Rush to Glory

by Robert L Hecker

  “You can’t possibly go in upwind. It’s suicide.” The voice was Betty Axley’s, and it seemed to make Luke even more determined.

  “They’re exaggerating, lieutenant. Cossel, how much farther to the I.P.?”

  “About ten minutes, but . . .”

  “Don’t ‘but’ me, lieutenant. And that goes for the rest of you, too. We’re up here to win the war. The best way to do it is hit that railyard. You heard the briefing.”

  “I also heard the orders to hit the secondary,” O’Reilly said, all humor gone from his voice.

  “The hell you did. I never heard any order. Did anybody else hear such an order?”

  What the hell was Luke thinking? He might be able to order the crew to keep their mouths shut, but he couldn’t stop Betty Axley.

  O’Reilly’s voice was hard as he answered, “You lose this group, Bailey, and you’ll damn well see if I heard those orders or not.”

  “I’ll take full responsibility,” Luke said. Suddenly he laughed. “Hell, we’ve been through worse than this. No fighter is going to come up in this stuff.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” Cossel said. “They lose the Ruhr; they lose the war.”

  “My point exactly,” Luke said.

  “What about flak?” the chief said. “I’d rather have the fighters. At least you can shoot at them.”

  “Quit your bitchin’. We’ll be okay.”

  The intercom was silent. Nobody believed him.

  They got their first flak before they reached the Initial Point. The radar directed Fliegerabwehrkannon shells punched through the seemingly solid cloud layer below them to burst in the surrounding whiteness, their black smoke obscene in the purity of the mist.

  “Radio,” Luke said. “Start the chaff.”

  “Uh-roger,” Bernard said.

  The flak increased when, abruptly, they ran out of the bottom layer of clouds. The bombers were still boring through a misty canyon, but the ground far below was faintly visible, the Rhine River a silver ribbon snaking through green fields and forests, linking sprawling villages, towns, and factory complexes.

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” Luke said happily. “If we can keep it like this, it’ll make it tougher for them to spot us, but we can still see the target.”

  “You’re forgetting,” O’Reilly said, “that our adversaries have very large cannons which ignore clouds but seek out Irishmen who are twenty-four years of age.” O’Reilly’s voice sounded a trifle strained, and Hal had the impression that O’Reilly was not talking for Luke’s benefit but Betty Axley.

  “The hell with them and their flak,” Luke said. “Caplinger, I mean Ortiz, how’re we doin’?”

  “I think the deputy lead of the low squadron just got hit, sir. He’s falling back.”

  “He’d better be hit. Are the rest of ’em keeping up?”

  “Yes, sir. They’ve closed up pretty well.”

  “Captain, my captain,” O’Reilly said. “Lead on. I’d follow you to hell and, I hope, back.”

  Luke ignored him. “Lieutenant Axley, you’d better hook your parachute to one of the rings on your chest pack. That way, if anything happens, you won’t have to look for it.”

  “Good idea, major.” Her voice was calm and firm, and Hal felt a quiet pride. He wasn’t sure that he could keep it together if the going got rough, but Betty sure as hell was not going to come unglued.

  “Major,” Cossel said. “Maybe I can plot a new I.P. that’ll let us make the run partially downwind.”

  The intercom was silent as though every crewman was holding his breath, waiting for an answer that might save his life.

  “How long would it take?”

  “Five minutes to plot. A half-hour maybe to get to the new I.P.”

  “Negative. We’ve got a clear view of the target now. It might not hold for a half-hour.”

  “We could always hit the secondary.”

  “We’re here. We’re going in.”

  The intercom clicked with the finality of death.

  At the I.P., they swept around in a wide turn, fighting a heavy crosswind that became a headwind as they straightened on the bomb run. With an indicated airspeed of a hundred fifty miles per hour and headwinds of close to a hundred, their ground speed was only a little more than fifty miles per hour. In effect, they were stationary targets for more than 400 German anti-aircraft guns. No wonder the division leader had elected to hit the secondary.

  Hal clutched in and began his bomb run. Through the broken clouds, he could see that the Germans had put up an extensive smoke screen that covered most of the target area. He was glad that Deering had insisted on all bombardiers memorizing target area checkpoints. Despite the smoke and clouds, he was able to identify distinctive landmarks that led him toward the unseen target.

  “I’m leaving the bomb bay doors closed as long as I can,” he told Luke.

  “Good idea,” Luke acknowledged. “Let me know when you open.”

  “Uh-roger.”

  He was killing drift by lining up his bombsights on an island in the river that he knew was approximately in line with the distant target when, abruptly, the big ship reeled as 20mm cannon rounds hit it and simultaneously Polazzo screamed, “Bandits! One o’clock. One o’clock high. Bandits!”

  With a sound like ripping cloth, a hail of 7.6mm machine gun slugs tore through the roof of the nose and savaged the floor between Hal and Cossel and Hal looked up to see a black blur streak past the nose, then another and another until in the distance they turned into six ME-109s that ended their diving attack by arching up into the clouds that had first hidden them from view.

  The slashing attack had been so sudden that nobody had gotten off a single round, but the intercom was crazy with yelling, screaming voices, and the bomber was vibrating as though it would come apart. It was O’Reilly’s voice that cut through the fear. “Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! They’re gone. They’re gone. Let’s get some order here. whoever is dead, speak first.”

  “I am,” Bernard’s voice silenced the others. “God-damn-it!”

  “Bernard,” O’Reilly snapped. “That you?”

  “Yeah. They shot the hell out of this place.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m hit. Not bad, I think.”

  “All right,” Luke said. “Everybody shut up a minute. We’ve got a hell of a vibration problem here. Tail, can you see the rudder?”

  “Yeah.” Ortiz’s voice was shrill. “We got a big hole in the rudder and one in the left elevator. Pieces of skin are still comin’ off.”

  “An’ you’ve got a damn hole in the radio roof you could drive a Jeep through.” That was Bernard.

  “Okay. O’Reilly see what you can do with the tabs.”

  “Everybody,” Hal said, and the quiver in his voice irritated him. “They’ll be back. I saw them climbing.”

  “Okay,” Luke said. “They’ll come at us out of the cloud tops like before. One o’clock high. Be ready. Bailey, get back on the sight.”

  Hal grunted an “Uh-roger,” but he had to force himself to look away from the clouds that had been so beautiful a moment ago, but which now were concealing death. Through a rift in the cloud valley, he could see the target far ahead. Ground wind had dissipated much of the smokescreen, and the sprawling railroad marshaling yard was just visible through the haze.

  Knowing that his view of the target could be obscured at any moment, Hal quickly lined up his crosshairs and noted that he had already killed most of the drift. But he had plenty of time to make corrections. At their current ground speed, they wouldn’t be over the target for a good fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes for the 109s to rip into the formation. Oh God. And then . . .

  As if to punctuate his thoughts, the ship began to shudder as its .50 cals opened up, and the voices at the int
ercom began their cacophony: “Two o’clock! Two o’clock! I see ’em . . . Yeah . . . Yeah . . . Yeah . . . Comin’ through . . . Ball, comin’ through . . . Jesus . . . look at Fox. The son-a-bitch is shooting with his .45.”

  Hal shot a glance at the left and saw that Fox had pushed back the command deck’s side window and was banging away with his Colt .45 as fast as he could pull the trigger.

  “Holy shit,” somebody yelled. “There goes two out of the low squadron.”

  Ignoring the sight, Hal pulled the control column for his chin turret in front of him and aimed the guns up and to his right just as another ME 109 bored in from one o’clock, fire twinkling from the knife edges of its wings, the silver blur of its propeller growing as the distance closed. Hal’s sights were bracketing the target, and he felt the heavy vibration of the twin .50s with a thrill of satisfaction. To his surprise, he could see his stream of bullets join a cone of fire from the top turret and Cossel’s cheek gun. Suddenly the fighter’s propeller shattered, and the plane cart-wheeled past, and he screamed in joy: Take it! Take it! Take it! You bastards! Take it!

  And there were more, one after the other, coming in down-wind, slashing past at 300 miles per hour. He couldn’t track them fast enough, so he aimed the guns at a spot and put down a curtain of fire, holding the triggers down, not giving a damn if he burned out the barrels.

  Blur! Blur! Blur! ME 109s and FW 190s hurtled down and away like swords that sliced through the tissue of aluminum and flesh. And this time, they kept going, heading for the safety of the ground. But two of them were trailing smoke, and another was on its back, out of control. The big bombers had taken a frightful beating, but they had exacted their revenge.

  Reluctantly, Hal stopped firing, riding a high of adrenaline that made him want to keep shooting even though the targets had vanished as quickly as they had appeared.

  The guns were silent, but the intercom was alive with sound: “I think I got one. Yeah, yeah, me too. You see that, chief? Are they coming back? Where the hell are they?”

  “They ran for cover.” That was Willy Osborne.

  “Why the hell did they leave?” Palozzo voiced. “We’ve got no friendlies.”

  “Beats the hell . . .” Osborne started to say. His voice died abruptly as there was the ‘whump’ of a nearby flak burst, and the B-17 rocked. Whump! Whump! Whump! The bursts were so close that the red of their explosions could be seen, and the bomber began to duck and roll like a boxer trying to slip murderous bunches.

  “That’s why,” O’Reilly said. “Only mad dogs and Englishmen would stick around here.”

  “Bailey,” Luke said. “How we doing?”

  Hal thrust the gunsight control column aside and put his eye to the Norden’s rubber eyepiece. The crosshairs were still close to the target. “Okay,” he said as he brought them back on target. Luke and O’Reilly, through the use of the rudder and elevator trim tabs, had managed to control most of the heavy vibration and, except for the effects of the flak bursts, the ship was a relatively stable platform. As long as it didn’t get any worse, his gyros could handle it. He wondered how many other planes of the group were still with them. Somebody had said they saw two go down from the low squadron.

  “How much longer?”

  Hal checked the indices. They were flying almost straight into the wind. With the slow ground speed, the rate hair was scarcely moving.

  “Six-seven minutes, at least. We’re hardly moving.”

  “Yeah, okay.

  Hal looked up from the sight into a sea of blackness from exploding cannon shells. The German batteries had all day to blaze away at them, and the closer they got to the target, the thicker was the flak. Their propellers were constantly tearing through drifting black patches as the German gunners zeroed in on the slow-moving B-17s. Each time a burst hit close, the ship lifted heavily from the concussion then settled back only to be rocked by another near burst.

  “Hey,” Ortiz called. “There goes the low lead.”

  Looking down and back through the Plexiglas, Hal saw that the right wing of the low squadron lead had been shot away, and the B-17 was in a death spiral. As he stared in fascination, their deputy lead took a hit in its number one engine, and the entire wing erupted in flames. Almost immediately, he saw forms leaving the ship and hurtling away into the void. One man pulled his ripcord too soon, and his chute fowled the stabilizer. When the ship slowly rolled onto its back and started its long dive, he was trailing behind, hooked like a fish, buffeting in its wind of death.

  Hal tore his eyes away, feeling sick with shock and anger. God! Where are you? How can you let this happen? How long? How much longer before they were all dead? On the bombsight, the indices were hardly moving, and now the flak was like a roiling black lake.

  “Luke,” Hal said on the intercom. “this isn’t going to work. We’ll never get there.”

  “Well, well,” O’Reilly said. “At least one of the Baileys is rational.”

  There was a sharp click on the intercom as Luke hit the button hard, then for a moment, there was no sound except the hum of the open circuit. When Luke did speak, it was not to Hal.

  “Cossel,” he said, “Take over the bombsight. Hal, get your dead ass out of there.”

  “Not me,” Cossel said, his voice flat even over the intercom. “I don’t know a thing about it.”

  “Damn it! Somebody’s got to run the damn thing. We didn’t come this far to dump on a friggin’ outhouse.”

  “I didn’t say I couldn’t handle the bomb run,” Hal said. “But I agree with O’Reilly. We’ll lose the whole damn group.”

  “Including us.” Polazzo echoed.

  “Shut up,” Luke said. “Hal, you get on that sight. If you miss those marshaling yards, I’ll have you court-martialed.”

  “It isn’t a question of missing. I’m already lined up on the target. But you can’t . . .”

  “God-damn-it! Get off the intercom. Open the bomb bay doors. Do your job!” The click on the intercom had a note of finality. If Luke was concerned about Betty Axley’s report, his anger had affected his judgment.

  Angrily Hal hit the door control handle. A moment later, the plane shuddered as the bomb bay doors ground open, the extra drag slowing them even more.

  It seemed impossible for the flak to grow any thicker. It was as though all the anti-aircraft guns in Germany were concentrating their fire on the group. Time after time, the big plane shuddered as flak ripped through the thin aluminum, searching for vital organs of ship and crew.

  “Hey!” It was MacGruder. “The number three in the right Squadron . . . he’s got a fire in the cockpit.”

  “There goes the low lead.” That was Polazzo. “He’s got no stabilizer.”

  O’Reilly was right; Luke had to be crazy, completely insane. But what good was it to know? Luke was in command. Where he went, they had to follow, although every man in the outfit must know by now that Luke was determined to make himself look good even if he lost the entire group. Like the charge of the light brigade, they didn’t have enough courage not to follow a mad leader, so they thundered into the valley of death, fighting to keep their place in the pack so that they could die beautifully. They refused to turn and run. They might all die, but they wouldn’t quit.

  “God-damn-it!” Willy Osborne screeched. “We only got three ships in the low squadron. How the hell much longer?”

  Hall glanced at the rate indice on the sight. Its movement was almost imperceptible. “Don’t ask,” he said.

  “Time goes by fast when you’re having fun,” O’Reilly said. “Right, lieutenant?”

  “If the truth were known,” Betty Axley said, her voice tight, “I would rather be somewhere else.”

  Hal’s gaze was suddenly drawn to the left as the big Fortress which had been sliding along less than fifty feet off their left wing blossom i
nto a fiery orange ball. It held its position for a moment, a flaming meteor drawn forward by four spinning propellers. Then it erupted into a violent black and orange geyser that rocked their plane and was gone.

  “That was Fox,” said a voice in Hal’s ears; he thought it was Cossel’s.

  “I hope they got lots of girls where he’s going,” Polazzo said.

  “They’ll have girls,” O’Reilly whispered. “And they’ll all be lovers.”

  “It’s finally over,” Hal said for a reason he could not name. “It’s over for him.”

  “Screw Fox,” Luke shouted. “Get back to work.”

  The big plane was pitching and rocking violently now as it fought to elude the searching black puffs with tiny red dots in the center, but the chief’s voice was calm. “Nothin’ to do, skipper. They ain’t gonna be no fighters crazy enough to fly in this shit. I might as well catch up on my sleep.”

  Luke laughed, and the sound was more frightening than his snarl. “Hell, yes,” he said. “Everybody, take a nap. The Baileys have got this thing hacked.”

  “Heaven help us common heroes,” O’Reilly said.

  “We’re getting clobbered back here,” Ortiz said, and there was panic in his voice. “I seen six get it so far.”

  Luke cursed. “How much longer?”

  Hal looked up from the eyepiece at the indice. It had barely moved from its last position. “Two minutes.”

  Luke cursed again. Hal glanced at his instruments and noted the way the airspeed was fluctuating, and the altimeter was registering changes of a hundred feet or more as the Fortress heaved and fell. “Can you give me a better platform?” he said to Luke. “I can’t hit anything this way.”

  “What the crap do you think I’m trying to do?” Luke gritted, and Hal could picture him working frantically at the four throttles, trying to maintain constant speed and altitude. The sweat would be running down his face, and his skin would be red, and his eyes burning with effort, but he would force the plane forward, and nothing could stop him . . . nothing.

  Then the plane heaved and shuddered violently. “Hey!” Willy Osborne’s voice was shrill. “We got hit in the waist. There’s a big hole right by . . . oh, my God! The ball’s comin’ loose. Oh, my God! I gotta get out. Oh, my . . .” His voice broke off abruptly, and, at the same instant, the plane lurched forward.