Dream of Her Heart

by Shanna Hatfield

  “I have a feeling we’re not gonna dry out for a while,” Bud said as he stared out at the gray skies around them.

  “Look on the bright side,” Zane said, grinning at his friend. “We could be in the middle of a lightning storm, or maybe hail the size of baseballs.”

  “You got me there. That would be worse.” Bud sat forward and tapped on his window. “Down there. Isn’t that the runway?”

  “We should be coming right over it, Tex,” the navigator’s voice crackled across their radio system.

  “Copy that, Stretch. Over.” Zane brought the plane around and lined it up with the runway. Thanks to work done by troops stationed on the island before the Battle of the Coral Sea, there was a runway, barracks, and an established base there.

  In spite of the rain and low visibility, Zane made a perfect landing and brought the plane to a gentle stop. With their service crews still at sea, they took care of the plane, filled it with fuel, and went to find a place to bunk.

  The next morning, they took off on their first mission over the Guadalcanal area. They snapped photos of Japanese working on an airstrip there, and flew along the north coast, capturing images, per the general’s orders. The cameras were borrowed from the Navy and the photographer who rode along was a Marine, but they got the job done.

  The men got their first taste of fighter opposition when Zeros intercepted them during their flight. The Japanese planes opened fire, but Zane’s crew, along with the rest of the squadron on the mission, returned fire as they flew back toward the base.

  In the next few days, they hardly slept, either flying missions or servicing the Tornado. The landing strip had been hacked out of a swamp and was coated in red dust, high in iron oxide. The dust sifted through everything, including the filters on the plane, causing mechanical issues. The B-17s were doing well to fly six hours with a full load of oil.

  The rare moments Zane had to himself, his thoughts drifted to Billie. She’d been faithful in sending him letters when he was in Hawaii. With the new V-mail, he’d received at least a letter every week, sometimes two, and the news was never more than two weeks old. Other than her birthday present, he’d only managed to send her one letter before he’d been sent to the South Pacific. He hoped she’d understand the silence from him since he had no way to get her a letter right now. As it was, he had no idea when he’d receive mail, either.

  He’d brought along every note she’d written him and reread them until he had the words memorized. In the midnight darkness when sleep eluded him, he’d close his eyes, picture her smile, and pretend he could hear her voice as he replayed her letters in his mind. Sometimes, he’d even sleep with her scarf beneath his cheek, just to inhale the delightful scent of her.

  Relentless in his teasing, Bud continued to inform him he was far past smitten with Billie.

  Zane would have argued with him if the man hadn’t been right. Each letter he received from her only made him fall more in love with the woman. And that was something Zane had vowed he’d never do.

  He’d been married to his career for a long time and had no plans to change that. If he guessed correctly, Billie had no interest in marriage either. Yet, in spite of what his head knew, his heart yearned for her in ways he’d never imagined possible.

  Unable to remove her from his mind or untangle her from his heart, he shoved thoughts of her into a corner during the day so he could focus on his work.

  July was nearly at an end when Zane and the members of his squadron were given orders to report to a new base northeast of their current location that would put them closer to Guadalcanal.

  “Well, what kind of rinky-dink set up did they send us to, Tex?” Bud asked as they circled the newly-constructed runway on Espiritu Santo.

  The island had previously been a no-man’s land, but was positioned directly in the path of a possible thrust from the Solomons. A Navy admiral was adamant a base there would give them an advantage as the Americans took Guadalcanal away from the Japanese.

  Zane glanced down at the runway. Completed just days ago, the airstrip had been hacked out of the jungle and a coconut grove. At two hundred feet wide and several thousand feet long, crushed coral and a Marston mat provided the landing surface.

  “Have you landed on one of those before?” Bud asked, pointing to the long strip of interconnected metal that created the mat.

  Pierced steel planking consisting of steel strips punched with holes set in rows, along with a formation of U-shaped channels between the holes, comprised the mats. Marston mats had been developed to provide an almost instant place for military planes to land. Hooks were formed along one side of each piece with slots on the other edge that gave the mats the ability to connect. The hooks were held in place with steel clips and stakes were driven in at intervals to keep the assembly in place. The design of the mat, perforated and channeled, created strength and rigidity, as well as providing sufficient drainage which was necessary on the humid, damp islands where they were used with growing frequency.

  “I have a few times,” Zane said. He wholeheartedly agreed with Bud’s statement about it being a rinky-dink place, but refrained from saying anything. The base there was so new that barracks had not yet been established. In fact, it looked like not much of anything had been wrested from the jungle beyond a place to land and a spot to park the planes.

  Zane carefully set the plane down, noticing the revetments were barely deep enough to keep the Tornado’s nose off the runway and so narrow, he worried about taking out a tree with a wing tip.

  When his crew crawled inside the plane to sleep that night, Zane wondered what they’d been sent into. Even the colonel was asleep on the ground beneath a B-17 wing. No barracks, beds, or mess halls existed in this primitive place.

  Poor Smitty had screamed like a girl when he’d wandered off to take care of personal business and happened upon a snake bigger around than a three hundred pound pugilist’s hefty arm. They’d all run through the thick growth of jungle, expecting to find him being packed off by cannibals or eaten by a wild animal. Instead, Smitty stood with his pants around his ankles, frozen in place with a look of terror on his face as the snake lifted its head and stared at him from a few feet away. Bud had nearly laughed himself silly as the snake turned, as though dismissing Smitty as not worth his time, and slithered back into the jungle.

  Zane wouldn’t admit it, but he wasn’t any fonder of snakes than Smitty.

  The lack of service crews, and nearly everything else, left little time for worrying about their new base.

  The very next morning, they prepared to fly to Guadalcanal under the protection of bad weather. Zane and his crew, along with others from their squadron, dumped bombs from fourteen-thousand feet, striking at the landing strip. Others ravaged supply dumps at Lunga Point with the bombs they dropped. Little resistance met them, as though they caught the Japanese by surprise.

  By then, it was determined Lunga Point held the biggest concentration of supplies and personnel for the Japanese. It became the top priority to destroy. Daily, crews took full bomb loads from Espiritu Santo to Guadalcanal. They dropped them on nearby Tulagi, too, an island also under Japanese control.

  During those hectic, harrowing days, Zane had never longed so much for the ranch of his childhood with cattle as far as the eye could see. He’d be thrilled with a cactus or sagebrush, too. He never thought he’d wish for a day of dry heat, maybe with a hot wind blowing, but it sounded like a slice of heaven at that moment.

  Between the encroaching jungle, snakes and unfamiliar creepy-crawlies, and rain that turned the foot-deep black soil into a quagmire, he dreamed of his boyhood years on the ranch in Texas where the sun would beat down on the hard-baked earth.

  Smitty had complained he was going to start growing moss soon if they didn’t dry out and Zane didn’t think the scrappy little gunner was wrong. Even when it wasn’t raining, everything felt damp, and humid, and musty.

  The option of keeping dry, or rested, didn’t exist with t
heir limited supplies at Espiritu Santo. Everything, from clothing and food to fuel and housing had to be brought in by ship. Without fuel trucks or water carts, just servicing the planes proved unbelievably difficult. Steel drums of fuel were dumped over the side of a supply ship, floated ashore in nets, hand-rolled under trees and dispersed into smaller containers. These were rolled onto stands then emptied into tank wagons that serviced the B-17s.

  One early August day, during a driving, blinding rain storm, all available hands worked a bucket line for hours on end to put twenty-five thousand gallons of gasoline aboard the planes. Zane looked up from the line, wiping the water from his eyes, and saw both the colonel and brigadier general passing along buckets.

  When the crews finally took off in the early morning hours, a man stood beside each wing tip to guide pilots out to the short taxiway. Bottles of oil with wicks made of paper flickered along the runway to illuminate it while the headlights from a Jeep marked the end of the strip as they took flight, prepared to deliver more destruction to the Japs.

  In the past week, they’d dropped bomb loads on Japanese airfields, supply dumps, ships, docks, and troop positions with hardly any resistance, other than a few Zeros chasing them and anti-aircraft explosions from the ships that did no damage. While the bombers focused on destroying what they could from the air, Naval support moved in and Marines took to the ground on Guadalcanal and Tulagi.

  Zane felt sorry for the men at Guadalcanal, an island that appeared forgotten in time. A mixture of rain forests, stinking malaria-plagued swamps, thick grasslands and undergrowth, and steep, treacherous mountains made for round-the-clock challenges. The Marines quickly secured the airfield and sent out scouts to deduce what the Japanese who’d fled into the jungle had planned.

  Tulagi was a different story. The Japanese there offered stiff resistance, but the Marines prevailed and had the island completely under their control with nary a Japanese soldier left in a matter of days.

  Yet the battle was only beginning. The Japanese seemed to have unlimited resources as they snuck supplies to troops left on the islands, dropped bombs at night, and used the cover of darkness to harass American troops. But the Americans were determined to prevail.

  Zane and his crew, along with a handful of other planes, had been on a mission to drop bomb loads on an enemy carrier. The timing left them flying back to Espiritu Santo in the dark. The Tornado acted sluggish, so they’d fallen behind the rest of squadron as Zane babied the plane along.

  They hadn’t seen any enemy planes, so he wasn’t too worried about a group of Zeros getting the jump on them as they limped back to the airfield.

  As they flew through the dark sky, Zane thought of their struggling base. The supply situation on the island had become critical. No spare parts existed for broken turret doors. Regulators as well as flight and engine instruments were acting up. Some engines were so full of muck and mire, they necessitated constant engine changes.

  “What a beautiful day for an adventure,” Bud quipped with heavy sarcasm as the clouds thickened and it began to rain. “I bet we can look forward to another delicious meal of rice and canned meat for supper. If I never see another can of that stuff, I’ll be glad from now through the rest of eternity.” He glanced over at Zane. “Hey, speaking of beautiful adventures, how do you suppose that nurse of yours is getting along? Any chance she’ll get transferred overseas while you’re gone?”

  Zane hadn’t even given a thought to Billie leaving the states with the nurse’s corp. He thought most of the nurses at the hospital were civilian, but he didn’t know Billie’s status for a fact. What if she’d been sent off to a war zone? She could be on her way to one of the island bases or to a hospital in Europe right then and he’d have no idea how to find her.

  He hadn’t received a letter from her since he left Hawaii more than three weeks ago. A lifetime of experiences might have transpired the past month. She could be injured, taken captive, forced to…

  With effort, he shut down his derailing train of thought and glanced over at Bud. “She’s a civilian nurse, I think. There shouldn’t be an issue of her leaving.”

  Billie seemed to love her job at the hospital, so he couldn’t imagine her leaving. What she did for the men there, many of whom would never return to active duty, was essential and necessary. Even Rock was convinced without Billie’s care, he would have died before he had the chance to escape.

  “We got company, Tex,” the tail gunner’s voice crackled over the radio.

  “Copy that, J.J. Eyes wide open, men.” Zane cast a quick glimpse out the side window and thought he could see something approaching through the dark.

  “There’s one on our tail,” J.J. reported.

  “I’ve got one on my side,” the left waist gunner noted.

  “I can see one, too,” Smitty said.

  “Be ready to fight,” Zane said, pushing Texas Tornado to reach Espiritu Santo before the approaching Zeros shot them out of the sky.

  The crack of enemy fire burst around them and Zane felt the plane lurch as it was hit. His gunners opened fire and they watched a Zero burst into flames.

  Another exploded to their right, hit by Smitty.

  The men cheered as they pressed onward through the night sky.

  “They’re lighting a shuck and running, Tex,” the tail gunner said.

  “They’re scared of a Tornado sweeping them up and spitting them out,” Bud replied, grinning at Zane.

  Only Zane didn’t notice. He had a failing engine and he was sure the fuel tank had been hit, unless that gauge had suddenly malfunctioned.

  “How far are we from the airstrip?” he asked the navigator.

  “Should be coming up on our right, Tex.”

  The tropical rainstorm drenched the airfield with a consuming blackness that made it seem like they’d fallen into the inky depths of a bottomless well. Water poured from the skies over the plane, leaving visibility nearly nonexistent, especially without any illumination on the landing strip to light their way to the ground.

  “Tex?” Bud asked, his voice holding a note of worry and concern as their plane pitched to the right and they started losing elevation.

  “Brace yourselves!” Zane bellowed as he sent up prayers they’d survive the landing.

  The engines coughed, sputtered, then fell quiet. Eerie silence enfolded them as the ground rushed up with alarming speed. Zane banked hard to the left as a ball of flame shot up in front of him. Explosions burst around them and the sound of ripping metal screeched through the air along with the screams of his men.

  He glanced at Bud as the plane ripped apart then the darkness swallowed him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What’s that you got there, Klayne?” Billie asked as she happened upon the soldier as he rested in the courtyard. He’d walked out there on his own, as part of his therapy to strengthen his wounded leg. If all her patients were as determined as Sergeant Klayne Campbell, they’d have a lot fewer men in the hospital.

  His hand clenched around a bit of fabric as he shot a guarded look her direction.

  She raised her eyebrows in question, but didn’t move closer to where he sat on a bench in a patch of sunshine. Billie had no idea where the summer had gone. August would soon give way to September, bringing with it the first hints of autumn. She hadn’t heard a word from Zane since her birthday, but she’d continued writing to him twice a week. She’d even sent him a package a few weeks ago with more cookies, chewing gum, and a selection of magazines she thought he might enjoy.

  Instead of worrying about where he was, she sent up another prayer for his safekeeping and refocused her attention on the man sitting in front of her.

  With her best schoolmarm expression in place, she stared at Klayne until he shifted on the bench, like a misbehaving boy squirming to get out of his punishment.

  Finally, the man sighed and held out his hand.

  Billie looked at a woman’s handkerchief. It might have been lovely at one time, and had no d
oubt been white, but now it was gray, stained with spots of dried blood, the edges beginning to fray.

  “Does that belong to someone special?” she asked, noting the skilled embroidery work. Someone had gone to much effort to make it a thing of beauty, even if it now looked more like a rag.

  Klayne nodded. “My wife.”

  “Your wife?” Billie’s mouth dropped open in surprise and she had to force it shut. She spluttered a few minutes before she turned her disbelieving stare on Klayne. “You have a wife?”

  He nodded again.

  “Well, good golly, man! Do we need to notify her that you’re here? Do you want to write her a letter? What can I do to help?” Billie knew for a fact Klayne’s file didn’t list a wife. No relatives were listed and no one had been contacted on his behalf.