Suddenly he thought of Carol, and he turned abruptly and walked away, his head down, his mind far away. He had been unable to elicit a letter from her since the one in which she had declared their marriage was over. He had even tried telephoning, but the number had been disconnected. His father, Logan, had made several attempts to speak with her, but so far had been unsuccessful.
Of all the things that had happened to Clint Stuart, this had been the most difficult of all. Even though he faced death or dismemberment in the skies on a regular basis and had become inured to this, he could not ignore what was happening with this woman that he loved so dearly. As he walked along closing out the world about him, he seemed to see her face. He remembered the sweetness that was in her smile. He could almost feel the touch of her hands on his cheeks, for she had a way, when she kissed him, of putting each of her palms on the sides of his face lightly, gently, almost like a butterfly’s touch. The memories were bittersweet, and as the hot July sun began to beat down on the fields and the base, he sought desperately to find some reason for what had happened.
After walking aimlessly around the base, he decided that he would go out to the stream, some four miles away, and spend the afternoon fishing. He had done this before, and although he had not made any great catches, the quietness and the setting had reminded him of home. Attempting to throw off thoughts of Carol, he collected his long pole and fishing gear and walked out of the base shortly after one o’clock. The sun was warm on his face, and he began to perspire very quickly. He watched the cows as he walked along. He was interested in anything that had to do with farming. He’d had many conversations with the farmers of the region, going to visit with them, taking in their methods. The farms were very small compared to those in the States, and the English farmers were intently interested in what it was like to be in America.
At last he reached the small river that wound in a serpentine fashion between green fields. Selecting a spot on the bank, he baited his hook, tossed it out, then sat down to wait. The river produced mostly a small fish that the English called roach. He had tried to eat his first catch, and although people did eat them, it was generally agreed that if you liked the taste of old cotton, you might like roach well enough. But the grass was soft, and the wind was stirring on his cheeks. Far off he saw a flight of Thunderbolts, P-47s, clinging close to the curvature of the earth, headed on some mission to aid the bombers, he supposed.
For two hours he sat there, catching three roach and releasing them. They were not a fighting fish, and it was not exciting fishing. Finally he decided to move downstream. He followed the curving bank for almost a mile, his quick eyes taking in the minnows that formed in silvery, darting schools up close to the bank. He was totally aware of his world out-of-doors, having spent most of his life in the fields and forest. The peace of the countryside was soaking into him, driving away the constant tension of waiting for a burst of flak to destroy him or the cannon fire from a Focke-Wulf to blow him to death.
The river bent around a stand of trees that leaned over it, and he moved toward the shade, for the sun was hot indeed. As he stepped inside the embracing arm of the grove, he was startled when a man turned to face him. It was Adam.
“Why, Lieutenant,” Clint said at once. “I didn’t know you were here.”
Adam had put on his oldest uniform, stained with oil from the airplane and worn thin. A battered uniform cap was shoved back on his fair hair. “Hello, Clint. Come fishing?”
“Yes, Sir! Nothing doing though.”
“Never mind the ‘Sir.’ When we’re out here I guess we’re just cousins.” Adam shrugged. “I never did like the distinction between officers and enlisted men anyway.”
“Has to be, Adam,” Clint said, taking his cousin at his word. “Somebody has to be in command, and when the fighting starts there’s no time to decide that. It all has to be decided ahead of time.”
“That’s right; it does.” Adam was holding a fishing rod with a reel in his hand, and with an expert flick of his wrist, he sent the plug to the other side of the river. It landed within a foot of the bank, and he let it lie there for some five seconds, then gave it a twitch. Turning, he smiled and said, “I found out this is the way to catch fish. If you throw it out there and drag it in at once, nothing ever happens.”
“You’re right about that, Adam. I have caught many a bass back on Eleven Point River like that.”
Clint took a seat on an old log and continued to speak. “I guess the fish are gonna see if it’s edible or not, I don’t know. Anyway, what do you catch on one of those fancy reels?”
“Not much of anything. They say this river’s got pike in it up to ten pounds, but I’ve only caught two and neither of ’em much over a pound.”
Adam cast the repulsive looking bait over and over again, retrieving it in short spurts. They talked of past missions, of the strategy of the war. Adam paid more attention to this and, as an officer, had more information.
He sent the plug across the river in a smooth arc. “The thing is, there’s got to be an invasion of France. That’s the only way we’ll ever beat the Germans. We can pound their factories and rail yards, but sooner or later the ground troops are going to have to go in, infantry and tanks.”
“When do you figure that will be?”
Adam gave the rod a twitch. “I figure next year, and it’ll have to be launched from England. No other place to hit Germany except from this country. Probably land in France or somewhere, and those fellows that’ll cross the Channel will be sitting ducks if we don’t have air cover. Imagine being out there in a little boat with a Focke-Wulf coming at you with machine guns blazing and cannon fire bursting. They wouldn’t have a chance!”
“You’re right about that.” Clint shrugged his shoulders and looked out to where the plug was resting quietly on the smooth surface of the water. “I guess that means they’re going to expect the Air Corps to get command of the skies.”
“That’s right. We’re knocking down too few of their planes, and we don’t have enough bombers to knock out all their factories. I look for a big buildup any time now—more planes and crews—but until they get here, we’re going to be sent out deeper and deeper into Germany.”
“Well, that’s what we came for, I guess.”
“I guess!—” Suddenly the slender rod in his hand bent almost double, and the reel screamed. “Hey, I got one, Clint!” He began reeling in, but the fish was so large that it nearly ripped the line off of the reel. “I can’t hold him!”
“Let him take it! Just hold your thumb on there and slow him down. He’ll tire pretty soon.” Clint’s eyes glowed with excitement, and he leaped to his feet as he watched Adam struggle with the fish. “Careful now, that’s a good one.”
Adam played the fish until the line was almost exhausted on his reel, but finally the fish tired, and he began reeling it in slowly, hoping that the line wouldn’t break. He caught a glimpse of a silvery, slender body, and gasped, “It’s a monster, Clint!”
Clint said, “Don’t try to lift him up. You get him close, and I’ll pull him out so he won’t break the line!”
“Okay!”
Clint took off his boots and waded out into the water, watching carefully as the fish thrashed the surface, moving closer as Adam reeled him in. Reaching down in a swift gesture, he grabbed the fish in the middle, and with one quick twist, threw it up on the bank. “Watch him; don’t let him get back,” he yelled as he clambered back up on the bank.
Adam threw the rod down and went to place his foot on the fish. His heart was beating faster than it did in combat, and he turned and glanced at Clint, who’d come to stand beside him. “I never caught a fish that big!”
“Me either! Mean looking sucker isn’t he?” Clint answered, looking at the mouth full of teeth. “That’s a pike, though. They’re pretty good eating, I hear.”
“It’ll be enough for the whole crew,” Adam said. Cautiously he reached down and pulled the fish up, saying, “Why, he must weigh fi
fteen pounds. Look at the size of him!”
Clint had been happy that Adam had thought of the crew. “I’ll clean him myself.” And then he thought, Oh, the crew’s gone to London—won’t be back until Tuesday.
Adam was deflated. “Well, we’ll share it with the rest of the fellows.” He laughed shakily and said, “I go crazy every time I catch a fish.”
“So do I,” Clint grinned. The two men felt closer than they had since Adam had joined the group. They gathered their gear together and headed back toward the base, Clint carrying the fishing gear and Adam awkwardly carrying the huge pike as best he could. They laughed and relived the experience, then related other fishing tales.
When the camp came in view, Adam seemed to sober. “How come you didn’t go into London with the rest of the crew?”
“Not much for me there.”
Adam flashed a quick glance at his cousin and knew exactly what that meant. The rest of the crew, he understood, would be drinking and chasing women. He had developed a sincere admiration for Clint and knew that he was fortunate to have a combat engineer of his caliber. “How’s Carol?” he asked, glad that he had managed to remember her name. When Clint did not answer at once, he glanced at him and saw with some surprise that there was no smile on his companion’s face. “She’s not sick, is she?”
“Not-not that I know of.”
Instantly, Adam understood Clint’s reticence. “She not writing to you?”
“I guess this is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, Adam.”
“You want to talk about it?”
Strangely enough, Clint did want to talk about it. He had mentioned his problems to no one, but he saw Adam as family, and despite the fact that the lieutenant had been hard on the crew and had kept himself aloof, he felt the need to say something to someone. He began to speak awkwardly, stressing how Carol had depended on her father and that his death had been terrible for her. He defended her behavior, not once blaming her, and there was a sadness in his voice but no anger whatsoever.
Adam listened carefully and wondered if he could’ve handled the situation as well. He finally decided that he could not, and when it came time to separate he said, “I’m sorry to hear it, Clint. Don’t let it get you down—you can make it right when you get home.”
Adam did not feel this was the case, but it was all he could think of to say. After he left Clint to go to his own quarters, he shook his head and his lips tightened bitterly. “What kind of a woman would leave a man who’s risking his life every day? Probably run off with some other man. Couldn’t even wait until Clint got home,” he muttered. He was unhappy and miserable in his own life, and somehow Clint’s stability had been a help to him. A puzzled frown came to his face. I don’t see how he can be so calm about it. He’s hurting inside, anybody can see that. He really loves that woman, but he didn’t say one word against her—not one! As he moved toward the kitchen to deposit the fish, he wondered if he ever would be that kind of man.
Red Frazier had steady nerves and was a tough individual. He had manifested no fear at all in the ring, and his reputation as a fighter had been that he could take anything that was thrown at him. But as the weeks passed, and Red saw more and more Forts going down to earth bearing his fellow airmen, a gloom settled over him. During the trip to London, he had gotten blind drunk, and he stayed that way as long as possible. But when he had come back, he had discovered on the very next mission that somehow he had lost something. He did not call it a loss of courage, for it was not exactly that. He performed his duties as radio operator and waist gunner as well as ever, but inside something was wrong with him, and he struggled to keep the crew from finding him out. To him a loss of courage was the most shameful thing that could happen to a man, and if anything, he became louder and more aggressive than ever.
Late one afternoon he was talking to Clint, whom he trusted more than any man in the crew—or any other man he had ever known, for that matter. Something about the quiet steadiness of the tall engineer drew him, and the two had had several long talks together. Red had even gone to services twice at Clint’s insistence, although he laughed at himself for doing so.
As usual, the question of their odds for living through the war surfaced. Red actually brought it up, and he said, “You know, every time I fly another mission, my luck and chances for survival get a little bit less.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Well, the more raids you go on, the more the odds catch up with you.”
Clint had been through this before. He paid little attention himself to the twenty-five-mission goal and said, “You mean you think the odds on your twentieth mission will be twenty times more than on your first mission?”
“Sure. The odds stretch and stretch. That’s why so many men go down on their last two or three missions.”
Actually, Clint had noticed this, but he had tried to assuage Red’s doubts. He could see that the tough-faced radio operator was struggling inside, and he had privately decided that it was a struggle against God. “The way I see it,” he said easily, “the odds start all over every day on every mission.”
“Naw, that ain’t right. The more you fly, the closer you get to the breaking point—then bang! They just catch up with you!”
They argued for some time and finally Clint said, “Look, you take a pair of dice and you roll them, and the mathematical chance to get a seven or an eleven will repeat every time you throw those dice. It’s the same thing for a mission, Red. What’s already happened doesn’t count.”
“Oh, I think it does!”
“Look here. Every raid we learn something new. We get smarter, and we learn how to dodge around. We got the best pilot, I think, in the whole Eighth Air Force. We’re supposed to be a hard-luck crew, but look how we’ve made it when others who didn’t have our reputation aren’t with us anymore.”
Red shrugged his burly shoulders and scratched his cheek. He had not shaved, and his fingernails made a raspy sound on his tough beard. “I understand what you’re saying, but gamblers wouldn’t agree with you. There’s a law of chance somehow or other, doesn’t make any difference whether it’s cards or missions.”
Red sat silent, thinking hard, and Clint did not attempt to rush him. Clint mentioned the sermons that they had heard from the chaplain, saying in an offhand fashion, “That was an unusually good sermon the parson preached last Sunday.”
“I didn’t understand it. I’m too dumb to understand things like that.”
“You’re not dumb, Red, but I found out that smartness doesn’t have much to do with the way we find God.”
“How do you figure that?”
“There’s a verse in the Bible that says ‘The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God.’ That just means that there’s some things that you can learn by going to school. For instance, you had to learn how to operate that radio just by study. Anybody with a little aptitude can do that, but you can’t find God out that way because he’s not like a radio.”
“Well, how do you find him out then?”
“Different ways. The old preachers used to say we would never search for God if he hadn’t searched for us first.”
Red’s eyes narrowed. “What does that mean, Clint?”
“I think it means that we’ve gotten so rotten that we’re gonna go our own way if we’re left alone. I know I probably would have. Most of us would, I think, so God comes looking for us.”
“He hasn’t never come lookin’ for me!”
“I think he has, though you may not have noticed. Jesus said that he had come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Clint spoke easily and pulled a New Testament out of his pocket. “Here!” He turned the pages and said, “There, you see where I’ve got it underlined?”
“‘For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.’ I still don’t get it.”
“Red, it’s a big thing—bigger than anything in the world. In the Old Testament, you read how man was created pe
rfect, he lived in a perfect place, and yet, he didn’t stay there. Something happened to him—he went sour. That’s not the way the Bible describes it,” he grinned, “but that’s what it means. So, he’s cut off from God. Now, how does he get back again?”
“I don’t know. How does he?”
“Well, that’s what the New Testament is all about. Here, over here it says that Christ died to save sinners.”
Frazier listened intently as Clint moved from verse to verse, and finally he exclaimed, “Why, even I can see that, dumb as I am!”
“If you can see that you need God, then you’re not dumb. Lots of people don’t understand that,” Clint said gently.
“A man would be a fool if he didn’t know that he needs something.”
“You really need to get converted, as the Bible puts it.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that before, and that preacher last Sunday talked about being born again. I don’t get that, Clint. A man can’t be born but once.”
“Physically that’s true, but spiritually it’s not. He can be born in his heart. These bodies are going to die. If we don’t get killed on a raid, we may go home and get hit by a car. We’re all going to die; it’s just a matter of when. Inside, Red, our hearts can be changed, and we’ll never die in our spirits. But only Jesus can do that for you.”
“How can he do it, since he’s dead? He lived two thousand years ago; the preacher said that.”
“He came out of the tomb, and now he’s alive.” For some time the two men talked, and Clint urged Frazier to give his heart to Christ. For some time there was a struggle, for Frazier led a hard, sinful life. Finally, Clint saw a brokenness in him and said, “I don’t have all the answers, Red, but I’ve found Christ myself. I know he can forgive us and make us new inside. Are you willing to let him do that for you?”
Winds of Change Page 20
