling the beetroot and kale patches in the Lincolnshire gloaming, there drummed now from every side, m universal chorus, the rising hum of myriad motors tuning.

For now the work of the base personnel rose with a jerky tempo to the tune of the motors. Along the lanes muffled jeep lights bounced crazily over bumps their dim projection had not revealed. Down by the bomb dumps, panting tractors chugged the dollies mto place. Then their crews cut their switches and paced off through the cool grass the requisite distance for smoking while they watched the coming of the evening stars and waited the details of the loading decision.

Along every highway, through every station, around every perimeter track, and to every parking stand the petrol trucks rumbled on the last lap of the journey that had brought their cargo through subhaunted waters from Arabia and the Caribbean. Deft hands and wrenches maneuvered the hoses. Then, with the soft whirring of still more motors, the Weary truck tires began to contract again, and the bulbous doughnuts of the Fortresses spread and distended under the inflowing burden as dry tanks gurgled and burped.

Now, above and around the Forts themselves, on platforms and catwalks and cowlings, with chain hoists that lifted motors like matches and wrenches smaller than matches, the crews clambered and cursed and toiled in a disciplined frenzy of activity. Motors coughed and sputtered, roared into thunder or choked into vacuums of quick silence. Starting engines whined and squealed, generators purred. Hammers and scissors, files and hacksaws and riveters, incised with sure surgery round the gaping shot wounds — ripping, replacing, restoring, and finally polishing new strength and surface into the old contours of the bodies. In the motors themselves men stripped and dismantled and searched, deeper and ever deeper, seeking with calipers and gauges and electric pulsations the subtler maladies of friction and metal fatigue. In the gloom, muffled work lamps twinkled like fireflies. Hurrying chiefs looked oftener and oftoner at their watches. Every passing bicycle ;>t jeep slowed up to receive, or pass on, with blasphemy the information that there was as yet no further information.

In the cookshacks other men waited for the word. Already the standard things were done. Bread was baking, beans boiling, stew meat and potatoes poured from the machines into rising conicles in the great caldrons. Cans gasped under the knives and then yielded their contents with a gurgle. But there, too. the absence of final word delayed the final arrangements. The padlocks guarding the combat crews’ fresh eggs and oranges were still locked. Their keys remained deep in the pockets of scowling mess Sergeants who pondered the comic strips in the Stars and Stripes spread out on their tables as they, too. waited.

Outside the Staff Offices at both Division mid Group Headquarters, the continuous opening and shutting of doors slashed the blackout with quick shards of the bright internal light, as men hurried to and fro, exchanging with each other the news that there was no news yet. They, too, were cursing the delay.

Inside, the chairs were set and the blackboard sponged against the morning’s briefing. But the tiered cords of maps waited in their bins until it was decided which particular acres of them must be folded and marked long before take-off. In other rooms men fingered and studied blankly the miniature planes whose numbers duplicated those on the monsters now gutted for repair work on the parking stands. Each phone call was a resurrection, moving one of the symbols into its place in the toy formation on the blackboard which would precede and dictate tomorrow’s formation in the sky—if there was to be a formation.

Through all of these and a hundred other forms of preparation, men worked always with uncertainty in their minds, measuring everything they did by it. Every part of the process could be brought so far, and nightly was brought so far, toward the final forms of preparation. This in itself was more than enough to occupy most of the men most of the night. But in itself this also was only a preliminary to the final frenzy which would begin with the certainty of a mission and then the unfolding final details of bomb load, gas load, degrees of repair, destination, courses, timings, frequencies, and all the other innumerable and vital details which must somehow be worked out through the steadily dwindling interval to the deadline of the take-off.

19

DENNIS knew very well not only the continuously changing physical condition of his command throughout this vigil but also its emotional and nervous state. It had been his life’s work to control and manage the energies of other men, training and restraining them until orders gave them final release in purpose for which there never could be entirely adequate preparation.

The job was, of course, too big for any one man, and the service his country had created to cope with it understood this. No one man did it. Dennis, like the rest, was only a part of it, as dependent upon orders from above as the men who now cursed him were dependent upon orders from him. Kane might be dead in a ditch, drunk in a boudoir, stalemated in passionate dispute with still Higher Command, or cutting his fingernails; it did not matter. He had left an order with Dennis not to send out the field order until he returned.

Dennis knew the Army well enough to know that it probably thought him afraid to act until he could pin responsibility on Kane, but it would never know from him the truth of why he was waiting, under a more wearing tension than any of the men who chafed around him.

By the same token he realized that he himself might never know why Kane was wait mg; there were always more reasons than met the eye. In the meantime he could do nothing more than wring from every minute the maximum possible preparation that could be made in the present situation and then try to set the others an example of composure and equanimity while he, too, waited. Not since the beginning of the war had he permitted himself to ponder the deeper reasons of why he waited.

Dennis had been the only son of a promising young doctor in a small Middle Western city. He had idolized the father who often played baseball with the neighborhood kids on the dusty lots and set fingers with competence and jocular reassurance in the gas-lit office in their house. In the morning he was allowed to help his father into a linen duster before they started, together, the brassbound, leather-strapped car that was the wonder of the neighborhood.

As he grew older Dennis himself was allowed to open the brass petcocks and pour compounds of benzene and ether into the cylinders. They both loved the car, and though Mrs. Dennis predicted, with mournful pride, that their experiments would blow up the whole city, they never did. Sometimes they cranked it until their arms ached; then suddenly its motor caught with resounding bursts, and the doctor waved back triumphantly as he roared off at a giddy twenty miles an hour to the hospital where he was worshiped. Everywhere Dennis went, from the trackworkers’ shanties down by the yard to the glittering marble edifice of the Bank, he was greeted with affection, respect, and a solicitude that warmed the casual words of the universal “How’s the Doc?”

Since earliest recollection, his one determination had been to study medicine and practice with his father. While he was waiting for this there had been another war, in which fourteen-year-old boys were not wanted. The Doc had become Captain Dennis of the Medical Reserve, and while his family were in the first pride of his duty overseas, he had been killed in a forward dressing station in the Argonne, leaving a young doctor’s normal legacy of debts and good will, and a prematurely serious son.

Dennis might still have gone to medical school, but he was aware of the sacrifices it would have entailed for his mother — and even more aware, within himself, that the soldier had begun to overshadow the doctor in his memory of his father. When part of his heritage of good will crystallized into the offer of an appointment to the Military Academy, he had accepted with a feeling of consecration.

He had become a First Classman before his expanding view had been seriously troubled by the prospect of life in a peacetime Army. By then the Government was offering flying training to a selected few from his class.

He was fully aware that it was the uniform which had made him an aviator. It was more than a fair bargain; it was a binding pact. He was still a young man when the lucrative world of civil aviation first beckoned and then begged greedily for his services, but for him the decision was a simple one. The Government had educated him: the obligation became all the graver with his dawning realization that only men like himself could hope to educate the Government.

After that realization there had not only been no further doubts; there had been no time to doubt. Each step, in his own steady progress from proficiency to eminence in an exacting profession was only a tactical victory in the interminable campaign against the entrenched tradition. The real fight was never with the finite problems of momentum and gravity but with the anachronism of saber and broadside. It had been a struggle to save the propeller from the sword, against the certain time when only the propeller could save the sword. But the time had come upon them with the struggle still undecided internally. Now the propellers were buying more time, at a price.

Dennis knew it was not immodesty which made him consider himself one of the few competent judges of the precariousness, the desperate uncertainty of even this bargain for time. He was one of the small earnest fraternity who had foreseen the essential outlines of this struggle long before the cries from Europe and then the thunderclap from Pearl Harbor had finally awakened even the dullest of his superiors. It was why they had sent him here, to buy them time with a minimum of the propellers for which he had worked and begged so long.

He had come with the conviction that it could be done. He had faith in the planes which carried years of his own work in most of their essential parts. He had faith in his crews and in the people from whom they came, faith in the capacity of an awakened country to produce enough more planes and crews, with time.

But time was always the essence of it. His first perception of the jet plane, now panting on the threshold of operational use, had revised even his own narrow estimate of the time margin against which he was working. In this development of the jet principle he had seen and accepted a revolution that would make propellers themselves as obsolete as they had made the kind of thought that still governed them.

Realization of this had only brought him to the other side, the never ending duality of the struggle. It was never enough to realize it; the struggle was in forcing the realization upon other people, in this case, paradoxically, upon Kane, who had been himself a legend among the pioneers for propellers. He not only had to make Kane see it, he had to make him act upon it in time. Minute by minute the decisive time, the present ephemeral gift of this favorable weather, was ticking away while his people waited for him and he, with an inner compounding of the gathering tension around him, waited for General Kane.

20

CORPORAL HERBERT MCGINNIS was a victim of this general tension, but he considered, with more accuracy than he knew, that he was also a victim of Sergeant Evans. He had done the eight to four shift in the General’s office and was happily contemplating his Saturday night off when he had been summoned back to fill in for Evans, who was said to be absent on a special mission for the General.

McGinnis was still thinking of his grievance shortly after ten that night as he worked over the General’s claim board. He disliked working in the General’s office itself but he knew that a man who did his duty had nothing to fear and he had been ordered to do it there. The General paid no more attention to him than to the furniture but it made him uncomfortable; even now he could not help overhearing every word of the General’s angry voice talking over the phone: —

“ I’ve told you four times he said he was going to visit Groups and then come back here; that’s all I know.— Well, tell the Embassy they don’t want him any more than I do.”

The phone slammed down and McGinnis started guiltily. He disliked even involuntary eavesdropping but he had begun to be intrigued by the frantic search for General Kane. He did not see why Dennis cared whether he found Kane or not; what was more, he did not approve. The sages of Hut 6 said that Kane spent his time undressing Duchesses and drinking tea with Ambassadors, and McGinnis felt that Dennis would do well to avoid such a man. He frowned now and re-crayoned a faultless number as General Dennis came over to view the board.

“How they coming, Corporal?”

“ Three more destroyeds and a probable from them guys they fished out of the Channel, sir.”

“Anything on that other crew in the ditch?”

“Not yet, sir. That British sub is still standing by.”

“I’ll be in the hole with Colonel Martin.”

Dennis was gone before McGinnis could think of any way to communicate his disapproval of this unseemly concern over General Kane. He was still scowling over it when the anteroom door opened and Evans strolled in with an air of languid complacency. In spite of private resolutions McGinnis found himself speaking as he had learned to speak in the Army.

“Where in hell you been?”

“Busy. Where’s Dennis?”

“In the hole. You listen here, Evans—”

“ Was he smoking? ”

“No.”

Evans sauntered to the General’s desk, took out the cigar box, selected a cigar, and lit it. McGinnis watched with horror, half expecting to see lightning strike in the room. Instead he saw, and then smelt, only a fragrant cloud of smoke. Deep inside McGinnis something cracked; he was scarcely shocked to hear himself saying, “How about one of them for me?”

“He’d notice two burning,” said Evans.

McGinnis continued to watch with rising fury as Evans now lifted out the whiskey bottle, measured its depleted contents with a rueful eye, and then helped himself to a short, restorative swig. He was about to burst out when Evans proffered the bottle.

“You know I never touch it. Ain’t that the General’s?”

“ I and the General share everything,” said Evans.

“Except work,” said McGinnis bitterly. “ I notice you share that with me; you leave it and I do it.”

Evans replaced the bottle and eyed the Corporal sardonically. “McGinnis, if there’s one thing I pride myself on as a Tech Sergeant it ‘s never doing nothing a Corporal can do for me.”

Evans sat down, stretched his legs comfortably up onto the map table, and regarded McGinnis with contemptuous tolerance. It comforted his present frame of mind to rediscover someone stupider than himself. Brockhurst’s car had yielded another case of whiskey. From this, Evans had solaced Peterson with four bottles and the locksmith with two. The Division left him with a wealth that made him, for the first time since he had been in the Island, uneasy about German bombers.

He was troubled over what was happening to General Dennis. Now back at the station, he sat looking at McGinnis making crayon scores on a gaudy cardboard chart. He shook his head uneasily. “What you got there, McGinnis?”

“Claims! Look at them lying scoundrels. Ninetyseven! If the Germans seen that they’d bust their guts laughing. How come Dennis got such a wild hair in his crotch for claims tonight?”

“Percent’s riding him again,” said Evans.

McGinnis remembered other things the sages of Hut 6 had remarked of the biggest wheel on their horizon. “Oh. We going to destroy that Luftwaffe again for this Sunday’s papers?”

“With pictures,” said Evans. “Full face and both stars showing.”

McGinnis eyed the claim board unhappily. “I wished they’d quit this. My wife, she wrote me a letter. She said in that there letter, she said: ‘You’ve done destroyed that Luftwaffe six times now. When you coming home?'”

“What did you tell her?”

“I didn’t know what to tell her. I expect she thinks it’s all lies now.”

“Tell her we’ve beat Germany,” said Evans. “Tell her we’re just staying here till we outclaim MacArthur.”

McGinnis pondered this. “We better hurry up then while we still got something to do it with. Eddie Cahill, he called up to tell you he couldn’t get to town tonight. He said he told the new CO over to the 641st if they ever had another day like today he was fixing to resign as Line Chief and take out a junk dealer’s license.”

“That gang ought to get their thumbs out,” said Evans. “They never could fly formation.”

McGinnis, remembering the truth of this from his own combat days, nodded. “They ought to do better now they lost Colonel Ledgrave and Captain Jenks, though. You reckon Dennis is going to send ‘em again tomorrow?”

“Maybe a milk run,” said Evans. “But not no real mission till Percent’s got his picture on the front of Time again, or Life anyway.’

McGinnis scowled. “That’s what the guys in Hut 6 say. But you know it don’t look right to me. If we got ‘em to fight we just as well to fight ‘em and get it over with. That’s the way I figured my twenty-five.”

“Is that why they made you a General?”

“I don’t see no stars on you, Evans.”

McGinnis broke off just in time to manage a rigid attention as the Ops door crashed inward under the impact of the General’s shoulder. McGinnis knew that nothing could save Evans now and, to his surprise, felt sorry. It wasn’t right. Evans had stolen the General’s cigar and a man who stole things —

“Haley!” called the General.

Without a glance at the noncoms Dennis walked in now, his eyes making a swift arc from Ops room to blackboard. Evans got himself to attention unnoticed. As Haley hurried frantically after the General to the blackboard, Evans slid with a crablike, sidling motion to the desk and deposited the burning cigar in the General’s ash tray.

“That’s one forty-nine now. Crews?” snapped the General.

“One fifty-three, sir.”

“How many would finish their tours tomorrow?”

“Fourteen, sir. Too many to spare.”

Dennis shook his head wearily: “Weather?”

“No change of consequence in the 2200, sir.”

“Good. Anything else?”

Haley walked over to McGinnis and the chart now. The General returned to his desk, picked the burning cigar out of the ash tray, and inhaled with satisfaction. He looked faintly surprised as McGinnis gasped and then coughed twice.

“The claim chart is done, sir,” said Haley.

With his cigar going comfortably the General moved back and scrutinized the chart attentively. Then, with brief and absent thanks, he dismissed McGinnis, who retired with a final glance of frustrate fury at the bland Evans. Haley shuffled the papers in his pudgy hands.

“Those medical officers are waiting, sir.”

“Keep ‘em,” said Dennis. “Any calls?

“Mostly for General Kane, sir. Colonel Saybold has called three times, the Embassy four more, and Lady Grattonfield six.”

Unexpectedly, Dennis smiled. “Any idea what they want ?”

Haley had noted the smile. “I’ve no idea what Colonel Saybold or the Embassy want, sir.”

He observed the General’s appreciative grin with relief. Haley never could be sure of General Dennis; he would miss the most obvious jokes and then be observed indulging his tight-faced chuckle over things Haley did not consider funny. But this time it was all right.

“What else?”

“The boys in the Groups are in a hell of a sweat to know if there’ll be a mission tomorrow, sir.”

“So am I, Keep 'em alerted.”

“Sir, it s after ten and they want briefing poop and bomb loads. Most of ‘em haven’t had their clothes off for seventy-two hours.”

“Neither has anyone else.” Dennis thought a minute. “Cut another field order tape using the data for Chase Two Operation Stitch.”

“Phase Two, sir?”

“That’s what I said.”

Haley saw that deep fatigue had repossessed Dennis. But in their entire time together he had never known the General to make a mistake like this. He coughed and spoke diffidently.

“Sir, I understood that General Kane had said —”

“I didn’t say to put it on the printer. I said to cut the tape.”

The voice rasped. Haley stiffened reflexively and made for the door without a word. He had almost reached it when a softer accent, stopped him.

“Ernie—”

He turned to see Dennis striding toward him, his face relaxed and his voice contrite under its fatigue.

“I’m sorry. I’m tired.”

It gave Haley one of the bitterest moments he had known in service. He had behaved like a petulant child over a well-earned rebuke. He had to gulp before he was sure he could speak without intruding further emotion into Dennis’s troubles.

“Roger, sir. You ought to get some sleep, Casey.”

Dennis smiled wryly and clapping Haley on the shoulder walked into the Ops room with him.

21

EVANS had barely cornered McGinnis in the Ops room when he noticed the hurried passage of Dennis and Haley through it on their way down to the hole. Leading the suspicious Corporal back into the relative privacy of the General’s office, Evans took out the cigar box, opened it, and extended it with a hospitable smile.

“What you after now, Evans?”

“I’m fixing to share things more with you,” said Evans.

“What else we sharing?”

Evans snapped the box shut, replaced it with a fine simulation of indifference, and shrugged his shoulders. “Okay, if you want to be a Corporal all your life.”

“What you bucking for now?; McGinnis inquired more cordially.

Dennis won’t let me go to China till I’ve got someone to take my place. It’s worth Tech stripes, but if you don’t want it —”

They both jumped to silent attention as Dennis, with one of his habitually unexpected appearances, walked back in now, made straight for his desk, and sitting down, pulled out the Jenks file. Evans winked at McGinnis, who scuttled silently out.

Alone, Evans studied the General. “Excuse me, sir. You had any chow yet?”

“I’m expecting General Kane.”

He’d be pretty stringy, sir. I’ll get you something.”

He thought he saw a swift glow of gratitude in the General s bleak face as he went out.

Martin, entering the General’s office quietly a few minutes later, had a more detached look at his friend than he had thought of taking for years. Dennis was standing with a Personnel file in his hand, looking back and forth between those black dots on the map and the file itself, in a posture of ineffable weariness.

Studying him now with some of the acute attentiveness he normally reserved for the observation of engines, he wondered how Dennis took it. To ask the same question about himself would never have occurred to him. Martin had spent twenty of the last forty hours with entire aerial responsibility for the fate and effectiveness of a hundred and forty bombers through the two toughest missions of the war, to date. Sixteen of these hours he had been on oxygen, three of them he had spent shooting a machine gun for his life in the nose of a crippled fort. He was thinking now that, as always in their long relationship, Dennis had the tough job.

Dennis, of course, was an Academy man and he liked the service; at least he had liked it once.

There had been times during the latter years when Martin had begun to wonder about that. His own views of the service were so simple they had made a legend. At the reception after his graduation from flying school, the benign old Colonel who had suffered most through Martin’s training had asked the newly created Lieutenant what he thought of the uniform now.

“Just what I always thought, sir. It stinks but you have nice airplanes.”

Martin had been demoted three times before reaching his Captaincy. In his official file, however, there had long been established separate subcategories, a C for citations and commendations and an R for reprimands. The balance between these two had kept him almost abreast of classmates who had their first of either to earn.

He would not have cared if it hadn’t. To Martin the uniform was simply an inconvenience attendant upon life in a world full of airplanes no impecunious young man could hope to own. He considered it a fair bargain.

At his peak there were not half a dozen Americans who could fly in the same sky with him Dennis had been the only one of these in uniform It was Dennis who had twice kept Martin in the service through crises the Citation and Commendation file might not have balanced.

22

WHEN Dennis had been given the fifth Division his first personnel request had been for Martin.

It had troubled his conscience at the time because he had known what Martin could do, perhaps should be doing, for the teething troubles of the B-29’s. On the other hand, he had known the kind of thing Martin would, and did, do under most Commanders. The Fifth Division was an operational command; its priority was clear.

For Martin himself there had never been the slightest indecision about what he was going to do. He was grateful that Dennis’s good sense had finally saved them both the trouble of having him desert some other command to join the Fifth. It would have taken a lot of fixing.

Studying Dennis now as he pondered the Jenks file, unaware of anything else, Martin felt a hot, futile indignation. It was this kind of waste effort,

this pressure for which there were no gauges, that was slowly, visibly doing things to Dennis that even momentum and gravity and centrifugal force had never been able to do. Martin could feel immeasurable weight on that fragile form.

It filled him with a sudden fury, not against Jenks, but against the whole irrational structure that could let things like that consume Dennis. Toward Jenks himself Martin had no feeling. He knew him for a poor pilot but plenty of those got through. To ground such a man in combat was to issue a tacit invitation to malingerers. But if Jenks preferred the risk of quitting to running out six more missions, it was probably a break for the crews who would have ridden with him.

He was pondering how to say this so as to comfort Dennis, when Dennis himself looked up, bleakly at first and then with the quick smile that always welcomed his recognition of Martin. find it?”

The question, confronting Martin again with his own failure of that afternoon, swept the whole Jenks affair out of his mind. “Not in the first three categories. Jake’s working out the target folders on the Fourth now. Found our wandering General

yet?”

“No.”

“He must have heard of another camera somewhere.”

Dennis grunted but said nothing. They had long since effected a tacit compromise on these matters. Dennis never rebuked Martin’s habitual insubordinations when they were in private. Martin never allowed his tongue or attitude to embarrass Dennis in public At the moment, however, he wanted above all things to get Dennis away from his troubles, for respite if he could. There were few things that would divert him, but his own sympathy was one of them.

“Casey, did Cliff say anything about Helen?”

“He says she’s worried.”

Dennis tossed the Jenks file on the desk now, to indicate his receptiveness if Martin wished to speak of this matter. He rarely did and latterly only with the shrugging indifference that indicated the tragic finality of it. Tonight, however, he appeared to have it on his mind and Dennis listened with concentration.

“Worried about me or the kid?”

“You.”

“She always was—and with reason. I guess I was a pretty harebrained kid.”

He mused a second and it was too long. Involuntarily Dennis’s eyes had gone back to the map. The glance returned Martin abruptly to the implacable/present. He spoke half-bitterly.

“Now I’m Eagle-eye Martin — sure death on any target below the first three categories.”

“Quit hurting,” said Dennis sharply. You ve had this coming. It’s averages.

“Not with Cliff here,” said Martin. “Why couldn’t he stay with the United Chiefs? He wore his lips out getting there.”

He waited but Dennis deliberately evaded.

“Ted, are you and Helen going to click this time?”

Martin shrugged. “Maybe. I guess she didn’t feel so secure on her own, either. I won’t be flying forever. You know the thing that pulled my rip cord wit h the whole Garnett family was turning down that airline job.”

“Twelve thousand a year is a lot of dough tor a kid to laugh off.”

“I heard you turn down eighteen the same day. Grandpa. But those Garnetts always worshiped security — I guess because they’d been Army so long. At heart the guy’s jealous of us.”

“He’s done well, Ted.”

“At staff work.”

“We had to have those guys to get planes for loodlums like you and me,” said Dennis easily.

“Maybe,” Martin smiled fleetingly. “Helen tried everything in the book to make me one of ‘em indoors, flying tail cover on Cliff’s desk. She figures he’s a cinch for the top some day.”

“She’s probably right,” said Dennis slowly.

It always came to this, Martin reflected. He and Casey would find a few unexpected minutes together and it would be almost like the old days. Then, no matter what they were talking about, their new troubles closed in on them. It was so now and he knew he had to make the most of this time for the newest and nearest of them “Casey, she s right except for one thing. No record will be worth a damn after this war without Combat Command in it. Cliff knows that. And this is still the best Air Command in the war.”

“Maybe it is, until the B-29’s come along.”

“They’re still a dream, maybe a nightmare. Cliff always follows the beaten tracks, at a safe distance.”

Dennis smiled. “Ted, you’re imagining things.”

Martin jumped up and thumped the Swastika on the wall. “I’m not imagining that. Those things are going to be more fun than adultery, for the guys who have them. I admit I’d hate to see Cliff get your job but. I’d hate it worse to see Galland get these before we get our new fighters.”

“So would I, said Dennis. He was not smiling now.

“Well, he will if you tell Kane about today now. 8ut if he thinks we’re two-thirds done we can probably brace his spine enough to let us finish Fendelhorst tomorrow.”

“And after that?”

“ After that we discover today’s mistake. He’ll be in so deep by then he’ll have to finish to justify himself. Those pictures will keep him happy for twentyfour hours more. My God, Casey, they’re fooling the experts down in the hole and Kane doesn’t know a strike photo from a Wassermann smear. Why do you have to tell him tonight?”

“Why did you tell me?”

“I could trust you.”

Dennis considered before speaking slowly. “He trusts us, Ted.”

Martin exploded into blasphemy and then checked it. He knew that all the profanity at his command would not dent the rocky substructure of scruple in Dennis. He had to use reason, and he had to do it fast, while there was time. He was wondering how much time he had, when General Kane himself walked through the door.

23

TOWARD Kano, Marl m fell only the essential contempt he cherished for all things military. He had long since recognized that the caste system was more than a relic of the monarchical principle to which Armies clung so wistfully. It was vital armor against reason or competition. For Kane’s rank Martin felt no more inward respect than for any other, including his own.

As a young man Martin had revered Kane’s flying record. As a maturing pilot he had realized that Kane’s private compass had always been set for the kind of stars men wear. He observed now that Kane was traveling with a characteristic retinue. Besides his distinguished visitor he had brought one aide and one newspaperman. Martin accepted the introductions quietly in his turn, offered an indifferent hand to his brother-in-law, and nodded absently to Garnett’s compliments on the mission and his eager insistence upon a good private talk later on.

His mind was on Dennis. He listened to Kane’s explanations that the party had extended its visiting to the Headquarters of General Endicott’s neighboring Division and had felt obliged to stop there for dinner. Dennis appeared to have shed both fatigue and tension. He looked as calm and selfpossessed as if they were about to settle to cards. So did Kane.

“I here are some messages for you, sir,” Dennis was saying.

“Anything from Washington?”

“No, sir.”

“They can wait.”

The bell had rung, but even Martin was unprepared for the immediacy of Dennis’s opening.

‘Sir. may I speak with you briefly, alone?”

“Of course, Casey. But first I want Cliff to tell you — ”

“Sir, may I have one minute alone with you?”

Kane was not used to being interrupted. He spoke shortly. “All night, when you’ve heard what I want you to hear. Cliff, will you tell Casey what we decided?”

It was Garnett, rather than Dennis, who now showed embarrassment over this superficial discourtesy of Kane’s, but an order was an order. After a hesitant glance at Brockhurst and Prescott, who had drawn a little away from the faint turbulence now making itself felt in the room, he plunged in. Casey, I felt it was impossible for you people to be doing anything so serious without informing higher authority.”

That’s why I filed a report and recommendations.”

Martin locked his face muscles against the involuntary grin. He had seen Kane quicken with the impact of the remark. He knew it was no inadvertence that had caused Dennis to make it. The next job probably wouldn’t be as good as this one but Casey would be the same guy in it instead of a different man clinging to this one. For the first time he felt a twinge of pity for Garnett’s evident unease. But, as Kane chose to default the retort by silence, Garnett had to continue.

“Well, Casey, they never reached us. So General Kane and I have been talking to Washington bv teleprint conversation from Joe Endicott’s. We felt we owed it to the Chief to put him in the position of being able to defend what we — what’s being done here, if he approves it. Brockie here was good enough to write the whole thing out for us so as to put it in the most forceful and favorable light. I think if you’ll read it — ”

He nodded to Brockhurst, who stepped forward now and offered Dennis a roll of teletype paper. Dennis had heard the news with a sense of lifting relief that the information had at last reached levels of authority commensurate with its importance. Garnett’s action had put the thing in its proper position, bringing the essence of the Army’s strength, which was its unity, to bear upon it.

“I’ve read enough of Brockhurst s lily-gilding.

What did the Chief say?”

“Unfortunately he’s in Florida, at the proving

grounds.” .

“Testing a new typewriter.

“General!” said Kane. “I can’t tolerate such remarks. The Chief’s public relations policy has put us where we are today.

“ It sure has,” said Dennis.

Garnett intervened hastily. “We had a very constructive talk with Lester Blackmer, Casey. You know how close Les and the ; Chief are.

“I know,” said Dennis. “What did Lester Yessir

say?

“Well, he couldn’t speak officially but he’s sure the Chief will be 100 per cent behind us in principle.”

Evans, entering with a tray full of sandwiches just then, blessed the luck that had brought him back at this minute. The room was crackling with tension. Kane’s face was now a dull brick-red. Dennis had his jaw locked on a dead cigar but Evans could tell from the exaggerated levelness of his voice that

he was angry.

“These gentlemen have eaten. Sergeant.”

“Do they know you haven’t, sir!”

Kane saved Evans the rebuke he had fully expected, by turning quickly to Dennis with courteous

solicitude.

“I’m sorry, Casey. Put those things on the table,

Sergeant. We’ll be going soon.”

“That’s fine, sir,” said Evans blandly. Moving to the map table, he cocked his ears and began unloading as slowly as he dared. _

“Les warned us, Casey,” continued Garnett, “that the Chief may be very upset about our your losses. He said he’d help us by working up a

big feature story on claims.”

““Did you get those added up, General: asked

Kane.

“Multiplied, sir.” Dennis pointed to the gaudy claim chart and Kane hurried to it tor a personal inspection.

“Les will also stress the importance of these targets when he can reach the Chief and — they all felt. Garnett heshate “he’s going to try to sell the Chief on letting us finish after the allocation

meeting.”

Dennis walked straight over to Kane, who kept

his eves on the chart.

“Sir, did you let that little two-star stooge forbid

our mission for tomorrow.J

The phrasing of the question deflected Kanes mind from its manifest insubordination. It was all very well for Dennis to dismiss Blackmer so contemptuously. Kane knew that no Major General got that close to the Chief for the purpose of dulling his knives on Brigadiers. Blackmer was his own contemporary. Kane had had a bad moment on learning who would steer the report of this situation to the Chief. He answered testily, as much to his own worries as to Dennis’s open anger. “Of course not. If there’s one thing the Chief prides himself on, it’s not letting his own people interfere with his Commanders’ freedom of action in the field.

Dennis caught himself quickly. “That’s fine, sir. Now the Groups are waiting for the order and - “Not. so fast, Casey. Les indicated to us, unofficially, that it would be a great thing to put the Chief in a position to announce a new monthly record for sorties and tonnages just before that

meeting on Tuesday.”

“We can’t take record tonnages that far, sir.”

“I’m afraid that’s the point,” said Garnett. “Les virtually promised us, if we’d take things easy for the last two days of this month, he thought everything would be all right with the Chief after Tues-

“ Including weather, I suppos — in Washington. “Casey, you’ll get weather again,” said Garnett

soothingly.

“When?” demanded Dennis. “I’ve waited five

weeks for this. Twice we had one day; this job takes three. If we ever do get them again, the big wheels will be after us for headlines over those sub-pens or tearing up the French perfume trade to discourage the Italians or covering some State Department four-flush in the Balkans or any other damned thing on the planet except the one thing that will decide whether American bombardment can stay in business at all.” , .

Martin was finding it hard work to cover his excitement. He did not see how even Kane could have let the argument go on so far if his mind were made up. If it were not, there was a chance, almost too elusive for measurement, but present still in the wavering course of this discussion. It lay m Kane himself, in the irresolution which was still permitting Garnett to carry the preliminary skirmish for him while he studied it and calculated. Garnett seemed to be sensing his superior’s uncertainty; he continued persuasively. “Casey, we know you’ve had distractions. Nobody can take all the politics out of war. But you don’t need three days again. As Lester said, the saving grace of the situation is that

you’re two-thirds done—”

He broke off with annoyance, looking toward the door, and Martin, following his gaze, saw with dismay that Lieutenant Jake Goldberg had burst wildly into the room, his arms laden with maps and photos and target folders.

24

GOLDBERG had crashed through the door with the velocity of flight. He was fleeing from himself. For, on the way upstairs from the laboratory in the hole, he had paused briefly to think for the first time since his eves had seen the target folder in his hand superimpose, line for line, over the photos on the light table, and his feet had started instantly for the General’s office. His brief pause en route he now saw as the darkest of moral compromises. It had occurred to him that there was some comfort in what he had learned. At least the thing was not a hospital.

Goldberg was a boy who understood the cost of the advantages that had been given him. His mother and father kept a delicatessen just, off Santa Monica Boulevard. From their cash till, Goldberg had been sent through high school and two years of college. His brain had been as immediately and happily at home with trig and calculus as the others around him were with jockeys’ records and dance tunes. Goldberg’s parents had seen for the boy a chance beyond their own horizons.

War changed the chance; he was graduated number one in a class of six hundred bombardiers, to become an officer in the Army of the United Slates. He had learned. He had been ready, equipped, and useful when his country wanted him.

Then, in one day, he had not only mistaken a target which was important enough to take the Division beyond fighters; he had found himself on the verge of trying to ameliorate his failure in the eyes of General Dennis and Colonel Martin by misrepresenting, with considered words, the importance of what he had hit.

This afternoon, as soon as the photos had come in, General Dennis had come down to the light table instead of sending for them. Before looking at them he had cleared his throat and said: “Goldberg, Colonel Martin has told me this is not your fault. He still thinks you’re the best bombardier in the Army and he’s the best judge I know. Now find out what you did hit. and bring it to me at once.”

The Officers in the conference looked up at his intrusion with astonishment. They saw an unshaven Lieutenant, face still grimy from powder smoke, eyes red from strain and tears. His proximity to acute hysteria was apparent in everything but the inflexible steadiness of purpose with which he now thrust his maps and photos straight at General Dennis, oblivious of everyone else in the room. I’ve found the damned thing, sir,” he said.

Only then did he look around to see a Major General, another Brigadier, and two strangers gaping at his appearance.

“Excuse me, sir. You said —”

“That’s right,” said Dennis quickly. “General Kane, this is today’s lead bombardier, Lieutenant Goldberg.”

Kane had had time to study the boy’s condition. He stepped forward now and extended his hand with benign paternalism. “Good evening, Lieutenant. That was a wonderful mission you boys ran today.

I couldn’t wait to see the pictures myself but I’ve been talking to a member of the Big Chief’s personal staff and he says the Chief will be very proud of you.” Goldberg accepted the handshake absently. His mind was still on the folders in his other hand. To his astonishment it was Colonel Martin who grabbed him by the arm and started him toward the door, speaking quickly to Kane. “Very sorry you were interrupted, sir. This can wait.”

He was propelling Goldberg forcibly toward the door when General Kane himself saw the pictures and, reaching out, took them out of the Lieutenant’s hand. At the first glance his face began to beam.

Look, Cliff, look! These are wonderful. You see — here’s the highway coming in, here’s the river, here’s the factory—”

free from Martin, Goldberg stepped over to the General now, his mind clear again and focused entirely on the pictures. “You’ve got them upside down. General,” he said.

Major Prescott wondered for an instant whether he should put this unspeakable Lieutenant in his place. But keeping his mouth shut, Prescott walked over to join his senior’s admiration of the photographs. It was Dennis who spoke now, very sharply. hut not to Goldberg. “General Kane, may 1 have a minute alone with you?”

1 his time Kane did show his irritation openly. “I ve told you, General, you can have all night, as soon as we’re done. Look, Cliff! Look at that blast here on the smoke fringe.” He stopped, cogitated, and then spoke with decision. “These will have to go to the Chief at once by special plane.”

Sir, said Major Prescott, '“considering the importance of these, I should like permission to work up a special presentation of them — frame them dramatically on good white board — using before and after shots, with a t itle, ‘The Doom of Schweinhafen.’ ”

Kane beamed. “The very thing, Homer.”

“It isn’t Schweinhafen,” said Lieutenant Goldberg.

“Not Schweinhafen! What is it?” Kane glared.

“The Nautilus Torpedo plant at Gritzenheim,

sir.”

“Torpedo plant?” echoed Kane.

Garnett s reflexes were faster. He had seized the photos now and his face lit up at the new examination of them. General, this couldn’t be more opportune. The Admirals will want, to see this. If we can get these to the Big Chief before that meeting Kane got it now. He beamed upon Goldberg and then, as his whole perception expanded, he clapped the Lieutenant affectionately upon the shoulder. “I’ll send my own plane. Lieutenant, you don’t know what this will do for us. When we can show our Commanders that in the midst of the greatest air campaign in history we still think enough of the over-all strategy to knock out a torpedo factory too —”

I’m sorry, sir,”said Dennis. “We hit it by accident instead of Schweinhafen.”

(To be continued)