$3.00
NO TIME
FOR GLORY
Stories of World War II
Selected by
PHYLLIS R. FENNER
Illustrated by \Vu,i. IAM R. I-OHSK
They were dashing, they were methodi-
cal; they were light-hearted, they \vere
"rim. Veterans, schoolboys, oilicers, me-
chanics --they were the men uho iought
in World War II. They had 110 time-
and no taste- for glory.
**It was truly a war fought around the
world/* Miss Fermer says. The ten stories
in this collection bear her statement out.
Claude Hearpaw, the grandson of a
Cherokee chief, took part in a raid over*
the PJoesti oil fields; young" Andy Cassat
outwitted a German submarine oil Nan-
tucket. In other stories a boy from Aus-
tralia crashes in flames on English soil:
an American sailor lies wounded and
dying on a beach in Japan; two Allied
airmen reach the Swiss frontier after
breaking out of an "escapcproof" Ger-
man prison.
Once again Phyllis Fenner demon-
strates her unerring" skill in story selec-
tion* The ones she has chosen here point
up the drama, the suffering*, the courage,
and sometimes even the humor that
marked a world at war. Among the
distinguished authors she includes are
William Chamberlain, James Warner
Bcllah, and Pearl S. Buck.
MORROW JUNIOR BOOKS
OO12-OO16
64-06752
l\/nr>a% Phyllis IUU, 1899-
crmp
Ito time for glory* Llus
by >Iilliaii R* Lchse* Mor-
o'^^AV^^l-l^-
6^-06752
by .JUli'im R. Lchac. ^'
'
kansas city |||| jjublic library
J kansas. ^city, missouri
Books will be issued only
on presentation of library card.
Please report lost cards and
change of residence promptly.
Card holders are responsible for
all books, records, films, pictures
out on the
TIME FOR GLORY
Stories of World
HAY 1964
illustrated by William R. Lohse
NO TIME
FOR GLORY
Stories of World War II
selected by
Phyllis R. Fenner
WILLIAM MORROW & COMPANY NEW YORK
Copyright 1962 by Phyllis R, Fenner
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint the follow-
ing:
"The Secret Raiders of Ploesti/' by William Chamberlain, from The
Saturday Evening Post, 1959 by The Curtis Publishing Company.
Reprinted by permission of the author and his agents, Littauer and
Wilkinson.
"Pirate Off Nantucket," by James Warner Bellah, from The Saturday
Evening Post, 1942. by The Curtis Publishing Company. Reprinted
by permission of the author and his agents, Scott Meredith Literary
Agency, Inc.
"The Commandos Go In," by Bernard Glemser, from his book, Radar
Commandos, 1953 by Bernard Glemser. Reprinted by permission of
Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
"Leave It to Wilbur/* by Arch Whitehouse, from his book, Fighters in
the Sky, 1942, 1951, 1959 by Arch Whitehouse. Reprinted by per-
mission of Duell, Sloane & Pearce, Inc.
"The Walls Are Breached," by P. R. Reid, from his book, The Colditz
Story, 1952 by P. R. Reid. Reprinted by permission of J. B. Lip-
pincott Company.
"The Rifles of the Regiment/* by Eric Knight, from Colliers* 1942
by The Crowell-Collier Publishing Company. Reprinted by permission
of the author's estate.
The Immortal Harpy/* by Hobert Douglas Skidmore, from The Satur-
day Evening Post, 1944 by The Curtis Publishing Company. Re-
printed by permission of the author and his agents, Constance Smith
Associates.
"The Beaches of Dunkirk," by "Bartimeus/' from The Atlantic
Monthly, 1940 by The Atlantic Monthly Company. Reprinted by
permission of Paul R. Reynolds & Son.
"The Young Man from Kalgoorlie/" by H. E. Bates, from Ms book,
There s Something m the Air, 1943 by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., and
reprinted with their permission.
"The Enemy," by Pearl S. Buck, from Harper's Magazine and from,
her book, Far and Near (The John Day Company, 1947), 1942 by
Pearl S. Buck. Reprinted by permission of Harold Ober Associates In-
corporated.
All rights reserved.
Published simultaneously in the Dominion of Canada by
George J. McLeod Limited, Toronto.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 62-11900
For my friend,
Anna Buck.,
in appreciation
of her help
through the years.
Young Mutt
6406752
CONTENTS
THE SECRET RAIDERS OF PLOESTi William Chamberlain 13
PIRATE OFF NANTUCKET James Warner Bellah 33
THE COMMANDOS GO IN Bernard Glemser 53
LEAVE IT TO WILBUR Arch Whitehouse 76
THE WALLS ARE BREACHED P. R. Reid QQ
THE RIFLES OF THE REGIMENT EriC Knight 132
THE IMMORTAL HARPY Hobert Douglas Skidmore 138
THE BEACHES OF DUNKIRK "Bartimeus" 168
THE YOUNG MAN FROM KALGOORLIE H. E. Bates 179
THE ENEMY Pearl S. Buck 196
A WORLD ON FIRE
World War I ( 1914 to 1918) was called "a war to end wars,"
but in 1934 Adolf Hitler got control of Germany and an-
nexed Austria and Czechoslovakia. The rest of the world sat
by and watched until he conquered Poland in 1939. Then
France and Britain became involved. Hitler's tanks knocked
out the French and drove the British Army to the beaches
of Dunkirk where, but for a miracle, they would have been
destroyed. The long bombing of Britain began.
On December 7, 1941, "the day of infamy," with no
declaration of war, Japanese planes destroyed almost our
entire main fleet at Pearl Harbor and nearly all of our air-
craft on the ground in the Philippines. Germany and Italy
declared war on us immediately. Thus began a war lasting
from 1941 to 1945, which was "the longest, fiercest, and
bloodiest war we had fought since the Civil War/* It was
truly a war fought around the world, and few nations es-
caped being drawn in.
It was also a grim war, fought with machine guns and
hand grenades, tanks and jeeps, heavy bombers and little
Spitfire fighting planes, PT boats and submarines, destroy-
ers and big battleships. There was no chivalry. Civilians
were killed and open cities destroyed. It was no war of
songs and slogans. There was literally no time for glory.
P.F.
The Secret Raiders of Ploesti
WILLIAM CHAMBERLAIN
The official report of the Ploesti raid f or it was only a raid,
although a magnificent one is terse and factual. It makes
dry reading, for official reports are not noted for their liter-
ary quality. Its gist may be given as follows:
"On i August, 1943, five groups of 6-24 heavy bombers,
flying from airfields in the vicinity of Bengasi, made a low-
level attack on enemy oil installations at Ploesti, Rumania,
One hundred and seventy-seven bombers were dispatched
14 WILLIAM CHAMBERLAIN
on the mission. Fifty-four failed to return. Approximately
forty per cent of the cracking and refining capacity at
Ploesti was destroyed. . . /*
If you dig deep enough you may learn that five Congres-
sional Medals of Honor were earned that day for ". . . gal-
lantry and intrepidity . . . above and beyond the call of
duty. . " It is doubtful, however, that you will find men-
tion of Cass Bolivar or his ship, the Sally Lou, or of First
Lt. Claude Bearpaw. Officially, neither Claude nor Cass
Bolivar was at Ploesti at all
Not, of course, that the omission of Bearpaw from the re-
ports bothered Claude. In the first place, he never read offi-
cial reports; in the second place, since he'd been A.W.O.L.
at the time, he felt that the less said about the matter, the
better.
Claude was twenty-two a tall, rangy youth with his
Cherokee ancestry showing in the high cheekbones of his
face and the copper-bronze cast of his skin. Back in Okla-
homa his father owned more oil wells than he could count,
and Claude had been going to a football college until the
Air Force had lured him away to learn to fly planes. Since
he was the grandson of a chief, Claude had taken to flying
and to war as a hound dog takes to a rabbit.
It was this zeal, coupled with a happy disregard for such
things as regulations, that landed Claude in the hospital,
suffering from an acute overdose of flak, early in July of
1943. His squadron lie was flying medium bombers for
the Northwest African Strategic Air Force at the time had
been enjoying a one-day stand-down. The inactivity had
bored Claude. Instead of reasonably heading for a binge in
The Secret Raiders of Ploesti 15
Constantine, as had the rest of his fellows, he had thumbed
a ride up to Sicily with a neighboring squadron which was
going to bomb the railroad yards at Palermo.
Coming back, they'd run into an unplotted AA battery
manned by Germans whose shooting was considerably
better than that of the "Eyeties." As a result, the plane in
which Claude was riding had been pretty thoroughly venti-
lated with flak, and Claude himself had arrived home with
a dozen chunks of assorted metal in parts of his anatomy.
His C.O., a rough type, had given Claude a chewing out;
then he had remarked piously that it was doubtless Allah's
will and now maybe he'd get some sleep of nights and
had consigned Claude to the hospital for repairs. That had
been better than three weeks ago, and now boredom was
again beginning to ride Claude. He mentioned that to the
man in the next bed.
"Either I get out of here or I go nuts," Claude said darkly.
"As long as they were picking iron out of me with the flak
clippers it wasn't so bad at least it passed the time away.
Now these monkeys say I got to stick around here for ob-
servation whatever that is."
The man sitting on the edge of the next bed made no an-
swer as he lighted a cigar with meticulous care. He'd been
moved in here this morning, and this was the first chance
Claude had had to get acquainted. A harmless, happy-
looking old guy, had been Claude's first impression. A mid-
dle-sized man with mild eyes, crow-footed at the corners,
and hair that was patched with gray at the temples. Most
likely, Claude thought, the other was some sort of a staff
wallah in here to rest his ulcers. The other had that look.
l6 WILLIAM CHAMBERLAIN
However, Claude was a person who liked to know. "What
you in here for, dad?" he asked, grinning to show that there
was no offense meant.
The older man gave Claude a thoughtful stare; then he
took the cigar from his mouth and inspected its burning
end. "Observation/' he said finally.
Claude said disgustedly, "Well, that makes two of us. You
know what I think? I think this here is a nut ward they got
us cooped up in." He paused to tap himself moodily on the
chest with a forefinger, then introduced himself. "Bearpaw,
here. Claude, first loot You got a name, dad?"
The other said, his tone indicating it was of no great con-
sequence, "Bolivar. Captain Cass Bolivar/"
"Glad to know you, cap/' Claude said, his grin coming
back as he put out a hand. "What they got you doing in the
white man's war? Working at the base section, maybe?"
"Flying," Cass Bolivar said. "At least that's what I was
doing until they shipped me here to the hospital, lieuten-
,
ant.
Claude squinted at Bolivar with new interest now. "Fly-
ing, huh? You must be new out here I ain't seen you
around before."
Cass didn't answer that at once. He was thinking, How
little these brash kids, just out from the States, know of
what war really is. Well, it's not your job to tell them, Cass.
They'll find out for themselves all too soon.
Cass Bolivar was ten years older than Claude, but meas-
ured in terms other than years, he was already an old, old
man, for he had learned of war the hard way. He had his
The Secret Raiders of Ploesti 17
first lesson of war while he'd watched impotently as the core
of the Far East Air Force had died on Clark Field in the
Philippines., amid the crash of bombs and the howl of straf-
ing fighters. That had been a little over a year and a half ago
as days went; reckoned on a starker scale the scale of
heartbreak and forlorn missions against impossible odds,
and running they took eons from a man's life that he could
never get back.
Not that Cass Bolivar thought of things that way he
was not an imaginative man. He just knew that after Clark
Field there had been the futility of Mindanao and the
Dutch islands and India. Then, finally, Egypt, where the
hastily formed United States Army Middle East Air Force
later to become the gth Air Force was helping to beat
back RommeFs Afrika Korps; then the months of war in the
desert after that. There had been too few pilots and too
few planes in those days; some not many of both were
left now, but they were old and war weary far beyond their
time.
Cass Bolivar was one of those. He didn't know it, but his
squadron commander himself one of the old ones had
seen and had understood too well. He'd put the thing into
words in the late afternoon three days ago, after Cass had
come in for a bad landing. Cass had ground-looped the
Sally Lou in the dust of the desert field, and Bull Holliday
had waited until the rest of the Safs crew had moved off
out of earshot before he'd given Cass the business.
"You've had it, Cass," he'd said quietly then. "I've been
watching since we started practicing on this low-level
strike. It's no dice. I'm sorry, but I'm pulling you off flying."
l8 WILLIAM CHAMBERLAIN
It had taken a minute for that to sink in. "You mean I'm
not going on the Big One?" Cass had asked then, disbeliev-
ing,
"That's right/' Bull had said in a flat, hard voice, because
that was the only way. "Young Stahl will take the Sal I'm
sending you back for a rest. That way maybe youll live
long enough to fly again before this war is over."
Probably Bull Holliday hadn't realized that he was de-
livering Cass into the eager clutches of the medics, but that
was the way it had worked out. Presently Cass had found
himself on a C-47 consigned back to the base section. Here
at the hospital this morning he'd been gleefully welcomed
by a medical major named Micklejohn a bulgy little man
with a toothbrush mustache and eyes that glittered with a
bird-dog look behind shiny pince-nez as he hastily scanned
the papers that Cass had brought with him.
< Hah!" Micklejohn said to the medical lieutenant with
him. "A perfect case of battle fatigue, Jensen it's all here.
Clearly a subconscious withdrawal from reality in the sub-
ject's actions. That ground loop, for example."
"That ground loop was because the rudder stuck," Cass
had growled. The major had paid no attention.
"Put him in Ward Three, Jensen," he had said. "We've
got another interesting case in there a lieutenant who
thinks he likes to fly combat missions. Got wounded over
Sicily when he wasn't even supposed to be there. Screwy,
eh?"
Cass, with an effort, brought his attention back to Claude.
The latter, he saw, was squinting a little suspiciously while
he tried to digest the fact that Cass was a flier.
The Secret Raiders of Ploesti 19
"You wouldn't," Claude asked, "be one of those Air
Transport boys, would you, cap? What kind o flying you
beendoin'?"
"Different kinds/' Cass said.
"Been on any combat missions?"
"A few."
"How many?"
"After a hundred I lost count," Cass said.
Claude's jaw dropped as he stared back; then he stood up
and batted Cass enthusiastically on the back. "Well, 111 be!"
he said. "Let's us do a sneak out of here, cap. Any guy that's
flown a hundred missions, I got to buy a drink for!"
"I could do with a drink," Cass said thoughtfully. "Don't
suppose that the medicos would approve, though."
"They won't even know about it," Claude said. "I know
an orderly around this dump that likes money he'll sneak
us out our clothes if I wave a few francs at him. How about
it?"
Cass started to refuse then changed his mind. What did
he have to lose? "When do we go?" he asked.
Claude gave him a wide grin. "Meet me in the can in five
minutes, cap," he said. "I'll have the duds with me."
He fished an oversized roll of paper money from beneath
his pillow, and explained obliquely, "Got into a crap game
with the Navy last night. Navy'd never heard of the Chero-
kee luck it cost 'em, cap," and departed down the aisle
between the beds. Cass Bolivar stared after him. Cass was
beginning to like Claude Bearpaw.
Presently the two of them left the hospital unchallenged.
Claude hailed a ramshackle cab and gave the Arab driver
20 WILLIAM CHAMBERLAIN
an address. Cass's old uniform felt slack and comfortable as
lie lighted a fresh cigar and looked at his companion
through the smoke. Claude's uniform was on the informal
side. He wore wrinkled khaki trousers and a khaki shirt with
the sleeves chopped off above the elbows. A long-billed
baseball cap was canted on the back of his head, and his
pilot's wings had been pinned to the breast of his shirt up-
side down.
"Distress signal, cap," he explained to Cass. "Lo, the pore
Injun has shore been distressed in that hospital."
"I see," Cass murmured. He was liking Claude better.
The taxi stopped before an establishment that had Cafe
Georgette painted on a window. Claude hopped out, push-
ing a wad of paper money at the driver and beckoning to
Cass. He led the way into a dim room, empty except for
three sailors, sitting broke and glum at a far table, and a
woman, grossly fat, who stood behind a bar.
"Set, cap," Claude commanded. "This is on me. Hey,
Mamma, you remember the Injun boy from Oklahoma?"
The fat woman squinted, then smiled broadly. "Ah," she
said, "it is the Lieutenant Bearf eet, no? Allo, man ami?
"Paw not feet," Claude corrected amiably. " 'Bout the
same difference though, I guess. You remember how to mix
them Oklahoma Specials like I showed you last time I was
here, ma'am?"
"Those drinks," Mamma said piously, "I don't forget"
"Then mix up a couple for me and the cap," Claude told
her. "Come to think of it, dearie, better mix five and well
treat those swabbies in the corner. They're our allies, sort
r yy
of.
The Secret Raiders of Ploesti 21
Mamma waddled out and soon returned with glasses
filled with a murky-looking liquid. She placed two down on
the table and carried the others to where the sailors sat.
The latter accepted enthusiastically. Claude lifted his own
glass. "Mud in your eye, cap," he said.
Cass sipped. His first thought was that the concoction
had a flat, insipid taste; his second thought was that some-
one had suddenly aimed a lighted blowtorch down his
gullet. He choked violently, and tears ran down his cheeks
as he tried to get his breath.
"My ole grandpappy's recipe/' Claude explained. "He
was a Cherokee chief. After the first jolt, it goes down
easier."
"Oof !" Cass said in a husky whisper. "Wha* "
"Cognac, bay rum, dago red, and cayenne pepper,"
Claude explained in a matter-of-fact voice.
The second swig did go down more easily, and a warm,
comfortable glow began to run through Cass. They had two
more Specials, Claude dispatching refills to the grateful
sailors each time. The latter had perked up and were sing-
ing now.
"You don't look like a nut to me, cap," Claude said, peek-
ing owlishly at Cass after the third Special, "What they ob-
servin' you for, anyway? Or did you just get in the glue with
some of the high brass?"
The Specials had thawed Cass's customary reserve, and
presently he was telling Claude about the events that had
led up to his relief from his squadron. He spoke, keeping
his voice low, of a coming operation which he referred to
only as the Big One; it was to be a low-level attack for
days now his group had been practicing on simulated tar-
22 WILLIAM CHAMBERLAIN
gets laid out in the desert. Tricky business very tricky
for a 6-24 was never meant to bomb at treetop level It was
hard enough just to fly such a mission in practice; it would
be hell on wheels to take such an attack in against fighters
and flak.
Claude's eyes were bright with interest now. "This Big
One, cap where's it going? You know?"
Cass shook his head. "That's security stuff and I can't tell.
But it'll be big and it's coming soon/'
"I got a grapevine around these parts/' Claude said,
frowning thoughtfully. "This morning I hear that a bunch
of the big brass is flying east tonight. Going to see the show,
you think?"
"I wouldn't know," Cass said heavily. "I think we've got
trouble coming through the door, Bearpaw."
Claude turned his head. The street entrance had opened
and a bulgy major, a lieutenant at his shoulder, had just
entered. The major paused for a moment, blinking his eyes
behind his pince-nez to accustom them to the gloom. It was
Micklejohn and his assistant, Jensen; now he stalked for-
ward, smiling as a cat smiles at a mouse.
"I had a hunch we'd find our two flown birds here," he
chortled triumphantly. "All right, you two, are you coming
quietly or do we have to send for the net?"
He reached a pudgy hand for Cass Bolivar's arm. Over
in the corner the three sailors had stopped singing and were
watching, dark scowls on their faces. Inspiration suddenly
moved Claude.
"Hey, give us a hand, Navy!" he yelled. "These are the
two nuts that stole officers' uniforms and escaped from the
The Secret Raiders of Ploesti 23
hospital this morning! There's free beer for anybody who
takes 'em back!"
Claude's grandpappy, the Cherokee chief, had dreamed
up the Oklahoma Specials in order to condition young
braves for the warpath. It worked about the same on the
Navy. The smallest of the trio, a bullet-headed and much-
tattooed man, started across the floor purposefully; his two
companions followed. Major MicHejohn's eyes glittered
fiercely behind his glasses as he backed away.
"We're not the lunatics!" he yelped shrilly. "We're "
"That's what they all say," Claude said in a severe tone.
"Grab 'em, boys!" the tattooed sailor said. He lowered his
head and butted the major in the belly. His mates closed in
and the room was suddenly filled with salty language and
flying arms and legs. Claude dumped paper money onto the
table as Mamma screamed behind the bar.
"Let's get out of here, cap," Claude said practically.
"Looks like the United States Navy has got the situation in
hand."
He hauled Cass toward a side door, and the two of them
went along a winding alley at a gallop to come presently
to a wider street. Here Claude flagged down a passing cab
and piled in after Cass, shouting orders to the Arab driver in
pidgin English.
Cass Bolivar recovered his breath enough to ask, "Where
are we going, lieutenant? Back to the hospital?"
Claude shook his head and looked at the other out of the
corners of his eyes. "Be just as well if we're not around when
those swabbies show up with their escaped nuts, cap," he
said. "Why don't we just go to Bengasi, instead?"
24 WILLIAM CHAMBERLAIN
Cass blinked, beginning to wonder if possibly Claude
was a mental case after all "Bengasi?" he asked blankly.
"Yup," Claude said, but the levity had gone out of his
voice. "You were telling me back there, cap, about how
youVe been drilling the SaTs crew for this low-level strike
even with all that drill you figure it's going to be a rough
deal, huh?"
Cass nodded. "Rough as a cob."
"O.K.," Claude agreed in a flat voice. "So I want to ask
you something. You figure that copilot of yours Stahl was
his name, wasn't it? can take the Sal wherever she's going
and bring her back?"
Heaviness settled into Cass Bolivar's face. He knew the
answer to that question; it was an answer that had kept him
awake for the past two nights. Because he knew too well
that young Ed Stahl had too few missions behind him to be
ready for this one.
"No," he said to Claude now. "I don't think he can."
"So we go to Bengasi," Claude said, as though that
clinched it. "Somebody has got to fly the Sal, don't they?"
Cass rubbed fingers slowly across his chin. "And youVe
got some idea how we can get to Bengasi, lieutenant?" he
asked, wondering if he, too, were really nuts.
"Oh, shore," Claude said, his good nature returning.
"Like I said, cap, I got spies around. One of 'em is at the air-
field that we're headed for. Give him a few francs and hell
smuggle us onto that plane that is taking the brass up to
Bengasi tonight."
"What'll the brass say to that?"
Claude flapped a hand. "Shucks, they won't even know
The Secret Raiders of Ploesti 25
we're there. Well get us some fatigues and smear grease
on our pusses and make like we're along to help hold the
ship together."
Claude, squatting on his heels beside the squat shape of
the Sally Lou, shivered in the gray dawn. The desert can
be cold before the sun comes up. Cass Bolivar had finished
his inspection of the ship; now he stood a little apart talking
with the crew chief of the SaTs ground crew, a lanky ser-
geant who had not questioned the captain's return. Trucks
were jouncing across the sand in the growing light, and
Claude lounged to his feet. One of the trucks stopped a little
way off and men climbed down. Cass Bolivar went to meet
them.
That would be the Sal's combat crew, Claude knew. They
had halted to stand in a little huddle, and Claude grinned
tightly as he heard the little murmur of surprise that ran
through them. An incautious voice carried from the rear.
"Holy smoke, it's the skipper!"
Cass Bolivar seemed not to hear, and he spoke with the
tone of a man who had never been away. "Morning, men,"
he was saying. "Sorry to have missed the briefing. . . .
You can fill me in after we get in the air, Ed. Youll ride co-
pilot, as usual."
"Yes, sir/' That would be young Stahl, Claude guessed.
The kid had a high, reedy voice, and there was no mistaking
the relief that was in it. "What about York, captain? He was
to ride copilot"
"Sorry, York," Cass said, his voice clipped. "You won't be
going on this trip, son. With the load that the Saf s carrying
26 WILLIAM CHAMBERLAIN
today, therell be no room for an extra passenger. Any other
questions?''
Across the field now the morning was filled with the roar
of warming engines, but here by the Sally Lou a pregnant
silence held the crew for a moment. Then a gunner's voice
broke the tension. "Me, Tm happy/' he said.
Claude heard the murmur of approval that followed; then
Cass Bolivar was saying, "Load up, men," and a new
thought struck Claude, so that he scowled and ducked be-
neath a wing.
If Cass Bolivar meant to leave that extra copilot behind,
it was a pretty good bet that Claude Bearpaw could get
left behind, too, if he wasn't careful Nuts to that, Claude
decided, and climbed through a hatch into the Sal's belly.
The Sal was air-borne before the tail gunner, a sergeant
named Hortha, spotted Claude. Hortha's mouth dropped
open a little when he saw Claude's lieutenant's bars and
the wings worn upside down.
"Ain't you kind of new around here, lootenant?" Hortha
asked then. "Or maybe I just got a bad memory?"
Claude grinned. "I came along for the ride."
"Gripes," Hortha grunted, "the skipper will blow his top
for sure does he find we got a passenger."
"He ain't a passenger not if he can shoot a waist gun, he
ain't," a sergeant named Moss said. "Barney went sick at
the briefing, and no replacement for him showed up."
"I'm murder with a machine gun," Claude said modestly.
"Murder's our business today," Moss answered dourly.
They crossed the Mediterranean, reaching for altitude,
The Secret Raiders of Ploesti 27
for there were mountains ahead. The Sal grumped steadily
along, preserving radio silence and holding her place in the
low squadron of the task force. Sergeant Moss shouted to
make himself heard above the pulsing roar of the Libera-
tor's four engines.
"We're Tail-end Charley in this show," he said, and his
voice sounded unhappy. "By the time we get to Ploesti,
every fighter and every flak battery in Rumania will be
waiting for us."
"So that's where we're going," Claude grunted. "Well,
nobody dies, sergeant. I got the word."
"I hope you're right," Moss answered.
In the cockpit Cass Bolivar sat relaxed, the joy of flying
in him and his mind tight on the job ahead. In the right-
hand seat young Ed Stahl, copilot, fidgeted nervously. "I'm
glad they let you come along, captain," he said.
"They didn't," Cass told him. "Don't ask questions."
The time paddle-footed away. Below, mountains slipped
into the leading edges of the SaTs wings, were spewed out
behind. Ahead, the ships of another squadron made black
bugs against the sky. Cass spoke into the interphone,
nodded curtly at his navigator's reply. They'd be heading
down for the deck soon.
The altimeter was winding down now, and the mountains
were lost astern as they dropped into the valley of the Dan-
ube. They fled over fields where peasants watched; startled
faces turned up as the bomber stream roared on. The broad
reaches of the Danube were left behind; ahead, and still
far away, black smoke was beginning to climb into the
summer sky. The first of the raiders had already struck. It
28 WILLIAM CHAMBERLAIN
was scant minutes later when Cass spotted the German
fighters ME- log's coming in head on and fast.
Thank God, Cass's mind said with detached calm, we're
low. They can't get at us so well down here
The interphone had suddenly come alive, and, still with
that detachment, Cass's mind fitted the snatches of words
into a pattern which told him of the battle that raged
around the Sal now. Nothing he could do about it. He had
his own hands full with the heavy ship as it bucked in the
tricky air currents coming off the ground below. The voices
pulsed on in his ears.
"Three fighters coming in at nine o'clock high. . . .
Roger. . . , Nose gunner to left waist. . . . ME one-oh-
nine coming down your side close. . . . I'm awaitin' for
him, boy. . . /'
The last voice had belonged to Claude Bearpaw, Cass
realized without any particular surprise. He could have
guessed that; one way or another Claude would have come
along on this trip. The Sal shuddered with the rack of the
fifty calibers all guns going except those in the ball turret
in her belly.
The voice of the gunner there reached Cass with a Texas-
accented lament. "I cain't see nothin* down heah for all the
trees hittin* me in the face/'
Ahead, the smoke column shot with scarlet climbed
higher into the sky; it was racing closer with giant strides.
OS to one side a Liberator fell off on one wing dived sud-
denly into the ground to explode in a great gout of flame.
Far ahead, two more Liberators went down. It was getting
harder to hold the Sal; Cass jabbed the button of his mike
The Secret Raiders of Ploesti 29
and yelled at Ed Stahl, who was hunched in the right-hand
seat, his face the color of dirty canvas.
"Help me hold her! Once we hit those updrafts over the
target, she'll buck like a steer!"
No answer came back from the copilot. Cass glanced
quickly; saw the shattered side window and the spreading
dark stain and the red froth on StahTs lips. Young Ed Stahl
had bought it.
No time for that now time was running out and the tar-
get just ahead. A boiling caldron of smoke and flame, which
seethed with the violence of a volcano. The ships of the
group ahead were gulped up by the smoke as Cass tried to
spot the landmarks that would guide him to the cracking
plant which was the SaFs target. No good. The whole world
was going up in flame, and there was nothing to see. The
Sal ran on, exploding flak swaddling her on all sides now.
A thump smashed like a giant fist against the fuselage be-
neath Cass, and fragments of red-hot iron bit at his legs.
He pushed the mike button again. "Pilot to bombardier
we won't be able to find our primary in this toggle on
any target you can see/* The reply seemed faint and far
away as it came back. "Bombardier to pilot Roger good
luck, skipper ."
Just before the smoke swallowed them, Cass saw a great
chunk of metal peel back from the SaTs nose and go kiting
away. The ship seemed to have gone wild now; it was being
flung about like a leaf in a gale. Across the way, Ed StahTs
head lolled loosely on his shoulders as the Sal pitched and
yawed. The acrid smell of burning oil seeped into the cock-
pit to sting Cass's nostrils and burn his eyes.
go WILLIAM CHAMBERLAIN
He felt a shudder run through the ship, and then the
bombardier's voice came again over the interphone. "Bombs
away." The Sal surged upward, free of her load, and a spark
of exultation warmed Cass for a moment. We're going to
make it, he thought. By gosh, we're going to make it! The
smoke had started to thin when he saw a black flower, wear-
ing a scarlet core at its center, blossom ahead and a little
below. A white-hot spear rammed into Cass's side, and he
felt his fingers go numb on the controls.
You ve bought it, Cass, his mind said fuzzily. Who is go-
ing to take the Sal back now?
In the last seconds of consciousness left to him, Cass
Bolivar had his answer. A rangy youth, wearing a khaki
shirt with the sleeves chopped off above the elbows and
wings pinned on upside down, was hauling Ed Stahl out of
his seat.
"Move over, bud," Claude Bearpaw was saying crazily.
"Let papa drive this here chariot/ 7
Cass Bolivar felt good as the last of the daylight went.
Afterward, when he would think of it, the details of the
rest of that day were never too clear to Claude. He did
things, but memory of doing them would never come to a
sharp, clear focus in his mind. It was like a picture seen in
a kaleidoscope.
Sergeant Moss, dead and lying among the empty fifty-
caliber cartridge cases beneath his gun. Turret gunner
dead, and bombardier dying. Young Ed Stahl hit in the
chest. Cass Bolivar hit bad, too, and the navigator blood
running down the side of his own face giving rough first
The Secret Raiders of Ploesti 31
aid back on the deck. That was the way it went as Claude
fought the bucking ship.
The fighters came in again as they left the funeral pyre
of Ploesti behind. Now the Sal no longer had the covering
fire of other ships to protect her as she lumbered back across
the valley most of her own guns were silent now. An ex-
ploding 20-mm. shell drove hot chards into Claude's thigh,
but he didn't notice as his face set into granite lines he
held the Sal close to the ground, zigzagging a course across
the fields. Vaguely he noted that the Sal's black shadow ran
with them like a great bird below.
He thought vaguely, You get out of this one, boy, and
you can shore say "thank you" to the Man Upstairs.
It was a long while later when they came to the moun-
tains again, the Sal limping on three engines now. Claude
fought for altitude; somehow they made it with nothing to
spare. More eons drifted by, and then the blue of the Medi-
terranean showed ahead. The navigator came to crouch at
Claude's back.
"We're losing gas," the navigator said in a toneless voice.
"We can't make it back to base."
Claude scowled through the streaks that sweat had cut
across the smoke-grimed mask of his face. The leg of his
khaki trousers was dark with blood, he noticed without
emotion.
"Then we'll ditch," he said.
"I'll have the wounded ready," the navigator said, with-
out comment. "There's only five of us left."
"Roger," Claude told him tiredly .
There were other events after that hazy things not well
32 WILLIAM CHAMBERLAIN
remembered. The sound as the Sal settled into the water,
and the sound, seconds later, as the Sal died. The yellow life
raft bobbing on the choppy sea and, after a long, long while,
the sharp, clean lines of the destroyer coming toward them.
"Always figured the Navy was our allies," Claude mum-
bled a little crazily. "Buy 'em all an Oklahoma Special
sometime."
Back in the hospital Claude and Cass Bolivar again had
beds that were side by side. Cass lay quietly, propped up
and cigar clamped in a corner of his mouth; restlessness was
already beginning to ride Claude again. An orderly came
down the aisle between the beds.
"Hey," Claude said heartily, "if it ain't Fingers Moody,
the guy that likes money. How you be, chum?"
The orderly approached warily. "What you want now,
lootenant?" he asked. "Whatever it is, I ain't got it."
"Jest a little information, son," Claude told him, fishing
money from beneath his pillow. "Maybe you could tell us
what happened to that major in the pinch-nose glasses that
used to be around here."
The orderly glanced over his shoulder then grinned.
"You mean Major Micklejohn, lootenant? They got him
and Lootenant Jensen over in Ward Four. It seems they got
took with battle fatigue. Say, what did you two guys do
after I brung you your clothes, anyway?"
Claude considered the question for a long moment. When
he finally answered, his reply made even the terse official
reports sound like the grossest kind of overstatement.
"A bunch of us went up to Ploesti," Claude said. "Some
of us came back. That was about all there was to it."
Pirate off Nantucket
JAMES WARNER BELLAH
Andy Cassat ate his supper in sullen silence. The algebra
books lay under the lamp on the red-and-white-checked
cloth. Mrs. Albro would tell him to get at them as soon as he
finished. That's what his brother paid her for to cook and
clean and sew and keep the house for Andy to study in and
live in.
*Tm goin* to tell your brother where you were again this
afternoon, soon's he docks/' she said, Andy put his fork
down. "He ain't goin* to like it" the thin lips snapped shut
34 JAMES WARNER BELLAH
"because your job's to stay in school, not to hang around
that Navy recruitin' fella at the post office/'
"I wasn't hangin* around," Andy said angrily. "I was talk-
ing to him 'bout enlistin* in the inactive reserve I can
graduate and still be called up next fall when Tin seven-
teen. And after I'm in, maybe I can go to Annapolis ."
The woman shook her head. "Michael Cassat ain't goin*
to allow it. I've heard him talk to you about gettin' yourself
educated. You ain't enlistin' in the Navy. I mind the night
he took you up to the graveyard and showed you them fam-
ily gravestones. He couldn't get an education like your old
people had, so he had to go for a common sailor himself.
But you ain't goin' for one, so get it out of your mind/'
"He didn't do so bad," Andy growled. "He's got his mas-
ter's ticket; he'll be going as captain next trip or the one
after. Cap'n Whitehouse's a sick man. He knows it and Mike
knows it. Likely, Mikell have the Bannockburn herself
one of the smaller boats anyway."
"It took him a good many years," Mrs. Albro said, "mak-
ing up for the lack of the book learning he's giving you.
Don't think he's going to forget that. And he's mighty stub-
born, is your brother Michael. You git after those school-
books now."
"Not till I hear the news." Andy swung around in his
chair and snapped on the radio switch. **. , . rich, creamy
lather . . . the fourth vessel to send out its distress call
since dawn yesterday, when the Languedoo was attacked.
Authoritative naval sources believe that there are at least
two enemy raiders operating in the waters of the Boston
coastal area. No further details are available at the present
, . 57
tune.
Pirate off Nantucket 35
"Is that so?" Andy snorted at the radio. He reached for a
rolled chart on the shelf above. "That's all yon know about
it. There doesn't have to be but one sub!" He spread the
chart out on the table. "I bet I can put my finger almost on
the spot that fourth ship went down if I knew the ship,
where she was going or coming from. On a twenty-mile
segment of a circle not knowing it. What do you want to
bet?"
"I ain't bettin'," said Mrs. Albro firmly, "and you git to
studyin' now."
"You look here," Andy said. "I bet I could tell them in
Boston it only has to be one submarine. I bet it's so obvious
they haven't thought of it. She's intercepting whatever is
taking a departure from the lightship or making a landfall
on her."
Mrs. Albro watched his flushed, excited face. It always
hurt her to see him that way, because that way he looked
just as her own Eddie would have looked. She pressed her
lips tightly together in faint remembered pain.
Andy pointed a finger at her. "She's run away from two
areas. So they take it for granted she'll run away from the
third. But this time she fools *em. She just moves off her
course a little, submerges and lies on the shelf until sun-
down again. Sundown today. And 111 bet she's lying be-
tween a southeasterly bearing from the lightship and say a
shade just east by south. That way whatever comes in from
South Africa, or leaves New York for Europe, or comes in
from "
Mrs. Albro looked at him.
" Bermuda," Andy said. He stared at the chart for a mo-
ment. "It's too soon for Mike." His voice was sharp, for he
36 JAMESWARNERBELLAH
suddenly realized that it wasn't too soon. A quick run down,
a quick unloading and a quick ran back, and Mike could
be docking in Boston.
He twisted the radio again. "Survivors of the Languedoc
and the Choctaw were brought into Boston late this after-
noon. So far, it is known that there are seven survivors of
the Pitcairn Island aboard an unspecified Coast Guard cut-
ter still at sea, but no further word has been received from
the Bannockburn since she sent out her distress "
"Mrs. Albro, it's the Bannockburnr He was turned to-
ward her, white-faced, staring at the woman, his eyes sting-
ing at the corners, so that for a second he could hardly see
her. Then he grabbed up his chart and his cap, and barged
out of the house. A dog was barking in the quietude of the
supper hour.
The night was drawn down tightly around him and
around the whole island, and somewhere in that darkness
his old people stood with him. He felt them suddenly as
Mike felt them. The compulsion of them. The obligation to
them. Old whaling masters and old clipper captains in
their white knee breeches and their gold-headed ebony
canes. Dead Cassats come back from the cities of the world
and the lanes of the seven seas to sleep on Nantucket, Cap-
tain Makepeace Cassat, of the Orion. Captain Rufus Gas-
sat, of the barkentine Nora. And suddenly all that his
brother Mike had ever told him was a blinding conscious-
ness in his mind.
"Your old people aren't ever going to let you go, Andy.
You'll know, when you get older. Because they're you and
you're them. So get a grip on them at the start, and make
Pirate off Nantucket 37
'em work for you. Make your life out of what they gave
you, good blood and bad. Drink, devil, and duty, but do the
job! And remember always it's the little things that make
the job. Remember the little things and you'll never have to
worry about the big ones. Because that's what the big things
always are the sum of the little ones."
His brother Mike was almost old enough to be his father,
and all Andy's life he tried to be. But he was cold about it
sometimes, harsh about it, ruthless.
Andy was tearing toward Jessup's now, through the nar-
row streets of the old town, his breathing deep and strong
within his young chest, and his leg muscles hard to the im-
pact of his feet on the roadway. He burst into the lighted
store and turned around deliberately to close the door and
steady himself. The air inside was warm and heavy with the
smell of salt fish and new rubber boots and tub butter and
kerosene.
"Just heard it, Andy," Owen Jessup said. "It said they
picked up the call at about ten minutes of five no position,
no nothing else. That's two hours ago. They'll have sent de-
stroyers out, and planes. It's tough on Mike." Owen passed
his rough hand across his mouth and shook his head.
"Owen" Andy Cassat walked over and put both hands
flat on the worn counter "I want the Sally /."
"Aw, say now, Andy; Mike wouldn't want this himself.
It's crazy. They'll do everything possible out of Boston. If
you think a minute, you'll know that. Even they haven't got
the Bannockburns last position. You can't just shove off in
sixty feet and comb around the whole ocean."
"That's not what I'm going to do. And it isn't the whole
38 JAMES WAENERBELLAH
ocean." And Andy spread out Ms chart on the counter and
put his finger under Nantucket Lightship. "Owen, youVe
got to believe me. Give me your parallel rule. Here. Like
this." Andy worked for a minute laying off bearings. "I
know it, Owen. That sub wouldn't head farther south, be-
cause she's working the lightship. Everything she's done so
far proves it. Mike says they always work the lightships,
and a man's a fool to use them in wartime. That's how I
know that the same sub got Mike, and where it got him. It
was swinging on this circle." He swung the circle with
Owen's navigator's compass, a continuation of the circle
that intercepted the positions of the Choctaw and the Pit-
cairn Island attacks. "And they got Mike right in here. Well
off the lightship, but on that same circle. They got him by
chance! The sub just kept swinging on that circle and it
caught Mike. I want to go out there in the Sally J right
away."
Owen looked at him. "You know you're right, Andy, don't
?
j^^.
"Sure as I'm standing here!"
"Get going then; I'll meet you on the Sally. Get Black
Oke"
Andy headed for the dead-end alleyway behind Carson's
shop and pounded on Black Oke's door.
Fifteen minutes later they were swaying up the Sallys
headsls to get way on her to cast off.
At the outer harbor buoy, Owen nodded to Andy. "You
keep her,"
"I'm laying for Great Point in a minute."
"Right." Owen shouted forward, "On the jib sheets, Oke!"
Pirate off Nantucket 39
It was just on to ten when they came up on Great Point
Light and beat around the point laying for Sankaty Head.
Owen took the wheel and Andy turned in.
Somewhere not so many miles away, Mike was in those
same waters. Maybe he was in a boat, rowing. Maybe he
was alone, swimming in his belt, pushing a piece of timber
along with him. Big, vital Mike. Or maybe Andy closed
his eyes tightly and clenched his fists he was just in them,
floating face downward.
The nervous excitement washed out of his youth and he
slept until Black Oke and Owen came about again and
rolled him out of the bunk.
It was five o'clock. Owen put a flashlight down to the
chart he had spread on the cockpit deck and pointed.
"We're just about in here, Andy. Here's where your last
tick is. Over there is Nantucket."
"You're way south; you must have had wind/*
Owen nodded. "We've been footing it pretty steadily all
night. Now I figure well run off another three quarters of
an hour as we go, and come about again. That'll put us just
north of your ticked position. Then if the wind holds, well
run it out until noon. If we don't find anything by noon,
well come in and call it a sail."
Andy looked at him for a moment "That's it, Owen, be-
cause we haven't got a radio set, so we can't know what the
Navy's found. But if they didn't find anything, and we don't,
well know then that there isn't anything."
"Don't talk like that. We came out to get Mike. So we
get Mike."
The three of them lapsed into the silence of night sailing,
40 JAMES WARNER BELLAH
waiting for the dawn to whiten to port. Suddenly they
could see the tight line of the Sallys backstay against the
darkness above and the lower course of reef points and her
slapping lazy jacks, and that was the beginning of dawn.
"Owen!" Andy exclaimed.
At the wheel, Black Oke stared in surprise.
Three hundred yards to starboard there was a black can
buoy, only larger and it wasn't a can buoy. There were
men beside it standing beside it, and a head over top of
it, and a voice, "On the schooner! Heave to at once!"
"For God's sake, head up, Oke!" Owen breathed through
his teeth. Black Oke didn't need the word; he was throwing
the wheel as soon as Owen started to speak.
"Hold her!" the voice bellowed at them across the water.
"What ship?"
"Sally J ? out of Nantucket."
"Stand by for boarding. You're a prize. Muster all hands
on deck by your wheel. I'm coming along your starboard
side. Hold her up as she goes." And they saw the machine
gun on her bridge rail, trained on them.
In the half-light, all of it was completely unreal all of it
but that voice. The three of them stood rigid in the Sally's
cockpit, with bitter saliva threading down the backs of
their throats and the bend of their elbows cold with nerve
tension.
The submarine turned slowly toward them, rounded be-
hind, and they could smell the hot uncleanliness of heavy
diesel smoke.
Owen reached out for Andy's arm and bit into it with his
fingers. "Son, you ain't talked yet. When you do, be care-
ful."
Pirate off Nantucket 41
"You didn't have to say that."
Close to, it was an unholy craft. Lean, metallic., vicious. A
trespasser and a murderer with the blood of four ships on
her. And the sudden hatred in the boy was pain for a mo-
ment. Blind hatred that Owen had seen in his eyes.
There were four men forward of the submarine's conning
tower. The wet-gun crew. Damp-looking, rumpled men in
sea boots and sweaters watching the lightening waters to
the northward and eastward like hunted animals, their
backs to the Sally. All of the blackness of the raider was
white-streaked and weathered gray. Sea-worn, softened.
And suddenly the three men on the Sally saw something
more. She was torn up, ripped ragged, between the wet gun
and the conning tower. The edges of the rip were a jagged
blossoming of torn steel.
"Sumpin' done hit her," Black Oke breathed.
Owen nodded.
And again the voice on her hailed them, "Steady!" They
could see her officer's face now under the visor of his cap,
tight drawn along the jaw lines, young hard young. He
had his hands on the wet wheel, laying his ship alongside,
himself. Deep bells rang inside of her and white water
boiled in her wake. She came in on the Sally neatly, rubbing
her, holding close to her and stopping. The gun-access
trunk hatch opened and more men came up out of her, men
with white faces and white hands under the dirt. Sick white
from no sunlight.
The rip in her topsides had opened great torn leaves of
her deck plates about eight feet forward of the base of her
conning tower, ruffled them upward and outward and cut in
below into the hull itself, for inside the tear there was
42 JAMES WARNER BELLAH
growling green flame suddenly, a portable oxy torch, and
the movement of men in small space. And as one man
moved there was white paint visible far beyond the hole
and the glare of electric lights from below. Not a direct hit,
because that would have penetrated her and blown her
open, but a close-in lashing, with the shell splinters ripping
her wet superstructure wide and cutting through it to hull
her. The 4.7*8 on the Bannockburn.
The broad sheer of the Sally ground against the rounded
submerged side of the submarine, and die boarding party
took short runs and leaped to the schooner's deck, awk-
wardly, as if their legs were stiff. The boarding officer had a
long-snouted automatic pistol in his hand with a black
leather lanyard across the shoulder of his gray sweater. He
steadied himself and stepped down into the cockpit He was
extremely young, and arrogant in his youth.
He jerked his head toward Andy and Owen and Black
Oke. Ridiculously and momentarily, as if he had read in a
book that he must do just that. He said, "Leutnant zur See
Hessels," and thereafter he ignored them completely, ex-
cept to look at them now and then. He searched the cabin
and the forepeak, and sent a man to the main masthead.
Lines coiled off the raider and struck on the Sallys deck
with a bony rattle, and in a few moments she was hauled in
close to the submarine.
The skipper shouted in German to Hessels, and the
boarding party tried to lay the Sallys main and foresl
booms across the submarine's deck, but both boats were
still up into the wind and the schooner's canvas was backed.
They couldn't walk the booms, even outboard of the Sally.
Pirate off Nantucket 43
They hitched lines to the boom ends and hauled from the
submarine's deck. That way they got the booms outboard,
but it didn't please the officer on the conning tower.
It was thirteen hours since the Bannockburn had sent out
her call. If there had been a chance, it was going. If Mike
was only there alone, he was on his own now, with the Sally
caught, with only the new day to give him hope. Big, blus-
tering Mike. Andy wanted to cry, not actual tears, but deep
inside of him, because no matter what happened now, it
wouldn't be any good if Mike was gone. What in heck are
they after? What are they trying to do? he thought.
The raider's skipper was bellowing at Hessels, and Hes-
sels, on the Sally, was standing stiffly to attention. He said,
"Yes, Herr Kapitan," twice, and he yelled angrily at his
men. It wasn't arrogance with Hessels. It was sullenness.
The heavy, controlled sullenness of insufficiency and fear,
He lived with fear and he was worn by it. Fear had stolen
his youth.
Then Owen was getting it. Black Oke was getting it
They all got it suddenly together.
Andy stood up and moved close to Owen. "She can't
submerge, and dawn's caught her, so she's going to use us
as a decoy, with our canvas to blanket her and our shadow
to lie in when the sun comes up."
"Maybe," Owen growled, "but they ain't sailors. Not a
sailor in the lot."
"Owen, she can't stay out here, even with us. She's safe
enough from the north'ard because of Nantucket That's
why she's on our starboard side. But shell have to run
farther inshore, farther east with us. You watch."
44 JAMES WARNER BELLAH
Owen nodded. "That's sensible. It wouldn't be No Man's,
would it?"
"You've got it. Fifty-five miles, and the further inshore
she gets, the less chance of a destroyer spotting her/'
"No one but the caretaker on No Man's to bother with,"
Black Oke whispered. "Sho, sho, No Man's. 'At's it. To re-
fit and repair/'
"You vill not shpeak togedder!" They all turned quickly.
Hessels, gun in hand, was glaring at them.
"Even if I can tell you how to do what you are trying to
do?" Andy said.
"Iss no madder!" Hessels shouted at him. "Keep shtilir
"Can I tell him?" Andy pointed at the skipper. His voice
was soft, almost eager.
Owen stared as if the boy had struck him. His eyes went
blank, cold; Black Oke's eyes were wide in disbelief.
"What are you trying to do, help him?" Owen growled,
"Silenz!" Hessels brought the gun up slowly.
From the conning tower, the captain called across in Ger-
man. Hessels answered him.
"On the schooner! You will not talk!" the German said.
"You, boy, there at the wheel. Do you hear me?"
"You've got to get yourself lower in the water," Andy said,
Now, you can't hit anything you shoot at from the hip.
But Hessels did. He jerked his wrist and pulled the trigger
of his automatic with quick fury, jerked the trigger with his
wrist bent. The heavy explosion tore the loose expanse of
the early morning like a knife, cutting through taut fabric.
Hessles* action was so blindly the action of an infuriated,
half -frightened boy that the sound of the shot sobered him
Pirate off Nantucket 45
at once and stopped him from firing again. A bitter whiff of
burned powder swept into Black Oke's broad nostrils. His
knees began to give, and his big, hunched body turned
slowly as he went down with the dawn light gleaming on
his great white teeth and his enormous, surprised eyeballs.
Then he pitched heavily onto the deck planking and lay on
his back, his hands to his belt line. The shot had taken him
vitally. Oke lay there looking up at Andy and Owen, telling
them with his eyes.
Then he told Hessels with his voice, "You done killed me,
white boy, foh no reason," and quite simply Black Oke
died. So simply that it was the most terrible thing that
would ever happen.
There was Black Oke that they had known all their lives.
Only it wasn't Black Oke; it was a dreadful, outraged, dead
reminder of Black Oke. And there were Owen Jessup's eyes,
telling Andy why forever.
The voice on the conning tower ignored all of it blandly.
"Why do I have to get lower in the water?" it said.
Andy stared at him. It was just as if he didn't know it
had happened, hadn't seen it.
"Yes, you," the German said. "Why do I have to get lower
in the water?"
Andy tried to swallow, but he couldn't. "You've got to
got to get lower " Then he saw Owen's accusing eyes and
he closed his own,
"Why?"
"So you can get under us. So we can lie in closer to you/ 5 "
Andy said. It was coming back now. He'd make it come
back. They weren't sailing men. Little things. "Then then,,
46 JAMES WARNER BELLAH
when we lie in closer, get a couple more cables to us and
cant us over to port on your own underbody as you come
up. That way the booms will lie to starboard across your
deck."
"So? How do you know this?"
"I know how you're built. I read the magazines. And I
know how our hull's built. That's all/*
"You are a bright boy," the German said. "How is it you
know what I intend to do? Is that in the magazines too?"
Owen turned his back angrily and spat overside.
For a moment longer the officer stared at Andy. His head
and shoulders disappeared from above the steel bridge cur-
tain, and they heard him call an order into the depths of
his own boat. Nothing happened for a moment or so, then
the Sally was no longer touching; she was free of contact,
and the cables across her hung slack. At once the crew on
deck took in scope and drew her closer. She ground against
the sub again, and they took in more scope and they laid
four more cables across her from the submarine, clewing
them down and drawing them taut. The submarine lay
much lower in the water now than it had at first. They'd
changed trim and they were changing again. And then, very
gently, the cables began to tighten of their own accord,
biting deep into the Sally, crushing into her firmly, whisper-
ing with the tension as the sub rose a shade. And imper-
ceptibly the schooner listed slightly to port, listed a little
more, more, until she lay over at about twelve degrees.
That way they could draw her main boom to starboard
across the submarine abaft of the conning tower and screen,
the tower with it from the eastward. Then they drew her
Pirate of Nantwket 47
fores'! boom over forward of the tower. Screening It to the
west, and, with the topping lifts slacked off on the Sally,
they secured the booms aboard the sub in that position.
Bells rang, and the taut cables across the Sally rasped and.
cut, chafing her decks raw as the raider began to move.
The compass needle swung lazily around and steadied on
a touch north of east. Owen looked at it mechanically, for
something to do, looking overside to see what they were
making. Four and a half to five knots. Testing to see what
the cumbersome rig would hold at. Better not get much
more than five, Owen's mind said, or it won't look like sail-
ing, if anyone sees us. Keep your mind on anything rather
than think of Black Oke.
Andy sat with his back turned to Owen, thinking what
Owen was thinking, but only thinking it around the edges
of the wet red hole that Black Oke's murder had left in his
mind. Doesn't look like sailing, if any boat sees it. But as
he thought it, exultantly, it was as if the wind heard him
and wanted to help the Germans. It hauled around almost
two points and freshened perceptibly, bellying into the
Sally's canvas.
Two of the boarding party laid onto Black Oke's stiffen-
ing arms and hauled him to the companion. Bumped him
down into the cabin.
Still Owen wouldn't look at Andy. The boy was feeling
it now, knowing it. Owen thought he might never be able
to look at him again. He could see him out of the corner of
his eye, sitting on the locker top, knowing now what he'd
done to Black Oke by talking, and helping them. Suppose
I never can look at him again? Suppose I never can?
48 JAMES WARNER BELLAH
Eight o'clock. Eight or nine hours to No Man's. Five in
the afternoon. Could they get away with it that long?
There were a whale of a lot of Navy wagons usually
around Newport, going back and forth. Coming out or go-
ing in between Block Island and No Man's. But why don't
they come? If it was only swordfish time! But it wasn't.
Owen was biting his thumb.
There must be some boat out here somewhere. There
must be some plane that'll come out and spot us. From
the air, they ought to see what we're hiding, even miles
away. Maybe, except from right overhead, we'd just look
like a schooner to an airplane. No, no! Owen threw his head
up and his muscles stiffened in his back. For a moment he
thought he had shouted, because as he thought it, the look-
out on the main masthead did shout and point to the south
and east.
She doesn't look like a schooner sailing; any sailor'd spot
her miles away, and someone has. That's what the kid did,
and I've been cursing his soul for a fool and now it may
be too late to tell him.
Not twenty feet from Owen they were swinging that
murderous deck gun around, elevating her, laying her to fire
across the Sally. The men on the schooner leaped wildly off
her to the submarine. There were two more machine guns
on the sub's bridge suddenly. Men were standing by the
cables to slip them on order, and they were all straining
their eyes to the south and east. Smoke boiling down close
to the water. Black smoke. Full-speed, forced-draft smoke,
and four hundred yards ahead, a beautiful thin spindle of
water leaping straight up into the sunlight. They could see
Pirate off Nantucket 49
the destroyer's boiling bone now, white and high and furi-
ous.
Andy had sprung up from the locker top, standing there,
unable to breathe. Someone had spotted what he'd made
wrong about it all. And the destroyer had fired for them to
heave ho. He watched the Germans crouching to fight.
Owen stepped closer to Andy and gripped his hand
where it hung at his side. "Good, kid, good! They still don't
know!"
Suddenly the sub's skipper shouted, and the men at the
cables slipped them. The Sally lurched and threw out a flat
sheet of water to port as they let her go. She whipped her
sticks, and her canvas cracked overhead. Then the sub's en-
gines roared, and diesel smoke fanned across the wallowing
schooner. Water boiled all along her starboard side, and her
booms clammed across her and whipped out to port as if
they'd tear her sticks loose.
The sub fired her deck gun, and the blast of it tore the
sound out of their ears, the air from their lungs, rocked them
on their feet. There were four more spindles of white water
thrusting straight up into the sunlight. And again four.
Closer, pinching in on the raider. They could see the white-
orange flame of her deck gun firing through the water spin-
dles, swinging as the sub swung bow on to bring her for-
ward torpedo tubes to bear, to narrow her silhouette.
The destroyer was huge now, careering down on them,
and the firing of both ships shredded the morning, tore it to
tatters, riddled it. Then a great gout of water leaped up over
the midsection of the sub and whipped outward in all di-
rections, with flame in it and black particles; whipped out
50 JAMES WARNEKBELLAH
and dropped back along the whole midsection length of the
raider. But halfway back, it spurted upward again in an-
other furious, torn sheet in the sunlight. And suddenly the
conning tower was heeled over to port, and the bow with
the net cutter was coming up out of water. Men were run-
ning forward along her narrow deck, their arms flung up.
Leaping overboard headlong and head down. Then the wa-
ter between the sub and the Sally was pocked in a thousand
small splashes as if a great fistful of pebbles had struck into
it. And pebbles were striking the Sally. But that didn't mat-
ter. What mattered was the awful grandeur of sea death
the sub rolling in and under so fast that it wasn't possible.
Rolling like a great black log, with that destroyer still tear-
ing down on her through the screaming wind. Passing clean
over where the submarine had been, dropping two ash cans
and circling beyond the rumbling mushrooms that came up
from them.
Then she bore down on the Sally and spoke through a
megaphone. "What's your story?"
"They took us over just before daylight. WeVe been with
them ever since. They killed one of our crew. He's in the
cabin. I'm Owen Jessup, the owner/*
"You're lucky," the destroyer's captain said. "We've got
some of the Bannockburn survivors aboard. One of 'em's a
Nantucket sailing man. He spotted you through the glasses
for a wrong-un before we did."
Owen shouted, "This kid got 'em to do it! They weren't
sailors, none of them. They canted us to port and hauled our
booms to starboard. The kid sold 'em the idea. He had us on
both tacks at the same time, port and starboard. Any sailor'd
spot that as far as he could see. He's Andrew Cassat."
Pirate off Nantudket 51
"Wait a minute!" The destroyer's skipper turned to an of-
ficer behind him on the bridge. Then he called back to the
Sally, "Tell him weVe got his brother aboard, off the Ban-
nockburn?
Mike sat in the dining room listening to Andy. "All right,
all right." Mike raised his hand. "I've got it all now, and the
answer is you don't enlist."
"Mike, I had to go before, but Tve got to go double now.
I can't ever get over Black Oke, unless I do go and pay 'em
back more and more."
"You can't get over Black Oke completely, no matter
what you do." Mike's voice was solemn. "Black Oke didn't
lay down his life for you, but he died by mistake for what
you were doing. What you were doing was right, Andy. You
were selling them a little thing, a bill of goods that finally
killed their ship and all but five of them. And that's big
just as I told you the little things generally are. But there is
still Oke to account for and dead Germans can't do it for
you. You've got to account for him yourself, Andy. Because
that officer couldn't shoot, you're alive and poor Oke's dead.
So it's you who's got to be big now, to account for it. To pay
Oke back for dying, while you lived. Black Oke is going up
into our burial plot with the whole story written out on his
stone, so that you'll always remember why you're alive and
never waste one chance you get in living. You're not enlist-
,
"I've got to, I tell you. I can't go to college with this war!"
"You're not going on to college. Not the way you were.
The newspapers in Boston are trying to make a hero out of
you. We'll forget that, because being a hero is all right in
52 JAMES WARNER BELLAH
the funny papers, but it ain't living. We won't forget.,
though, that the afternoon papers say that Senator Cassidy
is appointing you to the Naval Academy, so you're not en-
listing."
"Say that again/'
Mike stood up and held out his hand for Andy's. "All
right, admiral," he grinned. "That's the start of your life. Go
to it full out. I'm going down to Owen's now; they're laying
Oke out." He stood quite still for a moment, looking at his
younger brother. A big, hard-bitten man, Mike, long years
away from the scant tenderness of his own sketchy boy-
hood. And always a little embarrassed when he felt tender-
ness for this kid. He started to speak, and stopped himself.
Then he said gruffly, "You're a good kid, Andy."
The Commandos Go In
BERNARD GLEMSER
The date was the twenty-seventh of February, 1942. The
time was late evening. The place was the briefing room of
an airfield in the south of England. The commandos stood
around quietly, calm and relaxed. Nobody could have
guessed that in a few hours they would be storming through
enemy-occupied territory like fiends.
Paul, standing among them with Gaston at his side,
54 BERNARD GLEMSER
looked at them with admiration. In the past few days he
had lived with them very closely; he knew them all by their
first names, and they had accepted him as one of them-
selves. He had taken part in the many rehearsals for the
raid; he had gone out on exercises, led by Major Cowles,
who was to be in command of the raiding parties; he had
eaten with these men, slept in a hut with them, and listened
to their talk. They did not act or talk like supermen, he dis-
covered. They seemed, in fact, to be extraordinarily mild
and easygoing. But under that mildness was tremendous
alertness; under that easygoing manner was great confi-
dence in themselves and their comrades. They knew the
strength of their combined striking power.
By now both Paul and Gaston had recovered from the ef-
fects of those eight nightmarish days of training. As the
sergeant had warned, they were not commandos now; by
comparison with the men in this room they were still rather
like children. Even so, their bodies had hardened; they had
learned that in an emergency they could call on hidden re-
serves of endurance. They felt alive and full of energy, as if
they had just returned from a long vacation, instead of from
one of the most rugged training camps in the world. They
both felt that this night was going to be the greatest experi-
ence of their lives.
There was a rustle of interest as Major Cowles entered
the room, followed by Professor Cheswick and Air Commo-
dore Simpson. The major, a tall, broad-shouldered man, be-
gan to speak without any introduction. His voice was quiet,
and he stood with one hand comfortably in his pocket.
"All of you know your jobs tonight," he began. 'Tm only
The Commandos Go In 55
going to run over the operation briefly in case there are any
last-minute questions."
He faced the huge aerial photographs of Bruneval and
the scale models of the farm, the house on the cliffs, and the
Fire Bowl. Then he pointed to the Fire Bowl, which housed
the radar installation.
"First, let me state again what it's all about. The Nazis
have developed this device, known as radar, wliich is a defi-
nite menace to all our future plans. We could destroy it, but
that wouldn't help us very much. We want to capture vari-
ous parts of it intact, so that our scientific experts can ex-
amine it in detail. This is your primary objective. We also
need to capture a few of the Nazi technicians who operate
this radar, since they might give us some useful informa-
tion; that's your secondary objective.
"Furthermore, this is an historic occasion. It's the first in-
vasion, in force, of France since the Germans drove us back
at Dunkirk in 1940. And we want to make it good. We are
going to strike panic into the hearts of the Nazis and en-
courage our good allies the French. From now on the Nazis
are going to realize that they are not safe anywhere.
"Now, as to details. You will fly in Whitley bombers and
be dropped over the target area at midnight. The assembly
point, which you will all try to reach immediately, is the
ditch you see on the photograph here. Our young friend
Paul Martin has described it to you very exactly. It's in the
cover of a row of trees on the edge of the woods.
"You will be in three groups, each under its own leader.
The first group will storm the house on the cliffs and deal
with any Nazi troops found there. The second group is the
56 BERNAKDGLEMSER
technical group. These men will capture the radar post and
dismantle it. The third group will clear the way to the
beach, opening up the way for our return.
"When the beach path is open, all three groups will as-
semble on the beach and give the signal to be taken off.
Landing craft will come in for this purpose. These will be
covered by other landing craft that will guard your with-
drawal. Covering these, in turn, will be motor gunboats and
two destroyers, so that you will be well protected on the re-
turn journey. These naval forces, incidentally, are already
on their way to Bruneval and have reported that they are
making good progress. Are there any questions?"
There were none.
Air Commodore Simpson stepped forward, and said in
his brisk manner, "I want to say a word about the flight ar-
rangements. It's a perfect flying night not much wind, a
bright moon with a little cloud. Visibility should be good,
and your pilots shouldn't have much difficulty finding the
dropping area. You can expect some flak as you cross the
French coast, but it will be light, I hope, and shouldn't give
you any real trouble. We are also sending some planes to
make a raid on a nearby area, which will draw off the en-
emy fighter planes located around Bruneval. I trust, there-
fore, that youll have a comfortable trip/'
Finally, Professor Cheswick stepped forward. He said
with a chuckle, "I think this is the first time that science has
had the help of a group of experts like yourselves. This is a
piece of research that will go down in scientific textbooks as
well as history books. That's all I have to say, and God bless
every one of you/'
The Commandos Go In 57
"Thank you, Professor," Major Cowles said. He looked at
his watch. "Zero hour for take-off is in fourteen and a half
minutes. You'd better get ready, men/'
The professor came hurrying toward Paul, and said,
"How do you feel, my boy?"
Paul smiled at him cheerfully. "Fine, sir. I'm very happy
that I shall be in France again soon, even if it's only for a
short while."
"Take care of yourself," the professor said. "Remember, I
have great plans for you when you come back." He turned
to Gaston. "I'm relying on you to look after this lad, Ser-
geant. See that he doesn't get into any real trouble."
"Yes, sir," Gaston answered solemnly. "Ill keep an eye on
him."
"Sir," Paul asked, "will the Resistance take any part in
this raid tonight?"
"No," Professor Cheswick replied. "Not this time. We've
warned them to stay in hiding, because there's too much
danger of reprisals. But the day is fast coming when they'll
take a full part in our raids. Don't worry about this now,
Paul. Just be sure to come back safely."
The commandos were rubbing burnt cork on their faces
and hands, leaving a thick black grime that would stay on
for hours. They wore paratroopers' crash helmets, and they
all carried heavy commando knives and hand grenades.
Many of them had Sten guns short, light Tommy guns
that could pour out a terrifying hail of fire; some had auto-
matic pistols. They were in very high spirits, laughing and
joking as if they were going on an easy night exercise, not
on a highly dangerous mission against the enemy.
58 BEBNARDGLEMSEK
They rocked with laughter as they saw Paul and Gaston
cautiously applying the burnt cork, and they crowded
around the two Frenchmen giving advice. At last Gaston
said, grinning at Paul, "Eh, my little general! Even your
own mother wouldn't recognize you now/*
Paul grinned back. "And you, Sergeant, all you need is a
banjo to make your fortune in a circus,"
They were both armed with commando knives, but Paul
had no gun. Gaston had both a Sten gun and a revolver.
The order came to assemble outside the briefing room,
and the commandos trooped out and formed into squads in
the darkness. Nearby, Paul could hear the sputter and
whine of aircraft engines, bursting into shattering roars as
they wanned up. As he stood at attention his hands were
tightly clenched, and he could feel his heart beating rapidly.
He was cold, but not with fear. It was like the line-up be-
fore a soccer game, when his body always tightened with
expectation. He began to relax in a few moments, and he
smiled to himself at the excitement of this adventure. He
could never have imagined it in his wildest dreams; yet here
he was, one of a company of commandos setting off for
France. . . .
Then the darkness was split by a noise like the screeching
of a thousand cats in agony. His blood froze; but at his side
Gaston exclaimed, "Bagpipes!" Before Paul could get over
his astonishment at the unearthly sound, his squad was
marching toward the waiting planes.
The pipers led the way, stepping out at a steady pace,
their pipes skirling Scottish songs that Paul had never heard
before; but in some mysterious way the shrill sounds seemed
The Commandos Go In 59
to creep into his veins and make him tingle. It was the mu-
sic of savage warriors, a noise that heartened men going
into battle and terrified the enemy.
With the precision of guardsmen on a parade ground, the
commandos marched around the perimeter of the airfield,
and as each squad reached its plane it wheeled smartly. The
pipes were still playing as the men entered the Whitleys.
Paul found himself sitting on a narrow bench that ran along
the side of the fuselage; with him was an almost unrecog-
nizable Gaston and a horde of black-faced, grinning com-
mandos. It seemed completely unreal. Then he heard the
twin motors of the Whitley speed up, and felt the plane
lurch as it began its slow waddle to the runway.
"Hold tight," Gaston said in his ear, and gripped his arm.
The noise of the motors grew louder and louder, the plane
seemed to be moving at incredible speed, and then all sen-
sation ceased. He might have been sitting in an armchair in
his own home. There was a cheer from the men, and Gas-
ton's hold loosened.
An officer came over to Paul and looked down at him
with a smile. "How are you feeling, laddie ?"
"Fine, sir. Just fine."
"Try to get a little sleep. We shan't reach the French
coast until shortly before midnight."
Some of the commandos were singing. Some were play-
ing cards. Gaston brought two sleeping bags from a pile in
the rear of the plane and handed one to Paul. "Curl up in
this, my general. Make yourself comfortable."
"Thank you," Paul said. He lay curled up warmly, sus-
pended in space, lulled by the steady purring of the mo-
($0 BEKNARDGLEMSER
tors, thinking of Bruneval, which he was about to visit in
this strange way. How exciting everything is, he thought
vaguely, and his mind wandered off into a pleasant fog.
The next thing he knew, Gaston was shaking him. "Put on
your parachute/' Gaston said. "We're nearly there."
Paul scrambled out of his sleeping bag, tightened his hel-
met, and fastened his parachute. Gaston checked it, pulling
at the various straps to make certain they were secure, and
Paul did the same for him.
"Twenty minutes more," Gaston said, "and we shall be
flying over our own country."
All the men were standing now, lined up at action sta-
tions. There was no tension, no sense that they were going
into danger. They were simply waiting to descend from the
plane to do an important job. The Whitley lurched sud-
denly, and somebody said in a steady voice, "Hold on, boys.
Flak/' It lurched again and seemed to tip over slightly. The
calm voice said again, "The Nazis have some flak ships
down there. We're taking evasive action/'
"Paul/* Gaston said urgently, "stay close to me all the
time. Remember. Stay close!"
A red light came on. The pilot of the Whitley was turn-
ing into the target. The hole in the floor of the fuselage
through which the commandos would drop was open. The
first men were already in position, waiting for the green
light which was the signal to jump. Paul had practiced the
routine many times already; he knew exactly what was go-
ing to happen, but he was surprised at the speed with which
it was happening now, in actual combat conditions.
There it was! The green light! The first men had dropped
. . . the line was moving forward . . . Gaston was behind
The Commandos Go In 61
him holding on to his shoulder, and for some reason Paul
could hear the shrill wailing of the bagpipes in his ears
again. Suddenly he himself was sitting over the drop hole
looking down into darkness an R. A.F. sergeant had hooked
up his static line there was a whispered go and he was
through the hole and his legs were blowing sideways as he
was caught in the Whitley's slip stream. There was a jerk at
his shoulder as the static cord pulled his parachute open,
and he saw it billow out and rise over his head, blotting out
the sky. Then he was floating in a black silent world, with-
out any sensation of falling, until the earth rose up slowly to
meet him. He landed on it in the midst of a soft white
coldness with a thump, and found himself being dragged
forward. He grabbed the shrouds of the parachute, fumbled
with the catch to release it, and tumbled on his chest into a
foot of snow, gasping but uninjured.
Bruneval! But was this Bruneval? He stood up cautiously
and looked around him. Yes. The woods were over to his
left, the farmhouse and the house on the cliffs and the Fire
Bowl were ahead of him, hidden in the darkness. He could
see the gray shapes of the commandos against the snow,
crouching as they ran to the assembly point in the ditch,
and then he heard Gaston's voice calling quietly, "Paul!
Paul!"
He called back, "Gaston."
"A moil" Gaston exclaimed. "A moi!" The traditional
French cry of comrades in battle: "To me! To me!"
Paul found him quickly, only a few yards away. "Are you
all right?" Gaston asked anxiously, and Paul answered,
"Yes."
"Let's get to the assembly point then. Hurry!"
62 BERNARD GLEMSER
They began to run. The snow blanketed all noise; the
world seemed asleep. Even the throb of the Whitley bomb-
ers had dwindled. There was only this uncanny movement
of silent men., all running swiftly toward the ditch under the
trees. Scattered over the snow were cylindrical containers
holding additional equipment for the raid guns, dynamite,
signaling apparatus. These the commandos scooped up as
they ran.
"France!" Gaston laughed. "My beautiful France!" He
snatched up a handful of snow in his stride, and held it un-
til it melted, as if it were something infinitely precious. Paul
knew how he felt. Even in these tense moments he was
overjoyed at being back in his own land; every tree, every
stone in his path was familiar. He had walked with his fa-
ther and mother here, played at boys' games with his friends,
and the recollection that the Nazis occupied it made him
burn with anger.
"Here's the ditch/' he panted to Gaston. For one awful
moment he thought that it was empty, that some mistake
had been made and the commandos had gone somewhere
else. But then he saw the black-faced men crouching on
their haunches, waiting motionless for the order that would
send them into action, and he slipped quietly down among
them.
"Here's Paul,'" somebody whispered, and he heard his
name going down the line. "Paul . . . Paul . . . Paul."
Then the whispering came back to him. The commando at
his side touched his arm and muttered in his ear, "Squeeze
past me, son. Report to Major Cowles."
This was no time for questions. He obeyed the order im-
The Commandos Go In 63
mediately, edging past the men until lie reached the major.
"Paul Martin reporting, sir/' he whispered.
"Paul!" the major said. "Thank God you're safe. Now lis-
ten. We go into action in three minutes. But all our men
aren't here yet. iVe just had a report that two of the Whit-
leys were driven off course by the flak and dropped their
squads somewhere to the southwest, behind the woods.
These were the men who had the job of clearing the way to
the beach. They were expected to wipe out the machine-
gun posts on the cliffs. Without them we may be cut off. Do
you understand?"
CC-r-T .
Yes, sir.
"If s possible that they're lost in the woods. This is what I
want you to do, Paul. Stay here while we go forward. If
these troops haven't arrived by the time you hear firing, go
into the woods and find them. It's vitally important that
they find their way to the cliffs. If those defenses aren't
knocked out well never get down to the beach."
Paul's heart began to beat fast. He had known it all along.
He had known that he could be of help to the commandos
on this mission, and here was his chance.
"One minute to go," the major said, almost under his
breath. He was staring at the sweep second hand of
his illuminated watch. "Fifty-five . . . fifty . . . forty-
five. ..."
There was not a sound from the crouching commandos.
Paul held his breath.
"Thirty . . . twenty-five . . . twenty. . . ."
Paul's hands were clenched behind his back. In his
mind's eye he could see the machine guns bristling out of
64 BERNARD GLEMSER
the emplacements that guarded the Fire Bowl, he could see
the Nazis waiting in their dugouts, peering into the dark-
ness for any sign of danger, never expecting that danger
was so near.
"Ten seconds . . . five. . . ."
The major blew his whistle, a muted rattle like the
choked, angry sound of a hawk about to pounce. That was
all Without any other order, the major crept out of the
ditch and went running toward the house on the cliffs.
Ranged on either side of him were the hunched, threatening
figures of the commandos. And still there was no sound no
sound of clattering footsteps, no sound of clinking guns.
Then all the figures disappeared into the night. Paul, left
alone, felt as if he had dreamed the attack had begun. The
commandos seemed to have vanished utterly, like ghosts.
These first few minutes were critical. If the attack were
discovered too soon the machine guns would open fire,
mowing down and perhaps halting the commandos. But
there was still only silence. Total silence.
The Nazis guarding Bruneval felt at peace with them-
selves. Most of them were in the farmhouse, sound asleep.
Those others who were on duty were snug in their dugouts,
and a little bored. There wasn't much to do, guarding this
radar installation. After all, Germany was the undisputed
master of Europe now, and there was nothing to fear from
the Allies. True, a few bombers had flown overhead about
ten minutes before, probably on their way to bomb some
luckless town in Germany; but these bombing raids were
ineffectual, and the Nazi night fighters would deal with the
interlopers. Had not Adolph Hitler himself declared that
The Commandos Go In 65
Europe was a fortress the enemy would never penetrate?
Why didn't the stupid Allies realize they had lost the war?
Why didn't they stop making foolish speeches about return-
ing here? They sat in the machine-gun posts bored, half-
asleep, waiting for their spell of duty to end so that they
could go back to bed in the farmhouse and snore comfort-
ably for a few hours.
The major had reached the house on the cliffs. Silently,
his men surrounded it. The second group of commandos
had reached the Fire Bowl. This, too, was surrounded with-
out a sound.
An instant later came the signal for attack a fierce blast
on the major's whistle. Now there was no time to waste, no
further need to move in silence. He dashed up to the door
of the house, found it open, and rushed through. His men
poured after him, guns and grenades ready to deal with any
Nazi troops they found here. There were none in the rooms
downstairs. The major went flying upstairs, shouting in a
tremendous voice, "Surrender! Come out with your hands
up!" A German soldier came out onto the landing, a rifle
nervously in his hands, bewildered by this unexpected
noise. Before he could fire, a bullet tore through his heart.
He was the only occupant of the house, the major dis-
covered. The Nazis had been so sure of themselves that they
had not taken the trouble to put more than one man in it to
guard it through the night.
Swiftly the major detailed a dozen commandos to hold
the house. Since it stood between the farmhouse, where the
main force of the Nazis slept, and the Fire Bowl, it could act
as a barrier in case the Nazis attempted to fight. From the
66 BERNARD GLEMSER
Fire Bowl itself came the dull explosions of grenades, and
the major went speeding through the snow to discover what
was happening there. Six Nazis had made a hopeless effort
to defend the installation; grenades had killed five of them
and the sixth had been captured after making an attempt to
escape. The squad of technicians was already dismantling
the apparatus, while a number of commandos stood alert
outside. Pieces of the precious equipment, so vital to the
Nazis and the Allies alike, were being carried out swiftly.
But at the road that led to the beach only a handful of
commandos lay concealed in the darkness, waiting to de-
stroy the six or seven machine-gun posts that barred the
way down. There were not enough men to take the post.
They waited, hoping desperately that the remainder of their
section would arrive so that they could launch their attack.
Otherwise, those machine guns could hold up the entire
raiding party long enough for the Nazi troops in the farm-
house to come into action. Suddenly they heard the first
staccato clatter from the farmhouse two machine guns
firing erratically into the night, unsure who or where the
attackers were, just firing blindly out of windows.
The way to the beach had to be cleared. Beyond the
beach, a quarter of a mile out to sea, were the landing craft
and the motor gunboats and the destroyers, watching anx-
iously for the signal to come in close to take the commandos
off. Enemy destroyers and E-boats had passed them on pa-
trol, and had miraculously missed them. But that, truly, was
a miracle, and the small fleet was in deadly danger every
moment it was stationary. If the commandos did not reach
the beach soon, the Nazis would have sent out a general
alert that would bring scores of their warships to this area.
The Commandos Go In 67
That would bring, too, land reinforcements which would
seal off the beach forever.
At the first sound of firing Paul slipped out of the ditch
and went quickly toward the woods. His only weapon was
his heavy knife, and he loosened it in its sheath so that it
would be ready for immediate use if necessary. His mind
was working very clearly. After he had gone a little way he
stopped and stood with his head cocked forward, holding
his breath. If the missing commandos had reached the woods
he would hear some sound the slight scrape of a boot
against tall grass, the crackle of a branch underfoot.
He heard nothing. There was only the gentle sighing of
the trees, laden down by snow.
He crept forward another hundred yards and listened
again. Behind him he heard muffled shots; ahead, still noth-
ing.
He reached the outskirts of the woods and began to work
his way along them, toward the village where he had been
born and had lived all his life. Then, in a low crouching
rush, he went scurrying up a chalky bank, which gave him
enough height to look over the nearby fields, and stood
straining ears and eyes to catch some sign of the missing
men. It was a dangerous place. A roving Nazi patrol might
easily have spotted him here. But his personal danger no
longer mattered; all that mattered was getting those com-
mandos in action against the beach defenses.
He waited for several minutes. The cold air was begin-
ning to numb his body. Suddenly he thought he heard a tiny
sound over to his left, and he stiffened. The sound was not
repeated.
Now he realized that he was in double danger. The sound
68 BERNARD GLEMSER
might have been made by a Nazi trailing after him, or by a
commando tracking him down in the belief that he was a
Nazi guard. He knew only too well how the commandos
worked creeping through the snow like cats, pouncing
out of nowhere, killing with a single knife-thrust. They
couldn't be expected to know that Major Cowles had sent
him out to find them.
Was the sound made by a Nazi or a commando? There
was only one way to find out. He took a whistle from his
pocket and blew it very gently, his hands cupped over it,
making a noise that might be a bird or a small night-prowl-
ing animal.
He waited for a reply. None came.
He blew the whistle again in the same way, repeating it
in desperation. This time, clearly and decisively, a whistle
answered. As soon as he heard it he went running down the
bank, wildly calling out, "This way! This way!"
A voice snarled out of the darkness, "Who goes there?''
"Paul," he answered. "Paul," and stopped abruptly, real-
izing that the commandos would take no chances, that by
now a dozen guns were leveled at him, ready to blast him
into eternity if he made one false move.
A shadow wavered across the snow, followed by other
shadows. "Paul who?" the voice demanded. It came from
another direction now.
"Paul Martin."
"What are you doing here?"
"Major Cowles sent ine to lead you to the machine guns
overlooking the beach. We heard that you were lost."
The voice laughed. Paul recognized it as belonging to a
Scottish sergeant. "Och, Paul, and thank the Lord it's you,
The Commandos Go In 69
laddie. But you took an awful risk standing in yon place. I
nearly put a bullet through your handsome head/'
"There's no time to lose, Sergeant/ 7 Paul cried. "They've
begun to attack the Fire Bowl/'
The shadows had reached him, had materialized as men
in familiar uniform. "Aye, Paul, we heard the firing," the
sergeant said. "We were making our way toward it, through
yonder gap in the trees "
"No," Paul interrupted. "I can show you a short cut
through the woods. We go this way."
The sergeant blew a short blast on his whistle. "On the
double!" he shouted. There was no need now for silence.
The commandos were going through., no matter who tried
to stop them.
"Lead on/* he said grimly to Paul. "They'll be needing us.
Let's get there fast."
The machine-gun fire from the farmhouse was growing
fiercer. Bewildered by the unexpected attack, unable to
guess how the raiders had reached Bruneval, the Nazis were
making a confused effort to defend themselves. The major
and his men calmly returned the fire, lying flat in the snow.
They were grouped around the Fire Bowl, protecting it, try-
ing to give the technicians every second they needed to
complete their job. Equipment had already begun to move
toward the cliffs. Everything was going as planned, except
the final and most urgent task of clearing the way down to
the beach. The major wondered whether Paul had been
successful in finding the missing commandos, what was
happening in the woods. . . .
In the distance, traveling along a road that led to the
7 BERNARD GLEMSER
farm., Paul saw the dimmed lights of three cars. They must
be bringing up reinforcements, he realized, and there might
be more Nazis following. It couldn't be helped. His first
duty was to protect the men who were dismantling and
carrying off the all-important apparatus. He and his com-
mandos would stay to the bitter end, if it came to that, and
fight a delaying battle to allow the apparatus to be taken
aboard the landing craft. This was the purpose of the raid.
It was his duty to see that it was fulfilled.
But the technicians had worked fast and efficiently. A
corporal, wriggling flat on his stomach, reached the major
and reported cheerfully, "The last load is on its way to the
cliffs, sir."
"Have you set the demolition charges to destroy every-
thing that's left?"
"Yes, sir. They'll go off in about three minutes."
"Good"
The major's whistle blew for retreat. Still facing the farm-
house, the commandos began to move back steadily, blaz-
ing away from a dozen different directions, confusing the
Nazis, who must have felt by now that an entire Allied army
had suddenly descended upon them. Their confusion was
increased by the violent explosions under the Fire BowL
All that remained now was to get down to the beach and
signal the waiting ships. But was the way clear? The major
decided to find out for himself. He sprinted ahead, past the
piles of equipment, and reached the gap between steep
cliffs that led down to safety. It was dark here, and he could
not see what the position was. The machine-gun posts, con-
cealed in shadow, were silent.
The Commandos Go In 7 1
Were their crews dead? Had the guns been knocked out?
He could not tell. His men were running toward him, and
he blew a short warning blast on his whistle to halt them.
Before anybody made another move, he had to find out for
certain what had happened.
The commandos halted warily at his command. Then,
from the beach, a gruff voice called, "Come on down. The
boats are here. It's all right."
"Come on, men/' the major cried. "Hurry!"
They began to move, but as they did so a voice called
from the other side of the gap, "Major! Get back! The beach
isn't taken yet! Get back!" At once machine guns opened
fire. Two of the commandos fell.
"Flat on your faces!" the major bawled. "If s a trap!"
The machine guns had opened fire a second too early.
The commandos snaked back, their bodies pressed to the
ground, taking with them their two wounded comrades.
Coldly, the major considered the situation. After all this,
after achieving full success in dismantling the Fire Bowl
and bringing the equipment as far as the cliff top, they
might be completely halted by the machine guns defending
the beach path. It was bitter.
He shouted across the gap, "How many men do you have
over there?"
"Major, only half my section. Not enough to attack all
the emplacements."
The major bit his lip. He needed every man he had on
this side to fight off the Nazis from the farmhouse and their
reinforcements. And yet these machine guns had to be
wiped out.
"Sergeant!" lie snapped.
"He's been wounded, sir," a commando replied from the
shadows.
"Corporal!"
"Sir!"
"Take nine men to reinforce the section across the gap.
You will destroy the machine guns that fired on us."
< f * 99
Yes, sir.
The major heard his men creep off and wondered what
would happen now. You gave an order, destroy the guns,
and you could trust your men to try to carry out that order.
But it might not work out. Forty men could do it in a swift
maneuver, attacking from different directions; twenty might
be massacred. That would make the situation even more
desperate. If only Paul had managed to bring the missing
men here in time!
In a couple of minutes the action would start. He waited
tensely.
The Germans in the farmhouse had not yet made any
move. They still seemed to be dazed, uncertain what had
hit them, and a group of commandos was still keeping them
3ccupied with accurate fire, preventing them from show-
ing their heads. But that could only last a little while
onger. . . .
Then the major heard a shout, a wild sound that must
aave struck terror into the Nazis" hearts, "Caber Feighr
'The Antlers of the Deer!" The war cry of the Scottish
Highlanders. The shout came nearer, and he laughed aloud,
tnowing what it meant.
"Here are your men," he called vehemently across the
jap. "Wait for them! Wait for them!"
The Commandos Go In 73
In the growing clamor another voice rang out. It was
Gaston. "Paul!" he cried. "A moil A moil"
The battle for the machine guns was short. A horde of
ferocious commandos went swarming over the cliff, Tommy
guns blazing, hurling their grenades into the sandbagged
emplacements where the Nazis cowered under this paralyz-
ing attack, wiping the crews out before they had a chance
to fire. In a great savage rush, the black-faced men poured
down to the beach, the Scots yelling their war cry, "Caber
Feigh! Caber Feigh!" guns and grenades and the screams
of the dying shattering the night.
Then, abruptly, it was over. A powerful voice called ex-
ultantly, "The way is clear, Major," and then quietly, effi-
ciently, the secrets of the Fire Bowl were carried down, and
the commandos took their places under the shelter of the
cliffs. From the beach, bright with moonlight, a signal
flashed out to the waiting ships to come immediately.
Gaston was hugging Paul with joy. "I thought you were
lost in those woods forever, my little general," he said. "I
kept wondering what I should tell the professor when 1
returned."
"This is my own country," Paul said. "I couldn't get lost
., ?>
in it.
The major came over, still tense and yet pleased. "You did
a wonderful job, Paul," he said. "We shouldn't be here now
if those missing troops hadn't arrived in time."
"Did we get all the apparatus from the Fire Bowl, sir?"
Paul asked earnestly.
"Everything we need, my lad."
"What about casualties, sir?"
"We lost one man. Two were wounded. But Tve just
74 BERNARD GLEMSER
made a quick check, and there are still seven missing. They
belonged to the sections that were dropped away from the
target area."
"Sir!" Paul cried. "Let me go back and find them."
The major said heavily, "No, Paul. I can't let you take an-
other chance like that. YouVe already done your part."
There was a cry, "Sir! The boats are coming in!"
Grinding into the shallow water came the monstrous
shapes of the landing craft, carrying fresh troops who could
cover the commandos' withdrawal. A cheer went up as the
ramps were lowered.
"Paul," the major ordered. "Get on board. Go with him,
Sergeant."
Neither Paul nor Gaston dared to disobey the order. They
waded into the icy water and clambered up the ramp of the
nearest boat. Following them came three disheveled Nazi
prisoners, and commandos carrying the secrets of the Fire
Bowl. Too late, some guns opened up from the cliff top, but
the guns mounted on the landing craft answered with a
torrent of fire that silenced them.
There was no further opposition. A minute later the land-
ing craft backed away and trundled out to sea, to the wait-
ing warships. The raid was over. Triumphantly, the flotilla
made for England.
In the warmth of a cabin, wrapped in blankets and still
faithfully guarded by Gaston, Paul fell asleep.
He dreamed of Bruneval, which he was now leaving
again for the second time. He dreamed of Bruneval, peace-
ful, quiet, free of the Nazis. In his dream he saw green grass
and wild flowers growing where the Fire Bowl had been.
The Commandos Go In 75
Not only Bruneval, but the whole of France was free; the
people could laugh and talk as they pleased; the invader
had been defeated and driven out. And in this dream some-
body was talking to him.
It was the commando major saying, "You did your part,"
and Paul smiled in his sleep.
Leave It to Wilbur
ARCH WHITEHOUSE
In the 1942 Issue of the Salamander, BranHey High School's
yearbook, the scholastic history of Wilbur Doyle was duly
chronicled, and he was bustled off to the wars. Beside a
small studio photograph showing Wilbur with a stock
graduation expression you may read:
Wilbur Hurst Doyle ( Nickname Wilb )
Course: Scientific
"A Goof of Plain, Uncoiled Constancy"
Leave It to Wilbur 77
Wilb's main claim to fame is his ability to build boxes
out of matches. He is reserved and shy, but has been
heard to mutter items concerning model airplanes. He's
a member of the Physics Club, sings in the a capella choir,
and collects stamps. Wants to join the Air Service.
Class Prophecy: The darnedest things do happen.
No one wrote congratulatory jingles along the borders of
Wilbur's copy of the Salamander. No football star deigned
to scrawl his autograph across the team picture for him. He
never even disturbed Mr. Blaithegate, his physics teacher,
who would have been delighted to reward his star scholar
with his standard algebraic motto festooned with his blunt-
nib signature.
On the last day of school Wilbur took his yearbook home,
tossed it on the bamboo-and-raffia table on the sun porch,
and went upstairs to inspect his blue-serge suit, which he
was to wear at the graduation exercises.
Later that evening his father picked up the Salamander
and read Wilbur's scholastic record and the opinions as
penned by the editors. He ruefully agreed that "A Goof of
Plain, Uncoiled Constancy" was a fairly reasonable disposi-
tion of the evidence.
"Wasn't it nice that they mentioned Wilbur's stamp col-
lection?" Mrs. Doyle said, as she knitted a few more rows
before they started for the high school.
"Stamp collection bah!" the former Captain Peter Doyle
exploded. "Couldn't they have at least mentioned that he
has been accepted for the Air Service? It just says that he
wants to join the Air Service."
"You know Wilbur. He probably didn't tell anyone. He's
y8 ARCH WHITEHOUSE
going to tell Arlueen Bidder tonight when he takes her to
die graduation exercises/"
"Well, that's one normal feature of the boy at least he
has a girl. But where the devil do these chits of girls get
such names ?"
"I think it's a pretty name." Myra Doyle pursed her lips
with decision.
"You thought Wilbur was a pretty name, too/' Peter
Doyle observed. "Look what it got him! 'A Goof of Plain,
Uncoiled Constancy!' "
"You don't even know what it means, Wilbur passed the
Air Service examinations, didn't he? Butch Meakins and
Sandy Tiller flunked miserably and they were football
heroes."
"I think he must have got the appointment on my record/'
his father ranted. "They do things like that in the Army.
They probably thought he'd be like his old man a heller
on wings! I don't think he'll make a pilot; he never even
made the Ping-pong team. No competitive spirit. I suppose
he'll flunk out in primary and wind up inflating balloons for
the meteorologist. I tell you, Myra, that boy simply doesn't
have it."
"You don't know what he has/* Mrs. Doyle said philo-
sophically. "It takes all sorts to win a war."
"Do you mean to sit there and say you believe your Wil-
bur is capable of flying a f our-hundred-mile-an-hour fighter
plane, and shooting down those German bombers?"
"He's your Wilbur as much as he's mine!" Myra Doyle
charged. "Looking back, I wonder how you managed to be-
come an ace in the last war. You're an absolute menace with
Leave It to Wilbur 79
an automobile, and as for being able to read a map do you
remember the time we toured Cape Cod?"
"That's different! What you don't seem to realize, Myra,
is that today I have to concentrate on other problems the
problems at hand. Being a research engineer demands long-
view thinking. You have to think ahead; and Tve done fairly
well at it."
Peter Doyle had cause for his pride. The sun parlor was
wide and well furnished. It looked out across a carpet of
well-tended lawn. A blue-stone driveway curled through
the grounds and splayed wide to the apron of a three-car
garage. Peter Doyle had done well, once he got started;
just as he had done at Verdun in 1918.
"I wouldn't worry about Wilbur/' Myra Doyle said with
quiet satisfaction. "I think I've taught him how to take care
of himself and to recognize the value of things. That's the
important thing in this world. You are able to accumulate
things, Peter, but I'm the one who knows how to take care
of them."
"But I've tried to talk to him and give him the benefit of
my experience," Peter Doyle persisted. "He just doesn't re-
act to any of it. I can't go and fight his war for him. I only
wish I could. That's what's wrong with this war not
enough experienced men in it."
Peter Doyle felt better after that. He felt his words must
sound good. The old esprit de corps and the courage to
make sacrifices. He was almost certain he'd be willing to
go in Wilbur's place.
"This is Wilbur's war," his mother stated. "We brought
him into this world and gave him an education; we've
So ARCH WHITEHOUSE
taken care of his health, and you've provided him with a
family tradition. I'd say that he was well-equipped/'
"But he won't listen to me/' brooded Mr. Doyle. "Still, as
you say, he does have a tradition to uphold. That might
help."
'Tin sure he has a sense of values, at any rate," Mrs.
Doyle reassured him, as she put her knitting away.
Lieutenant Wilbur Doyle knew exactly what they were,
the minute they pinioned out of the clouds. Months before
he had known the exact identification details of the Focke-
Wulf 190 fighter. He knew precisely what to look for and
where to look for it.
The only trouble was in the values. He was up here alone
and there were four Focke-Wulf s to consider. Four of them,
all looking more like slim-flanked American fighters than
like enemy planes. If you didn't look for the inverted gull
wing, you might mistake them for Corsairs.
"We are going to do a simple offensive sweep," Captain
Hardy had said that morning. "Well break you in gently,
Doyle. All you have to do is to stay in formation and watch
what we do. Keep out of trouble, but if you start anything
make sure you finish it that I insist on. That's all."
Captain Hardy made it sound very simple, which was
why he had become a flight leader. Hardy was one of those
breath-taking gods with two sets of wings up. He'd been an
illustrious member of the old Eagle Squadron serving with
the R.A.F., when the war was just something noisy in the
newsreels. The first Thunderbolt Squadron of the Eighth
Air Force had been built around a number of Eagle Squad-
Leave It to Wilbur 81
ron men who had had much operational experience. That
two-wing business had Wilbur stiff with respect. He had
spent fourteen weary months collecting one pair; now he
was expected to keep pace with men who sported wings on
both sides of their uniform jackets.
On the day his name went up on the board for opera-
tional patrol Wilbur felt no sense of what he might in-
terpret as fear. To fear, one must face something that one
hates. Wilbur couldn't remember hating anything like that.
It was the same thing as the sense of concern he struggled
with whenever he had gone to class for an examination. His
concern rested in the realization that what mistakes were
to be made and charged against him were mistakes he him-
self was to make. The questions were there on paper, and
all that was required of him was to answer them.
It was as simple as that to Wilbur.
Taking off with the flight and crossing the Channel were
simple, too, but when Captain Hardy snapped that wing-tip
signal and started after three Dornier bombers, Wilbur
tried to remember what the signal meant. By the time he
had interpreted it the 'Bolts had somehow disappeared. He
peeled off and tried to find them, but only got mixed up in
the smoke coming up from Lille, which looked like black-
shrouded ghosts devised to frighten him. Weaving in and
out of these columns, Wilbur took time to ponder on his
dilemma and then decided to go back upstairs and get a
better look around.
That's when the Focke-Wulf s appeared.
Wilbur banked around to get a better view of their rud-
ders just to be sure. That gave him time to remember
82 ARCHWHITEHOUSE
what his father had told him the night he left home to go
to the troop-concentration point up the river from New
York City.
"If yon take my tip," Peter Doyle had stated with burly
confidence, "you'll fight shy of those fighters. I mean, flying
all alone just isn't for your type, son. I happen to know from
personal experience/'
Former Captain Doyle always made that point clear. It
was another way of saying, "Don't forget, I was in the last
war. I flew in the last war and I know what it's all about."
Something that had happened many years before his own
son was born was still a personal experience that somehow
had become even more sharply defined by the kind rub-
bings of time. It was puzzling how he remembered every
detail of his fight with three Fokker D-y's near Luneville in
September of 1918, when, as a matter of fact, he hadn't
been able to make out a very convincing combat report an
hour after he landed.
"I started out on DH-4's, where I had a gunner behind
me/' Captain Peter Doyle continued. "I liked having a gun-
ner. In the first place it gave me a feeling of responsibility
for someone and I always felt that there was someone there
to take over, in case anything happened. You can get a
'creaser/ you know, Wilbur; and if your gunner can take
over for only a few minutes, it gives you a chance to shake
out of it."
What Captain Doyle was saying then was, of course, "I
don't like seeing you go alone, Wilbur. I wish it could be ar-
ranged so that I could go with you. I'd even be willing to
go again as a gunner/'
Leave It to Wilbur 83
But Wilbur soon discovered lie liked being alone. If he
made a mistake he could compensate for it in his own way
and no one would be the wiser. Wilbur had made a lot of
mistakes, but he usually sat tight and thought it out, just
as he had done at Brankley High when a knotty math prob-
lem came up. Of course, this mistake of losing Captain
Hardy might take quite a lot of sitting out and a lot of con-
centrated thought.
A disturbing Focke-Wulf made a pass at him, but Wilbur
pulled the stick back and climbed like fury.
"I mean to say/' his father had explained., "two sets of
eyes are better than one. If you miss an enemy formation,
it's dollars to doughnuts your gunner will see them in time
and tip you off. Then you can work up a system of team-
work, just as we did. My gunner would tap me on the shoul-
der to indicate which way he wanted me to turn. That's how
we always got home. Take it from me, Wilbur, youll be
much better off in a two-seater where you have someone
else to work with you."
Wilbur pondered on that and wondered where the Ger-
man fighter had swished to. He drew his throttle back and
tried to peer around. Something shot past him with a roar
that made him huddle down in his seat.
"Next thing/' his father had warned, "never let those
Huns get on your tail. You're a gone cookie if you do. I
mean, if you're flying single-seaters. Now, on the other
hand, if you have a rear gunner, no Hun will attack you that
way. They'll have to come in from in front and below
your blind spot, like."
Wilbur looked up and saw the blurred outline of a Focke-
84 ARCHWHITEHOUSE
Wulf s tail assembly rocketing skyward above him. With-
out bothering to snap on the reflector gunsight he pressed
the button and eight guns spanked off streams of fifty-
caliber stuff.
The Hun broke up as though it had flown through a large
sieve. *1 suppose I made a terrible mistake throttling back
like that," Wilbur reflected. "I could have stalled badly and
fallen off into a spin. I must watch out for that. I don't sup-
pose anyone saw me, but if I'd been carrying a gunner "
Wilbur wondered what he ought to do now. He wished
he could find Captain Hardy and the rest of them. He
wasn't sure where he was, and he didn't want to get lost
completely and have to put a brand-new Thunderbolt down
in enemy territory.
That reminded him of his mother, who had always in-
sisted on his being careful with valuable things, hke her
punch bowl and the English mantel clock Uncle George
had given her as a wedding present. Something about hold-
ing your breath when you wound it, to keep the dampness
out.
The day Wilbur had come home with his commission
bars and wings up she had asked about his uniform, and he
had shown her the bill and explained that the Government
had allowed him two hundred and fifty dollars for these
expenses.
"But they seem too nice to wear while flying airplanes/'
Mrs. Doyle had said, fingering the material and inspecting
the finish of the buttonholes.
"But we don't fly in these uniforms, Mother/' he had ex-
plained. "We have special flying equipment: helmets and
goggles and all that stuff. They issue that to you."
o oo J ^
Leave It to Wilbur 85
"Seems like a lot of money to spend on one boy," she
fretted, as she adjusted her glasses. "And how much do
those airplanes cost?"
Wilbur knew to the penny. He even knew how much a
round of ammunition cost; he remembered seeing the fig-
ures on a war-bond advertisement. Wilbur picked up the
strangest collection of information that way.
Mrs. Doyle sat down, stunned with the financial responsi-
bility her Wilbur had assumed. "You must take care of these
things, Wilbur. A lot of poor people are contributing from
their small earnings every week to buy all this equipment.
You must be careful not to break anything."
Wilbur had a confession to make. "I had one small
crack-up at Westover when I was getting in some cross
country on an AT-6. I guess I really wiped that undercar-
riage off."
"Oh, my dear! How much do you think that would cost?' 1
Mrs. Doyle said that with the air of one about to remit pay-
ment immediately by check.
"Exactly two hundred and eighty dollars" Wilbur pro-
duced the damage "but I didn't have to pay for it,
Mother."
"You must be careful, you know. We shall have to pay
for it all eventually, you know."
This reminder came back to Wilbur the day he arrived at
the Thaxted Air Station and saw the new Thunderbolts.
The latest fighting equipment issued to the Eighth Air
Force, they carried eight machine guns and did more than
four hundred miles an hour.
Outside his cockpit the light was getting brittle, and
Wilbur squinted about for a sign of the other Focke-Wulf s.
86 ARCH WHITEHOUSE
Something hit the side of his fuselage with a thud that
sounded like beating the hull of a barge with a wet plank.
Chunks of his Perspex hatch cover went flying in all direc-
tions.
The three Focke-Wulfs were coming in at him from a
tight angle and Wilbur realized at once that they were
really after him. So far they'd done considerable damage to
his plane, and he knew there would be the devil to pay
when he got back.
''You must remember/' his mother had said, "you're an
officer now, Wilbur, and you're responsible for everything
they turn over to you."
There was an idea there, and Wilbur rammed the throttle
up the gate again and pulled the stick back into his safety-
belt buckle. The big Thunderbolt, retching and screaming
through the pipe-organ vents drilled out of her fuselage,
went up hard, curled over on her back, and Wilbur looked
down and saw the Focke-Wulfs roar past.
"If you get in a jam," Captain Hardy had said, "stick her
nose up, flop her over on her back, and let them go past.
After that you should be in the driver's seat!"
There was something in what Captain Hardy had said.
The German fighters shot away, hanging on to the tail of
their leader, and tried to make out what this fool American
was up to. Wilbur allowed the Thunderbolt to come around,
completed the loop, blinked twice to kill the blackout, and
charged in again.
The three F-W's huddled close for companionship, and
Wilbur treadled his sight on the leader. He fumbled for the
gun trip, pressed it, and the 'Bolt vibrated with speed pres-
Leave It to Wilbur 87
sure and the frantic recoil of the guns. The Focke-Wulf
leader took the hurst full in his tail assembly and ripped
up into a mad, fluttering zoom.
That was just as well, for Wilbur, riding the air-speed
indicator clean off the dial, went right through like a plum-
met and made the two wing men splay out. The leader hung
at the top of his stall, twisted like a pike under the gaff, and
started a flat spin on his back.
"They'll probably be able to fix some of those holes with
a few dural patches," Wilbur muttered with a dash of wish-
ful thinking as he came around again to get up into the sun.
He wondered what he'd tell Captain Hardy to explain it all.
The two Focke-Wulf pilots were certain now that they
were up against something particularly juicy. They agreed
that their adversary was a crazy American but all the
Americans were crazy. Still, this one bore certain stripes of
the exuberant youngster who doesn't know when to knock
off. An Engishman would have his minute of joy uncon-
fined, get in quick, make his kill, and buzz off again. That's
how they stuck it through the Battle of Britain. Here they
had a newcomer equipped with a brand-new Dunderbolz
who was obviously intoxicated with his own program of
success.
Already he had knocked off Oberst-leutnant Niglitsch
and Hauptmann Waechter, for a certainty. That would
make room for the advancement of a couple of mere Qloer-
leutnants especially if they could bring down this young
bloody-taloned eagle. The two Focke-Wulfs drew off to
consolidate their forces. There was at least an Iron Cross
First Class connected to this somewhere.
88 ARCH WHITEHOUSE
Wilbur continued to circle, trying to make up his mind
what to do and what to say when he got back. He dallied
with the possibility of finding Captain Hardy and slipping
back into formation on the assumption they would not have
missed him. After all, the flight leader had been engaged
with three two-engined Dorniers returning from a hit-and-
run raid over the Thames estuary.
There was another headache. He would be expected to
substantiate anything Captain Hardy might write in his re-
port. Hardy might want someone to confirm any claim he
might make concerning the bombers. That point brought up
his own problem. He had shot down two Focke-Wulf s, but
he would have a tough time trying to prove it. He didn't
even know where all this was taking place and he hadn't
noticed whether they carried any particular identification
mark or number. When those Intelligence guys get at you,
they can ask a lot of embarrassing questions, and if you
want to rate as an ace you have to produce the evidence.
Arlueen had mentioned something about that before he
left. It might be a good idea if he went over and got a closer
look at them. They might carry squadron markings of some
sort.
Wilbur swung over and pounded after them, encouraged
by the memory of Arlueen, who alone had shown any in-
terest in him at Brankley High. He liked Arlueen, because
she was the only one who hadn't laughed when he ex-
plained about the Army Air Corps. He had told her about
it in the garden while she picked flowers to make a corsage.
Arlueen hadn't laughed; she just gasped, folded her warm
brown hands over her breast, and stared.
Leave It to Wilbur 89
"But, Wilbur/* she said, really seeing him for the first
time. "I didn't know!"
And Arlueen Ridder actually put her arms around him
and kissed him. Wilbur didn't kiss her in return. He just
looked into her eyes and for the first time noticed how big
and brown they were. They were actually saying the words
her lips couldn't form. They were actually talking to him;
they were saying, "But, Wilbur, this is wonderful marvel-
ous! I'm ever so proud."
"But I'm only going for training, Arlueen with pre-
flight training school first. I won't be a pilot for months."
But Arlueen would have none of it. She carried on and
said the keenest things about him. Nice things, such as he
was to be congratulated and that he must be very smart to
get the appointment and pass the tests. She even jsaid she
would be very proud to have people know that she knew
him er personally.
"Know me?" Wilbur quaked. "Why, you kissed me! That's
more than just knowing me, isn't it? You don't kiss everyone
who goes into the Air Corps or do you?"
"Why, Wilbur!"
"But I just thought," Wilbur stammered, "that is, I
thought," he began again. "I could write that is, we could
correspond while I'm away, couldn't we?"
"Oh, my dear," Arlueen faltered. "Of course. You must
write to me. We'll write every day. That would mean some-
thing, wouldn't it? I mean " Arlueen's eyelashes sema-
phored their triumph and affection.
"As if we were engaged, you mean?" went on Wilbur,
blowing the last fuse.
go ABCHWHITEHOUSE
"Of course but just between ourselves, for now. It'll
be such a lovely secret until you get your wings. Then
then 111 wear your pin and everyone will know, won't they?
Our very own secret given to the world on the silver wings
of the Army Air Corps."
"Golly, Arlueen! You sure know how to talk nice," Wilbur
gasped. "I got to get to be a pilot now!"
She led him away to a bench hidden by a trellis. Wilbur
was really glad to sit down by now, regardless of the creases
in his pants. Things were going blue, and bells were tinkling
softly. Sweet smells he had never noticed before were
wafted from the flower beds, and he wondered what a
nightingale sounded like.
"Will you fly a bomber over Berlin, Wilbur?" Arlueen
said, after a suitable pause. "You won't be afraid, will you?"
"Look, Arlueen," Wilbur replied. "No one knows whether
he is brave or a coward. How can you know until you've
been in danger? I won't know until I face it alone. That's
why I want to fly a fighter all by myself.
"You're always alone, in a fighter/' Wilbur explained to
her. "You're all alone, with just your thoughts. But I'd like
that. It's clean and fair that way. You meet the enemy and
you fight it out fair and square; and when it's all over and
you've won, the victory is all yours. I guess it's because I've
always been alone with just my father and mother. In a
bomber I'd be relying on someone else to some extent; on
the gunners, the navigator, or even my copilot. This way,
all the marks both red and black go down in your book.
You can't borrow a piece of someone else's courage you
have to use what you have."
Leave It to Wilbur 91
"Why, Wilbur!" Arlueen tried to stop her lower lip from
trembling.
"And you get me right/' Wilbur challenged, looking her
full in the eyes. "I didn't read that somewhere and memo-
rize it. I made it up myself. It's something Tve been wanting
to tell to my father, but somehow I guess I just feel sorry
for him being old now and trying to remember what he
did in the last war; and I can't make him understand that it
won't be necessary for him to go off again and fight my war."
Arlueen was overwhelmed. Wilbur Doyle had opened the
doors on an entirely new world. Without realizing it they
had passed out of saddle-shoed adolescence into the somber
courtyard of maturity. Graduation and a valedictorian look-
ing back could be no better than a costumed anticlimax.
"Wilbur/' Arlueen said, moving closer, "I don't know just
what to say, except Will you kiss me, please?"
Wilbur did. That was that.
"We'd better be going now/' he said, "but we understand
each other, don't we? I mean, it's all arranged, isn't it?"
"It's your war, Wilbur."
A few seconds later Wilbur discovered the two remaining
Focke-Wulf s were presenting him with more than his share
of the war, special delivery. It was coming at him in high-
speed jets from Jerry 7.92 guns, backed up by the air cannon
tucked away in their wings. What they were doing to that
Thunderbolt was more than Wilbur could stand. He al-
ready had enough to account for, without assuming the re-
sponsibility for any more. Captain Hardy would really be
sore about this!
Still, if he wanted to find some mark of identification to
Q2 ARCHWHITEHOUSE
feed the Intelligence officer he'd have to get closer. The two
Focke-Wulfs were converging on him now from a tight
angle. Wilbur tried to remember what Captain Hardy had
said about evading deflection shots, but his memory failed
him completely.
The Thunderbolt took another scourging from the enemy
guns. Wilbur gulped and kicked his rudder hard and
wrenched the battered aircraft around to the right, creak-
ing and protesting at the strain on her outraged frame.
Without knowing why, he had broken up the attack, be-
cause he had sharpened the deflection angle and the Huns
had to break off to avoid a wing-tip collision.
Wilbur continued his turn, banking hard, and lugged the
stick back with all he had. On reversed controls the Thun-
derbolt whanged at the flustered Germans, who were still
burdened with the problem of avoiding each other and
evading this utter fool, who persisted in ignoring all the
orthodox tactics of aerial warfare. It all added up to the
fact that the inside Jerry found himself pinned between
the flame-flecked gun barrels of Wilbur's 'Bolt and the
dithering Focke-Wulf on his left.
Before he could make up his mind just what evasive ac-
tion to take, Wilbur's guns had whipsawed his starboard
wing away, and he fluttered into a flat spin.
Wilbur pulled up and came around again. He had caught
the first part of the Focke-WuFs factory marking, but he
wanted to make a complete identification. That was Wilbur
all over.
"The first part is DF/' he muttered, jotting it down on a
fixed pad near his knee. "I really ought to try and get the
rest of it.**
Leave It to Wilbur 93
He went back after the tumbling F-W, which was now
trying to wrap itself up into a ball. He could see the pilot
struggling to get the hatch cover back and abandon the
hulk. When the wing had broken away it slashed back and
carved most of the tail assembly from the fuselage. It was
well down by the nose now and trying to get rid of the other
wing. There wasn't much left to work on, and Wilbur had to
give it up and settle for the details of the dazzle-painted
wings and the blue tips on the propeller blades.
As he watched, with professional interest, the efforts of
the German pilot to get clear, he suddenly realized he had
somehow managed to shoot down three of the four Focke-
Wulf s that had attacked him. The impact of it left him won-
dering whether Captain Hardy would accept that to com-
pensate for the damage. Three Focke-Wulf s ought to make
up for the battering his own aircraft had taken. Of course,
it would take a full crew, working all night, to repair her.
Wilbur wondered just how much the ground-crew per-
sonnel received an hour and what they got for overtime.
There were probably figures on it somewhere. He decided
to look it up when he got back.
He tried to remember what Captain Hardy had told them
about fighting Focke-Wulfs and what particular strategy
to use. This might be a good chance to try some of it out.
There was still another one about, somewhere.
"Now you guys needn't think that just because you're
Americans and flying these new Thunderbolts, you're the
pick of the pack," Captain Hardy had said only the day be-
fore. "Don't get the idea that one Yank is worth ten Jerries,
because you're not. You're only worth about five," he had
added with a mawkish grin.
Q4 ARCH WHITEHOUSE
"You're flying a great ship/' he went on, "one of the best,
but the other guys have some nice mounts, too. They
learned a lot from the R.A.F chaps in the Battle of Britain,
and they're coming back fast with the book open at the
right page.
"'Now you take this F-W 190 of theirs. You'll see a lot of
them on the sweeps across the Channel They're not the
best fighters in the world, but they cany a load of bad news.
The old Mess carried two rifle-caliber machine guns and a
light air cannon. The 190 will greet you with two machine
guns and four cannon. She can really dish it out.
"But don't worry about that. The Focke-Wulf can be
taken. Don't try to get the pilot he s carefully packed in
Krupp plate. Her real weakness is the engine. They've
loaded everything but the nutmeg grater under the cowling,
and that's where we seem to get them every time. Pack a
burst or two in there and you're sure to make her stink
that is, smoke up and quit. But once you start on these
babies, don't give up. You finish the job or they will. That's
all"
Reflecting on this, Wilbur's orderly mind sorted the logic
from the leadership hoopla and realized that Captain Hardy
had missed an important point. "Still," he contemplated, "I
should try out that engine theory. It wouldn't be fair to
attempt to refute the captain's statement, without giving
it a trial. Now where's that other Focke-Wulf?"
A few minutes later Captain Hardy, leading his eight-
plane formation back to the Channel area after chasing a
Dornier all the way to Nainur, came upon a lone Thunder-
Leave It to Wilbur 95
bolt engaging a Focke-Wulf . Hardy was a born leader, and
he decided to stand by and use the exhibition for instruc-
tional purposes.
"Now I want you guys to watch this," he said over his
command set. "Well re-form into a packed V and sit above
it just in case he needs help. Now watch what happens."
They were first treated to the sight of the Thunderbolt
ripping across the sky with a dash that almost swept the
Jerry clean out of his coveralls.
"That was nice/' commented the captain. "He has set
himself a beautiful deflection shot. This ought to be easy."
But, instead, Wilbur leapfrogged and came around again.
The German turned in tight and tried to zoom, but saw
what was waiting for him up there. That gave Wilbur a
chance to nose down and beat it back to a position dead on
the Hun's tail.
"Now he has him cold," explained Captain Hardy. "This
ought to be good. The kid's got a nice touch. Wish he had
a movie camera in that kite."
But Wilbur had other ideas. Actually he was getting out
of patience with the German, who somehow seemed bent
on getting himself in the way the wrong way! Wilbur
swung off, came back, and once more was in a tight deflec-
tion-shot position.
"What is this, an act?" Hardy demanded. "Or is he play-
ing cat-and-mouse with the poor guy? Maybe the kid's out
of ammunition." Captain Hardy began to worry. "He's had
several good chances already, but he hasn't fired a shot!"
"That's Wilbur," Pete Nyeland explained over his throat
mike, "and you know Wilbur!"
96 ARCH WHITEHOUSE
The Jerry pilot was getting every swish of maneuver out
of his aircraft now, and Wilbur was having to make the
'Bolt do more tricks than had been built into her. There
was nothing else to do, if the captain's theory was to be
tried out. The Hun was twisting and turning like a hooked
trout, wondering why he was still in the air. Captain Hardy
himself was not quite sure what was going on. "The kid
really can fly if that's Wilbur/' he agreed, "but what's the
idea?"
The two exhibitionists were packing home the knots now.
The Focke-Wulf turned inside Wilbur with regularity, but
Wilbur always recovered fast enough to set up another at-
tack. Still, while he managed to get on the Jerry's tail or
dead on for a broadside shot or even in a position to chance
a deflection shot, he never released a round.
"This is getting monotonous," the captain grumbled.
"The kid will fly himself clean off his base."
Suddenly the German saw an opening and peeled off
while Wilbur was coining around after ignoring a chance
from behind and below the Focke-Wulf s tail. Wilbur let
out a low cry of dismay at realizing his enemy was run-
ning away. Still, he must attempt that "in-the-engine" at-
tack somehow!
Hardy saw what was happening, but it was too late to
stop it. The Jerry kite was in a scram dive. It would be fatal
to go down after him. There was too much ack-ack around
Lille.
"You threw your chance away, Wilbur," the flight com-
mander argued silently, deciding to use all this as an object
lesson later on.
But Wilbur wasn't through. There was still one trick left
Leave It to Wilbur 97
in the Thunderbolt no Focke-Wulf could trump. Wilbur
kicked over on one wing tip, peeled off, and went after him.
"No! Stay upstairs!" yelled Captain Hardy.
But the 'Bolt was on its way down for keeps. It caught
the fleeing Focke-Wulf fifteen hundred feet below and
passed it. Wilbur ignored the fact that he was reversing
the original situation and giving the Hun a chance to fol-
low on his tail. The heavy 'Bolt continued at bazooka speed
while the perplexed Jerry wondered just what crazy Yank
trick was to be played now.
Wilbur was clamped into his seat with the speed pressure,
but he managed to screw his head around and check the
position of the Focke-Wulf. Then, timing his trick to the
second, Wilbur brought the stick back hard and reversed his
direction completely. The Focke-Wulf was dead in his
sights and coming at him at a million miles an hour. There
wasn't any time for the delicacies of the game, so Wilbur
pressed the gun releases blind.
The stuff went smack into the Focke-Wulf s blunt nose
and proved Captain Hardy was right. There was a second
when she flaunted a long back plume of smoke, which pre-
ceded an explosion that wiped off everything.
" even the nutmeg grater," said Wilbur, ramming his
stick forward to clear the mess.
"Just what was the idea, Doyle?" Captain Hardy de-
manded when they got back to Thaxted. "You had that guy
cold about five times."
"But I'd tried all the other methods," explained Wilbur.
"I just wanted to see how your theory worked."
"I don't get it."
98 ARCH WHITEHOUSE
"About making him stink in the engine/' Wilbur went
on. "You see I had already shot two down by just clipping
their tail assemblies, and another by shooting the wing off.
I had to try your theory in all fairness to you/'
"Don't argue with him, Gappy/' Pete Nyeland warned,
"That guy says he got 'em, he got 'em!"
"Well, it was only fair to "
"Wilbur," said the captain feelingly, "you're an ace, boy.
You're an ace!"
"Oh, no, Captain," Wilbur protested, "I only got four. It
takes five to be an ace!"
"You got five, Wilbur," Hardy insisted. "Four Huns
and me! I'm still in a flat spin."
I mean to say, you can't do anything with guys like Wil-
bur.
The Walls An Breached
P. R. REID
At the beginning of the war, Allied airmen imprisoned by
the Germans made many attempts at escape. The Germans
were a little more lenient then. Later, when it became a
game with the prisoners to try to escape, the Germans he-
came harsher in their treatment They sent these airmen to
Colditz, a medieval fortress in the center of Germany
thought to be escapeprooj. It was floodlighted, patrolled by
10O P. E. REID
dogs, ringed by barbed wire, surrounded by walls and
moats. They made one mistake, however; they brought to-
gether in one place the very best escape artists in the world.
The prisoners pooled their talents. This story tells of the
authors success in getting to Switzerland.
It was October 14$!, 1942. As evening approached, the
four of us, Hank, Billie, Ronnie, and I, made final prepara-
tions. I said, "Au revoir till tomorrow/' to Van den Heuvel,
and to Rupert, Harry, Peter Allan, Kenneth and Dick. Ru-
pert was to be our kitchen-window stooge. We donned our
civilian clothing, and covered this with army trousers and
greatcoats. Civilian overcoats were made into neat bundles.
In parenthesis, I should explain why we had to wear the
military clothes over everything. At any time a wandering
Goon might appear as we waited our moment to enter the
kitchen, and there might even be delays. Further, we had to
think of informers among the foreign orderlies, for ex-
ample, who were always wandering about. If orderlies saw
one of us leap through the kitchen window, it was just too
bad we might be after food but it would be far worse if
they saw a number of civilian-clothed officers in a staircase
lobby the orderlies' staircase as it happened waiting, ap-
parently, for their taxi to arrive!
Our suitcases were surrounded with blankets to muffle
sound, and we carried enough sheets and blankets to make
a fifty-foot descent, if necessary. Later we would wear bala-
clava helmets and gloves; no white skin was to be visible.
Darkness and the shadows were to be our friends, we could
not afford to offend them. Only our eyes and noses would be
The Watts Are Breached 101
exposed. All light-colored garments were excluded. We car-
ried thick socks to put over our shoes. This is the most silent
method o movement I know, barring removal of one's
shoes which we were to do for the crossing of the sentry's
path.
Squadron Leader MacColm was to accompany us into
the kitchen in order to bend the window bar back into
place and seal up the window after we had gone. He would
have to conceal the military clothing we left behind in the
kitchen and make his exit the next morning after the kitchen
was unlocked. He could hide in one of the enormous cal-
drons as long as he did not oversleep and have himself
served up with the soup next day.
Immediately after the evening Appell we were ready and
started on the first leg of our long journey. It was 6:30 P.M.
I was used to the drill of the entry window by now. At
the nodded signal from Rupert, I acted automatically; a
run, a leap to the sill, one arm through the cracked pane of
glass, up with the window lever, withdraw arm carefully,
open window without noise jump through, and close
again softly. I was through. Only two had done it before at
any one session. The question was, Would five succeed?
One after another they came. At least, they had not the
window-lever latch to bother about.
The sentry was behaving himself. At regular intervals >
as he turned his back, the signal was given. I could not see-
Rupert but he was timing perfectly. I could see the sentry
from behind the window throughout his beat.
Each time, as the sentry turned away, I heard a gentle
scurry. I automatically opened the window, in jumped a
102 P. R. REID
body, and I closed the window again, breathing a heavy
sigh. The drill was becoming automatic. It was taking as
little as five seconds. Then, suddenly, just as the last of the
five was due, I sensed I do not know how an uncer-
tainty, a hesitation in the manner of the sentry as he turned
away. I knew that he would behave oddly during this beat
My heart was in my mouth, for I expected to hear the
scurry and anticipated a clash. But there was no scurry, and
in the next instant the sentry stopped dead and turned
around! It was nothing less than intuition on Rupert's part
that saved us.
On the next turn of the sentry's beat, I heard the scurry,
opened and closed again. At last all five of us were safe.
We removed our military clothing and handed it to Mac-
Colm.
I set about the window overlooking the German court-
yard, and as darkness fell and the floodlights went on, I
heaved on the bar until it was bent horizontal, and im-
mediately attached to the unbent portion a long strip of
black-painted cardboard resembling the bar. This hung
downwards in the correct position and camouflaged the
opening.
"All set!" I whispered to the others. "I'm going out now.
Hank! Wait until I'm hidden by the shadow of the large
ventilator out there. Then join me as quickly as you can.
Billie and Ronnie, remember not to follow until we have
crossed the sentry's path safely."
I squirmed through the hole in the bars onto the flat roof
beyond. The roof joined the kitchen wall just below our
window sill. I crept quietly forward in a blaze of light. The
eyes of a hundred windows glared down upon me.
The Walls Are Breached 103
The impression was appalling. "Does nobody ever look
out of a window at night?" I kept asking myself.
Happily there was shelter from the glare about halfway
across the roof. The high square ventilator provided a deep
shadow behind which I crawled. Hank soon followed. The
sentry plied his beat not fifteen yards away.
For several days we had arranged music practices in the
evenings in the senior officers' quarters (the theater block).
The music was to be used for signaling, and we had to ac-
custom the sentry in front of us to a certain amount of noise.
While Major Anderson (Andy) played the oboe, Colonel
George Young played the concertina, and Douglas Bader,
keeping watch from a window, acted as conductor. Their
room was on the third floor, overlooking the German court-
yard. Bader could see our sentry for the whole length of his
beat. He was to start the practice at 7:30 P.M., when the
traffic in the courtyard had died down. From 8 P.M. onward
he was to keep a rigid control on the players, so that they
only stopped their music when the sentry was in a suitable
position for us to cross his path. It was not imperative that
they stop playing every time the sentry turned his back,
but when they did stop playing that meant we could move.
We arranged this signaling system because, once on the
ground, we would have little concealment, and what little
there was, provided by an angle in the wall of the outbuild-
ings, prevented us from seeing the sentry.
At 8 P.M. Hank and I crawled once more into the lime-
light and over the remainder of the roof, dropping to the
ground over a loose, noisy gutter, which gave me the jitters.
In the dark angle of the wall, with our shoes around our
necks and our suitcases under our arms, we waited for the
1O4 P R REID
music to stop. The players had been playing light jaunty
airs and then ran the gauntlet of our popular-songbooks.
At 8 P.M. they changed to classical music; it gave them more
excuse for stopping. Bader had seen us drop from the roof
and would see us cross the sentry's path. The players were
in the middle of Haydn's oboe concerto when they stopped.
I shall make this a trial run, I thought.
I advanced quickly five yards to the end of the wall con-
cealing us, and regarded the sentry. He was fidgety and
looked up at Bader's window twice during the five sec-
onds' view I had of his back. Before me was the roadway, a
cobbled seven yards wide. Beyond was the end of a shed
and some friendly concealing shrubbery. As the sentry
turned, the music started again. Our players had chosen a
piece the Germans love. I only hoped the sentry would not
be exasperated by their repeated interruptions. The next
time they stopped we would go.
The music ceased abruptly and I ran but it started
again just as I reached the corner. I stopped dead and re-
tired hurriedly. This happened twice. Then I heard German
voices through the music. It was the duty officer on his
rounds. He was questioning the sentry. He was suspicious.
I heard gruff orders given.
Five minutes later I was caught napping the music
stopped while I was ruminating on the cause of the duty
officer's interrogation and I was not on my toes, A late dash
was worse than none. I stood still and waited. I waited a
long time and the music did not begin again. A quarter of
an hour passed and there was still no music. Obviously
something had gone wrong upstairs. I decided, therefore,
The Walls Are Breached 105
to wait an hour in order to let suspicions die down. We had
the whole night before us.
All this time Hank was beside me not a word passed his
lips not a murmur or comment to distract us from the job
at hand.
In the angle of the wall where we hid, there was a door.
We tried the handle and found it was open, so we entered
in pitch-darkness and, passing through a second door, we
took temporary refuge in a room which had a small window
and contained, as far as we could see, only rubbish waste-
paper, empty bottles, and empty food tins. Outside, in the
angle of the wall, any Goon with extra-sharp eyesight, pass-
ing along the roadway, would spot us. The sentry himself
was also liable to extend his beat without warning and take
a look around the corner of the wall where we had been
hiding. In the rubbish room we were much safer.
We had been in there five minutes when, suddenly, there
was a rustling of paper, a crash of falling tins, and a jangling
of overturned bottles a noise fit to waken the dead. We
froze with horror. A cat leaped out from among the refuse
and tore out of the room as if the devil were after it.
"That's finished everything," I exclaimed. "The Jerries
will be here in a moment to investigate/'
"The thing was after a mouse, I think/' said Hank. "Let's
make the best of things anyway. They may only flash a torch
around casually, and we may get away with it if we try to
look like a couple of sacks in the corner/'
"Quick, then," I rejoined. "Grab those piles of newspapers
and let's spread them out a little over our heads. It's our
only hope/'
1O6 P. R. REID
We did so and waited, with our hearts thumping. Five
minutes passed, and then ten, and still nobody came. We
began to breathe again.
Soon our hour's vigil was over. It was 9:45 P.M., and I re-
solved to carry on. All was silent in the courtyard. I could
now hear the sentry's footsteps clearly approaching, and
then receding. Choosing our moment, we advanced to the
end of the wall as he turned on his beat. I peeped around
the corner. He was ten yards off and marching away from
us. The courtyard was empty. I tiptoed quickly across the
roadway with Hank at my heels. Reaching the wall of the
shed on the other side, we had just time to crouch behind
the shrubbery before he turned. He had heard nothing. On
his next receding beat we crept behind the shed, and hid
in a small shrubbery, which bordered the main steps and
veranda in front of the entrance to the Kommandantur.
The first leg of our escape was behind us. I dropped my
suitcase and recoimoitered the next stage of our journey,
which was to the pit. Watching the sentry, I crept quickly
along the narrow grass verge at the edge of the path leading
away from the main steps. On one side was the path and on
the other side was a long flower bed; beyond that the balus-
trade of the Kommandantur veranda. I was in light shadow
and had to crouch as I moved. Reaching the pit, about
twenty-five yards away, before the sentry turned, I looked
over the edge. There was a wooden trestle with steps. The
pit was not deep, I dropped into it. A brick tunnel from the
pit ran underneath the veranda and gave perfect conceal-
ment. That was enough. As I emerged again, I distinctly
heard noises from the direction of the roofs over which we
The Walls Are Breached 107
had climbed. Ronnie and Billie, who had witnessed our
crossing of the roadway, were following. The sentry ap-
parently heard nothing.
I began to creep back to the shrubbery where Hank was
waiting. I was nearly halfway when, without warning,
heavy footsteps sounded; a Goon was approaching quickly
from the direction of the main Castle gateway and around
the corner of the Castle building into sight. In a flash I was
flat on my face on the grass verge, and lay rigid, just as he
turned the corner and headed up the path straight toward
me. He could not fail to see me. I waited for the end. He
approached nearer and nearer with noisy footsteps crunch-
ing on the gravel. He was level with me. It was all over. I
waited for his ejaculation at my discovery, for his warning
shout to the sentry, for the familiar "Hande hock!" and the
feel of his pistol in my back between the shoulder blades.
The crunching footsteps continued past me and retreated.
He mounted the steps and entered the Kommandantur.
After a moment's pause to recover, I crept the remainder
of the distance to the shrubbery and, as I did so, Ronnie
and Billie appeared from the other direction.
Before long we were all safe in the pit without further
alarms, the second lap completed! We had time to relax for
a moment
I asked Billie, "How did you get on crossing the sentry's
beat?"
"We saw you two cross over and it looked as easy as pie.
That gave us confidence. We made one trial, and then
crossed the second time. Something went wrong with the
music, didn't it?"
108 P. H. BE ID
"Yes, that's why we held up proceedings so long/' I an-
swered. "We had a lucky break when they stopped for the
last time. I thought it was the signal to move, but I was too
late off the mark, thank God! I'd probably have run into
the sentry's arms!"
"What do you think happened?" asked Ronnie.
"I heard the duty officer asking questions," I explained. "I
think they suspected the music practice was phony. They
probably went upstairs and stopped it."
Changing the subject, I said, "I heard you coming over
the roofs. I was sure the sentry could have heard."
"We made a noise at one point, I remember," said Ronnie,
"but it wasn't anything to speak of. It's amazing what you
can hear if your ears are expecting certain sounds. The sen-
try was probably thinking of his girl friend at that moment."
My next job was to try to open the door of a building
through which one of our officers had already escaped. The
door was fifteen yards away; it was in deep shadow, though
the area between the door and the pit was only in semidark-
ness. Again watching the sentry, I crept carefully to the
door, and then started work with a set of passe-partout
keys I had brought with me. I had one unnerving interrup-
tion, when I heard a voice in the distance returning from
the town. I had just sufficient time to creep back to the pit
and hide, before the officer came around the corner.
It was 11 P.M. when the officer passed by. I worked for an
hour on the door without success and finally gave up. We
were checked, and would have to find another exit.
We felt our way along the tunnel leading from the pit
under the veranda, and after eight yards came to a large
The Walls Are Breached log
cellar with a low arched ceiling supported on pillars. It had
something to do with sewage, for Hank, at one point,
stepped off solid ground and nearly fell into what might
have been deep water. He must have disturbed a scum on
top of the liquid, because a dreadful stench arose. When I
was well away from the entrance, I struck a match. There
was a solitary wheelbarrow for furniture, and at the far end
of the cavernlike cellar, a chimney flue. I had previously no-
ticed a faint glimmer of light from this direction. Examining
the flue, I found it was an air vent, which led vertically up-
ward from the ceiling of the cavern for about four feet, and
then curved outward toward the fresh air. Hank pushed me
up the flue. In plan it was about nine inches by three feet.
I managed to wriggle myself high enough to see around the
curve. The flue ended at the vertical face of a wall two feet
away from me as a barred opening shaped like a letter-box
slot. The opening was at the level of the ground outside,
and was situated on the far side of the building the moat
side for which we were heading but it was a practical
impossibility to negotiate this flue. There were bars, and
in any case only a Pygmy could have wriggled round the
curve.
We held a conference.
"We seem to have struck a dead end," I started, "this
place is a cul-de-sac, and I can't manage the door either.
I'm terribly sorry, but there we are'/'
"Can anyone think of another way out?" asked Ronnie.
"The main gateway, I think, is out of the question," I
went on. "Since Neave's escape nearly a year ago, they lock
the inner gate this side of the bridge over the moat. That
110 P. K. REID
means we can't reach the side gate leading down into the
moat."
"Our only hope is through the Kommandantur" sug-
gested Billie. "We can try it either now, and hope to get
through unseen or else try it early in the morning when
there's a little traffic about and some doors may be un-
locked."
"Do you really think we'll ever pass scrutiny at that
hour?" questioned Ronnie. "If we must take that route, I
think it's better to try it at about 3 A.M. when the whole
camp is dead asleep."
I was thinking how impossibly foolhardy was the idea of
going through the Kommandantur. In desperation, I said,
"I'm going to have another look at the flue."
This time I removed some of my top clothing and found I
could slide more easily up the shaft. I examined the bars
closely and found one was loose in its mortar socket. As I
did so, I heard footsteps outside the opening and a Goon
patrol approached. The Goon had an Alsatian with him. A
heavy pair of boots tramped past me. I could have touched
them with my hand. The dog pattered behind and did not
see me. I imagine the smell issuing from the flue obliterated
my scent.
I succeeded in loosening one end of the bar and bent it
nearly double. Slipping down into the cellar again, I whis-
pered to the others, "There's a vague chance we may be
able to squeeze through the flue. Anyway, it's worth trying.
We shall have to strip completely naked."
"Hank and Billie will never make it," said Ronnie. "It's
impossible; they're too big. You and I might manage it with
The Walls Are Breached 111
help at both ends with someone pushing below and some-
one else pulling from above."
"I think I can make it," I rejoined, "if someone stands on
the wheelbarrow and helps to push me through. Once I'm
out, I can do the pulling. Hank had better come next. If he
can make it, we all can."
Hank was over six feet tall and Billie nearly six feet.
Ronnie and I were smaller, and Ronnie was very thin.
"Neither Hank nor I," intervened Billie, "will ever
squeeze around the curve on our tummies. Our knees are
not double-jointed and our legs will stick. Well have to
come out on our backs."
"Agreed," I said. "Then I go first, Hank next, then Billie
and Ronnie last. Ronnie, youll have no one to push you, but
if two of us grab your arms and pull, we should manage it.
Be careful undressing. Don't leave anything behind we
want to leave no traces. Hand your clothes to me in neat
bundles, and your suitcases. I'll dispose of them temporarily
outside."
After a tremendous struggle, I succeeded in squeezing
through the chimney and sallied forth naked on to the path
outside. Bending down into the flue again, I could just
reach Hank's hand as he passed me up my clothes and my
suitcase, and then his own. I hid the kit in some bushes near
the path and put on enough dark clothing to make me in-
conspicuous. Hank was stripped and struggling in the hole
with his back toward me. I managed to grab one arm and
heaved, while he was pushed from below. Inch by inch he
advanced and at the end of twenty minutes, with a last
wrench, I pulled him clear. He was bruised all over and
. BE ID
streaming with perspiration. During all that time we were
at the mercy of any passer-by. What a spectacle it must
have been a naked man being squeezed through a hole
in the wall like toothpaste out of a tube! To the imaginative-
minded in the eerie darkness, it must have looked as if the
massive walls of the Castle were slowly descending upon
the man's body while his comrade was engaged in a des-
perate tug of war to save his life!
Hank retired to the bushes to recover and dress himself.
Next came Billie's clothes and suitcase, and then Billie
himself. I extracted him in about fifteen minutes. Then
Ronnie's kit arrived. I gave him a sheet on which to pull in
order to begin his climb. After that, two of us set about him,
and he was out in about ten minutes. We all collapsed in
the bushes for a breather. It was about 3:30 A.M., and we
had completed the third leg of our marathon.
"What do you think of our chances now?" I asked Billie.
Tm beyond thinking of chances/' was the reply, "but I
know I shall never forget this night as long as I live."
"I hope youVe got all your kit/' I said, smiling at him in
the darkness. '1 should hate to have to push you back down
the shaft to fetch it!"
Td give anything for a smoke," sighed Billie.
'1 see no reason why you shouldn't smoke as we walk past
the barracks if you feel like it. What cigarettes have you
got?"
"Gold Flake, I think."
"Exactly! You'd better start chain-smoking, because you'll
have to throw the rest away before you reach Leisnig. Had
you thought of that?"
The Walls Are Breached 113
"But Ive got fifty!"
"Too bad," I replied. "With, luck youVe got about three
hours; that's seventeen cigarettes an hour. Can you do it?"
"Ill try," said Billie ruefully.
A German was snoring loudly in a room with the window
open, a few yards away. The flue through which we had just
climbed gave onto a narrow path running along the top of
the moat immediately under the main Castle walls. The
bushes we hid in were on the very edge of the moat. The
moat wall was luckily stepped into three successive de-
scents. The drops were about eighteen feet and the steps
were about two yards wide, with odd shrubs and grass
growing on them. A couple of sheets were made ready.
After half an hour's rest, and fully clothed once more, we
dropped down one by one. I went last and fell into the arms
of those below me.
On the way down, Billie suddenly developed a tickle in
his throat and started a cough which disturbed the dogs.
They began barking in their kennels, which we saw for the
first time, uncomfortably near the route we were to take.
Billie in desperation ate a quantity of grass and earth, which
seemed to stop the irritation in his throat. By the time we
reached the bottom of the moat it was 4:30 A.M. The fourth
leg was completed.
We tidied our clothes and adjusted the socks over our
shoes. In a few moments we would have to pass under-
neath a lamp at the corner of the road leading to the Ger-
man barracks. This was the road leading to the double
gates in the outer wall around the Castle grounds. It was
the road taken by Neave and by Van Doorninck.
P* R. REID
The lamp was situated in full view of a sentry luckily,
some forty-five yards away who would be able to con-
template our back silhouettes as we turned the corner and
faded into the darkness beyond.
The dogs had ceased barking. Hank and I moved off first
over a small railing, onto a path, past the kennels, down
some steps, around the corner under the light, and away
into the darkness. We walked leisurely, side by side, as if
we were inmates of the barracks returning after a night's
carousal in the town.
Before passing the barracks I had one last duty to per-
f orm to give those in the camp an idea as to what we had
done, to indicate whether other escapers would be able to
follow our route or not. I had half a dozen pieces of white
cardboard cut into various shapes a square, an oblong, a
triangle, a circle, and so on. Dick Howe and I had arranged
a code whereby each shape gave him some information. I
threw certain of the cards down onto a small grass patch be-
low the road, past which our exercise parade marched on
their way to the park. With luck, if the parade was not can-
celled for a week, Dick would see the cards. My message
ran:
"Exit from pit. Moat easy. No traces left/' Although I had
pulled the bar of the flue exit back into place, we had, in
truth, probably left minor traces. But as the alternative mes-
sage was, "Exit obvious to Goons' 5 which would have been
the case, for instance, if we left fifty feet of sheet rope dan-
gling from a window I preferred to encourage other es-
capers to have a shot at following us.
We continued another hundred yards past the barracks,
The Walls Are Breached 115
where the garrison was peacefully sleeping, and arrived at
our last obstacle the outer wall. It was only ten feet high
here, with coils of barbed wire stretched along the top. I
was on the wall heaving Hank up, when, with a sudden
pounding of my heart, I noticed the glow of a cigarette in
the distance. It was approaching. Then I realized it was
Billie. They had caught us up. We had arranged a discreet
gap between us, so that we did not look like a regiment
passing under the corner lamp.
The barbed wire did not present a serious obstacle when
tackled without hurry and with minute care. We were all
eventually over the wall, but none too soon, because we had
a long way to go in order to be safe before dawn. It was
5:15 in the morning, and the fifth leg of the marathon was
over. The sixth and last stage the long journey to Switzer-
land lay ahead of us!
We shook hands all round and with "Au revoir see you
in Switzerland in a few days," Hank and I set off along the
road. Two hundred yards behind us, the other two fol-
lowed. Soon they branched off on their route and we took to
the fields.
As we trudged along, Hank fumbled for a long time in
his pockets, and then uttered practically the first words he
had spoken during the whole night. He said, "I reckon, Pat,
I must have left my pipe at the top of the moat/'
Hank and I walked fast. We intended to lie up for a day.
Therefore, in order to be at all safe we had to put the long-
est distance possible between ourselves and the camp. We
judged the German search would be concentrated in the di-
rection of a village about five miles away, for which Ronnie
Il6 P. B. REID
and Billie had headed and in which there was a railway sta-
tion. The first train was shortly before morning Appell. Pro-
vided there was no alarm in the camp before then, and if
the two of them could reach the station in time for the train
(which now seemed probable), they would be in Leipzig
before the real search started. This was the course Lulu
Lawton had taken, but he had missed the train and had to
hide up in a closely hunted area.
Hank and I chose a difficult route, calculated to put the
hunters off the scent. We headed first south and then west-
ward in a big sweep in the direction of the River Mulde,
which ran due northward toward the Elbe. In order to reach
a railway station we had to trek about twenty miles and
cross the river into the bargain. It was not a "cushy" escape
route, and we relied on the Germans thinking likewise.
We walked for about an hour and a half, and when it was
almost daylight entered a wood and hid up in a thicket for
the day. We must have been five miles away from the camp.
Although we tried to sleep, our nerves were as taut as piano
wires. I was on the alert the whole day.
"A wild animal must have magnificent nerves/' I said to
Hank at one point.
"Wild animals have nerves just like you and me. That's
why they are not captured easily/' was his comment.
Hank was not going to be easy to catch. His fiancee had
been waiting for him since the night when he took off in his
bomber in April 1940. It would plainly require more than a
few tough Germans to recapture him. It gave me confidence
to know he was beside me.
I mused for a long time over the queer twists that fate
The Walls Are Breached 117
gives to our lives. I had always assumed that Rupert and I
would escape finally together. Yet it happened to be Hank's
turn, and here we were. I had left old and tried friends be-
hind me. Two years of constant companionship had ce-
mented some of us together very closely. Rupert, Harry,
Dick, Kenneth, and Peter. Would I ever see them again?
Inside the camp the probability of early failure in the es-
cape was so great that we brushed aside all serious thought
of a long parting.
Here in the woods it was different. If I did my job prop-
erly from now on, it was probable that I would never see
them again. We were not going back to Colditz; Hank was
sure of that too. I was rather shaken by the thought, real-
izing fully for the first time what these men meant to me.
We had been through much together. I prayed that we
might all survive the war and meet again.
As dusk fell we set off across the fields. Sometimes when
roads led in our direction we used them, but we had to be
very careful. On one occasion we only just left the road in
time as we saw a light ahead (unusual in the blackout) and
heard voices. A car approaching was stopped. As we by-
passed the light by way of the fields, we saw an army mo-
torcyclist talking to a sentry. It was a control and they were
after us. We passed within fifty yards of them!
It seemed a long way to the river. As the night wore on, I
could hardly keep my eyes open. I stumbled and dozed as
I walked, and finally gave up.
"Hank, Til have to lie down for an hour and sleep. Tve
been sleepwalking as it is. I don't know where we're going."
"Okay. Ill stay on guard while you pass out on that bank
Il8 *>. R. REID
over there under the tree/' said Hank, indicating a mound
of grass looming ahead of us.
He woke me in an hour and we continued, eventually
reaching the river. It was in a deep cutting, down which we
climbed, and there was a road which ran along its bank. To-
ward our left, crossing the river and the cutting, was a high-
level railway bridge. I decided to cross it. We had to re-
climb the cutting. Sleep was overcoming me once more.
The climb was steep and over huge rocks cut into steps like
those of the pyramids. It was a nightmare climb in the
pitch-darkness, as I repeatedly stumbled, fell down, and
slept where I lay. Hank would tug at me, pull me over the
next huge stone, and set me on my feet without a word,
only to have to repeat the performance again in a few mo-
ments. Halfway up the embankment we stopped to rest. I
slept, but Hank was on the qui vive and, peering through
the darkness, noticed a movement on the railway bridge.
It needed a cat's eye to notice anything at all. He shook
me and said, "Pat, we're not going over that bridge; it's
guarded."
"How do you know for certain?" I asked. "And how are
we going to cross the river, then?"
"I don't mind if we have to swim it, but I'm not crossing
that bridge."
I gave way, though it meant making a big half circle,
crossing the railway line, and descending to the river again
somewhere near a road bridge which we knew existed far-
ther upstream.
Reaching the top of the railway-bridge embankment we
crossed the lines, and as we did so we saw in the distance
The Walls Are Breached 119
from the direction of the bridge the flash of a lighted match.
"Did you see that?" I whispered.
"Yes."
"There's a sentry on the bridge, sure enough. You were
right, Hank. Thank God you insisted/'
Gradually we edged down the hill again where the river
cutting was less steep, and found that our bearings had not
been too bad, for we saw the road bridge in the foreground.
We inspected it carefully before crossing, listening for a
long time for any sound of movement. It was unguarded.
We crossed rapidly and took to the bushes on the far side,
not a moment too soon; a motorcycle came roaring around
the bend, its headlight blazing, and crossed the bridge in
the direction from which we had come.
We tramped wearily across country on a compass bear-
ing until dawn. Near the village of Penig, where our rail-
way station was situated, we spruced ourselves up, at-
tempted a shave, and polished our shoes. We entered the
village it was almost a small industrial town and wended
our way in the direction of the station. I was loath to ask
our way at this time of the morning when few people were
about. Instead, we wandered onward past some coal yards
where a tramline started. The tracks ran alongside a large
factory and then switched over to the other side of the road,
passing under trees and beside a small river. We followed
the lines, which eventually crossed a bridge, and entered
the town proper. I was sure the tramlines would lead us
to the station. The town was dingy, not at all like Colditz,
which was of pleasing appearance. Upkeep had evidently
gone to the dogs. Broken windowpanes were filled with
120 * R - REID
newspaper, ironwork was rusty, and the front doors of the
houses, which opened directly on the street, badly needed
a coat of paint
We arrived at the railway station. It was on the far edge
of the town and looked older and out of keeping with the
buildings around it. It had a staid respectable atmosphere
and belonged to a period before industry had come to
Penig. We entered and looked up the trains. Our route was
Munich via Zwickau. I saw we had a three-hour wait and
then another long wait at Zwickau before the night express
for Munich. Leaving the station, we walked out into the
country again and settled down for a meal and a rest be-
hind a bam near the road. It is dangerous to wait in railway
stations or public parks and advisable to keep moving un-
der any circumstances when in a town.
We returned to the station toward midday. I bought two
third-class tickets to Munich, and we caught the train com-
fortably. Our suitcases were a definite asset. My German
accent was anything but perfect, but the brandishing of my
suitcase on all occasions to emphasize whatever I happened
to be saying worked like a soporific on the Germans.
In Zwickau, having another long wait, we boarded a
tram. I tripped on the mounting step and nearly knocked
the conductress over. I apologized loudly in German. "Ex-
cuse me, please! Excuse me, excuse me! I am a foreigner."
We sat down, and when the conductress came round I
beamed at her, and asked in broken German, "Gniidiges
Frdulein! If you please, where is the nearest cinema? We
have a long time to wait for our train and would like to see
a film and the news pictures. We are foreigners and do not
know this town."
The Walk Are Breached 121
"The best cinema in Zwickau is five minutes from here. I
shall tell you where to alight"
"How much is the fare, please, Fraulein?"
"Twenty pfennings each, if you please."
"Danke schon? I said, proffering the money.
After five minutes the tram stopped at a main thorough-
fare junction and the conductress beckoned to us. As we
alighted, one of the passengers pointed out to us with a
voluble and, to me, incoherent stream of German exactly
where the cinema was. I could gather that he was proud to
meet foreigners who were working for the victory of "Unser
Reich!" He took off his moth-eaten hat as we parted and
waved a courteous farewell.
Zwickau was just a greatly enlarged Penig as far as I
could see. Dilapidation was visible everywhere. The inhab-
itants gave me an impression of impoverishment, and only
the uniforms of officials, including the tram conductress and
those of the armed forces, bore a semblance of any smart-
ness at all.
Hank and I spent a comfortable two hours in the cinema,
which was no different from any other I had seen. German
officers and troops were dotted about in seats all around us
and made up ninety per cent of the audience. I dozed for a
long time and I noticed Hank's head drooping too. After
two hours I whispered to him:
"It's time to go. What did you think of the film?"
"What I saw of it was a washout," Hank replied. "I must
have slept though, because I missed parts of it. It was in-
coherent."
"This cinema seems to be nothing more than impromptu
sleeping quarters. Look around you," and I nudged Hank.
122 P. K. BE ID
The German Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe were dozing in all
sorts of postures around us!
"Let's go/' I said and, yawning repeatedly, we rose and
left the auditorium.
Returning to the station in good time, we boarded the ex-
press to Munich. It was crowded, for which I was glad, and
Hank and I spent the whole night standing in the corridor.
Nobody paid any attention to us. We might as well have
been in an express bound from London to the North. The
lighting, however, was so bad that few passengers attempted
to read. It was intensely stuffy owing to the overcrowding,
the cold outside, and the blackout curtains on all windows.
The hypnotic drumming and the swaying of the train per-
vaded all.
Our fellow travelers were a mixed bag; a few army and
air force officers, some workmen, and a majority of down-
at-the-heel-looking businessmen or government officials.
There was not a personality among them; all were sheep
ready to be slaughtered at the altar of Hitler. There was a
police control in the early hours. I produced my much-
soiled German leather wallet, which exposed my identity
card, or Ausweis, behind a grimy scratched piece of cellu-
loid. The police officer was curt. "Are you a foreigner?"
"]a wohl" I said. "To Munich and RottweiL"
"Why?"
"Beton Arbeit" ( that is, concrete work) .
Hank was slow in producing his papers. I said, "We are
together. He is mein Kamerad" Hank proffered his papers
as I added, taking the officer into my confidence, "He's a lit-
tle stupid, but a good fellow."
The Walls Are Breached 123
The control passed on and we relaxed into a fitful doze as
we roared through the night toward Munich and Switzer-
land.
We arrived in Munich in the cold gray of the morning,
several hours late. There had been bombing and train di-
versions.
I got in line at the booking office, telling Hank to stand
by. When my turn came I asked for two third-class tickets
for Rottweil.
The woman behind the grill asked for fifty-six marks.
"Karl/' I shouted in Hank's direction, "I need ten more
marks/' Hank produced a ten-mark note, which I handed to
the woman.
"Your identification/' she said.
I produced it.
"Gtrf/' and she handed my wallet back to me.
I was so relieved that as I left the line, forgetting my part
completely, I said in a loud voice, in English, "All right,
Hank, I've got the tickets!"
I nearly froze in my tracks. As we hurried away I felt the
baleful glare of a hundred eyes burning through my back.
But we were soon lost in the crowd, and what a crowd! Ev-
erybody seemed to be traveling. The station appeared to be
untouched by bombing and traffic was obviously running at
high pressure. We had another long wait for the train which
would take us to Rottweil via Ulm and Tuttlingen. I noted
with relief that the wait in Ulm was only ten minutes.
Hyde-Thompson and his Dutch colleague had been trapped
in the Ulm station. The name carried foreboding and I
prayed we would negotiate this junction safely. I also no-
124 p * R * HEII)
ticed with appreciation that there was a substantial wait at
Tiittlingen for the train to Rottweil. It would give us an ex-
cuse for leaving the station.
In Munich I felt safe. The waiting rooms were full to
overflowing and along with other passengers we were even
shepherded by station police to an underground bombproof
waiting room signposted for the use of all persons having
longer than half an hour to wait for a train.
Before descending to this waiting room, however, I asked
for the restaurant, and roving along the counter I saw a
large notice Markfreiessen, which meant coupon-free meals!
I promptly asked for two, and also two liters of Pilsner
Bier. They were duly served, and Hank and I sat down at a
table by ourselves to the best meal provided us by the Ger-
mans in two and a half years. The Markfreiessen consisted
of a very generous helping of thick stew mostly vegetable
and potatoes, but some good-tasting sausage meat was
floating around as well. The beer seemed excellent to our
parched gullets. We had not drunk anything since our re-
past on the outskirts of Penig, when we had finished the wa-
ter we carried with us.
We went to the underground waiting room. We were
controlled once in a cursory manner. I was blase by now
and smiled benignly at the burly representative of the
Abioehr Polizei security police as he passed by, hardly
glancing at the wallets we pushed under his nose.
In good time we boarded the train for Ulm. Arriving
there at midday, we changed platforms without incident
and quickly boarded our next train. This did not go direct
to Rottweil, but necessitated changing at Tuttlingen, Rott-
The Walls Are Breached 125
well was thirty miles, but Tiittlingen was only fifteen miles
from the frontier! My intention was to walk out of the sta-
tion at Tiittlingen with the excuse of waiting for the Rott-
weil train and never return.
This Hank and I duly did. As I walked off the station
platform at Tiittlingen, through the barrier, we handed in
our tickets. We had walked ten yards when I heard shouts
behind us.
"Kommen Sie hier! Here, come back!''
I turned round, fearing the worst, and saw the ticket col-
lector waving at us.
I returned to him and he said, "You gave up your tickets,
but you're going to Rottweil. You must keep your tickets/'
With almost visible relief I accepted the tickets once
more. In my anxiety I had forgotten that we were ostensibly
due to return to catch the Rottweil train and, of course, still
needed our tickets.
From the station we promptly took the wrong road; there
were no signposts. It was late afternoon and a Saturday.
The October weather was fine. We walked for a long time
along a road which refused to turn in the direction in which
we thought it ought to turn! It was maddening. We passed
a superbly camouflaged factory and sidings. There must
have been an area of ten acres completely covered with a
false flat room of what appeared to be rush matting. Even
at the low elevation at which we found ourselves looking
down upon it, the whole site looked like farm land. If the
camouflage was actually rush matting, I do not know how
they provided against fire risks.
We were gradually being driven into a valley heading
126 P. * REID
due south, whereas we wished to travel westward. Leaving
the road as soon as possible without creating suspicion, we
tried to make a short cut across country to another highway,
which we knew headed west. As a short cut it misfired, tak-
ing us over hilly country, which prolonged our journey con-
siderably. Evening was drawing in by the time we reached
the correct road. We walked along this for several miles,
and when it was dark, took to the woods to lie up for the
night.
We passed a freezing, uncomfortable night on beds of
leaves in the forest and were glad to warm ourselves with a
sharp walk early the next morning, which was Sunday. I
was thankful it was a Sunday, because it gave us a good ex-
cuse to be out walking in the country.
We now headed along roads leading southwest, until at
8 A.M. we retired again to the friendly shelter of the woods
to eat our breakfast, consuming most of what was left of our
German bread, sugar, and margarine.
We had almost finished our repast when we were dis-
turbed by a farmer, who approached and eyed us curiously
for a long time. He wore close-fitting breeches and gaiters
like a typical English gamekeeper. I did not like his attitude
at all. He came closer and demanded what we were doing.
I said, "We're eating. Can't you see that?"
"Why are you here?" he asked.
To which I answered, "We're going for a walk; it's Sun-
day, isn't it?"
At this he retired. I watched him carefully. As soon as he
was out of the wood and about fifty yards away, I saw him
turn along a hedge and change his gait into a trot.
The Walls Are Breached 12,7
This was enough for me. In less than a minute we were
packed and trotting fast in the opposite direction, which
happened to be southward! We did not touch the road
again for some time, but kept to the woods and lanes. Grad-
ually, however, the countryside became open and culti-
vated, and we were forced once more to the road. We
passed a German soldier, who was smartly turned out in his
Sunday best, with a friendly "Heil Hitler!" Church bells
were ringing out from steeples, which rose head and shoul-
ders above the roofs of several villages dotted here and
there in the rolling country around us.
We walked through one of the villages as the people were
coming out of church. I was terrified of the children, who
ran out of the church shouting and laughing. They gamboled
around us and eyed us curiously, although their elders took
no notice of us at all. I was relieved, nonetheless, when we
left the village behind us. Soon afterward, the country again
became wooded and hilly, and we disappeared among the
trees, heading now due south.
As the afternoon wore on I picked up our bearings more
accurately, and we aimed at the exact location of the fron-
tier crossing. A little too soon I thought we reached the
frontier road, running east and west. I could not be sure, so
we continued eastward along it to where it entered some
woods. We passed a fork where a forest track, which I rec-
ognized, joined it. I knew then that we were indeed on the
frontier road and that we had gone too far eastward. At that
moment there were people following us, and we could not
break off into the woods without looking suspicious. We
walked on casually, and at the end of the wooded portion
128 P. R. REID
of the road we heard suddenly, "Halt! Who's there?" And
then, more deliberately, "Where are you going?"
A sentry box stood back from the road in a clump of trees
and from it stepped forth a frontier guard.
"We are going to Singen," I said. "We are foreigners."
"Your identification, please."
We produced our papers, including the special permit al-
lowing us to travel near the frontier. We were close to him.
His rifle was slung over his shoulder. The people who had
been following us had turned down a lane toward a cottage.
We were alone with the sentry.
I chatted on, gesticulating with my suitcase brazenly con-
spicuous. "We are Flemish workmen. This evening we take
the train to Rottweil, where there is much construction
work. We must be there in the morning. Today we can
rest and we like your woods and countryside."
He eyed us for a moment; handed us back our papers and
let us go. As we walked on I dreaded to hear another "Halt!"
I imagined that if the sentry were not satisfied with us he
would, for his own safety, move us off a few yards so that
he could unsling his rifle. But no command was given and
we continued our "Sunday afternoon stroll."
As we moved out of earshot, Hank said to me, "If he'd
reached for his gun when he was close to us just then, I
would have knocked him to Kingdom Come."
I would not have relished being knocked to Kingdom
Come by Hank, and I often wonder if the sentry did not no-
tice a look in Hank's eye and think that discretion was per-
haps the better part of valor! A lonely sentry is not all-pow-
erful against two enemies, even with his gun leveled. Our
story may have had a vague ring of truth, but nonetheless,
The Walls Are Breached 129
we were foreigners within half a mile of the Swiss frontier!
Soon we were able to leave the road, and we started to
double back across the country to our frontier-crossing
point. Just as we came to a railway line and climbed a small
embankment, we nearly jumped out of our skins with fright
as a figure darted from a bush in front of us and ran for his
life into a thicket and disappeared. I could have assured
him, if only he had stopped, that he gave us just as big a
fright as we gave him!
By dusk we had found our exact location and waited in
deep pine woods for darkness to descend. The frontier was
scarcely a mile away. We ate a last meal nervously and
without appetite. Our suitcases would not be required any
more, so they were buried. When it was pitch-dark, we
pulled on socks over our shoes, and set off. We had to nego-
tiate the frontier crossing in inky blackness, entirely from
memory of maps studied in Colditz. We crossed over more
railway lines and then continued, skirting the edge of a
wood. We encountered a minor road, which foxed me for a
while because it should not have been there according to
my memory, but we carried on. Hearing a motorcycle pass
along a road in front of us, a road running close to and par-
allel with the frontier, warned us of the proximity of our
take-off point. We entered the woods to our left and pro-
ceeded parallel with the road eastward for about a hundred
yards and then approached it cautiously. Almost as we
stumbled into it, I suddenly recognized the outline of a
sentry box hidden among the trees straight in front of us!
We were within five yards of it when I recognized its an-
gular roof. My hair stood on end. It was impossible to move
without breaking twigs under our feet. They made noises
13O P. R. REID
like pistol shots and we could be heard easily. We retreated
with as much care as we could, but even the crackle of a
dried leaf caused me to perspire freely.
To compensate for this unnerving encounter, however, I
now knew exactly where we were, for the sentry box was
marked on our Colditz map and provided me with a check
bearing. We moved off seventy yards and approached the
road again. Peering across it, we could discern fields and
low hedges. In the distance was our goal: a wooded hill
looming blacker than the darkness around it, with the
woods ending abruptly halfway down its eastern slopes, to-
ward our left. There was no blackout in Switzerland, and
beyond the hill was the faintest haze of light, indicating the
existence of a Swiss village.
At 7:30 P.M. we moved off. Crouching low, and on the
double, we crossed the road and headed for the woods.
Without stopping for breath we ran, through hedges, across
ditches, wading through mud, and then on again. Dreading
barbed wire, which we could never have seen, we ran, pant-
ing with excitement as much as with breathlessness, across
fields newly plowed, meadows, and marshland, till at last
we rounded the corner of the woods. Here, for a moment,
we halted for breath.
I felt that if I could not have a drink of water soon I
would die. My throat was parched and swollen, and my
tongue was choking me. My heart was pounding like a
sledge hammer. I was gasping for breath. I had lived for
two and a half years, both awake and in sleep, with the vi-
sion of this race before me, and every nerve in my body was
taut to breaking pitch.
We were not yet home. We had done about half a mile
The Walls Are Breached 131
and could see the lights of the Swiss village ahead. Great
care was now necessary, for we could easily recross the
frontier into Germany without knowing it, and stumble on
a guard post. From the corner of the wood we had to con-
tinue in a sweeping curve, first toward our right, and then
left again toward the village. Where we stood we were ac-
tually in Switzerland, but in a direct line between us and
the Swiss village lay Germany.
Why had we run instead of creeping forward warily? The
answer is that instinct dictated it and, I think in this case,
instinct was right. Escapers* experience has borne out that
the psychological reaction of a fleeing man to a shouted
command, such as "Halt," varies. If a man is walking or
creeping the reaction is to stop. If he is running the reaction
is to run faster. It is in the split seconds of such instinctive
decisions that success or failure may be determined.
We continued on our way at a rapid walk, over grass and
boggy land, crouching low at every sound. It was important
to avoid even Swiss frontier posts. We had heard curious
rumors of escapers being returned to the Germans by un-
friendly Swiss guards. However untrue, we were taking no
risks.
We saw occasional shadowy forms and circled widely
around them and at last, at 8:30 P.M., approached the vil-
lage along a sandy path.
We were about a thousand yards inside the Swiss fron-
tier. We had completed the four-hundred-mile journey
from Colditz in less than four days.
Under the first lamppost of the village street, Hank and
I shook hands in silence.
The Rifles of the Regiment
ERIC KNIGHT
Colonel Heathergall has become a bit of a regimental legend
already. In the mess of the Loyal Rifles, they say, "Ah, but
Old Glass Eye! I'U never forget once. . . ." Then off they
go on some story or other about "Old Glass Eye."
But the regiment doesn't know the finest and truest story
of all: when he fought all night with Fear and won.
Colonel Heathergall met Fear in a little shack atop a cliff
near the French village of Ste. Marguerite-en-Vaux. He had
The Rifles of the Regiment 133
never met Fear before not on the Somme or in India or in
Palestine because he was the type brought up not to know
Fear. Fear is a cad you just don't recognize the bounder.
The system has its points. Not being even on nodding ac-
quaintance with Fear had allowed the colonel to keep the
Loyal Rifle Regiment going in France long after all other
British troops had gone they were still fighting, working
their way westward toward the Channel, nearly two weeks
after Dunkirk was all over.
The men those that were left were drunk with fatigue.
When they marched between fights, they slept. When they
rested, they went into a sort of coma, and the sergeants had
to slap them to waken them.
"They're nearly done," the adjutant said. "Shouldn't we
jettison equipment?''
"All right," the colonel said, finally. "Equipment can be
destroyed and left behind. But not rifles! The regiment's
never failed to carry its rifles in and carry 'em out. We'll
take our rifles with us every last single rifle."
The adjutant saluted.
"Er and tell 'em we'll cut through soon," the colonel
added. "Tell 'em I say we'll find a soft spot and cut through
soon."
But the Loyal Rifles never did cut through. For there was
then no British Army left in France to cut through to. But
the regiment didn't know that. It marched west and north
and attacked, and went west and north again. Each time it
brought out its rifles and left its dead. First the sergeants
were carrying two rifles, and then the men, and then the
officers.
134 ERIC KNIGHT
The Loyal Rifles went on until they could go no farther.
For they had reached the sea. It was on a headland looking
out over the Channel, beside the fishing port of Ste. Mar-
guerite-en- Vaux.
In the late afternoon the colonel used the regiment's last
strength in an attempt to take Ste. Marguerite, for there
might be boats there, fishing smacks, something that could
carry them all back to England. He didn't find boats. He
found the enemy with tanks and artillery, and the regiment
withdrew. They left their dead, but they left no rifles.
The colonel sent out scouts. They brought him the re-
port. They were cut off by the Germans ringed about with
their backs to the sea, on a cliff top with a two-hundred-foot
drop to the beach below.
The regiment posted pickets, and dug foxholes, and
fought until darkness came. Then they waited through the
night for the last attack that was sure to come.
And it was that night, in his headquarters at the cliff top
shack, that Colonel Heathergall, for the first time in his
well-bred, British, military life, met Fear.
Fear had a leprous face. Its white robes were damp, and
it smelled of stale sweat.
Colonel Heathergall, who had not heard the door close,
saw the figure standing there in the darkness. "Who who
. , <v>
IS it?
Fear bowed and said, "You know me, really, Colonel. All
your arrogant, aristocratic, British life youVe snubbed me
and pretended you didn't know me, but really you do, don't
you? Let us be friends."
The colonel adjusted his monocle. "What do you want?"
he asked.
The Rifles of the Regiment 135
"I've come to tell you/' Fear said, "that it's time for you
to surrender the regiment. You're finished."
"You're a slimy brute/' the colonel said. "I won't surren-
der. There must be some way out! That R.A.F. plane this
morning; I'm sure it saw us the way the chap waggled his
wings. He'd go get help. The Navy they'll come!"
Fear laughed. "And if they come, then what? How would
you get down that cliff? You cant get down and you
know it!"
"We could cut south and find a better spot the men still
have fight left," the colonel said desperately.
"The men," Fear said, "they'll leave their broken bodies
wherever you choose. They've got the stuff. And oh, yes,
you too, have courage, in your way. The huntin'-shootin'-
fishin' sort of courage. The well-bred kind of courage. But
that's got nothing to do with this kind of war. You haven't
the right to ask your men to die to preserve that sort of rec-
ord. Have you?"
The colonel sat still, not answering.
Fear spoke again. "The enemy will be here soon. Your
men are exhausted. They can't do any more. Really, you'd
be saving their lives if you surrender. No one would blame
you. . . ."
The colonel shook his head. "No," he said. "We can't do
that. You see we never have done that. And we can't now.
Perhaps we are outmoded. I and my kind may be out of
date incompetent belonging to a bygone day. But. . . ."
He looked around him as if for help. Then he went on des-
perately, "But we've brought out all the rifles."
"Is that all?" mocked Fear.
"All?" the colonel echoed. "Is that all?"
136 ERIC KNIGHT
Then at last he squared his shoulders, "All? Why, it's
everything! I may die and my men may die but the regi-
ment! It doesn't. The regiment goes on living. It's bigger
than me it's bigger than the men. It's bigger than you!"
And exactly as he said that, Fear fled. And there came a
rap on the door, and the adjutant's voice sounded,
"Come in," the colonel said quietly.
"Are you alone, sir?" the adjutant asked.
"Yes/' the colonel said. "Quite alone. What is it?"
"Report from the signal officer, sir. He has carried an or-
dinary torch with him, and he feels the colonel will be in-
terested to know that he's in visual communication with the
Navy destroyers or something. They say they're ready to
put off boats to take us off."
"Tell him my thanks to the C.O. of whatever naval force
there is there. Message to company commanders: With-
draw pickets quietly. Rendezvous cliff top north of this
H.Q. at three-fifty-five ack emma. Er pretty good chaps in
Navy I've heard."
"Indeed, sir," the adjutant said.
So they assembled the men of the Loyal Rifle Regiment
on the cliff top, where they could see out and below them
the brief dots and dashes of light that winked. And there,
too, in the night wind, they could feel the space and know
the vast drop to the beach. Some of the men lay flat and lis-
tened for the sound of the sailors two hundred feet below
them.
The officers waited, looking toward the colonel. It was
the major who spoke, "But but how on earth are we go-
ing to get down there, Colonel?"
The Rifles of the Regiment 137
Colonel Heathergall smiled privately within himself.
"The rifles/' he said softly. "The rifles, of course. I think
well just about have enough/*
And that's how the regiment escaped. They made a great
chain of linked rifle slings, and went down it one at a time.
The colonel came last, of course, as custom dictated.
Below, they picked up the rifles, whole and shattered,
that they had thrown from the cliff top, and, wading out
into the sea, carried them to the boats.
By this time the Germans were awake, and they let loose
with everything they had. The sailors used fine naval lan-
guage, but they got the men into the boats. The Navy got in
and got them out.
Thafs the way the Loyal Rifle Regiment came home
nearly two weeks after the last troops from Dunkirk had
landed in England.
In the mess they still talk of the colonel. "Old Glass Eye/*
they say. "Ah, there was a colonel for you. Saved the outfit,
he did. Knew the only way it'd ever get out would be down
a cliff so he made 'em carry all the rifles halfway across
France. Knew he'd need the slings for that cliff. Foresight,
eh? Great chap, Old Glass Eye. Never knew the meaning of
Fear."
The Immortal Harpy
HOBERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
The runway spun beneath the Harpy and she pulled up
from it like a thing that must leave the earth. She ate the air
and blew it back across her body. The runway held its drab
color up to her fuselage, then fell away, colorless and spent.
The propellers ate on, sticking in the air, and she was free
and air-borne.
They passed over the predawn dimness of the hangar and
saw the fellows waving to them. Inside the Harpy, there
The Immortal Harpy 139
was a slow, grinding noise as the landing gear retracted.
Her pilot, Captain Jerry Lawler, let her ride, gaining height.
The ridge dropped from sight beneath them, and nothing
lay ahead but the Pacific and the clouds that came down
and seemed to melt into it.
Jerry looked across at his copilot, Watts, and grinned,
winking. It was an expression of mutual knowledge, a rec-
ognition of each other and what must be shared.
"Ill hold her up for a while/' Watts suggested.
"Okay, I'll go back and beat the breeze," Jerry said.
"Good deal/' Watts grinned, and a moment later he had
the ship in his hands, alone for the first time.
"Atta girl, take it easy/' he mumbled. Already he felt a
trembling begin at his spine and move toward his shoul-
ders. It moved down his arms, and he clenched his hands
furiously, forcing the feeling to stop. Now, slicing through
illimitable space, the feeling quieted in his arms, and for a
moment the Harpy, like a proud horse, seemed to accept
his mastery of her. She rode free and easy, racing down the
sky. He had come to her with no family, but she, together
with Jerry, and the rest of her brood, was his family now.
In his high, transparent plastic roost, Sergeant Walter
Kazmierczak, gunner, saw light coming over the rim of the
world. The same that had hours earlier covered his home,
his girl, his place of life. He thought of the moving sun rays
as being the light that had come down Walnut Street in
Elmira, New York. It has gone around the world to find
Ginnie, he thought, and I wish to heaven I was there with
her. But he wasn't there. He was here on the Harpy, with
those who served her. With Pon and Chief and Mike Sheren
14O HOBERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
and the others wakened before the light by Jerry, who had
called, '"Get out of your sacks. I got something you guys'U
be glad to hear. This is our big day. We hit them late this
afternoon. Tomorrow morning, the marines and the infantry
land."
The Harpy was pulling a little heavy, but she was hauling
a terrific load. Her gas weighed on her, waiting to feed her,
and the huge bombs in her racks made her stomach heavy.
But she was on her way, and she seemed to know it. The
Harpy wouldn't have it any other way, her radioman, Ser-
geant Mike Sheren, told himself, not any more than he
would. The unstopping roar of the Harpy s engines became
a thing so familiar you didn't hear them, he decided. Then
after your thoughts had been away from her, oh, thousands
of miles distant, you laid off remembering other things and
let your mind come back to her, and you were conscious of
their roar again.
Mike had been on missions before. He had gone to
Munda, and down to Rendova, and to Tarawa, and to scores
of little atolls left burning and popping like magnesium
dropped into the Pacific. After one such mission he remem-
bered buying a half-dozen native handkerchiefs at a native
store. He had printed Mrs. Ida Sheren in large, croaked
letters, adding the street and town. Mom's going to be sur-
prised, he thought, as he carried the package to the mail
window. Afterward, he had looked at three P-4o's running
along the rim of the mountain, riding the air currents. That's
where he wanted to be, he knew up there in the sky,
where things became clear and apparent. It was then that
he felt that he stood at the beginning of a passageway which
The Immortal Harpy 141
led to some kind of a world, somehow known, but unseen.
He had noticed that there was a strong camaraderie among
the infantry a physical thing, something that came from
hand-to-hand combat, from seeing men die on the ground
beside you. It wasn't like that with him, Mike knew. The
old Harpy carried her full crew, but it was only a handful
of men; men who fought and lived inside the Harpy's warm
fuselage. There was something that happened up here
where he was, in the quiet, silent places where death
waited, but he could not be sure what it was. He knew only
the limitless ranges that fanned upward from the earth, and
they had given him a curious feeling of expectancy.
Sometimes, on leave, when he felt that way, he said,
"Let's get stinkinY' and Pon Technical Sergeant Chester
Poniatowski would say, "You ain't just whistling, bud.
Let's/' But when the time came for the pouring of the
musty, slightly bitter beer down their gullets, Pon would be
on the ground in front of the Harpy or under her, looking
up at her belly. They seemed to be standing guard over each
other, Pon and the Harpy; even when they weren't on the
ground any more, but were drumming above it, it seemed
that way.
The Harpy was box-shaped and unappealing while she
was inert, but once she felt the air against her wings, she
seemed to change. She was graceful and proud, and flew
with assurance, for she had been to battle before, and she
went to it calmly again. There was something about the
Harpy up here in the element she had been born to live in
that made her more than a battling old bag of bolts. The
Harpy had a spirit about her that could not be assailed even
142 HOBERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
by death. Pon loved her and sensed the immense power that
rested within her. He liked to go back and forth inside the
ship, touching her and taking care of her.
Even with all the others locked with him in flight above
the Pacific, he felt alone with her; the others shut out and
away from his communion with the Harpy. He felt alone
with her, the way he used to be alone with his car in a ga-
rage full of people. Below him, the water danced in the
plane's movements. As the air hit the Harpy, the whitecaps
rose and fell. This is the best life in the world, he told him-
self. There was no feeling like it. He wondered proudly
what those doubters, who had always seemed amazed that
he had been able to make the old jalopy run, would think
now, if they could see the Harpy with the miles slipping by
under her stomach, across her fuselage, and into the un-
posted spaces behind them.
Standing on her catwalk, he let his eyes take inventory of
the way the neat wires ran down her inner walls, the thou-
sands of mechanical parts of her, her guns, the slick bomb
racks. He knew that it was silly, but often when he was
alone with her he sensed that she was grateful to him. It was
something he imagined, he knew, but he had worked with
engines all his life, and he knew how they reacted an en-
gine was a thing you could depend on. If you were faithful
to them, they would be faithful to you and would run for-
ever. The Harpy hit a shallow bump and bobbed a little
beneath him, and he thought, If we treat her right, she'll
stay up here, clean and switchin* her tail at death after we're
gone.
The hours went easily. All the crew checked the instru-
The Immortal Harpy 143
ments of their particular functions, and looked occasionally
at the restless blue surface beneath them. They felt a sense
of freedom, being away from the earth and the things it
held, and yet, more strongly than at any other time, they
felt a part of a group.
By afternoon, Pon, like most of the others, had removed
his shirt and trousers, and in his shorts he rode the Harpy
down to the left of the dropping sun. Idly, he let his gaze
rest on the coppery back of Sergeant "Chief > Washington,
the Harpy s armament man. Only coppery wasn't quite the
right description, Pon thought. Chiefs skin, that rippled
over long muscles, seemed to be made of thick cream and
the cream diluted the dusty reddish hue. His cap was turned
sideways on his black hair, and the long, square-brimmed
visor stuck up above his right ear like a feather worn by
one of his ancestors.
Then out of a tumbling mountain of cloud two P-4</s
came in, one at a time, and roared down the sky to meet the
Harpy, like workmen gathering along the road. Those on
the Harpy watched them, knowing they had a date to-
gether down over the horizon, and that it was going to be an
important one.
Where they were, there were no markers for time or
space, but they met as easily as if they had traveled this
way a thousand times. His people had the same gift, Chief
thought. A waste of land, hard shadowed under a molten
sun, rolled into infinity with the heat wavering up from it,
and strangers to it were lost and their bones were bleached
white by that sun, because they could not read it and it was
a place foreign to them. Yet to those who were at home in
144 HOBERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
the vast, brown, crawling Bills, there were innumerable
signposts pointing the way.
The hours passed, with only the roar of the Harpy's en-
gines to mark their going. Jerry Lawler, back at the con-
trols, called to the Harpy's crew over the intercom, telling
them to settle down. The ship was pulling easier, now that
the greedy engines had drained some of her weight of gas
from her. She moved steadily, not lagging or impatient, and
the sureness and calmness of her journey spilled out from
her and into his arms and hands, up through his body,
In the Harpy s tail, Norry Sergeant Frank Norris idly
rolled the fifty-calibers back and forth, aiming indistinctly
at the sky in mock battle. When he dreamed, he dreamed
about being again at school, and about the graduation
dance and the way Edith had looked in her first formal
the broad, pretty stripes that ran around the full skirt of her
dress, the clean, suddenly mature look of her face. He had
taken her home at midnight, and they had said good night
very quietly and seriously. The things they had said to each
other seemed to have new value then.
Not that he had much time for dreaming. The need for
knowing the Harpy in all her moods, of doing a job for her,
and doing it as naturally as breathing, possessed all of them.
He looked at Lieutenant George Kristensen bent over the
navigator's table. Krist kept his hair cut short, hardly an
inch long, for he hated to have it falling over his face. No
navigator in the Pacific could bring a ship down on a pin-
point atoll with the cool assurance that Krist had. When he
said coolly, "You can take her down now," Norry and the
others knew that it was as sure as driving down from the
The Immortal Harpy 145
ramp of a towering bridge; the runway would be there.
When he marked the spreading terror of a hurricane, his
voice became emotional, and he sounded like the voice of
the storm itself. Jerry called him "Old Elements/' though he
was only twenty-two.
The names of winds held poetry for Krist: monsoons,
squalls and typhoons, tropical hurricanes, and all the storms
of the temperate zones. They fascinated him just as the
texture and the feel of each piece of his fifty-caliber fasci-
nated Johnny Curtin. Johnny knew every inch of her. But
though he had more than two hundred combat hours as a
waist gunner, he was still uncertain as to what it was that
caused him to be here on the heartless Harpy. Life had
been on the sweet side: a good job, plenty of money and
women, and if the boss got too cranky, he could tell him to
go blow it. And then one afternoon the radio music had
stopped, and into the quiet, sunny peacef ulness a voice had
come, clear and sharp. Hitler was marching his men
through the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, I'll join up tomor-
row, he told himself, and even yet he didn't know why.
The sun came in through the huge bubble of the nose
turret and made a brave nimbus of Bombardier Lieutenant
Frank Story's mustache. There was a shine to the day that
reminded him. of the mornings when he and Elsa hurried
down Fifth Avenue in time to see the morning light come
down through the stained-glass windows of the cathedral.
He and Elsa always walked from the church exalted and
proud of being alive. Looking down, he watched the back-
ward-moving, foamy whitecaps, wondering if Elsa still
went to the cathedral. He wanted to think that she did and
146 HOBERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
that she was happy. It was the only vow they had made to
each other, They had said, "Keep yourself happy. Keep
yourself happy, now, of all times/' He was happy, now,
knowing their target, its installations, its fighter protection,
just as the others of the Harpy's family did. Only their hap-
piness was serious and thoughtful, for they knew the en-
emy would give it up only when he no longer existed. But
the target had to be blasted out. It stood as protection to
one of the arteries to the heart of the enemy, and when men
talked of it they were grave and their voices were quiet.
The Harpy was flying the Number One position. Behind
her, two Liberators rode smoothly above the soft carpet of
clouds. Mike watched them in their easy flight. Even in his
heavy suit, his body felt light and free, and there was only
the strong determination in his mind to remain alert. He
passed his eyes around and around the unchartered spaces.
He remembered the days he had gone on past the people
shoving and hurrying along the streets, and for all of them
he felt a quiet pity. There was no way of telling them how a
man felt when his vision buried itself in the milky distance.
He and the others knew a solitary communion here that
made all the other things that filled a man's life trivial and
transient. Often, riding through the great shafts of light that
broke upward toward the sky, he felt as if he had glimpsed
some part of another world, a place luminously beautiful.
It had taken all fear out of him, and on a morning like this
he felt that he knew what to expect when the inevitable ar-
rived.
Beneath him, Krist bent over his charts. He knew that if
a line had been drawn across the skies, he could show that
The Immortal Harpy 147
they were not a yard off this course. He checked his charts
again, but they had ridden these skies for so many endless
hours and days that he knew the figures, the latitudes and
longitudes, the stars and planets, as if they were markers
on some insubstantial highway.
He snapped the intercom. "We should be there in thirty-
two minutes/' he said.
"Okay, Elements," Jerry answered. "Keep your eyes
open, fellows. They'll be coming up soon/'
Krist returned to his charts. It made little difference to
him what happened outside the ship. That was not his job.
He was to guide her there and guide her back. Almost ir-
ritably, he shoved his charts aside and placed a sheet of
white paper before him. He thought he'd scribble a note,
but he couldn't think of anyone to whom he wanted to
write. It had been like this all his life, he knew. The things
that made other people happy or miserable seemed always
to leave him unmoved. As a child, he remembered, he had
watched the other children playing, and wanted tearfully to
join them, but he had no capacity for laughter and play. He
often wondered if death would disturb him, but after de-
liberate consideration he could not tell himself that it
would.
Down in the nose, Story decided it would be safe to fin-
ish a chapter before he laid his book aside. It was a fright-
ening plot, and he read quickly, wanting to trap the mur-
derer before the fighters came in on them. He checked the
two thirty-calibers again, glanced at his bombsight, and
then returned to the mystery novel.
Chief's brown eyes moved across the far distances,
148 HO BERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
glanced upward, and then looked down to the side. Noth
ing coming yet. There was a curious lightness about him
similar to fever, but he knew he wasn't ill. It was only th<
awful weariness, the fatigue that ached in bones and settlec
stiffly in muscles.
"Lower the turret, Walt/' Jerry called over the intercom.
"Right. Going down," Walt answered. A moment later
he slipped into it and began checking his guns, his ammuni
tion, his range mechanism, his gun sight, switches, buttons
and pedals. It worked as fluently as a ball twisting and turn
ing in water. He remembered the day the mechanism;
hadn't worked and the resentment that he had felt. In the
days and nights that followed, he had learned that the wa]
isn't an individual; it isn't one mechanism. It is the total oj
all men and their willingness to die for the things they be-
lieve. He had become a part of it now, he knew, and it was
larger than any emotion he had known he could feel
"Comin' in at five o'clock!" Norry shouted. "Four oj
them! Five o'clock! Three Zekes and a Rufe!"
The words, sharp and loud, ran through the intercom
system, jarring the men as if their own nerves had been
touched. It would be a long run. It was at least twenty
minutes in to the target, and they would have the fighters
on them all the way.
Walt swung his turret around and down, so he faced as
if he were falling from some high precipice. As he started to
turn, a Jap fighter and another and another broke through
the clouds directly beneath them, climbing as if they had
been fired from some gigantic gun. "Three at six o'clock!
Comin' up at six o'clock!"
The Immortal Harpy 149
"Send them around here!" Chief shouted back, laughing.
The men tensed, waiting. The Harpy rode on her course,
oblivious of the planes that attacked from below and to the
rear, where they hoped to be protected by the upright rud-
ders.
Walt held his fire, and then, as the spurts of fire began to
break from the fighters' wings, he opened up. His guns
rattled, and the tracers went to the left and ahead of the
lead ship. Slowly, he moved back on it, but as his fire closed,
the fighter flipped over on its wing and drove off to the left.
"Comin' over at eight! Get her, Johnny!'' he shouted, and
pulled his fire back on the other ships.
They separated, one driving downward beneath the
clouds, and the other making a wide turn to the right and
pulling in just ahead of the fighters that drove in from the
rear.
Norry let them have a burst. John swung his guns across
and back, but they did not peel off.
It was then that the first bullet ripped up through the
Harpy, tearing a small hole in the floor near Pon's foot. He
heard the sound of the bullet rattling through the fuselage,
and swore quietly. He wanted Jerry to roll slowly to the
right, so he could get a shot at the plane which had sent the
first bullet into the Harpy.
Now the two other belly-turret gunners opened up, and
the planes rolled away, headed for the protection of the
cloud bank.
"Comin* in at two!" Chief yelled. "Three of them! Two
o'clock!"
He caught the closer one in his sight and held it there. He
XgO HOBERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
waited, tense and ready, and then he let his fire go, raising
it a little, pulling it down again, catching the fighter dead
center. Suddenly, flames leaped up from it, but it did not
falter or change its course. He gave it another burst, and
now suddenly, flaming and smoking, it seemed to be on
them.
"My God, there's a war goin" on out here!" Story shouted,
and grabbed the gun beside him, giving the second plane a
long burst. It peeled off to the left.
But it didn't seem to make any difference; it was too late
now. The flaming ship did not seem more than fifty feet
away.
In the cockpit, Jerry and Watts suddenly threw all their
weight on the controls. They acted together, without speak-
ing, and the giant Harpy flipped up her right wing as she
turned her nose to the left.
Involuntarily, Walt flung his arms over his eyes as the
ship passed beside him. He could see the pilot shoving hard
to get himself free of the ship. He could see the straps of the
parachute, even the dials that showed through the puffs of
smoke.
The third fighter saw his chance and made for it In turn-
ing to avoid the flaming ship, the Harpy exposed her belly.
He turned on her and opened all his guns. Walt saw the
tracers as if they were lines running from his eyes. He
shoved his foot down, swung his guns and his turret. He
couldn't miss now, for the thing was almost on top of him.
It was running a seam of holes down the Harpy s stomach.
He gave the Zero everything he had, and held it on the
plane until suddenly it seemed to explode in the air. What
The Immortal Harpy 151
had been a plane was wreckage and bundles of flame falling
down through the skies toward the ocean below.
Pon did not know he had been hurt until the Harpy
righted herself, and he threw his weight back on his right
foot. It crumpled beneath him, and then he felt the warm
fluid draining into his soft leather boot. There was only the
warmness, though, and no pain, so he raised his eyes and
looked along the bottom of the Harpy. A series of holes,
evenly spaced and whistling with the air that tore through
them, ran up toward the bomb-bay doors.
Thank God, he thought, they missed the auxiliary gas
tanks.
"Take her down," Krist said quietly. "Target three min-
utes ahead. Take her down/*
"Get ready for anything!" Jerry called. He waited a mo-
ment to see if the Harpy responded. Her giant nose slowly
lowered, and she rode down easily and surely. "They're go-
ing to throw all theyVe got at us!"
Only Norry did not hear him. He had ripped the phones
from his ears and was trying to force his hands inside his
flying suit. Something had ricocheted against the side of the
Harpy. It had come down through his left shoulder, and
now his fingers found the fragment. It was lying inside his
shirt, halfway between his shoulder bone and his heart.
He pulled it out and looked at it, though his fingers were al-
ready freezing from the cold air. He let the shrapnel rest in
his hands, holding his body backward from the handles of
his guns, and he smiled slightly. The rest he had wanted
was coming now. It was slipping up his legs and arms and
gathering in his stomach. He thought that the next time he
152 HOBERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
wrote home he'd tell Mom and Dad how the rest had come,
and then he decided to let his head fall forward, so he could
sleep easier. But as he moved, the Harpy dropped her nose
downward, her giant tail pointed upward in the sky, and
he looked into the clear whiteness above. It seemed that he
could touch it, if only he didn't want to rest so badly. It
seemed that he could reach out and touch everything that
was in the heavens, only he wanted to rest.
As the Harpy came down through the clouds, the target
lay ahead and to the north. Story looked quickly along the
palms which fringed the beach, remembering the photo-
graphs he had studied so often. That was the ammunition
dump ahead, where the low sheds huddled beneath the
palms. That was where he was going to lay them. There
was an immense dark cloud above the enemy base. It would
make fine cover to head into as soon as they dumped the
eggs. He moved his eyes back and across, wondering what
had happened to the formation which had gone in ahead of
them, And then he saw what it was. The dark cloud was
ack-ack smoke. It was so heavy it looked as if you could
walk on it. "They're sure sending it up/' he said softly. The
whispered words ran back through the intercom, back
through the Harpy, and ended in Norry's insensible ears.
Watts reached over and grabbed Jerry by the arm, point-
ing down and to the right with his free hand. They were do-
ing better than a hundred and fifty, and Jerry leaned for-
ward, looking out toward the sea. The lagoon seemed to
rush toward him. But his eyes caught and held. The enemy
was moving in innumerable reinforcements for the attack.
They were unloading men and equipment.
The Immortal Harpy 153
"Look at those ducks!" he yelled. "Look at them!"
In the belly turret, Walt swung his gun around to five
o'clock. He had to see the ships. They were unloading crack
troops, men trained to fight on the atolls, indoctrinated with
a love of death. They would be waiting tomorrow to attack
the American marines and infantrymen as they piled out of
the landing barges and raced across the reef and up the
beach. He knew what would happen to the men as the
doors of the LCI's dropped down. The men would have to
hit the water running. They would hit shoulder-deep, trying
to hold their rifles above their heads. The treacherous, un-
even coral would make progress slow and unsteady, hold-
ing the men like slowly trudging targets.
In those awful moments, the hundreds of enemy soldiers,
fresh and fanatic, would open up on them. Unable to move
back, with a rain of fire rippling the water before them, the
men would be trapped. They would die there, fixed by the
water.
"Let's get them, Jerry!" Story shouted. "Let me pick
them off!"
For a moment, Jerry hesitated. All his training, his knowl-
edge, the long months of his flying, told him that he had to
stick to the planned attack. The objectives must be hit. That
was the only way it worked.
"Stick to your targets!" he ordered.
"They'll wipe them out tomorrow, Jerry! There are thou-
sands of them!"
Jerry looked down and he knew he could not keep the
realization away for long. The water below him held victory
or failure. All the weeks of raids, of planning and training,
154 HO BERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
would be lost. The stroke that would break the enemy's
lines in the South Pacific would be turned back, snapped
and buried in the blue water. Even the Harpy seemed to see
her destined glory, but he righted in his seat and pulled
her back on her course.
"Comin' in at one o'clock!" Mike yelled.
Suddenly the intercom was shrieking wildly. Chief and
Mike and Johnny all saw them. Three of them were coming
down as if they were rushing at the peaked end of lightning.
Mike held his fire until they closed to eight hundred and
then he gave them a long burst.
There was nothing to do but wait, John knew. If they
peeled off on his side, he would get a crack at them. It was
less than the shaving of a second, but he waited impatiently.
His eye was ringed by the familiar sight, the stubby grips in
his hands, his thumbs extended and ready. This was the one
moment in which he felt no urge to be elsewhere. He felt
as if suddenly a picture of himself had been brought into
focus.
The Zekes screamed, pulling up. Mike gave them another
burst. It was so close he could see the slugs hit the cowling
as if he were throwing stones against it. "Comin* over, Pon!"
he yelled.
Pon hobbled a little to the rear of his slot, swung his gun,
and as the smoking ship pulled up beyond the Harpy, stall-
ing in her climb, he let his fire go. The Zeke seemed to hang
there for a moment, as if the bullets had pinned it to the
sky. Then it slid down and spilled over into a flaming de-
scent.
Mike never saw the two others. Abruptly, the Harpy
The Immortal Harpy 155
leaped sideways, fell downward. It seemed to have been
struck by a tremendous hammer. He heard the shattering
rip of metal, the rain-spattering sound of the small shrapnel.,
and as he hit the floor by the radio cabinet., the Harpy
caught heavily in the air. He could feel the jarring halt. As
he straightened., Krist tumbled onto the same spot where he
had fallen. He just lay there clutching his chest with one
hand and ripping the oxygen mask from his face with the
other. Mike straightened him out, shoved the mask back
on his face, and jumped up to his gun again.
Krist could feel the oxygen running along his nose and
down into his lungs. It was a pleasant and cooling sensation,
but he dismissed it as temporary. He wished he had his
glasses on. Perhaps he could see better, he thought, but he
dismissed that too. It wasn't important. It was the terrible
storm going on outside that was important. He wanted to
get to his feet, grab up his charts, and see where he had
made his mistake. Somewhere he had miscalculated, he told
himself.
He brought his hands up, placing them on the floor at
either side of his head, thinking he could push himself to
his feet. He felt a deep revulsion growing in his stunned
entrails. It swept upward, as if he would disgorge every-
thing inside himself, but the nauseous wave passed into his
head, clarifying it, and in that moment he felt a great re-
lease. Recognition grew slowly in his mind, and it left his
tattered body trembling. I hate them, he said silently. I
hate them. I have always hated them. I have hated them as
long as I can remember, and it has made me fight. There
had been this hatred in him, and it had kept him bent inces-
156 HOBERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
santly over his charts. The Harpy had never once been off
her course. He had taken her to the enemy and brought her
back, and he had never failed.
The Harpy was still rocking violently. It seemed to Mike
that it took him forever to get his intercom working again.
And all the time he was working with it, he kept repeating,
No, not yet, not yet.
Story bent slowly over his bombsight. The ack-ack was
coming up so thick that the trees and shacks were becoming
indistinct. I'll put it right in their lap, he thought. He began
yelling for Jerry to pull her over.
Walt pulled his turret up. The stuff was spraying around
him like hail hurled upward. He wanted to get his face up.
This might be it. It has to come sometime, and this might be
it, he kept telling himself, but I don't want to get it in the
face. I don't want it in the face.
Pon swung his waist gun around. The fighters were gone.
They were taking cover down toward five o'clock. He
swung his gun forward, and then he saw it. The outside en-
gine was on fire.
"Jerry! Number Four's on fire! It's on fire!" he yelled.
Jerry opened the extinguisher and, at the same time, he
turned the Harpy over to Story. "She's yours, Story!"
A moment later, Pon yelled, "She's out! She's out," he re-
peated softly, and the words held a quiet terror. The engine
was dead.
John threw the mask from his face. They were getting
down now. An eager, violent anger shook him, as if it had
been long awaited. His anger did not spring from the terri-
ble fire that exploded upward, the horrible cracking of the
The Immortal Harpy 157
air. It was something deeper and stronger and more imper-
sonal. Looking downward, it seemed that the roads of Ohio
should be running there. All his life he had known the open,
wide roads and searched them. He had smelled their tar
and cement and sand and clay, the white schoolhouses and
the whiter churches. He had asked for rides and given them.
There was no freedom in the world like the freedom of
America and her roads. It seemed that it would be drowned
beneath him, and he screamed in bitter challenge. He
screamed again and again, as if, when eternity quieted all
things, the sound of his outraged voice would still be heard.
Jerry waited. He was helplessly overcome by a desire to
strike something with all his might. He knew he was cool.
He knew everything that was happening. He had to make
the decision in a moment. In just one second more it had to
be made. We can't warn the convoy, he thought. It's too
late. They don't keep up contact. They can't. They'd give
themselves away. Tomorrow morning they are coming in,
and they'll be slaughtered. They'll be drained of blood in
the beguiling water. They should be climbing the beach,
crossing the island, clearing it, grasping victory quickly. But
they won't. Not if the Harpy returns home.
"Story, save half of them!" he called sharply, "Well get
those boats!"
He leaned forward, his nerves as alert as if they were held
on the blade of a shining scalpel. He felt no need to hurry,
to force the ship. She was moving to her goal.
Story leaned forward, his fingers cool and flexible. He ad-
justed the sight as carefully as a musician adjusts his instru-
ment. The Harpy pulled heavily. Her dead engine weighed
158 HO BERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
on her wing. Come on, girlie, lie begged. Come on, Harpy.
They were racing up the edge of the beach now. The fire
was bursting below him as if he were just a little to the left.
He moved her slowly, his head cocked as a violinist listens
to his tuning.
"Bomb bays open!"
Now, come along, girlie; come along to the Darktown
Strutters' Ball. The rhythm was wonderful in his mind and
fingers, marking the time as the earth rushed beneath them,
rushed backward, drawing the target into his sight.
"Bombs away!"
Jerry and Watts grabbed the Harpy. The ships were
anchored about three miles down the reef, and along every
inch of the lagoon ack-ack shoved upward.
"Norry! John! Keep your eyes open!"
"Right!" John shouted, and waited for Norry's voice. It
did not come.
"Norry, Norry!" he called, and then he slipped his inter-
com loose and flung himself back through the ship. It
smelled hot, like a radiator without water in it, and oily. He
put his hand against the side next to the life raft, and the
jagged holes gouged his fingers.
Ahead of him, he saw Norry slumped in his seat. He
crawled to him, calling, "Norry, Norry, did they get you?"
and then his voice trailed off. Norry sat there, quietly erect,
a piece of enemy shrapnel in his hand. John lifted him out of
the turret and carried him deeper into the ship.
Exist was the only one who could handle Norry's gun
now. John hurried forward. The air rushed up through the
open bomb bays, tearing at his clothing, and below him, on
The Immortal Harpy 159
either side of the narrow catwalk, he saw the land moving
dimly beneath the dark erupting smoke. Blood was run-
ning down Krist's face and across the front of his dislodged
mask.
Krist opened his eyes slightly, as if he had never opened
them wider. "John, drive them into the water. Blow them
up," he whispered hoarsely, and his eyes closed.
John raised himself slowly, looking down at Krist. There
was something unstrained and happy in the face. The whole
face was gentle and sensitive now.
Turning, he started the trip back across the bomb bay. He
walked almost slowly. That was it. He had almost known it
all the time. He had known it since that afternoon on the
road in Ohio. They had forgotten what America meant, and
those who became alert quickest, fought quickest, sacrificed
readily. It was as simple and right and inevitable as that, he
realized.
Pon grabbed him as he walked by, shaking him. "Take
the tail!" Pon shouted. "Ill handle these!" He nodded at
the two waist guns, and then shouted into the intercom,
"Jerry, Norry is gone! Norry is out!"
Jerry did not answer. He was pushing with all his weight
and all his might at some terrible burning thing that caught
in his stomach. He forced his weight down on his feet until
his body shoved itself against the safety straps, and then
suddenly the release came and he fell back. It felt good and
clean, as if he had been plunged into cool water. The air
rushing through the splintered plastic felt wonderful, only
it was smoky. They were going out over the water. I must be
tired, he thought. Sleepy. It was smoky and cool, like an
l6o HOBERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
autumn night, like the one when he had met Betts, and he
was sleepy, deeply and gratefully sleepy, for the release was
coming now.
Watts did not have time to more than glance at him. The
target was out in front two heavy barriers, crowded and
threatening. They alone held meaning, and the Harpy de-
scended on them as if she barely needed his guidance.
"Story, Jerry is out," he said quietly. "We're going down
low. Lay them on the decks/'
"Take the big one first/' Story said. "Then well cross the
stern on the other one/'
In the belly turret, it seemed to Walt that the ships were
flinging themselves upward from the water. Hundreds of
men, small but growing larger, scrambled about.
"I've got her!" Story shouted.
Watts let her ride.
Pon turned his gun downward, starting a spray toward
the deck. Men dropped from the debarking net, leaped
from the decks, flinging their equipment wildly,
Walt saw the two bombs free themselves and then spin
downward. He watched them even in the moment when
they struck the deck and the deep port side. Then the whole
ship exploded, and then exploded again and again. Am-
munition, he thought, as the Harpy lunged forward, rocked
by the tremendous concussion.
Watts pulled on the Harpy. She banked awkwardly,
pulled around and headed for the other ship. They were
down now, not more than eight hundred feet from the
water.
Mike waited in the top turret, looking into the exploded
The Immortal Harpy 161
skies. The formation behind them was just coming in. Ac-
cording to plan, the Harpy should be far down over the
lagoon, but as she neared the second ship, Mike could look
ahead and see the thousand-pounders heading downward
for the gun emplacements. He glanced up at the Liberators
again. It seemed that they were tremendously high and that
the Harpy would never get up there again. He did not
think there was any power in the world that could lift her
back into the heavens.
Chief stared ahead at the superstructure of the boat. He
wondered if they would clear it. It didn't matter much any
longer. He did not think he could summon the strength to
lift his head from the base of the gun, anyway. As the light
came down on his brown face, Chief recalled the fires he
had built as a child, the cool canyons, the mesquite and pine
nuts, the places he had seen in America. Rich and sturdy
and endlessly giving, this America had always been. But
now, thinking of America, his face held compassion and
love, quiet nobility and unknown strength. All these were
deep in the lines of his face, but they were brushed across
by a quiet serenity and peace. He rested his head, thinking
of the wonderful years in which his people had known their
country, the seasons which had passed, the autumns and
springs they had known, the fierce winters and the last end
of summer which had taken their name. The Creator had
said there was a season for everything. "A time to love, and
a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace/' In all
history of man's growth these words had been true. And
now his time was here, Chief knew the time of war.
"Here we go!" Story shouted, and he shoved all the
HOBEKT DOUGLAS SKI0MOKK
bombs free. He couldn't miss, lie knew. It was like drop-
ping rocks off abridge. He turned to grab the thirty-calibers
beside him, but as he got to his knees, the whole world
seemed to shatter before him. Everything broke with a bril-
liant, crystal clarity, cracking into new shapes, as intricate
and beautiful as hoarfrost, and he just sat down easily and
smiled. It's not so bad, he kept telling himself. It's not so
bad, only the wind comes in so strongly. If there just wasn't
the wind to take my breath away. Or perhaps it wasn't the
wind.
As he touched his body, he knew there was no place the
spattering shrapnel hadn't cut its way.
"Whatever they give you to do, I want you to be happy,
remembering/'
The light came back, the glorious luminous light in the
shrine in the cathedral that always remained after the red
and blues and greens had become harsh and dissolved in
the brash morning. The luminous light remained always.
Watts tried to anticipate the explosion. He tried to bank
the Harpy a little, so she wouldn't catch it full force against
her wings. He was afraid they'd snap off. But just as he
banked, it hit her, driving her downward and forward.
Walt felt the concussion, saw the black cloud of smoke
surround him, and out of it the leaping dull-red flames with
the brilliant orange tongues. They encircled him, and for a
moment he thought the turret would melt. He flung his arm
across his face, felt the force of the blow throw him about
the turret, and then he was grasping for something to steady
himself. The turret was turned downward, and he faced di-
rectly toward the water. It was only about a hundred feet
The Immortal Harpy 163
below him, and they were losing altitude rapidly. The
whitecaps were rushing up toward him. He watched them
come up. It seemed that he could almost touch them.
Watts felt the sweat all over his body. It was cold, as if
he sat with his body clamped in wet towels. We should be
hitting any second, he told himself, and he kept yanking and
pulling. He kept hoping the Harpy would find enough air
to hold onto and pull herself up from the surface of the
ocean.
"No, Harpy, no!" Pon shouted. None of them who could
still move made any effort to leave the ship. Pon would not.
He had never pictured the Harpy $ end, but he knew it
wasn't here. It wasn't in a whirling, exploded bay, where
the debris still rained down from the skies.
She held. She held as if her very wing tips were caught
on the edge of some unseen support. Watts flung himself
forward, working with the engine. Suddenly, the Number
Four caught. The right wing pulled down a little, leveled,
and they roared forward into the billowing black smoke.
She was riding now. Watts could feel her under his hands.
She had taken on life. He turned as sharply as he dared with
the speed they had, and started back out across the ex-
ploded ships. He had to get out to sea and get some speed.
It was the only hope.
Looking down, Walt saw the larger of the two Nip ships
slowly tumble on its side and roll over as if it had become
unbalanced. Equipment and men were thrown free into
the air and downward onto the burning water. The other
ship sat quiet and fat, like a child's bath toy, only the flames
roared upward for better than a hundred feet. The infantry
164 HOBERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
and marines and all the others could come in now. The re-
sistance was broken. The winds of America could blow
westward as they had in Kula Gulf and Kahili and Munda
and Midway, Guadalcanal and Makin and Tarawa. The sea-
son of war would soon be gone, and there would be the sea-
son of peace.
Slowly and purposefully, the Harpy gained altitude. She
was climbing toward some secret place. Mike jumped down
to look at Krist, and it was in that moment the fighters came
down from above. Two of them came out of the billowing
smoke clouds, and only John saw them. He grabbed his gun
and began to fire. He was unused to the tail turret, and he
knew he was going wild. His hands were steady and his
guns were spitting cartridges with the neat rapidity of a
sewing machine, but he knew it was coming. The Zekes
crossed just above the Harpy, and their fire left an X seamed
across her fuselage. Mike ripped into the one going off to
his left and held his fire on her, until something heavier
than a hammer struck his arm and knocked it away from
the gun.
He took the handkerchief he always wore around his
neck and stuffed it down the sleeve of his suit. He could feel
the warm blood down there, but it wasn't hurting him
much. It was then, as he turned back to his gun, that he saw
Jerry slumped sideways in his seat. He crawled up beside
him and felt his forehead. It was warm, he thought, but he
couldn't be sure. Everything was warm, the fume-filled air
was sticky with oily, smoky heat. Unsnapping the belt, he
lifted Jerry easily and carried him back beside Krist He
laid him on the platform and turned back to Watts. It was
The Immortal Harpy 165
then he saw the fighter coming in at two o'clock, straight
ahead of them, and its whole wing edge seemed to be
ablaze with firing guns.
Watts opened his eyes a little and looked up. "Take it!
Take it, Mike. I"
Mike saw that one of the bullets had ripped along the
edge of Watts' head, and blood was pouring down around
his ear. Mike fell into the pilot's seat. His hands and legs
stopped stiffly, helplessly. He looked at the things he
thought must be done, but he was helpless to move. The
Harpy was riding into a cloud bank that rested above the
ocean*s surface. She was climbing quickly, and before he
realized it, the cloud flooded in around them, blotting out
the disaster they had left, obstructing everything that lay
ahead. Mike started to reach for the throttles, but paused
again.
Just then, something moved beside him, and he turned to
see Pon. Mike did not know how he had been warned, but
there he stood, straight and thin, his face whiter than Mike
had ever seen it. But it wasn't fear that made it white, or
anger, or any emotion that Mike had ever known. It was
white as if it had always been that way, and it was calm.
Without speaking, Pon lifted Watts gently from the co-
pilot's seat and placed him back of them on the flight deck.
Unhurried, as if now more than ever in their lives there
was no need to hurry, no cause to be concerned with time.
It was curious how dreamlike were the movements of men
when they were timeless. Mike stared at him. It seemed as
if he had never known him before. And yet he was not sure.
There was some curious recognition in his face. Pon reached
l66 HOBERT DOUGLAS SKIDMORE
for the controls. It was then that Mike noticed how thin his
hands were and how he held them, the fingers partially bent
in a sort of repose.
It seemed a long while that they rode through the dark,
rain-filled cloud. The fuselage of the Harpy hummed with
the rain, but it no longer held terror for them. It was a
soothing, gentle, and unending sound, and beneath Pon's
hands, from some unmeasurable source, she drew strength.
She sang as if time and space were unlimited to her. New
and untried air pushed up against her wings, and when the
cloud fell away, she was high in the sky.
Mike leaned back, his eyes closed against the wind that
poured through the shattered plane. This was what he had
always dreamed of this quiet riding in the valley of the
sky.
A sweet serenity spread over him, and he felt a complete-
ness within himself, and yet this was part of a continuity,
he knew. This was the end for which the beginning had
been made; this was the beginning for which the end had
been promised.
The sun had fallen away over the horizon, far down
across the earth. It flung a shaft of light upward. The
vaulted space between the dark cloud and shaft was golden,
and colored all the heavens about it. The shaft rose upward
into infinite space, passing through the deep and distant
blue, and into that shaft the Harpy climbed easily, moving
unhindered, like some great homing bird.
The sound of her motors sang through the heavens, clear
and loud and endless. They sang through the sunset and
into the darkness. Long after midnight, and in the midnights
The Immortal Harpy 167
to follow, her ground crew, lying on the mat with their eyes
in the starry distance, believed they heard the sound of the
Harpy s singing. But they did not speak of it, for all men
who ride on the wings of the heavens listen for the Harpy,
knowing her spirit was infinite.
The Beaches of Dunkirk
'BARTIMEUS'
The evacuation of the British. Expeditionary Force from the
fire-swept coast of France, from Calais to the beaches of La
Panne, from which the British and French navies embarked
335>ooo troops and carried them to safety, has been de-
scribed as a miracle; and certain factors of chance did un-
doubtedly operate in the Allies' favor. Calm seas and oc-
casional mist on certain days were an advantage. But
The Beaches of Dunkirk 169
wherein lay the miracle was the degree of stubborn courage
attained by hundreds of thousands of quite ordinary men.
Mere leadership, mere skill in organization, could have
achieved nothing without this mass resistance to the fear
of death and an unconquerable belief in ultimate victory.
The tale of human valor outlines the causes that gave it
birth, whether they are victories or reverses. The world's
tragedy is that war brings it to its most splendid flower.
The yacht-club telephone rang, and the elderly steward.,
unaccustomed to the sound of it, laid down his paper, re-
moved his spectacles, and picked up the receiver. A man's
voice spoke authoritatively for about a minute.
The steward said nothing. He was an old Navy man and
had been a pensioner for a quarter of a century, but he rec-
ognized the note in the speaker's voice. He waited till the
end of the message.
"Aye, aye, sir," he said, and then added, "there's only the
one yacht here now, sir. The Wanderer. Motor yacht, forty
feet long. There's no crew, sir. Owner's fighting in France,
There's a young lady on board at this moment "
The voice interrupted him, He listened, turning the spec-
tacles over in his knotted fingers, staring into vacancy.
"Aye, aye, sir. Ill do what I can. Old Navy man myself*
They said I was too old to fight/*
There was no answer. "Hello, sir?" Silence. He replaced
the receiver.
The Wanderer was lying at her buoy, and there was no
sign of the girl. He untied the dinghy lying at the jetty and
rowed alongside. At the sound of the oars as he boated
170
them, the girl's head and shoulders appeared above the
companionway. She was flushed and had a scrubbing brush
in her hand.
"They want her, miss/' he said simply. "They rung up
from the Admiralty. Proceed to Ramsgate for orders.
They're taking every craft on the south coast/'
She brushed a lock of hair back from her damp forehead
with her forearm. "I'm single-handed/' she said. "Can you
run the engine if I steer?"
"You, miss?" He hadn't thought of that.
"She's full up with petrol. There's water, too, and some
stuff in tins to eat. Bring some bread."
"You know what it's for, don't you, miss? They won't let
a woman "
"They needn't know," was the girl's answer. She stood
motionless, thinking. The ebb tide running past the strakes
of the dinghy made a little chuckling noise in the stillness.
"Bring a couple of shrapnel helmets. Get them from the
A.R.R people. What about Johnnie?"
"Johnnie?" He turned that over in his mind. Johnnie was
simple, but he was useful in a boat. Ashore he just sat and
played with pebbles, but put him in a boat and he was all
there. The club employed him to ferry people to their
yachts and for attending to the moorings, and odd jobs like
scraping and painting. He didn't speak very plain, but after
all it wasn't talk they wanted on the beaches of Dunkirk.
Another aspect of the situation occurred to him. She seemed
to take it for granted he was coming. "What about the club,
miss? I'm the caretaker and steward."
She had emerged from her reverie. "The club? What does
the club matter?"
The Beaches of Dunkirk 171
He grinned, showing tobacco-stained teeth. "YouVe said
it, miss. Give me half an hour."
When he was halfway across to the jetty, she hailed him
again. Her clear voice was like a boy's, "^hmrte will want
a shrapnel helmet too."
He nodded; she went below and fell to mopping up the
mess on the cabin floor. She had decided to give the boat a
scrubout because it occupied her mind, which, since she had
had no word from France for three weeks, was inclined to
imagine things. This was where they had spent the happiest
hours of his leave the happiest hours of their lives. And
now, for all she knew, he was waiting on those hellish
beaches, one of all those thousands of exhausted men, wait-
ing under shell and machine-gun fire for succor from Eng-
land. She flung the mop and scrubber into the bucket and
jerked open a drawer. There was all his old kit: gray flannel
trousers, sweater, an old shooting jacket, a yellow muffler.
She would push her hair up under the shrapnel helmet. His
pipes stuck in a rack over his bunk caught her eye. That
would be the finishing touch. Keep one of those in her
mouth when they got to Ramsgate, and talk gruff. She se-
lected a blackened bulldog and experimented in front of
the glass. It tasted utterly foul.
Coming down channel, they overtook a convoy of motor
yachts and followed them. She had the chart open in front
of her, but the daylight was fading and there were no lights
anywhere she could recognize. She had never entered
Ramsgate from seaward only from the railway station,
once as a child, carrying her doll and a spade and bucket, in
the charge of her nurse.
She listened to the drone of the engine with satisfaction.
Old Ferris had been a mechanic when he served in the
Navy. It wasn't so good at the start, but he was enjoying
himself down in the engine room now he had picked up the
hang of the thing. Every now and again he put his head out
of the hatch with his spectacles on the end of his nose.
"Running as sweet as a nut, miss/' he announced.
"Bravo/* she answered,
Johnnie sat in the bows staring at the evening star. She
tried to remember why she had brought Johnnie. He wor-
shiped her like a dog, but that wasn't the reason. It was be-
cause she felt she had no right to take an able-bodied man
from his work in England; and on the spur of the moment
she could think of nobody on the spot who was as handy in
the boat. He and she used to take Johnnie away for the
week end sometimes. Johnnie washed up and looked after
the boat when they went ashore. She was one of the few
people who understood what he said. He turned his head
and smiled at her at that moment. It was the slow, confiding
smile of a child. He hadn't the remotest idea where he was
going. He didn't care. He just trusted her. She felt a swift
pang of compunction, and stifled it, giving him back his
smile. Reassured, he resumed his contemplation of the star.
She climbed ashore in the dusk, the awful pipe clenched
between her teeth, and was confronted by a man in the uni-
form of a lieutenant commander.
"What ship?"
"Wanderer" Nobody had ever called the Wanderer a
ship before. He would have liked that.
The Beaches of Dunkirk 173
"What is she?"
"Forty-foot motor cruiser."
"Armed?"
She shook her head. Other owners of yachts were crowd-
ing around asking for orders.
He glanced at her shrapnel helmet.
"Well, you'd better collect some rifles and life belts. First-
aid outfit, too, if you haven't got it."
"Then what?" She stuck her hands in her trouser pockets-,
making her voice as gruff and laconic as possible.
"La Panne. Time it so as to get there in the dawn. Take off
all youVe got room for each trip and transfer them to some-
thing bigger. Stick it as long as you can, and good luck." He
indicated a gap in the barbed wire, where she supposed
rifles and life belts were obtainable, and dismissed her from
his mind.
She went back to the edge of the jetty and hailed old
Ferris. The harbor was crammed with dim forms of boats
maneuvering for berths alongside. Beside her on the pier-
head was a soldier with a Bren gun mounted on a tripod.
"Ferris," she called down to the Wanderer,, "come ashore
with me and collect some rifles and life belts." The soldier
sidled up beside her.
"Here, Skipper," he muttered, "rifles ain't no use. Take
me and this Bren gun. Wait till it's dark and I'll slip down
and come along with you. They won't miss me till I'm
back"
She grinned delightedly. He would know about rifles, too*
She had never fired one in her life. "All right," she whis-
pered. "What's your name?"
174 "BABTIMEUS"
"Tanner's the name, Skipper. You're a sport." She felt a
bit of a sport.
To the westward the oil tanks of Dunkirk were a sullen
blaze that every now and again leaped upward like the
eruption of a volcano as a shell burst in the flaming inferno.
Fires glowed dully along the coast, and shore batteries
blinked white flashes that reached the ear as dull reverbera-
tions like distant thunder. The searchlights wheeled about
the low-flying clouds into which tracer shells were soaring.
They had solved the problem of navigating to La Panne
by following a paddle steamer that had half a dozen life-
boats in tow. The whole night was full of the sound of
motorboats* exhausts. There was a young moon peeping in
and out of the drifting clouds, and it revealed the indistinct
lines of little craft far and wide, heading in the same direc-
tion.
Johnnie sat entranced by the spectacle, crowing huskily
at intervals. Tanner, having mounted his Bren gun in the
stern, gave her a relief at die wheel. He said it was much
the same as driving a car. She practiced loading the rifle
under his tuition. Old Ferris visited them at intervals, call-
ing her "Skipper." It didn't matter what Johnnie called her,
because nobody could understand what he said.
"You're a bit young for this game, eh, Skipper?" asked
Tanner. "How old are you?"
"About a hundred," she replied with a gruff laugh. And in
that moment, before the dawn of hell's delight, she felt it.
The dawn came slowly, revealing the small craft of the
south coast of England covering the Channel like water
The Beaches of Dunkirk 175
beetles on the surface of a pool. Pleasure steamers and
yachts, barges, scoots, wherries, lifeboats, motorboats, row-
ing boats, and canoes. Fishermen, yachtsmen, longshore-
men, men who had never been afloat in their lives, mil-
lionaires and the very poor, elderly men and lads in their
teens, answering in a headlong rush the appeal for boats.
Boats for the beaches and the last of the Expeditionary
Force.
Somehow she hadn't thought about the dead. Her
thoughts were entirely occupied with the living. It wasn't
till Johnnie began making queer noises of distress and point-
ing down into the shallow water that she saw them the
men who had been machine-gunned in the shallows, wading
out into the water to reach security. They were still there,
some floating, some submerged; in an odd way they seemed
to convey resentment at the disturbance of their oblivion by
the passing keels.
She called Johnnie to her side. "Take the lead line and
sound over the bows. Call the soundings. Nothing else mat-
ters. Do you understand, Johnnie? Nothing else matters. I
am here/'
He made guttural noises, pointing at Tanner, who was
blazing away with the Bren gun at a Heinkel overhead that
had bombed a trawler astern of them. She held him with
her eyes. "Nothing else matters, do you understand?" He
picked up the lead line and went forward obediently. She
put her lips to the voice pipe. "Go very slow, Ferris."
"Go very slow," repeated the old man.
She crept inshore. The beach was pitted with shell craters
176 "BABTIMEUS"
out of which men came running, wading out into the water
to meet them. From the sand dunes more men stumbled,
helping the wounded. The whole foreshore was alive with
men and boats, and the smoke from the Dunkirk fires flowed
over them like a dark river.
At three and a half feet she would stop. It was the least
they could float in. She listened to the strange cries Johnnie
emitted as he hauled in the dripping lead line, understand-
ing them perfectly.
Presently, her mouth to the voice pipe, she gave the order
to stop. Tanner was having trouble with the Bren gun and
swearing in a ceaseless flow of incomprehensible blas-
phemy. Old Ferris, complete in shrapnel helmet and life
belt, climbed out of his hatch and came toward her, lighting
his pipe.
"They said I was too old to fight, but "
"Get back. We're in four feet. I must keep working the
engines." A bomb burst among the men wading toward
them. She shut her eyes for a moment. "Keep on sounding,
Johnnie. What water have you got?"
"Fraghf aph-ah-ah," crowed Johnnie.
"Good boy. Keep it going/'
The Bren gun broke out afresh. Tanner, having cleared
the jam, opened fire again, chanting oaths like a denuncia-
tory psalm. "Slow astern, Ferris."
Another cluster of men wading to their armpits had
reached them.
Johnnie looked back at her and pointed at their sun-
scorched, puffing faces. No doubt existed in his mind that
it was all something to do with his lead-line achievements.
He was delighted. Somewhere out of sight a German field-
The Beaches of Dunkirk 177
gun battery opened fire, the shells whistling viciously over-
head.
She searched every face as they came splashing and gasp-
ing toward her and somehow contrived to hoist each other
inboard. She took sixty or seventy at a trip and transferred
them to the nearest vessel lying out in the deep water; she
had hitherto believed that the utmost capacity of the Wan-
derer was a dozen. Backward and forward they went under
exploding bombs, under machine-gun fire and whining
shells. Tanner ran out of ammunition and they went along-
side a destroyer, where he got another case and a spare
barrel for the Bren gun. She lost all count of time, all fear,
all feeling. Sometimes she interrogated weary men: Had
they seen his unit? Had they ever heard his name? They
shook their heads and begged for water. She had none left.
Then suddenly it seemed that the beaches were empty.
She didn't know that the men were being marched west-
ward to Dunkirk, where the French and British destroyers
were crowding alongside the mole and embarking troops
in thousands under shellfire. Except for a few scattered
units moving west, the beaches were empty. The task was
done; but where was he where was he?
The Bren gun had been silent for a long time, but she
hadn't noticed. Now, turning to look seaward, she saw
Tanner lying beside it with his knees screwed up into his
belly. She ran aft and knelt beside him.
His eyes sought hers out of his gray face. "I bought it,
Skipper. Sorry. . . . Got a drop of water?"
She raised his head and held it against her breast. "There
isn't any water left."
178 "BARTIMEXJS"
His eyes were suddenly puzzled. He moved his head side-
ways a little and then smiled, and died, ineffably content.
They followed a big gray coaster back to Dover. Old
Ferris got a spare red ensign out of the locker and tucked
Tanner up in it. He didn't mind Tanner's being killed, hav-
ing been disposed to regard him jealously as an intruder
into a nice little family party. Moreover, he disapproved of
his language. He walked forward to the wheelhouse. She
was moving the spokes of the wheel slowly between her
blistered hands. Her shrapnel helmet lay on the chart be-
side the valiant briar pipe. She was aware of the old man
beside her and of having reached the end of her tether at
one and the same moment.
Old Ferris kicked Johnnie, asleep at her feet, into wake-
fulness. "Take the wheel," he said gruffly, and held her as
she pitched, sobbing and exhausted, into his arms.
They berthed alongside the Admiralty pier, and she
climbed ashore to find someone who could give them fuel
and water. The quays were thronged with troops in thou-
sands, being fed and sorted out into units and entrained. A
hospital ship was evacuating wounded into fleets of ambu-
lances. She stepped aside to give room to the bearers of a
stretcher and glanced at the face on the pillow.
He had a bandage around his head and opened his eyes
suddenly on her face.
*Tve been looking for you/' she announced in a calm
matter-of-fact tone. She felt no emotion whatever.
He smiled. "Well, here I am/' he said.
The Young Man from Kalgoorlie
H. E. BATES
He lived with his parents on a sheep farm two hundred
miles northeast of Kalgoorlie. The house was in the old
style, a simple white wooden cabin to which a few exten-
sions had been added by successive generations. On the low
hills east of the farm there were a few eucalyptus trees; his
mother grew pink and mauve asters under the house win-
dows in summer; and in spring the wattle was in blossom
l8o H. E. BATES
everywhere, like lemon foam. All of his life had been lived
there, and the war itself was a year old before he knew that
it had even begun.
On the bomber station, surrounded by flat gray English
hills cropped mostly by sugar beet and potatoes and steeped
in wintertime in thick windless fogs that kept the aircraft
grounded for days at a time, he used to tell me how it had
come to happen that he did not know the war had started.
It seemed he used to go down to Kalgoorlie only once, per-
haps twice, a year. I do not know what sort of place Kal-
goorlie is, but it seemed that he did there, on that one visit
or so, all the things that anyone can do on a visit to almost
any town in the world. He used to take a room for a week at
a hotel, get up at what he thought was a late hour every
morning about eight o'clock and spend most of the day
looking at shops, eating, and then looking at shops again. In
the evenings he used to take in a cinema, eat another meal,
have a couple of glasses of beer in the hotel lounge, and
then go to bed. He confessed that it wasn't very exciting,
and often he was relieved to get back into the Ford and
drive steadily back to the sheep farm and the familiar hori-
zon of eucalyptus trees, which after the streets of Kalgoorlie
did not seem a bad prospect at all. The truth was that he did
not know anyone in Kalgoorlie except an aunt, his mother's
sister, who was very deaf and used a patent electrical acous-
tic device, which always seemed to go wrong whenever he
was there and which he had once spent more than a day try-
ing to repair. He was very quiet, and he did not easily get
mixed up with people; he was never drunk, and more than
half the time he was worried that his father was making a
mess of things at home.
The Young Man from Kalgoorlie 181
It was this that was really the cause of his not knowing
about the war. His father was an unimaginative and rather
careless man to whom sheep were simply sheep, and grass
simply grass, and who had kept sheep on the same two
thousand acres, within sight of the same eucalyptus trees
for thirty years, and expected to go on keeping them there
for the rest of his life. He did not understand that two years
of bad luck had anything to do with his having kept sheep
in the same way, on the same grass, for so long. It was the
son who discovered that. He began to see that the native
grasses were played out, and in their place he decided to
make sowings of Italian rye grass and subterranean clover;
and soon he was able to change the flocks from one kind of
grass to another and then on to a third, and soon he could
see an improvement in the health of every breed they had.
After that he was virtually in charge of the farm. His par-
ents, who had always thought him a wonderful person, now
thought him more wonderful still. When neighbors came
and this, too, was not often, since the nearest farm was an-
other thirty miles up country they talked of nothing but
Albert's achievement. The sheep had improved in health,
the yield of wool had increased, and even the mutton, they
argued, tasted sweeter now, more like the meat of thirty
years ago. "Got a proper old-fashioned flavor," his mother
said.
It was about a year after these experiments of his none
of them very original, since he had simply read up on the
whole subject in an agricultural paper that war broke out.
It seemed, as he afterward found out, that his mother first
heard of it on an early-morning news bulletin on the radio.
She was scared and she called his father. The son himself
H. E. BATES
was out on the farm, riding around on horseback taking a
look at the sheep before breakfast. When he came in to
breakfast he switched on the radio, but nothing happened.
He opened up the radio and took a look at it. All the valves
were warm, but the detector valve and another were not
operating. It seemed a little odd, but he did not take much
notice of it. All he could do was write to Kalgoorlie for the
spare valves, and he did so in a letter which he wrote after
dinner that day. It was three miles to the postbox, and if
there were any letters to be posted his mother took them
down in the afternoon. His mother took this letter that
afternoon and tore it up in little pieces.
That must have happened, he discovered, to every letter
he wrote to the Kalgoorlie radio shop in the next twelve
months. No valves ever came and gradually, since it was
summer and sheep-shearing time and the busiest season of
the year, the family got used to being without the radio. His
father and mother said they even preferred it. All the time
he had no idea of the things they were doing in order to
keep the war from him. The incoming post arrived once a
week, and if there were any letters for him, his mother
steamed them open, read them, and then put the dangerous
ones away in a drawer upstairs. The newspapers stopped
coming, and when he remarked on it his father said he was
tired of wasting good money on papers that were anyway
nearly a week old before they came. If there were visitors
his mother managed to meet them before they reached the
house. In October the sheep-shearing contractors came, and
his father, ordinarily a rather careful man, gave every man
an extra pound to keep his mouth shut. All through that
The Young Man from Kalgoorlie 183
summer and the following winter his mother looked very ill,
but it was not until later that he knew the reason of it the
strain of intercepting the letters, of constantly guarded con-
versation, of warning neighbors and callers, of making ex-
cuses, and even of lying to him, day after day, for almost a
year.
The time came when he decided to go to Kalgoorlie. He
always went there about the same time of the year, in late
August, before the busy season started. His parents must
have anticipated and dreaded that moment, and his father
did an amazing thing. In the third week of August, early
one morning, he put two tablespoonfuls of salt in a cup of
hot tea and drank it, making himself very sick. By the time
Albert came in to breakfast, his father was back in bed, very
yellow in the face, and his mother was crying because he
had been taken suddenly ill. It was the strangest piece of
deception of all, and it might have succeeded if his father
had not overdone things. He decided to remain in bed for a
second week, making himself sick every third or fourth day,
knowing that once September had come, Albert would
never leave. But Albert was worried. He did not like the
recurrent sickness which now affected his father, and he be-
gan to fear some sort of internal trouble.
"I'm going to Kalgoorlie whether you like it or not," he
said, "to get a doctor/'
It was on the bomber station, when he had become a
pilot, that he used to tell me of that first day in Kalgoorlie,
one of the most remarkable in his life. When he left the farm
his mother seemed very upset, and began crying. He felt
184 H. E. BATES
that she was worried about his father; he was increasingly
worried too and promised to be back within three days.
Then he drove down to Kalgoorlie alone, perhaps the only
man in Australia who did not know that the war was a year
old.
He arrived at Kalgoorlie about four o'clock in the after-
noon, and the town seemed much the same as ever. He
drove straight to the hotel he always stayed at, booked him-
self a room, and went upstairs to wash and change. About
five o'clock he came down again and went into the hotel
lounge for a cup of tea. Except for a word or two with the
cashier and the lift boy he did not speak to a soul. He fin-
ished his tea and then decided to go to the downstairs sa-
loon, as he always did, to get himself a haircut. There were
several people waiting in the saloon, but he decided to wait
too. He sat down and picked up a paper.
He must have gone on staring at that paper, not really
reading it, for about ten minutes. It was late August and the
Nazis were bombing London. He did not understand any of
it who was fighting or what were the causes of it. He sim-
ply took in, from the headlines, the story of the great sky
battles, the bombing, the murder and destruction, as if they
were part of a ghastly fantasy. For the moment he did not
feel angry or sick or outraged because he had been de-
ceived. He got up and went out into the street. What he
felt, he told me, was very much as if you were suddenly to
discover that you had been living in a house where, without
knowing it, there was a carrier of smallpox. For months you
have lived an ordinary tranquil life, unsuspecting and un-
afraid, and then suddenly you made the awful discovery
that every fragment of your life, from the dust in your shoes
The Young Man from Kalgoorlie 185
to the air you breathed, was contaminated and that you had
been living in danger. Because you knew nothing you were
not afraid; but the moment you knew anything all the fears
and terrors you had not felt in the past were precipitated
into a single terrible moment of realization.
He also felt a fool. He walked up and down the street. As
he passed shops, read placards, saw men in service uniform,
fragmentary parts of his life during the past year became
joined together, making sense: the broken radio, his un-
answered letters, the newspapers, his mother's nervousness,
and the fact, above all, that they had not wanted him to
come to Kalgoorlie. Slowly he understood all this. He tried
to look on it as the simple cunning of country people. He
was still too confused to be angry. But what he still did not
understand, and what he had to find out about soon was the
war. He did not even know how long it had been going on.
He stopped on a street corner and bought another newspa-
per. The day before, he read, eighty-seven aircraft had been
shot down over England. His hands were trembling as he
read it, but it did not tell him the things he wanted to know.
And he realized suddenly, as he stood there trembling in the
hot sunshine, so amazed that he was still without feeling,
that there was no means of knowing these things. He cer-
tainly could not know by asking. He imagined the effect of
asking anyone, in the street or the hotel or back in the bar-
ber's saloon, a simple question like, "Can you tell me when
the war began?'* He felt greatly oppressed by a sense of
ridicule and bewilderment, by the fear that now, any time
he opened his mouth, he was likely to make a ghastly fool of
himself.
He walked about for an hour or more, pretending to look
l86 H. E. BATES
at shops, before it occurred to him what to do. Then it came
to him quite suddenly that he would go and see the only
other person he knew who, like himself, could be cut off
from the world of reality the deaf aunt who lived in Kal-
goorlie.
So he spent most of that evening in the old-fashioned par-
lor of her house, drinking tea, eating custard tarts, lightly
browned with veins of nutmeg, and talking as steadily as he
could into the electrical acoustic device fixed to the bodice
of her dress. From such remarks as, "Things look pretty
tough in England. Let's see, how long exactly has it been
going on now?" he learned most of the elementary things he
wanted to know. But there were still things he could not
ask, simply because he had no knowledge of them. He could
not ask about France or Poland or Holland or Norway. All
that he really understood clearly was that England and Ger-
many were at war; that England was being bombed every
day by great forces of aircraft; that soon, perhaps, she
would be invaded. The simplicity and limitation of his
knowledge were in a way, as he said, a good thing. For as
he ate the last of the old lady's custard tarts and drank the
last cup of tea and said good night to her, he changed from
being the man who knew least about the war in all Australia
to the man who had perhaps the clearest, simplest, and most
vivid conception of it in the whole continent. Forty years
back his father and mother had emigrated from Lincoln-
shire to Kalgoorlie. Young, newly wed, and with about
eighty pounds apart from their passage money, they started
a new life. Now the roots of their existence, and so in a way
the roots of his own existence, were being threatened with
The Young Man from Kalgoorlie 187
annihilation. This was the clear, simple, terrible thing he
understood in such a clear, simple, terrible way.
When he got back to his hotel he drafted a telegram to his
parents, telling them, as well as he could, that he under-
stood. Then in the morning he went around to the nearest
recruiting center. I have not so far described what he was
like. He was rather tall, fair, and brown in the face; his eyes
were a cool blue and his lips thin, determined, and rather
tight. He was just twenty-two, and he had no way of hold-
ing back his anger.
"I want to be a pilot/' he said.
"All right," they said. "Good. But you can't be a pilot all
of a sudden, just like that/*
"No?" he said. "No? Well soon see/*
He adjusted himself as time went on, but he carried some
of his first angry, clear, terrible conceptions of things across
the sea across the Pacific to Vancouver, across the Atlan-
tic to England. He was never angry with his parents, and
they in turn ceased being afraid about him. He used to de-
scribe to me how he went home on his first leave. From be-
ing stupidly affectionate in one way about him they became
stupidly affectionate in quite another. They had not wanted
him to go; now, because he had gone, they behaved as if
they had everything to do with sending him and nothing to
do with keeping him away. They had arranged a party, and
he said it was the largest gathering of folks anyone had ever
seen on the farm. They invited everyone for thirty miles
around and one or two people from fifty miles away. They
killed several spring lambs and about fifteen fowls, and tea
l88 H. E. BATES
was brewing all day long. At night they sang hymns and old
songs in the drawing room around the piano, and they slept
on the floor. In the end he was almost glad to get away.
He promised to write to them often, and he promised also
to keep a diary. He always did write, and he always kept the
diary. He sailed for Vancouver early in the year, and by the
spring he was flying Ansons and by the summer he was in
England. It was an uncertain and rather treacherous sum-
mer, and the harvest was wet and late in the corn country
where we were. The potato fields were blighted, so that
they looked as if they were spattered by drops of coffee on
the dark rainy autumn days, and for long periods low clouds
kept the aircraft down. Gradually the harvest fields were
cleaned and the potatoes sacked and carted away, and in
place of them you could see pale golden cones of sugar beet
piled in the fields and by the roadsides. I mention the
weather, because it was almost the only thing about Eng-
land that troubled him. He longed for the hot dry air of the
Australian summer, and he used to tell me, as we gazed over
the wet flat country, of the days when he had flown over
Victoria in a Moth in his shirt sleeves and had looked down
on the white beaches shining all along the coast in the sun.
The weather troubled him because his anger was still
there. He felt that it frustrated him. He could never forget
the day in Kalgoorlie when he had first read of the bombing
and the mass murder in England, and the very headlines of
the paper had seemed like an awful dream. He felt that so
much of his life had still to be brought up to date. Some-
thing had to be vindicated. Yet you could never tell that he
was angry. It was easier to tell that he was sometimes afraid;
The Young Man from Kalgoorlie 189
not that lie was afraid of dying or being hurt, but of some
material thing like mishandling a plane. As he graduated
from Moths to Ansons, to Blenheims and Wellingtons, and
finally to Sterlings, he felt each time that he would never be
big enough for the change to the bigger aircraft, yet it was
always because of that fear that he was big enough.
Late that autumn he became captain of a Stirling, and
about the same time he got to know a girl. Two or three eve-
nings a week, if there were no operations, we used to go
down into the town and drink a few glasses of beer at a pub
called the Grenadier, and one evening this girl came in. She
was very dark and rather sophisticated, with very red lips,
and she never wore her coat in the ordinary way, but simply
had it slung on her shoulders, with the sleeves empty and
dangling. "This is Olivia/' he said. For some reason I never
knew her other name; we most often called her Albert's
popsy, but after that, every night we were in the Grenadier,
she would come in, and soon, after talking for a time, they
would go off somewhere alone together. The weather was
very bad at that time and he saw her quite often. And then
for a few nights it cleared, and one night, before going over
to Bremen, he asked if I would keep his date with her and
make his apologies and explain.
He had arranged to see her at seven o'clock, and I made
a bad impression by being late and because, above all, I
was the wrong person.
"Don't be angry," I said. "I'm very sorry/'
"I'm not angry," she said. "Don't think it. I'm just wor-
ried."
"You needn't be worried," I said.
IQO H. E. BATES
"Why not? Aren't you worried? You're Ms friend."
"No, I'm not worried," I said. "I'm not worried, because
I know what sort of pilot he is."
"Oh, you do, do you? Well, what sort of pilot is he?" she
said. "He never tells me. He never talks about it at all."
"They never do," I said.
"Sometimes I think 111 never know what sort of person he
is. Never!"
I felt there was little I could say to her. She was angry be-
cause I was the wrong person and because she was frus-
trated. I bought her several drinks. For a time she was
quieter and then once more she got excited. "One night
hell get shot down and about all 111 know of him is that his
name was Albert!"
"Take it easy," I said. "In the first place he won't get shot
down."
"No? How are you so sure?"
"He's the sort that shoots other people down first."
"Are you trying to be funny?" she said.
"No," I said; and for a few minutes I tried to tell her why
it was not funny and why I had spoken that way. I tried
quite hard, but I do not think she understood. I realized
that she knew nothing of all that had happened in Kalgoor-
lie the blank year, the awful discovery about England, the
bewilderment and the anger. I tried to make her see that
there is a type who thinks of nothing but the idea that he
may be shot at; and that there is another type, of which he
was one, who thinks of nothing but shooting first. "He's glad
to go. He wants to go. It's what he lives for," I said. "Don't
you see?"
The Young Man from Kalgoorlie 19*
No sooner had I said it than I realized that it was the
stupidest thing in the world to say. It was herself, not flying,
that she wanted him to live for. She did not understand, and
it would have sounded very silly if I had tried to tell her
that he was engaged on something like a mission of ven-
geance; that because of all that had happened in Kalgoorlie,
and especially that one day in Kalgoorlie, he felt that he
had something cruel and hideous to wipe out from his con-
ception of what was a decent life on earth. Every time he
went up, something was vindicated. Nor did she under-
stand, and again it might have sounded foolish too, that it
was the living and positive clarity of the whole idea that
was really his preservation. All I could say was, "He's the
sort that goes on coming back and coming back until they're
fed up with him and make him an instructor."
Nevertheless, that night her fears were almost justified.
The flak over Bremen was very hostile, and it seemed that
he had to take a lot of hasty evasive action before he could
get clear away along the coast. They had brought him down
even then to about two thousand feet. The searchlights
were very thick too, and it was like daylight in the aircraft
marking the time. But as if he couldn't possibly miss the op-
portunity, he came down to three hundred feet, roaring
over the searchlight batteries as his gunners attacked them.
They flew for about forty miles in this way, until finally
something hit the outer starboard engine and holed the star-
board wing. After that they were in a very bad way and got
home, as he said, later than originally proposed.
I do not think he told her about this. It went down into
his log, and some of it may have gone down into the diary
1Q2 H. E. BATES
he had promised f aitMully to keep for his people back on
the farm. He was satisfied that he had blown out about
twenty searchlights, and that was all. Something else was
vindicated. Two days later he had another go. In quite a
short daylight attack along the Dutch coast he got into an
argument with a flak ship. He was in a very positive mood
and he decided to go down to attack. As he was coming in,
his rear gunner sighted a formation of Messerschmitts com-
ing up astern, and two minutes later they attacked him. He
must have engaged them for about fifteen minutes. He had
always hated Messerschmitts, and to be attacked by them
made him very angry indeed. At the end of the engagement
he had shot down two of them and had crippled a third, but
they in turn had holed the aircraft in fifteen places. Never-
theless, he went down just to carry out his instruction of giv-
ing the flak ship a good-by kiss. She had ceased firing, and
he went in almost to low level and just missed her with his
last two bombs by the stern. As he was coming home his
outer port engine gave up, but he tootled in just before
darkness, quite happy. "A piece of cake," he said.
I know that he did not tell her about this either, and I
could see that she had some excuse for thinking him un-
demonstrative and perhaps unheroic. For the next two days
there was thick fog and rime frost in the early morning that
covered the wings of the Stirlings with dusty silver. He was
impatient because of the fog, and we played many games of
cribbage in the mess on the second day while the crews
were grounded.
On the third day he came back from briefing with a very
satisfied look on his face, "A little visit to Mr. Salmin and
The Young Man from Kalgoorlie 193
Mr. Glucksteln at Brest/' he said. He had been flying just a
year. He had done twenty trips, all of them with the same
meaning. It was a bright calm day, without cloud, quite
warm in the winter sun. There were pools of water here and
there on the runways, and looking through the glasses I
could see little brushy silver tails spurting up from the
wheels of the aircraft as they taxied away.
When I looked into the air, again through the glasses, I
saw two aircraft circling round, waiting to formate before
setting course. One of them was smoking a little from the
outer port engine. The smoking seemed to increase a little,
and then became black. Suddenly it seemed as if the whole
engine burst silently and softly into crimson flower. I kept
looking through the glasses, transfixed, but suddenly the
aircraft went away behind the hangars as it came down.
That evening I waited until it was quite dark before go-
ing into the town. I went into the bar of the Grenadier, and
the girl was standing by the bar talking to the barmaid. She
was drinking a port while waiting for him to come.
"Hello/* she said. Her voice was cold, and I knew that she
was disappointed.
"Hello. Could you come outside a moment?" I said.
She finished her port and came outside and we stood in
the street, in the darkness. Some people went by, shining a
torch on the dirty road, and in the light I could see the
sleeves of her coat hanging loose, as if she had no arms. I
waited until the people had gone by, and then, not knowing
how to say it, I told her what had happened. "It wasn't very
heroic/' I said. "It was rotten luck. Just rotten luck, that's
all/'
H. E. BATES
I was afraid she would cry.
She stood still and quite silent. I felt that I had to do
something to comfort her and I made as if to take hold of
her arm, but I only caught the sleeve, which was dead and
empty, I felt suddenly far away from her and as if we had
known two different people almost as if she had not
known him at all.
<c ril take you to have a drink/' I said.
"No."
"You'll feel better"
"Why did it have to happen?" she said suddenly, raising
her voice. "Why did it have to happen?"
"It's the way it often does happen," I answered.
"Yes, it's the way it often does happen!" she said. "Is that
all you care? Is that all anyone cares? It's the way it hap-
1y>
r ~^.
I did not speak. For a moment I was not thinking of her.
I was thinking of a young man in a barber's saloon in Kal-
goorlie, about to make the shocking discovery that the
world was at war and that he did not know it.
"Yes, it's the way it happens!" she said. I could not see her
face in the darkness, but her voice was very bitter now. "In
a week nobody will ever know he flew. He's just one of
thousands who go up and never come back. I never knew
him. Nobody ever knew him. In a week nobody will know
him from anyone else. Nobody will even remember him."
For a moment I did not answer. Now I was not thinking
of him. I was thinking of the two people who had so bravely
and stupidly kept the war from him and then had so bravely
and proudly let him go. I was thinking of the farm with the
The Yotwg Man from Kalgoorlie 195
sheep and the eucalyptus trees, the pink and mauve asters
and the yellow spring wattle flaming in the sun. I was think-
ing of the thousands of farms like it, peopled by thousands
of people like them: the simple, decent, kindly, immemorial
people all over the earth.
"No," I said to her. "There will be many who will remem-
ber him."
The Enemy
PEARL BUCK
Dr. Sadao Hold's house was built on a spot of the Japanese
coast where as a little boy he had often played. The low
square stone house was set upon rocks well above a narrow
beach that was outlined with bent pines. As a boy Sadao
had climbed the pines, supporting himself on his bare feet,
as he had seen men do in the South Seas when they climbed
for coconuts. His father had taken him often to the islands
The Enemy 197
of those seas, and never had he failed to say to the grave lit-
tle boy at his side, "Those islands yonder, they are the step-
pingstones to the future for Japan/'
"Where shall we step from them?" Sadao had asked seri-
ously.
"Who knows?" his father had answered. "Who can limit
our future? It depends on what we make it."
Sadao had taken this into his mind, as he did everything
his father said, his father who never joked or played with
him, but who spent infinite pains upon him who was his
only son. Sadao knew that his education was his father's
chief concern. For this reason he had been sent at twenty-
two to America to learn all that could be learned of surgery
and medicine. He had come back at thirty, and before his
father died he had seen Sadao become famous not only as a
surgeon but as a scientist. Because he was now perfecting a
discovery which would render wounds entirely clean, he
had not been sent abroad with the troops. Also, he knew,
there was some slight danger that the old General might
need an operation for a condition for which he was now be-
ing treated medically, and for this possibility Sadao was be-
ing kept in Japan.
Clouds were rising from the ocean now. The unexpected
warmth of the past few days had at night drawn heavy fog
from the cold waves. Sadao watched mists hide outlines of
a little island near the shore and then come creeping up the
beach below the house, wreathing around the pines. In a
few minutes fog would be wrapped about the house too.
Then he would go into the room where Hana, his wife,
would be waiting for him with the two children.
ig8 PEARL BUCK
But at this moment the door opened and she looked out,
a dark blue woolen haori over her kimono. She came to him
affectionately and put her arm through his as he stood,
smiled, and said nothing. He had met Hana in America, but
he had waited to fall in love with her until he was sure she
was Japanese. His father would never have received her un-
less she had been pure in her race. He wondered often
whom he would have married if he had not met Hana, and
by what luck he had found her in the most casual way, by
chance literally, at an American professor's house. The pro-
fessor and his wife had been kind people, anxious to do
something for their few foreign students, and the students,
though bored, had accepted this kindness. Sadao had often
told Hana how nearly he had not gone to Professor Harley's
house that night the rooms were so small, the food so bad,
the professor's wife so voluble. But he had gone and there
he had found Hana, a new student, and had felt he would
love her if it were at all possible.
Now he felt her hand on his arm and was aware of the
pleasure it gave him, even though they had been married
years enough to have the two children. For they had not
married heedlessly in America. They had finished their
work at school and had come home to Japan, and when his
father had seen her the marriage had been arranged in the
old Japanese way, although Sadao and Hana had talked
everything over beforehand. They were perfectly happy.
She laid her cheek against his arm.
It was at this moment that both of them saw something
black come out of the mists. It was a man. He was flung up
out of the ocean flung, it seemed, to his feet by a breaker.
The Enemy 199
He staggered a few steps, his body outlined against the
mist, his arms above his head. Then the curled mists hid him
again.
"Who is that?" Hana cried. She dropped Sadao's arm and
they both leaned over the railing of the veranda. Now they
saw him again. The man was on his hands and knees crawl-
ing. Then they saw him fall on his face and lie there.
"A fisherman perhaps," Sadao said, "washed from his
boat." He ran quickly down the steps, and behind him Hana
came, her wide sleeves flying. A mile or two away on either
side there were fishing villages, but here was only the bare
and lonely coast, dangerous with rocks. The surf beyond the
beach was spiked with rocks. Somehow the man had man-
aged to come through them he must be badly torn.
They saw when they came toward him that indeed it was
so. The sand on one side of him had already a stain of red
soaking through.
"He is wounded/" Sadao exclaimed. He made haste to the
man, who lay motionless, his face in the sand. An old cap
stuck to his head, soaked with sea water. He was in wet rags
of garments. Sadao stooped, Hana at his side, and turned
the man's head. They saw the face.
"A white man!" Hana whispered.
Yes, it was a white man. The wet cap fell away and there
was his wet yellow hair, long, as though for many weeks it
had not been cut, and upon his young and tortured face was
a rough yellow beard. He was unconscious and knew noth-
ing that they did to him.
Now Sadao remembered the wound, and with his expert
fingers he began to search for it. Blood flowed freshly at his
2OO PEARL BUCK
touch. On the right side of his lower back Sadao saw that a
gun wound had been reopened. The flesh was blackened
with powder. Sometime, not many days ago, the man had
been shot and had not been tended. It was bad chance that
the rock had struck the wound.
"Oh, how he is bleeding!" Hana whispered again in a sol-
emn voice. The mists screened them now completely, and
at this time of day no one came by. The fishermen had gone
home, and even the chance beachcombers would have con-
sidered the day at an end.
"What shall we do with this man?" Sadao muttered. But
his trained hands seemed of their own will to be doing what
they could to stanch the fearful bleeding. He packed the
wound with the sea moss that strewed the beach. The man
moaned with pain in his stupor, but he did not awaken.
"The best thing that we could do would be to put him
back in the sea," Sadao said, answering himself.
Now that the bleeding was stopped for the moment he
stood up and dusted the sand from his hands.
"Yes, undoubtedly, that would be best," Hana said stead-
ily. But she continued to stare down at the motionless man.
"If we sheltered a white man in our house we should be
arrested, and if we turned him over as a prisoner, he would
certainly die," Sadao said.
"The kindest thing would be to put him back into the
sea," Hana said. But neither of them moved. They were
staring with a curious repulsion upon the inert figure.
"What is he?" Hana whispered.
"There is something about him that looks American,"
Sadao said. He took up the battered cap. Yes, there, almost
The Enemy 201
gone, was the faint lettering. "A sailor/* he said, "from an
American warship." He spelled it out: "U.S. Navy." The
man was a prisoner of war!
"He has escaped," Hana cried softly, "and that is why he
is wounded."
"In the back," Sadao agreed.
They hesitated, looking at each other. Then Hana said
with resolution, "Come, are we able to put him back into
the sea?"
"If I am able, are you?" Sadao asked.
"No," Hana said. "But if you can do it alone. . . ."
Sadao hesitated again. "The strange thing is," he said,
"that if the man were whole I could turn him over to the po-
lice without difficulty. I care nothing for him. He is my en-
emy. All Americans are my enemy. And he is only a com-
mon fellow. You see how foolish his face is. But since he is
wounded. . . ."
"You also cannot throw him back to the sea," Hana said.
"Then there is only one thing to do. We must carry him into
the house."
"But the servants?" Sadao inquired.
"We must simply tell them that we intend to give him to
the police as indeed we must, Sadao. We must think of
the children and your position. It would endanger all of us
if we did not give this man over as a prisoner of war."
"Certainly," Sadao agreed. "I would not think of doing
anything else."
Thus agreed, together they lifted the man. He was very
light, like a fowl that has been half -starved for a long time
until it is only feathers and skeleton. So, his arms hanging,
202 PEARL BUCK
they carried him up the steps and into the side door of the
house. This door opened into a passage, and down the pas-
sage they carried the man toward an empty bedroom. It had
been the bedroom of Sadao's father and since his death it
had not been used. They laid the man on the deeply matted
floor. Everything here had been Japanese to please the old
man, who would never in his own home sit on a chair or
sleep in a foreign bed. Hana went to the wall cupboards and
slid back a door and took out a soft quilt. She hesitated. The
quilt was covered with flowered silk and the lining was pure
white silk.
"He is so dirty/* she murmured in distress.
"Yes, he had better be washed/' Sadao agreed. "If you
will fetch hot water I will wash him."
"I cannot bear to have you touch him/* she said. "We
shall have to tell the servants he is here. I will tell Yumi
now. She can leave the children for a few minutes and she
can wash him."
Sadao considered a moment "Let it be so/ 7 he agreed.
"You tell Yumi and I will tell the others."
But the utter pallor of the man's unconscious face moved
him first to stoop and feel his pulse. It was faint, but it was
there. He put his hand against the man's cold breast. The
heart too was yet alive.
"He will die unless he is operated on," Sadao said, con-
sidering. "The question is whether he will not die anyway."
Hana cried out in fear. "Don't try to save him! What if he
should live?"
"What if he should die?" Sadao replied. He stood gazing
down on the motionless man. This man must have extraordi-
The Enemy 203
nary vitality or he would have been dead by now. But then
he was very young perhaps not yet twenty-five.
"You mean die from the operation?" Hana asked.
"Yes/' Sadao said.
Hana considered this doubtfully, and when she did not
answer Sadao turned away. "At any rate something must be
done with him/' he said, "and first he must be washed." He
went quickly out of the room and Hana came behind him.
She did not wish to be left alone with the white man. He
was the first she had seen since she left America, and now
he seemed to have nothing to do with those whom she had
known there. Here he was her enemy, a menace, living or
dead.
She turned to the nursery and called, "Yumi!"
But the children heard her voice and she had to go in for
a moment and smile at them and play with the baby boy,
now nearly three months old.
Over the baby's soft black hair she motioned with her
mouth, "Yumi come with me!"
"I will put the baby to bed," Yumi replied. "He is ready."
She went with Yumi into the bedroom next to the nursery
and stood with the boy in her arms while Yumi spread the
sleeping quilts on the floor and laid the baby between them.
Then Hana led the way quickly and softly to the kitchen.
The two servants were frightened at what their master had
just told them. The old gardener, who was also a house serv-
ant, pulled the few hairs on his upper lip.
"The master ought not to heal the wound of this white
man," he said bluntly to Hana. "The white man ought to
die. First he was shot. Then the sea caught him and
204 PEARL BUCK
wounded liitn with her rocks. If the master heals what the
gun did and what the sea did they will take revenge on us."
"I will tell him what you say/* Hana replied courteously.
But she herself was also frightened, although she was not
superstitious as the old man was. Could it ever he well to
help an enemy? Nevertheless, she told Yumi to fetch the
hot water and bring it to the room where the white man
was.
She went ahead and slid hack the partitions. Sadao was
not yet there. Yumi, following, put down her wooden
bucket. Then she went over to the white man. When she
saw him her thick lips folded themselves into stubbornness.
"I have never washed a white man," she said, "and I will not
wash so dirty a one now/'
Hana cried at her severely, "You will do what your master
commands you!"
"My master ought not to command me to wash the en-
emy," Yumi said stubbornly.
There was so fierce a look of resistance upon Yumf s
round dull face that Hana felt unreasonably afraid. After
all, if the servants should report something that was not as
it happened?
"Very well/* she said with dignity. "You understand we
only want to bring him to his senses so that we can turn him
over as a prisoner?"
"I will have nothing to do with it," Yumi said. "I am a
poor person and it is not my business."
"Then please," Hana said gently, "return to your own
work."
At once Yumi left the room. But this left Hana with the
The Enemy 205
white man alone. She might have been too afraid to stay
had not her anger at Yumf s stubbornness now sustained
her.
"Stupid Yumi/' she muttered fiercely. "Is this anything
but a man? And a wounded, helpless man!"
In the conviction of her own superiority she bent im-
pulsively and untied the knotted rags that kept the white
man covered. When she had his breast bare she dipped the
small clean towel that Yumi had brought into the steaming
hot water and washed his face carefully. The man's skin,
though rough with exposure, was of a fine texture and must
have been very blond when he was a child.
While she was thinking these thoughts, though not really
liking the man better now that he was no longer a child, she
kept on washing him until his upper body was quite clean.
But she dared not turn him over. Where was Sadao? Now
her anger was ebbing and she was anxious again, and she
rose, wiping her hands on the wrung towel. Then lest the
man be chilled she put the quilt over him.
"Sadao!" she called softly.
He had been about to come in when she called. His hand
had been on the door and now he opened it. She saw that
he had brought his surgeon's emergency bag and that he
wore his surgeon's coat.
"You have decided to operate!" she cried.
"Yes," he said shortly. He turned his back to her and un-
folded a sterilized towel upon the floor of the takonoma
alcove, and put his instruments out upon it
"Fetch towels/' he said.
She went obediently, but how anxious now, to the linen
206 PEARL BUCK
shelves and took out the towels. There ought also to be old
pieces of matting so that the blood would not ruin the fine
floor covering. She went out to the back veranda where the
gardener kept strips of matting with which to protect deli-
cate shrubs on cold nights and took an armful of them.
But when she went back into the room she saw this was
useless. The blood had already soaked through the packing
in the man's wound and had ruined the mat under him.
"Ok, the mat!" she cried.
"Yes, it is ruined," Sadao replied, as though he did not
care. "Help me to turn him/' he commanded her.
She obeyed him without a word, and he began to wash
the man's back carefully.
"Yumi would not wash him/' she said.
"Did you wash him, then?" Sadao asked, not stopping
for a moment his swift concise movements.
"Yes/' she said.
He did not seem to hear her. But she was used to his ab-
sorption when he was at work. She wondered for a moment
if it mattered to him what was the body upon which he
worked, so long as it was for the work he did so excellently.
"You will have to give the anesthetic if he needs it/' he
said.
"I?'* she repeated blanHy. "But never have I!"
"It is easy enough/' he said impatiently.
He was taking out the packing now and the blood began
to flow more quickly. He peered into the wound with the
bright surgeon's light fastened on his forehead. "The bullet
is still there," he said with cool interest. "Now I wonder how
deep this rock wound is. If it is not too deep it may be that
The Enemy 207
I can get the bullet. But the bleeding is not superficial. He
has lost much blood/'
At this moment Hana choked. He looked up and saw her
face the color of sulphur.
"Don't faint/' he said sharply. He did not put down his
exploring instrument. "If I stop now the man will surely
die." She clapped her hands to her mouth and leaped up and
ran out of the room. Outside in the garden he heard her
retching. But he went on with his work.
It will be better for her to empty her stomach, he thought.
He had forgotten that of course she had never seen an oper-
ation. But her distress and his inability to go to her at once
made him impatient and irritable with this man who lay like
dead under his knife.
This man, he thought., there is no reason under heaven
why he should live.
Unconsciously this thought made him ruthless and he
proceeded swiftly. In his dream the man moaned ? but Sadao
paid no heed except to mutter at him.
"Groan/' he muttered, "groan if you like. I am not doing
this for my own pleasure. In fact, I do not know why I am
doing it"
The door opened and there was Hana again. She had not
stopped even to smooth back her hair.
"Where is the anesthetic?" she asked in a clear voice.
Sadao motioned with his chin. "It is as well that you came
back/' he said. "This fellow is beginning to stir."
She had the bottle and some cotton in her hand.
"But how shall I do it?" she asked.
"Simply saturate the cotton and hold it near his nostrils,"
208 PEARL BUCK
Sadao replied without delaying for one moment the in-
tricate detail of his work. "When he breathes badly, move it
away a little."
She crouched close to the sleeping face of the young
American. It was a piteously thin face, she thought, and the
lips were twisted. The man was suffering whether he knew
it or not. Watching him, she wondered if the stories they
heard sometimes of the sufferings of prisoners were true.
They came like flickers of nimor, told by word of mouth and
always contradicted. In the newspapers the reports were
always that wherever the Japanese armies went the people
received them gladly, with cries of joy at their libera-
tion. But sometimes she remembered such men as General
Takima, who at home beat his wife cruelly, though no one
mentioned it now that he had fought so victorious a battle
in Manchuria. If a man like that could be so cruel to a
woman in his power, would he not be cruel to one like this
for instance?
She hoped anxiously that this young man had not been
tortured. It was at this moment that she observed deep red
scars on his neck, just under the ear. "Those scars/* she
murmured, lifting her eyes to Sadao.
But he did not answer. At this moment he felt the tip of
his instrument strike against something hard, dangerously
near the kidney. All thought left him. He felt only the purest
pleasure. He probed with his fingers, delicately, familiar
with every atom of this human body. His old American
professor of anatomy had seen to that knowledge. "Igno-
rance of the human body is the surgeon's cardinal sin, sirs!"
he had thundered at his classes year after year. "To operate
The Enemy 209
without as complete knowledge of the body as if you had
made it anything less than that is murder/'
"It is not quite at the kidney, my friend/' Sadao mur-
mured. It was his habit to murmur to the patient when he
forgot himself in an operation. "My friend/* he always
called Ms patients and so now he did, forgetting that this
was his enemy.
Then quickly, with the cleanest and most precise of inci-
sions, the bullet was out. The man quivered, but he was still
unconscious. Nevertheless, he muttered a few English
words.
"Guts," he muttered, choking. "They got . . . my
guts. . . ."
"Sadao!" Hana cried sharply.
"Hush," Sadao said.
The man sank again into silence so profound that Sadao
took up his wrist, hating the touch of it. Yes, there was still
a pulse so faint, so feeble, but enough, if he wanted the man
to live, to give hope.
But certainly I do not want this man to live, he thought
with bitterness.
"No more anesthetic," he told Hana.
He turned as swiftly as though he had never paused, and
from his medicines he chose a small vial and from it filled a
hypodermic and thrust it into the patient's left arm. Then,
putting down the needle, he took the man's wrist again.
The pulse under his fingers fluttered once or twice and then
grew stronger.
"This man will live in spite of all," he said to Hana, and
sighed.
21O PEAKL BUCK
The young man woke, so weak, his blue eyes so terrified
when he perceived where he was, that Hana felt compelled
to apology. She served him herself, for none of the servants
would enter the room.
When she came in the first time she saw him summon his
small strength to be prepared for some fearful thing.
"Don't be afraid/' she begged him softly.
"How come . . . you speak English?" he gasped,
"I was a long time in America/' she replied.
She saw that he wanted to reply to that, but he could not,
and so she knelt and fed him gently from the porcelain
spoon. He ate unwillingly, but still he ate.
"Now you will soon be strong/' she said, not liking him
and yet moved to comfort him.
He did not answer.
When Sadao came in the third day after the operation he
found the young man sitting up, his face bloodless with the
effort.
"Lie down/' Sadao cried. "Do you want to die?"
He forced the man down gently and strongly and ex-
amined the wound. "You may kill yourself if you do this
sort of thing/' he scolded.
"What are you going to do with me?" the boy muttered.
He looked just now barely seventeen. "Are you going to
hand me over?"
For a moment Sadao did not answer. He finished his ex-
amination and then pulled the silk quilt over the man. "I do
not know myself what I shall do with you," he said. "I ought,
of course, to give you to the police. You are a prisoner of
war no, do not tell me anything." He put up his hand as
The Enemy
he saw the young man about to speak. "Do not even tell me
your name unless I ask it."
They looked at each other for a moment, and then the
young man closed his eyes and turned his face to the wall.
"Okay," he whispered, his mouth a bitter line.
Outside the door Hana was waiting for Sadao. He saw at
once that she was in trouble.
"Sadao, Yumi tells me the servants feel they cannot stay
if we hide this man here any more," she said. "She tells me
that they are saying that you and I were so long in America
that we have forgotten to think of our own country first.
They think we like Americans."
"It is not true," Sadao said harshly. "Americans are our
enemies. But I have been trained not to let a man die if I
can help it."
"The servants cannot understand that," she said.
"No," he agreed.
Neither seemed able to say more, and somehow the
household dragged on. The servants grew daily more
watchful. Their courtesy was as careful as ever, but their
eyes were cold upon the pair by whom they were hired.
"It is clear what our master ought to do," the old gardener
said one morning. He had worked with flowers all his life,
and had been a specialist too in moss. For Sadao's father he
had made one of the finest moss gardens in Japan, sweeping
the bright green carpet constantly so that not a leaf or a
pine needle marred the velvet of its surface. "My old mas-
ter's son knows very well what he ought to do," he now
said, pinching a bud from a bush as he spoke. "When the
man was so near death why did he not let him bleed?"
212 PEARL BUCK
"That young master is so proud of his skill to save life
that he saves any life/' the cook said contemptuously. She
split a fowl's neck skillfully and held the fluttering bird and
let its blood flow into the roots of a wistaria vine. Blood is
the best of fertilizers, and the old gardener would not let
her waste a drop of it.
"It is the children of whom we must think," Yumi said
sadly. "What will be their fate if their father is condemned
as a traitor?"
They did not try to hide what they said from the ears of
Hana as she stood arranging the day's flowers in the veranda
near by, and she knew they spoke on purpose that she might
hear. That they were right she knew too in most of her be-
ing. But there was another part of her, which she herself
could not understand. It was not sentimental liking of the
prisoner. She had not liked him even yesterday when he had
said in his impulsive way, "Anyway, let me tell you that my
name is Tom/' She had only bowed her little distant bow.
She saw hurt in his eyes, but she did not wish to assuage it.
Indeed, he was a great trouble in this house.
As for Sadao, every day he examined the wound care-
fully. The last stitches had been pulled out this morning,
and the young man would in a fortnight be nearly as well
as ever. Sadao went back to his office and carefully typed a
letter to the chief of police reporting the whole matter. "On
the twenty-first day of February an escaped prisoner was
washed up on the shore in front of my house/' So far he
typed, and then he opened a secret drawer of his desk and
put the unfinished report into it
On the seventh day after that two things happened. In
The Enemy 213
the morning the servants left together, their belongings
tied in large square cotton kerchiefs. When Hana got up in
the morning nothing was done, the house not cleaned and
the food not prepared, and she knew what it meant. She
was dismayed and even terrified, but her pride as a mistress
would not allow her to show it. Instead she inclined her
head gracefully when they appeared before her in the
kitchen, and she paid them off and thanked them for all
that they had done for her. They were crying, but she did
not cry. The cook and the gardener had served Sadao since
he was a little boy in his father's house, and Yumi cried be-
cause of the children. She was so grieving that after she had
gone she ran back to Hana.
"If the baby misses me too much tonight, send for me. I
am going to my own house and you know where it is."
"Thank you," Hana said, smiling. But she told herself she
would not send for Yumi however the baby cried.
She made the breakfast and Sadao helped with the chil-
dren. Neither of them spoke of the servants beyond the fact
that they were gone. But after Hana had taken morning
food to the prisoner she came back to Sadao.
"Why is it we cannot see clearly what we ought to do?**
she asked him. "Even the servants see more clearly than we
do. Why are we different from other Japanese?"
Sadao did not answer. But a little later he went into the
room where the prisoner was and said brusquely, "Today
you may get up on your feet. I want you to stay up only five
minutes at a time. Tomorrow you may try it twice as long.
It would be well that you get back your strength as quickly
as possible."
214 PEARL BUCK
He saw the flicker of terror on the young face that was
still very pale.
"Okay/' the boy murmured. Evidently he was determined
to say more. "I feel I ought to thank you, Doctor, for having
saved my life."
"Don't thank me too early/' Sadao said coldly. He saw
the flicker of terror again in the boy's eyes terror as unmis-
takable as an animal's. The scars on his neck were crimson
for a moment. Those scars! What were they? Sadao did not
ask.
In the afternoon the second thing happened, Hana, work-
ing hard at unaccustomed labor, saw a messenger come to
the door in official uniform. Her hands went weak and she
could not draw her breath. The servants must have told al-
ready. She ran to Sadao, gasping, unable to utter a word.
But by then the messenger had simply followed her through
the garden and there he stood. She pointed at htm help-
lessly.
Sadao looked up from his book. He was in his office, the
outer partition of which was thrown open to the garden for
the southern sunshine.
"What is it?" he asked the messenger, and then he rose,
seeing the man's uniform,
"You are to come to the palace/' the man said. "The old
General is in pain again."
"Oh/' Hana breathed, "is that all?"
"All!" the messenger exclaimed. "Is it not enough?"
"Indeed it is," she replied. "I am very sorry."
When Sadao came to say good-by she was in the kitchen,
but doing nothing. The children were asleep and she sat
The Enemy 215
merely resting for a moment, more exhausted from lier
fright than from work.
"I thought they had come to arrest you/* she said.
He gazed down into her anxious eyes. "I must get rid of
this man for your sake," he said in distress. "Somehow I
must get rid of him."
"Of course/' the General said weakly, "I understand fully.
But that is because I once took a degree in Princeton. So
few Japanese have."
"I care nothing for the man, Excellency," Sadao said,
"but having operated on him with such success. . . ."
"Yes, yes," the General said. "It only makes me feel you
more indispensable to me. Evidently you can save anyone
you are so skilled. You say you think I can stand one more
such attack as I have had today?"
"Not more than one," Sadao said.
"Then certainly I can allow nothing to happen to you,"
the General said with anxiety. His long, pale, Japanese face
became expressionless, which meant that he was in deep
thought. "You cannot be arrested," the General said, closing
his eyes. "Suppose you were condemned to death and the
next day I had to have my operation?"
"There are other surgeons, Excellency," Sadao suggested.
"None I trust," the General replied. "The best ones have
been trained by Germans and would consider the operation
successful even if I died. I do not care for their point of
view." He sighed. "It seems a pity that we cannot better
combine the German ruthlessness with the American senti-
mentality. Then you could turn your prisoner over to execu-
PEARL BTJCK
tion and yet I could be sure you would not murder me while
I was unconscious/' The General laughed. He had an un-
usual sense of humor. "As a Japanese, could you not com-
bine these two foreign elements?" he asked.
Sadao smiled, "I am not quite sure/' he said, **but for
your sake I would be willing to try, Excellency/*
The General shook his head. "I had rather not be the test
case/' he said. He felt suddenly weak and overwhelmed
with the cares of his life as an official in times such as these,
when repeated victory brought great responsibilities all
over the south Pacific. "It is very unfortunate that this man
should have washed up on your doorstep/* he said irritably.
"I feel it so myself/' Sadao said gently.
"It would be best if he could be quietly killed/' the Gen-
eral said. "Not by you, but by someone who does not know
him. I have my own private assassins. Suppose I send two
of them to your house tonight or better, any night. You
need know nothing about it. It is now warm what would
be more natural than that you should leave the outer parti-
tion of the white man's room open to the garden while he
sleeps?"
"Certainly it would be very natural/' Sadao agreed. "In
fact, it is so left open every night."
"Good," the General said, yawning. "They are very capa-
ble assassins they make no noise and they know the trick
of inward bleeding. If you like I can even have them remove
the body/'
Sadao considered. "That perhaps would be best, Excel-
lency/' he agreed, thinking of Hana,
He left the General's presence then and went home,
The Enemy 217
thinking over the plan. In this way the whole thing would
be taken out of his hands. He would tell Hana nothing,
since she would he timid at the idea of assassins in the
house, and yet certainly such persons were essential in an
absolute state such as Japan was. How else could rulers
deal with those who opposed them?
He refused to allow anything but reason to be the atmos-
phere of his mind as he went into the room where the
American was in bed. But as he opened the door, to his sur-
prise he found the young man out of bed, and preparing
to go into the garden.
"What is this!" he exclaimed. "Who gave you permission
to leave your room?"
"I'm not used to waiting for permission/' Tom said gaily.
"Gosh, I feel pretty good again! But will the muscles on
this side always feel stiff?"
"Is it so?" Sadao inquired, surprised. He forgot all else.
"Now I thought I had provided against that," he murmured.
He lifted the edge of the man's shirt and gazed at the heal-
ing scar. "Massage may do it," he said, "if exercise does not."
"It won't bother me much," the young man said. His
young face was gaunt under the stubbly blond beard. "Say,
Doctor, IVe got something I want to say to you. If I hadn't
met a Jap like you well, I wouldn't be alive today. I know
that."
Sadao bowed but he could not speak.
"Sure, I know that," Tom went on warmly. His big thin
hands, gripping a chair, were white at the knuckles. "I guess
if all the Japs were like you there wouldn't have been a
99
war.
PEARL BUCK
"Perhaps," Sadao said with difficulty. "And now I think
you had better go back to bed/'
Sadao slept badly that night. Time and time again he
woke, thinking he heard the rustling of footsteps, the sound
of a twig broken or a stone displaced in the garden a noise
such as men might make who carried a burden.
The next morning he made the excuse to go first into the
guest room. If the American were gone, he then could
simply tell Hana that so the General had directed. But when
he opened the door he saw at once that it was not last night.
There on the pillow was the shaggy blond head. He could
hear the peaceful breathing of sleep, and he closed the door
again quietly.
"He is asleep," he told Hana. "He is almost well to sleep
like that."
"What shall we do with him?" Hana whispered her old
refrain.
Sadao shook his head. "I must decide in a day or two," he
promised.
But certainly, he thought, the second night must be the
night. There rose a wind that night, and he listened to the
sounds of bending boughs and whistling partitions.
Hana woke too. "Ought we not to go and close the sick
man's partition?" she asked.
"No," Sadao said. "He is able now to do it for himself."
But the next morning the American was still there.
Then the third night of course must be the night. The
wind changed to quiet rain and the garden was full of the
sound of dripping eaves and running springs. Sadao slept
The Enemy 219
a little better, but he woke at the sound of a crash and
leaped to his feet.
"What was that?" Hana cried. The baby woke at her
voice and began to wail. "I must go and see."
But he held her and would not let her move.
"Sadao," she cried, "what is the matter with you?"
"Don't go/' he muttered, "don't go!"
His terror infected her and she stood breathless, waiting.
There was only silence. Together they crept back into the
bed, the baby between them.
Yet when he opened the door of the guest room in the
morning, there was the young man. He was very gay and
had already washed and was now on his feet. He had asked
for a razor yesterday and had shaved himself, and there was
faint color in his cheeks. "I am well," he said joyously.
Sadao drew his kimono around his weary body. He could
not, he decided suddenly, go through another night. It was
not that he cared for this young man's life. No, simply it was
not worth the strain.
"You are well," Sadao agreed. He lowered his voice. "You
are so well that I think if I put my boat on the shore tonight,
with food and extra clothing in it, you might be able to row
to that little island not far from the coast. It is so near the
coast that it has not been worth fortifying. Nobody lives on
it because in storm it is submerged. But this is not the sea-
son of storm. You could live there until you saw a Korean
fishing boat pass by. They pass quite near the island because
the water is many fathoms deep there."
The young man stared at him, slowly comprehending.
"Do I have to?" he asked.
220 PEARL BUCK
"I think so," Sadao said gently. "You understand it is
not hidden that you are here/'
The young man nodded in perfect comprehension.
"Okay/' he said simply.
Sadao did not see him again until evening. As soon as it
was dark he had dragged the stout boat down to the shore,
and in it he put food and bottled water that he had bought
secretly during the day, as well as two quilts he had bought
at a pawnshop. The boat he tied to a post in the water, for
the tide was high. There was no moon and he worked with-
out a flashlight.
When he came to the house he entered as though he were
just back from his work, and so Hana knew nothing. "Yumi
was here today," she said as she served his supper. Though
she was so modern, still she did not eat with him. "Yumi
cried over the baby," she went on with a sigh. "She misses
him so"
"The servants will come back as soon as the foreigner is
gone," Sadao said.
He went into the guest room that night before he went to
bed and himself checked carefully the American's tempera-
ture, the state of the wound, and his heart and pulse. The
pulse was irregular, but that was perhaps because of excite-
ment. The young man's pale lips were pressed together and
his eyes burned. Only the scars on his neck were red.
"I realize you are saving my life again," he told Sadao.
"Not at all," Sadao said. "It is only inconvenient to have
you here any longer."
He had hesitated a good deal about giving the man a
flashlight. But he had decided to give it to him after all. It
The Enemy 221
was a small one, his own, which he used at night when he
was called.
"If your food runs out before you catch a boat/' he said,
"signal me two flashes at the same instant the sun drops over
the horizon. Do not signal in darkness, for it will be seen. If
you are all right, but still there, signal me once. You will
find fish easy to catch, but you must eat them raw. A fire
would be seen/'
"Okay," the young man breathed.
He was dressed now in the Japanese clothes that Sadao
had given him, and at the last moment Sadao wrapped a
black cloth about his blond head.
"Now," Sadao said.
The young American without a word shook Sadao's hand
warmly and then walked quite well across the floor and
down the step into the darkness of the garden. Once twice
Sadao saw his light flash to find his way. But that would
not be suspected. He waited until from the shore there was
one more flash. Then he closed the partition. That night he
slept.
"You say the man escaped?" the General asked faintly.
He had been operated upon a week before, an emergency
operation to which Sadao had been called in the night
For twelve hours Sadao had not been sure the General
would live. The gall bladder was much involved. Then the
old man had begun to breathe deeply again and to demand
food. Sadao had not been able to ask about the assassins.
So far as he knew they had never come. The servants had re-
turned, and Yumi had cleaned the guest room thoroughly
222
PEARL BUCK
and had burned sulphur in it to get the white man's smell
out of it. Nobody said anything. Only the gardener was
cross, because he had got behind with his chrysanthemums.
But after a week Sadao felt the General was well enough
to be spoken to about the prisoner.
"Yes, Excellency, he escaped," Sadao now said. He
coughed, signifying that he had not said all he might have
said but was unwilling to disturb the General further. But
the old man opened his eyes suddenly.
"That prisoner," he said with some energy, "did I not
promise you I would kill him for you?"
"You did, Excellency," Sadao said.
"Well, well!" the old man said in a tone of amazement.
"So I did! But you see, I was suffering a good deal The
truth is, I thought of nothing but myself. In short, I forgot
my promise to you."
"I wondered, Your Excellency," Sadao murmured.
"It was certainly very careless of me," the General said.
"But you understand it was not lack of patriotism or derelic-
tion of duty." He looked anxiously at his doctor. "If the
matter should come out, you would understand that,
wouldn't you?"
"Certainly, Your Excellency," Sadao said. He suddenly
comprehended that the General was in the palm of his hand
and that as a consequence he himself was perfectly safe. "I
can swear to your loyalty, Excellency," he said to the old
General, "and to your zeal against the enemy,"
"You are a good man," the General murmured, and closed
his eyes. "You will be rewarded."
But Sadao, searching the spot of black in the twilighted
The Enemy 2,2,3
sea that night, had his reward. There was no prick of light
in the dusk. No one was on the island. His prisoner was gone
safe, doubtless, for he had warned him to wait only for a
Korean fishing boat.
He stood for a moment on the veranda, gazing out to the
sea from whence the young man had come that other night.
And into his mind, although without reason, there came
other white faces he had known the professor at whose
house he had met Hana, a dull man, and his wife had been
a silly, talkative woman, in spite of her wish to be kind. He
remembered his old teacher of anatomy, who had been so
insistent on mercy with the knife, and then he remembered
the face of his fat and slatternly landlady. He had had great
difficulty in finding a place to live in America, because he
was a Japanese. The Americans were full of prejudice and
it had been bitter to live in it, knowing himself their supe-
rior. How he had despised the ignorant and dirty old woman
who had at last consented to house him in her miserable
home! He had once tried to be grateful to her because she
had in his last year nursed him through influenza, but it was
difficult, for she was no less repulsive to him in her kindness.
But then, white people were repulsive, of course. It was a
relief to be openly at war with them at last. Now he remem-
bered the youthful, haggard face of his prisoner white and
repulsive.
Strange, he thought, I wonder why I could not kill him?
Selected by
PHYLLIS R. FENNER
Illustrated by William R. Lohsc
BROTHER AGAINST BROTHER
STORIES OF THE WAR BETWEEN TI IE STATES
"A noteworthy selection of twelve stories
that tell about Civil War soldiers and
those who waited for them. The stories
are written by such famous authors as
Stephen Vincent Renet, Carl Sandburg,
Harnett T. Kane, and MacKmlay Kan-
tor." N.Y* Times
OVER THERE!
STORIES OF WORLD WAR I
"This popular reviewer has selected tci
stories of World War I background. Thi
period has been a neglected area as t<
fiction in our experience, and we we
come this collection as choice ma terns
to meet this need/* Peabody Journt
of Education
THE PRICE OF LIBERTY
STORIES OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION
"Miss Feiiner has repeated the succo
she scored in her excellent compilati<
of Civil War stories, Brother Again
Brother. Distinguished in both contcf
and format, the present volume fills
the background of the Revolution^
War period. Highly recommended/*
