Command Decision

by William Wister Haines

  With the departure of Dennis, Kane took a conscious grip on himself and turned from the window to Garnett, who was still staring out speechless at what he had seen.

  “Cliff, what will Washington think of this?”

  It took Cliff several seconds to clear that spectacle from his mind. When he had done it he measured his words gravely.

  “I wish they’d had some preparation, sir.”

  “I never dreamed Casey would be so… so impetuous.”

  “Can you reach Washington by telephone, sir?”

  “Not from here. I can by teleprinter from Joe Endicott’s division, forty miles from here. Cliff, you don’t think a… a misfortune now could really affect overall allocation, do you?”

  Garnett thought aloud: “Two successive loss records… 20 to 25 percent… with no warning…”

  “We’ll have claims though… records claims. The Chief loves those.”

  “I’m not thinking of our Chief, sir.”

  He was spared further consideration for the moment by Prescott, who hurried in, and by Brockhurst, who sauntered slowly after.

  “Sir, Brockie has some ideas I think you should hear.”

  “All right, Brockie. Tell us frankly.”

  Brockhurst studied Kane’s evident agitation and let him wait a little. He still resented his eviction from the military council. He had kept the secrets of bigger men than Kane and he was always infuriated by the army’s assumption that no one out of uniform was trustworthy.

  From Prescott he had learned all he needed to know about the Jenks case; but he was after bigger game. He needed Kane’s help and he wanted Kane to understand that he was going to help.

  “You want it rough or smooth, R. G.?” he asked quietly.

  “Let’s have it.”

  “Your neck’s out a foot.”

  “My neck…?”

  “It’s your baby unless you can buck it up to the Hemisphere Commander. You’ve got a hero to court-martial and you’ve got losses that’ll sound like Verdun in America. You’ve let this Secret Security Policy of yours keep the whole deal so dark it’s going to look like a cover for the worst blunder since Pearl Harbor. After all, the public makes these bombers and sends you these kids, it’s got a right to know…”

  He stopped as Dennis hurried in from the Ops room still smoldering with suppressed anger. The very force of it made even Kane glance at him apprehensively; his voice was oddly conciliatory.

  “Casey, Elmer here is giving us his reaction. I want you to hear it.”

  “He knows it,” said Brockhurst. “I tried to warn him that the press and public…”

  “Press and public be goddamned,” said Dennis. “Your syndicate would ambush a whole division for one headline and then print enough crocodile tears to keep us from ever making a useful attack again.”

  “When did we ever…?”

  “After Bremfurt. We needed a second attack to finish that job. By the time you got done with our losses and Washington got done explaining your insinuations, we got an order that it was politically impossible to attack the place again. Politically impossible! Some of our boys were killed today with cannon made at Bremfurt since that attack.”

  Brockhurst subsided. It was useless to explain now that he himself had been heartily ashamed of what his people had made of that unfortunate episode. Kane turned aside the Brigadier’s wrath.

  “Was that a group or a squadron, General?”

  “The 641st Group, sir. Some stragglers are still coming.”

  “How many?”

  “Three reported so far, sir.”

  They were all thinking the same thing. Kane said it.

  “Fourteen out of thirty-six.”

  “Thirty-four, sir; two aborted this morning.”

  Kane shuddered. “That’s over 50 percent.”

  “Nearly 59, sir,” said Major Prescott.

  “How about the other groups, General?”

  “Incomplete, so far, sir. Radio silence is still on except for serious cripples.”

  They regarded each other through a short, heavy silence. The vibrations of the homing Forts were almost imperceptible. Kane cleared his throat.

  “See if you can get anything more, will you, General?”

  Dennis understood that this second dismissal from his own office was less a rebuke than a precaution. He was not ashamed of having lost his temper at the miserable reporter. He knew that his self-control was always overtaxed while Ted was out. He welcomed the excuse to hurry into the Ops room where he could be that much nearer the teleprinter. Kane waited to speak until the door was closed behind Dennis.

  “Of course the other groups may not be so bad.”

  “They better not be,” said Brockhurst.

  “I’m afraid you’re right. I warned General Dennis…”

  “Dennis, hell! Do you think a brigadier’s a big enough burnt offering for a fiasco like this?”

  Brockhurst could see Garnett stiffen with disapproval at this but he didn’t care.

  “It’s not a fiasco, Brockie. If the public realized…”

  “I’m the public and I don’t realize a damned thing. Anything you say afterwards is just alibis, R. G.”

  “We’ll have claims, record claims.”

  “All smoke clouds look alike. When there isn’t any story…”

  Kane strode angrily to the wall and stripped back the curtain mask from the operational map. Garnett almost spoke in protest and then with a visible effort checked himself.

  “Story!” said Kane furiously. “Story? It’s the most audacious air operation in history. Two successive strikes at the most distant and dangerous targets ever attacked in daylight… the very guts and core of Germany’s new fighter program. Look at this!”

  He jabbed a savage finger into the red cross over Posenleben and then seizing a red crayon from the tray, made a heavy red cross through Schweinhafen.

  “Hold it,” said Brockhurst. “I want a shot of that.”

  “We’ll get you a clean map, Brockie,” said Major Prescott.

  “No. I want Kane himself, crossing it off…”

  His own interest had betrayed him. Covering his enthusiasm now he concluded slowly: “…this is, if I do the story.”

  “Now listen, Brockie…”

  “Or maybe there’s another story, an inside story that I don’t see. But I’d have too see it all, exclusively.”

  They all turned to see that Dennis had paused in the doorway, his eyes hard at the sight of the correspondent peering at the uncovered operational map. This time, however, he had his temper firmly in control.

  “Preliminary count thirty-five missing with one group unreported as yet, sir.”

  “About 32 per cent, sir,” said Major Prescott. And at that moment they were silenced by the rising vibrations of the last group of returning Fortresses.

  2

  Evans, waiting on call in the General’s anteroom, had decided it was about time to break up the meeting. Ordinarily he was delighted to doze at leisure through the brayings of the brass but today other considerations were stirring him. He needed freedom of action to remove the musette bag full of whiskey from the nonsecret filing cases in the crowded cubicle where he sat. Yet beyond even this consideration Evans found himself pondering whether the termination of the conference would be good for General Dennis. The discovery that he was concerned about the General’s welfare disturbed him.

  For the dozenth time he reassured himself indignantly that he didn’t give a damn what became of Dennis or any other general. If he didn’t like this Garnett he would move on. He had long since learned that, with reason, a resourceful man could do whatever he liked in the army.

  Regulars made a fetish of doing things they did not like in the name of duty, but Regulars liked being in the army and enjoyed kicking each other around. Evans felt that that was their business. Anyone who wanted to spend twenty or twenty-five years waiting for automatic promotions to change the ratio between the men he could boss and t
he men who could boss him was welcome to it.

  In civil life Evans had been a lineman. He had enjoyed beating the draft systematically until the morning after Pearl Harbor. That day the company superintendent had come out to the pole yard and told the men they were not to worry. Line work was a vital facet of national defense and the company would take care of all of them. That afternoon Evans enlisted.

  He had known that his occupational experience would lead him straight to the Signal Corps. He knew also that telephones were made for talking. Talking was not going to end this war and Evans had no intention of climbing poles for the government for sixty dollars a month. In the induction center he signed himself down as a clerk.

  In the next six months three lieutenants, two captains, and one major had eagerly approved his requests for transfer. The major had debated between approving his request to go to gunnery school and trying him for the willful mishandling of government records. But the unit had to make up a quota of volunteer gunners. He had made an excellent gunner and, during his tour, an exemplary soldier. He knew that on at least two occasions he personally had saved the government three hundred thousand dollars’ worth of airplane, once over Munster and once over the Channel.

  The lives of his fellow crew members did not enter this calculation because most of them had done as much for him at one time or another, which made it a private and human matter beyond the government’s province. He did feel, however, that two planes was a fair exchange for even his impressive ribbons. Many men had filed higher claims than his but Evans had observed that the ones who did were usually sent posthaste back to the States for teaching after their tours. He wanted no part of teaching. He considered that he and the government were now at honorable quits; they wouldn’t let him out of service of course but neither would they make him climb poles for sixty bucks a month, if he kept his neck in.

  Until today his post-tour life had been complicated by no deeper purpose than enjoying his leisure and keeping the Regulars in their place. Now against all reason and experience he found himself pondering whether or not it would help General Dennis to have him break up the jawing in the office.

  Crossing the anteroom toward the door, Evans too began to feel the rising roar of the last returning group. One of them, his experienced ears told him, was having a hell of a time. He stopped in his tracks, measuring the continuous increase and its internal communications carefully. The man had no more than two motors and was coming straight for them but he probably had altitude enough to clear the building. Evans hoped he had been able to get rid of his bombs.

  ***

  Inside the office Evans found all three Generals, the Major, and the correspondent grouped tensely as they peered out of the window. The noise of the oncoming planes made it useless to speak. Evans took up his position by the door.

  Dennis, even through the tension of his careful, habitual counting, had switched his eyes from their first glimpse of the crippled ship to the crash crews and ambulances waiting by the Ops tower. Everything was all right. The asbestos suits were buckled and steady streams of exhaust were pluming out of both vehicles. He saw that Major Dayhuff and Captain Getchell were both getting into the ambulance in white surgical coats and he made a mental note to speak to them that evening himself. He appreciated the instincts that made them both go rather than send their lieutenants but it was not their job.

  Across the field he saw the long line of the Group’s noncombat personnel lined up against the barrier ropes, the long dark blur of their fatigues broken here and there by the white of cooks and mess helpers. Every man among them knew, was watching and counting as tensely as he was.

  “…eighteen… twenty… twenty-one…” it looked a little better this time except for that one bad cripple and the fact that he still had not seen the uncorseted girl on the nose of the plane Ted was riding… “twenty-three…”

  “God, that one’s low!” said Garnett behind him.

  It was the cripple and even as he was trying to see whether the man had any undercarriage he could clearly hear Prescott’s fatuous remark.

  “When a crew finishes a tour, sir, they always give the field a good buzz in spite of rules.”

  The plane zoomed down at them, so low now that even the men across the field threw themselves on the ground. In the room, its sound had become a continuous thunder. Through it Dennis could hear the shouts of the men behind him and then the thudding of their bodies on the floor but he was scarcely aware of them. He was trying to measure the boy’s chances. As the plane cleared them with a crescendo of thunder perhaps two hundred feet above the building, Dennis saw that he had one sound motor and heard a second one catch with a rough, protesting response to the momentum of the zoom. It was skipping but as the noise receded Dennis could tell that the boy had recaptured some of the pull in it.

  Turning back now from the momentarily blank sky he observed that Kane, Garnett, Brockhurst, and Prescott were still trying to get their noses into the floorboards, their elbows drawn tightly over their ears. Beyond them Evans was regarding the spectacle with a sardonic smile that vanished slowly from his face as they began to peer up into the relative quiet of the plane’s receding thunder.

  “Colonel Martin’s group returning, sir,” said Evans dryly.

  Kane gathered himself first and jumped up. The others followed sheepishly, the more chagrined to realize that neither Dennis nor Evans had left his feet.

  “I’ll have that man tried,” said Kane. “After my orders about buzzing…”

  Dennis, his face glued to the window, had to speak over his shoulder.

  “He isn’t buzzing, sir. He’s in trouble.”

  They had gathered again behind him and he could hear their dismay as the plane came back into sight on a wide, approaching circle.

  “My God!” whispered Garnett. “Two feathered and one windmilling.”

  “Half the tail’s gone,” said Prescott.

  “How in God’s name is he turning it?” breathed Kane.

  Dennis himself didn’t know. He was flying it in with his own tendons now. He could feel them flexing and giving with the yawing erratic course of the ship, even though his mind knew that the boy up there probably didn’t have a quarter of his controls left. Incredibly, though, he had not only turned but was actually managing to lift it a little as the increase in the vibrations began to hammer them again.

  “Why don’t they bail out? She’s only salvage.”

  He felt a sudden fury that Garnett, of all people, should presume to question anything that boy was doing.

  “Probably wounded aboard,” he grunted.

  As if in confirmation they suddenly saw the red rockets flowering out behind her and then, from the left waistgate, three balls appeared against the blueness of the sky.

  “Look! They are bailing… two, three… look, they’re opening all right. Jesus! They didn’t have three hundred feet!” shouted Garnett.

  Dennis had felt with his whole body the lifting of the ship as those jumping figures lightened it. Now his tendons were taut again with the climbing curve that boy still, against all possibility, maintained. To the last possible second of the feud between gravity and momentum the boy held that bank. Then, as gravity won and the ship had to sag heavily back to level or spin in, he saw her settling in a smooth straight glide and realized that the pilot had succeeded in lining her up for the Number Two Strip with geometrical precision.

  “Good boy,” he breathed, “he’s going to try it.”

  She was so close now that they could plainly see her markings. As her last motor throttled down a little for the final shaky glide, the growling of the gear in the ambulance beside the Ops tower broke through the slackening volume of sound.

  “Urgent Virgin!” said Garnett.

  “Why, that’s Captain Jenks’s ship!” exclaimed Prescott.

  Her struggle was almost over now. Gravity was claiming her with harsh jerks that slewed her savagely from side to side against the failing resistance of momentum
and the clutching suction of the cannon wounds. It was one of these helpless, sidewise flutterings that suddenly showed Dennis the condition of her right wheel. He shouted.

  “Pick her up, boy! PICK HER UP!”

  He knew it was hopeless and knew that the boy himself must know it. He should be getting them away from the glass of the window but he stood immovable, watching. The Urgent Virgin seemed to settle very slowly now. With a final birdlike gentleness she leveled off perfectly just as the broken wheel strut touched down. Game to the last, she even bounced a little as the strut sheered off, but the lame motor would not respond this time and the last one could not do it. As if in slow motion she teetered a little twice more at the crest of her bounce and then, at a long final angle, plowed herself in. The ripping, tearing noises faded slowly into silence and then the detonation fluttered the maps tacked on the wall. Fragments appeared, arching lazily upward out of the expanding cloud of dust and smoke.

  Dennis made himself listen intently a second more but he could hear no screaming through the brief interval before the roaring motors of the crash truck and ambulance punctured the silence. He turned from the window, shoulders sagging limply, to find himself looking into the green fixity of Major Prescott’s face.

  “There’s another statistic for you, Major,” he said harshly.

  Haley appeared in the Ops room door.

  “Left main gas tank. Category E, sir.”

  “Can you get the others down here?”

  “We’re taking cripples on Strip One and sending everything with enough gas to the 641st. There’s lots of room over there now, sir.”

  “Any count on this gang yet?”

  “Twenty-eight now, sir. There may be stragglers.”

  He held Haley with his eyes, knowing it was no oversight which kept the Colonel silent now. Haley would have spoken at once if he had anything more to say. But Dennis could not help asking him.

  “Anything on Ted himself?”