A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II (35 page)

AT THE SAME TIME, SEETHING AIRFIELD

After a bathroom break and nap in the tower, Charlie asked Colonel Thompson for permission to visit
The Pub
. Thompson agreed. He told Charlie he had notified Kimbolton of the crew’s predicament. The 379th was sending a B-17 in an hour or two to take them home.

The sun was setting behind withered trees when Thompson drove Charlie west across the field to a hardstand where ground personnel had towed the bomber. Airmen milled around the plane, examining its damage with awe, some snapping pictures. Charlie and Thompson circled the bomber, marveling in the same way. In the soft, waning glow of the sun behind her,
The Pub
looked defiant as she stood on her own legs.

A mechanic walking the plane’s wing drew Charlie and Thompson’s attention to the number three engine. He had made a discovery. A 20mm round had blown off the top of the fuel tank but never ignited the fuel. At the tip of the right wing, Charlie looked up through
the hole where the 88 shell had passed through, leaving a gap the size of a softball. Charlie and Thompson stopped at the tail section. Someone had draped a tarp across it to hide the sight of the deceased gunner’s blood. Charlie told Thompson that his gunner, Ecky, had been looking forward to the base Christmas party that night.

Circling farther, Charlie saw the stub of the horizontal stabilizer and shook his head. Looking up at the remaining half of the rudder, he saw that all but one of the rudder’s control cables had been severed.
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Their inspection completed, Thompson told Charlie he was going to recommend medals for the entire crew, including Charlie.

He said he had one last question.

“Why didn’t you hit the silk over Germany?”

“Sir, I had a man who was too injured to jump.”

“So you and your crew stayed for just one man?”

“Yes, sir,” Charlie said and nodded. To him it was that simple. They had fought for one another from a Texas bar to the skies of Bremen. They knew they were stronger together than apart.

T
HOMPSON DROVE
C
HARLIE
to Lieutenant Harper’s office, a brick building south of the tower. There, Harper was set to debrief Charlie. Charlie and Thompson shook hands and parted alongside Thompson’s jeep. Charlie had come to quickly admire Thompson, who was fatherly in his leadership style, compared to Preston, who was more like a big brother or a big man on campus.
^†

Harper welcomed Charlie into his cozy office. The room’s brick walls had been freshly painted white, and the windows had been covered with tan paper to block light from escaping. A potbelly stove sat in the room’s corner. From the ceiling hung small black airplane models that Harper said he used in teaching aircraft recognition to bomber and anti-aircraft gunners.

Harper sat behind his desk and motioned for Charlie to sit across from him. He opened a file and admitted that the interrogation would be his first, since his unit had yet to see battle. Charlie asked if Harper would be calling in the others, and Harper said there was no time because their ride was due shortly. “You can speak for your crew,” he told Charlie.

Charlie felt like a mess. His hair was stringy and his body felt sticky from sweat. A debriefing was the last thing he wanted. He also knew that now was the time to see his crew’s bravery recognized. Like a testimony under oath, the story he gave Harper would become the official record.

Harper unlocked a drawer in his desk and removed a bottle of Vat 69 whiskey and two shot glasses. He uncorked the bottle while explaining that policy permitted him to give each crewman a shot to loosen his tongue before reviewing a tough mission. He poured Charlie a glass. That morning Charlie had turned down a drink from Walt, but now that moment seemed like another lifetime. Charlie slugged the whiskey in a stinging gulp. Harper kept holding the bottle at an angle. “No one’s counting here,” he said. Charlie accepted another shot.

Charlie walked Harper through the mission. He explained how Frenchy and Doc had downed enemy fighters, how Ecky and Blackie had remained at their useless guns to call out fighter attacks, how Pechout had refused to leave his radio, and how Jennings and Andy had saved Russian from bleeding to death. Harper scribbled notes, hanging on every word.

Charlie told him of the spin, of pulling out over Oldenburg, and
of racing for the coast. “Then the last 109 parked on our wingtip,” Charlie said, “and I thought it was all for nothing.”

Harper stopped Charlie. “The last 109?”

Charlie clarified, “Yeah, the one who flew with us.”

Charlie described their bizarre encounter with the German pilot who had escorted them out to sea and said good-bye with a salute.

Harper cocked his head and stared at Charlie as if he was joking. “He flew with you?” Harper said, leaning across his desk, incredulous.

“He was probably out of ammo,” Charlie said. “But he took us out of Germany.”

Harper slapped his desk. “I thought I had heard it all,” he said. Harper closed his notes. Charlie interrupted him to ask how he could nominate his crew for awards. He wanted a Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) for each man as well as a Bronze Star for Ecky. Harper told Charlie he might want to think bigger.

“They’ll take one look at that plane of yours and every one of you will be wearing the Bronze Star,” Harper said. Charlie knew his request for DFCs for his crew was not asking much. The DFC was a modest medal given routinely to bomber pilots who flew twenty-five missions or to fighter pilots after fifty missions.

Harper promised Charlie he would forward his report to his counterpart at Kimbolton.

It was around 5:30
P.M.
when Harper walked Charlie to the base officer’s club. Harper and Charlie found Pinky, Doc, and Andy sitting in plush chairs and eating sandwiches. A painted mural decorated the wall above a nearby fireplace. When Harper saw Charlie admiring it, he admitted he had painted it. The mural featured a creature with the body of a lion and the head and wings of an eagle jumping through the center of a massive blue American star. It was supposed to be a patriotic mural representing the bomb group on attack. Harper said painting was his hobby. Someday he hoped to be an artist. Doc and Andy covered their mouths with their arms and coughed, fighting not to break out in laughter. They found Harper’s artistic rendition to be hilarious.

Harper excused himself to call his superiors at 8th Air Force headquarters. He had told Charlie on their walk to the club that he saw tremendous PR value in the story of a miracle plane and the crew that stayed together to stay in the war. He departed with a wave. Charlie told his officers about Harper’s reaction. They grinned at the thought of how Harper would paint them as heroes.

C
HARLIE AND HIS
officers heard the B-17 land at 6:30
P.M.
, even before the orderly stuck his head into the club. The orderly informed them of a hitch. The B-17 had developed an engine problem and would need to be grounded for a while before its flight back to Kimbolton. The mechanics were working on it. Doc grumbled something about missing the dance.

Three hours and many Cokes and sandwiches later, the orderly returned. The bomber was ready to fly again. As Charlie and his men donned their jackets, Harper entered the club with a wild look of concern. He was glad to have caught them before they left. Harper pulled Charlie to a nearby table and asked him to sit down.

Charlie told his men to board the plane and that he’d catch up.

“I told them your story, just as you told me,” Harper said. “But when I mentioned the part about the German they went berserk!”

Charlie sighed with relief. He thought Harper had come to deliver bad news about Russian.

Harper explained that 8th Air Force headquarters had given him orders to pass along. “When you see your crew, you are to instruct them not to discuss the mission with anyone.”

Charlie raised an eyebrow.

“Here’s the worst part,” Harper said. “Forget about any medals for your crew.”

“That’s bullshit!” Charlie said, standing.

Harper rose to Charlie’s level. “I tried as hard as I could. I know what headquarters is thinking. If your men get medals, people will ask
how they got them. Then if your men tell the story, they’ll mention the Kraut pilot.”

Charlie shook his head in disbelief.

“The brass wants you to forget this day ever happened,” Harper said. “Those are the orders.”

Three words crossed Charlie’s mind:
Go to hell
. But he held his tongue, tossed on his jacket, and started for the door.

Harper caught Charlie by an arm and leaned in with a sudden whisper. “Listen—suppose another of our planes gets in a similar fix. And suppose our gunners hold their fire just as a 109 swoops in because they heard some story about how he’s going to ‘fly with them.’ Now suppose this Kraut isn’t as nice as yours and blows our boys out of the sky?”

Charlie thrust his hands in his pockets. Harper had a point.

“What am I supposed to tell my men?” Charlie asked.

“You tell them they did what they came here to do,” Harper said. “Bomb Germany, fly home, and go back to do it again.”

Charlie gave a terse nod. He and his crew weren’t in it for the medals. Surviving a horrendous attack was just doing what they had volunteered to do. He looked straight at Harper. “What about Ecky? Would you at least help me nominate my tail gunner for a commendation? For his family’s sake.”

“Write it up, and I’ll grease the wheels,” Harper said.

I
N THE DIM
light of a quarter moon, Charlie jogged toward the tower. His ride to Kimbolton lay idling behind the tower. Peering across the field, Charlie looked for
The Pub
but couldn’t see her. He passed the tower and approached his ride to Kimbolton from the tail. Blue exhaust flames spit from beneath the bomber’s engines. Charlie removed his crush cap and tucked it under his arm as he crossed through the prop wash. A crew chief waited with a flashlight near the bomber’s rear door. For a moment, Charlie hesitated before he entered the plane.

The crew chief had barely shut the door when the pilots gunned the engines, hurrying to make the thirty-minute hop to Kimbolton, seventy-seven miles west. Charlie found Pinky, Doc, Andy, Frenchy, and Jennings in the radio room. Charlie apologized for not wanting to sit with them and explained that he was curious to see what England looked like at night, from the plane’s nose.

The pilots swung the bomber around onto the main runway as Charlie took his seat in the nose. The pilots gunned the throttles. The bomber barreled along the runway and had just lifted off when Charlie heard a popping sound from the left wing followed by sputtering. The bomber had an engine problem again, this time a blown supercharger. The pilots lowered the plane back toward the earth and touched down. They slammed on the brakes and Charlie thought he heard an unusual squeal. The bomber veered left and ran off the concrete, just before the end of the runway.

As the bomber’s wheels dug into the mud, the sudden stop threw Charlie forward, into the Plexigas nose cone. Ammo cans, clipboards, and pencils from the navigator’s desk cascaded around him. Lying with his head in the tip of the cone, Charlie trembled. The bomber, somehow, managed to stay on its gear.
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