Authors: Walter J. Boyne
The fellow flyers in his flight were worse, sitting like five little
Indians around the depressing, laundry-strewn hovel that they used as ready room. What a bunch! Whitey Dahl, whose passport read
Hernando Diaz Evans, was Army Air Corps-trained and had flown
the air mail in 1934. Something had happened—a drunk-driving rap, a scandal—and he had been thrown out of the service. He was aggressive, but Bandy thought he lacked judgment in the air. He'd
been sick for weeks, some kind of dysentery, and was scheduled to
go in for treatment soon. Ernie Hopper was asleep next to Dahl. Hopper was an ardent communist. Bandy had spent time talking to him when he first arrived, but the man was exhausting, always wanting a conversion to the cause on the spot. He wouldn't say
where he got his pilot training; wherever it was, Bandy didn't think it was adequate to be flying combat. Next to Hopper, George Reid was
carving a stick figure from a slat from a wooden crate. Reid was
quiet, and inspired confidence. The story was that he had hijacked a
Nationalist Cant seaplane and flown it to the harbor in Valencia. When the Loyalists came on board, they found the rebel crew, throats slit, laid neatly in a row on the floor, dressed tallest to shortest. He was their kind of man.
Then Lacalle came in. Tall and slender with a jet-black pompa
dour of oily hair, he was affable on the ground, a martinet in the air.
Bandy shuffled to his feet as Lacalle called the group to attention;
the similar scene in the Richard Barthlemess film
The Dawn Patrol
flickered through Bandy's mind.
"The weather is supposed to improve around eleven o'clock. All
the aircraft will carry bombs. The Italians are retreating along the
road from Brihuega to Trijuque. The mud is keeping them on the road, so we'll attack in trail."
The room was quiet; no one took notes, they all just stared at
Lacalle. "Hopper, you'll lead the attack. I want you to drop from no
higher than five hundred feet, and no lower than four hundred. Got that? Reid, you follow Hopper, and Bandfield, you go next. I'll
bring up the rear, to check on how you are doing. Dahl, you stay at altitude until we recover, then make your own attack. After the drop
we'll strafe as long as we have ammunition. Any questions?"
There were none. Bandy knew the attack method was devised for
his benefit. Ordinarily Whitey Dahl, with his greater experience,
would have led the attack, and Lacalle would have flown top cover for them. Lacalle had eleven victories, and was clearly the best shot in the unit. Hopper was only a fair pilot and Reid didn't have much
time in the Chato. Lacalle was checking on Bandfield.
Great wet bags of clouds bullied the little spots of clear air,
squeezing in and coalescing, insolently changing shape and color as
they picked their way through to the front. The Chatos were slug
gish with the weight and drag of the two twenty-five-pound bombs
carried under each lower wing. Hopper leveled off just under the cloud base and led them directly to the line of retreat. From one
thousand feet, Bandy could see derelict armored cars and light tanks
pushed off into the mud, the road choked with streams of brown ants occasionally illuminated by a white upturned face. After nervous hand signals to Lacalle to make sure he was properly posi
tioned, Hopper peeled off, his wings flashing up as his nose came down in the classic attack mode, and the rest followed at twenty-
second intervals. He saw Hopper's bombs hit well to the right, and
then Reid's bracket the road perfectly. He dropped, hoping that he'd
miss but be close enough to satisfy Lacalle.
They formed up, watching out for Fiats and Heinkels, as Dahl made a textbook dive that tore chunks of men and rock from the
roadway. Lacalle waved his hand in a circle and they dove again,
Hopper leading them down to race just above the road, firing their
machine guns at any target. Details swam into view, lodging in the
mind and becoming distinct only long after Bandy was past. He saw
a tank, hatch open, a body hanging out; a horse, down, broken, but terribly alive; two men, carrying a third between them, falling
simultaneously to the side, dropping their comrade facedown in the
mud. The images simply poured in, he could concentrate on nothing; oddly, no one was shooting back at them, no one at all.
The long stream of fleeing Italian soldiers divided into purled lines
on each side of the road, as if a comb were running through them instead of bullets.
They exhausted their ammunition and flew directly back to the
field. Even before Lacalle had hoisted himself from his cockpit, his
adjutant handed him a congratulatory message from the Russian commander of the counterattack. The mechanics refueled and
rearmed the airplanes while the pilots ate thick sandwiches of coarse
white bread and sausage and gulped scalding black coffee. Lacalle
came over to Bandy. He had evidently carefully planned what he was going to say, because for once his English was flawless.
"You were just adequate on this mission. I'm tired of your talking
about a transfer, about flying I-16s, about joining a Russian unit. If
you don't start getting some victories in the air, I'll have you transferred to coastal patrol, flying Breguets."
Bandfield stiffened into a position of attention. Lacalle went on.
"Now you lead this attack. The weather's breaking, and we can expect to see some action." He paused, then reached out and
grabbed Bandy's shoulder. "I expect to see some action from you, or
I will shoot you down myself."
The American had no doubt that the Spaniard was serious.
Bandy led the takeoff, the other four Chatos quivering in forma
tion just off his wings. They began a standing patrol over the line of white cloth the infantry had laid out to mark its farthest advance. He
climbed to six thousand feet, grateful that the first bright sun in
weeks had elbowed the clouds out of the way, adding to the warmth
of his leather flying suit. Without the bombs, the little fighter felt like a different airplane. Lacalle suddenly slid over into the lead
position, signaling with a machine-gun burst. He pointed down and
to the north.
Six Junkers Ju-52s, slow trimotor bombers, were coming in V-formation, two flights of three. Above them a squadron of Fiats circled like hornets. Bandy laughed in excitement. The Fiats, CR-32s, were from the La Cucaracha Squadron—what a name to call yourself! Lacalle began an immediate climbing turn to the left, gaining an additional altitude advantage and positioning the flight between the bombers and the front line. Lacalle glanced across at
Bandy, pointed to the enemy, and sliced his finger across his neck, a
clear message to produce or die. Then he waggled his wings and dove, the other Chatos stringing out behind him.
The five airplanes plunged through the Fiats and toward the
bombers. Bandy caught the Junkers in his sights. It was a curious
airplane, with corrugated metal surfaces like the Ford Tri-motor,
but with its engines mounted wall-eyed on the low-set wings. They
moved into view slowly, the details making them somehow less real
than when they were dots in the distance. He fastened his sights on one, huge, ponderous, death-laden yet dancing lightly on the wind. The camouflage was distinctive, an earth gray-green covering the
center section of wings and fuselage, followed by a band of beige.
The tail and wings were chopped up in diagonal colors, with an
all-white rudder marked by the huge black X. At one hundred yards,
he began to fire, stitching a line of bullets through the fuselage and
into the cockpit. A burst of smoke came from the center engine, and
with a dreamlike grace the Junkers slowly peeled up and out of
formation, its arc like the hand of an opera diva taking a final bow.
Two men jumped from the rear, their parachutes opening immediately, jerking them alone to a halt in an otherwise constantly moving universe. From the front, a third tumbled, his clothes on fire. A Chato, probably Hopper, sliced across, firing at the men in the parachutes.
He was watching the slow tumbling of the bomber when his
instrument panel disintegrated, spraying glass and wood splinters instantaneously past him. Scorching hot wind-driven oil burned his face as he kicked the rudder and shoved the stick into the opposite
corner. The Chato snapped and the Fiat followed, pumping
12.7mm bullets into him. Anger superseded fear as the Italian pilot
pursued him through every maneuver, cooly firing snap shots as if
he were on a target range: a tough fighting cockroach. Bandfield knew he had only seconds to live. He looked back and saw Lacalle on the Fiat's tail; there was an explosion and the Fiat disappeared into a thousand pieces. Lacalle had saved his life.
He turned and caught sight of the remaining bombers, four of them, pressing their attack. There were no instruments left to check, but the engine was running and a quick burst showed that the machine guns still worked.
He put the Chato's nose down and dove below the bombers, pulling up sharply under the lead aircraft. A gunner, suspended
below the fuselage in the ridiculous garbage-can open turret, fired at
him. The war was suddenly personal. He could see the gunner
plainly, his face covered by goggles and scarf, shoulders hunched to
force the machine gun against the slipstream. It seemed strange that
he was aiming at Bandy, shooting, trying to kill him. Indignant at the hostility, Bandy kept the Junkers in his sights and walked his rudder back and forth, spraying bullets across the wing center section. Orange-red flames poured out as an explosion tore the right wing away. The airplane rolled rapidly to the right. He wondered if the gunner could bail out of his suspended bucket, now whirling around the axis of the falling Junker's flight.
Above him a Fiat, engine smoking, was gliding down. Its pilot stood in the cockpit and pulled the ripcord of his parachute; the billowing chute jerked him backward and out, like toast out of a
toaster. He saw three Chatos descending in a fast glide, and the Fiats
were forming up in a loose formation as they departed. God, they
could maneuver. The Italians in the air were apparently far different
from the Italians on the ground.
He glanced around his airplane, saw the fabric flapping, thought he could hear the wind whistling through the bullet holes in his windscreen. The engine was running rough, but he knew it would get him back. When he turned his head forward again, he saw Lacalle's airplane boxed in by three Fiats. Lacalle was turning but not firing—his guns were jammed or he was out of ammunition. Bandfield dove headlong, pulled in behind the lead Fiat, and hosed it with a long shattering burst that sawed the Italian pilot in half.
Bandfield turned left to get on the tail of the next Fiat, which
went inverted, diving away in a split S that might or might not clear
the ground. He turned right and pressed his firing buttons, only to hear the pneumatic chargers hammering away. He was out of ammunition. The remaining Fiat hung in behind Lacalle, firing short bursts.
Bandfield could see the pieces flying from Lacalle's airplane. Almost without thinking he hurled his Chato at the Fiat, felt a
crump
as his gear tore through the enemy's wings. The Italian pilot sheered off, quickly establishing a gentle descent, obviously trying
just to stay airborne in one piece.
Bandfield tucked his wing next to Lacalle's, and they flew back in formation. En route, Lacalle signaled that Bandfield's right gear was
damaged. He brought the Chato in on its left wheel, letting it slow almost to a halt before the broken right wheel touched down and spun it in a sharp circle.
Lacalle came running over.
"Bandy, forgive me! You saved my life. That dago bastard was a
good shot—another minute and he'd have had me."
Lacalle embraced him and took him inside while he got headquarters on the field phone and demanded a decoration for Bandfield.
Bandfield was happy, almost for the first time since being in Spain. He had fought and killed and they had turned the bomber
attack back. Even better, he had saved a patriot's life, a life worth
saving.
The fight transformed Lacalle's attitude. He was now as friendly
to Bandy as he'd been distant before, and in the next few weeks,
Bandfield felt closer to Lacalle than he did to any man except Hadley Roget. More important, Lacalle took him aside for long
talks, and into the air for mock dogfights, passing on to him all of his
experience. It didn't make sense in instructional terms; much of what he passed on would have been more helpful when Bandy
started flying combat. Yet he was indebted, for Lacalle was a master
flyer, and expert in the airplane.