by Jim Shepard
“We’ll be routed through that part of the German fighter belt with the greatest density of units, all capable of immediate or near-immediate response.” Snowberry bit his lip and winced. The sound carried. “Now the German units likely to come into action first will be the Gruppen of Jagdeschwader 1 and JG 26 stationed in Holland and northern France. There’s also evidence of the recent movement of units into this area—JG 2 and JG 11. There’s further evidence that JG 3 was pulled recently from the Russian front. We haven’t been able to locate it.” Bryant swept his hair back with both hands, both palms. “Now we should expect trouble from these airfields: Woensdrecht. München-Gladbach. Deelen. Leeuwarden, and Schiphol. We believe they won’t be at full strength, and we believe they won’t be well coordinated. They’ll use up valuable flying time, besides, trying to establish a height advantage and an up-sun position for attack. Gunners should be ready for the head-on stuff, and the stuff out of the sun. And pilots remember: they always look for the group with the loosest formation. They look for the raggedy-ass guys. You fly like assholes and they’ll shoot you a few more.”
He paused, and a few people coughed. “The toughest opposition should be between here and here—the coast and a point halfway to the target. After that, you should run into only a few twin-engined jobs, night fighters pressed into day work. It’s hoped that the interior will be largely empty of fighters.”
Bryant and Lewis looked at one another in amazement.
“Sir?” someone asked. “Doesn’t anybody know?”
“Intelligence is sketchy on that score,” the major said. “All we have is our best guess.”
Lewis was in the blackest despair. “Shithouse mouse,” he said. “Look at that line. You know how many Gruppen that has to be? Every Kraut in the West has to have a shot at us. We’re going to fly over everyone but the Red Baron.”
“Now there’s plenty of fighter support, as far as that goes,” the major said. “Eight Spitfire squadrons from the RAF will take us as far as Antwerp and then turn us over to two P-47 groups that’ll take us all the way to Eupen.”
“All that way,” Lewis muttered. “Isn’t that a big deal.”
“They’ll pick us up around Eupen on the return. Questions?”
“What’re you worried about?” Piacenti whispered to Lewis. “We get fighter escort the whole way. Ours all the way to Eupen and theirs all the rest of the way.” Lewis snorted.
The room was quiet. The entire row of gunners ahead of Bryant had their arms crossed, and their heads sunk down into the fur collars of their jackets.
The major looked through his notes. “Because of the importance of the strike, we’ve ordered a maximum effort. That means whatever individual extra planes are available will be added to existing formations whenever possible. The availability status for the 1st Bombardment Wing, including our group, is 238 Forts. We’re planning on sending 231 of those.” The crews gave a surprised “whoa!” “And using the other seven as ‘air spares’ to replace those aircraft forced to turn back early on with mechanical problems.”
The formation and squadron position charts were then unveiled. There was a roar of disapproval. Their group was in the lead low position of the formation, which meant the lowest part of the front of the giant arrowhead the twelve groups and 231 planes would form in the sky. Lead low and lead high, because of the head-on nature of the German interceptor strategies, were the coffin corners.
The crews gradually stopped making noise and sank into a profound depression. “As you can see, we drew a hard ride,” the major said. He was clearly frustrated with the atmosphere. He continued with the route briefing, taking it in stages: from point A to point B, there were these things to consider. “Now from point E to point F,” he said, “the force—”
“Them that’s left,” Skrink or Strink said behind Bryant.
A different weather officer took over, poor Stormy left in the wings, even more useless than usual. Whether he was on someone’s shit list or this was just standard operating procedure for such a big mission, they didn’t know.
“You guys’ll recognize this,” the new officer said, pointing to the weather chart. “A low pressure system went through Denmark last night and is heading north and east up the Baltic. An associated cold front is swinging eastward right across the map, north to south. That’s why it’s so foggy right now.”
He hit the lights from a switch near the front and a projector beamed upon a screen to the left an oversimplified diagram of cumulus clouds piled layer upon layer. There were conflicting wind arrows with velocity figures aimed at one another and a series of temperature and visibility estimates at all possible flying altitudes. Hirsch scribbled everything down on a little white pad, though later they’d be picking up mimeographed summaries of all of this, and it looked less than helpful to begin with.
They were told that this mission would take place exactly one year after the first 8th Bomber Command mission, when twelve B-17’s had made the run to a marshaling yard at Rouen. The information was intended to boost morale. The men clapped glumly.
They were given some final instructions: Fly their formations like it was a Presidential Review. Conserve ammo. Fill holes that appear in the formations as quickly as possible. Keep your guns loaded and stay alert all the way back—remember the Ju88’s. The major finished up with a joke about Nazis slipping and sliding in droves for days after this on scattered ball bearings. Ball smiled. Lewis said, “That’s the Nazis, boy. Kings of comedy.”
They were given a final exhortation: If they were successful, what they had done would significantly shorten the war. The briefing ended.
Bryant fell in behind Gabriel filing out. Gabriel touched with his finger the small airplane representing their squadron on the squadron position chart, and traced a path closer to the defensive box of the others, like a small boy attempting voodoo. They were on the far end of the low group, a position they could safely term the worst draw of the worst draw. Their major hope, as far as Bryant understood it, was to minimize vulnerability by making sure the planes ahead of them and in the center maintained a tight formation. If the formation strung out, they would be left fat and inviting and alone on the extreme edge of the “wheel,” overworking their engines to hold position with each formation turn of two or three degrees.
Gabriel grabbed a guy ahead of him Bryant recognized as the pilot of Lucky Me! and warned him about dragging his ass this time. “You don’t stay tight, I’m gonna go around you,” he said. “You remember that.”
They filed by Stormy at the door and turned their watches over to him. Hirsch kept his and a spare besides. Stormy was visibly suffering. They understood he hurt but found it difficult, considering their situation, to generate major league sympathy. Snowberry gave him a tight smile and pumped his hand.
“I wish I could go instead of you guys,” Stormy said.
“I’m with you,” Snowberry said. Ball gave Stormy the last watch and he slipped it into an open spot on his arm, and ran his forefinger from wrist to elbow over watchbands.
“Boy, if we go down, Stormy’s rich,” Ball murmured, eyeing the arm over his shoulder.
“What’re you, kidding?” Hirsch said. “Some of those watches, I think they came out of cereal boxes.”
They picked up their exterior flight clothing, parachutes, and oxygen masks. They went to the armament shops to be issued their fifty-caliber guns. They looked their individual guns over with agitation, some breaking them down right there and reassembling them. Any jams or sticking, anything less than smooth operation, was cause for bitter arguments with the armorers. Bryant checked his on the canvas engine tarps the line crews had left on the grass beside the hardstand, remembering Favale and the Texas sun at Harlingen. There were fights of near-riot intensity over ammunition: everyone wanted as much as possible, to hell with conservation, and some crews were stealing from the next plane over if the other crew was late arriving. There were extra supplies coming by truck, they were assured, and it was up
to the individual captains to decide how much extra weight to take on. Gabriel decided by one-man committee on ten thousand rounds per station, which they loaded in huge wooden boxes all over the plane, like haphazard cargo. Bryant had expected Lewis to argue passionately for limitless ammo, but he had not.
There was no point, he explained, when Bryant asked about it. They were watching the crew of the plane next to them skirmish with another crew further down the flight line over a box of ammo left under the tail. Someone was brandishing a piece of cable like a whip and it snapped and cracked authentically. The plane they were fighting beneath, it occurred to Bryant, was startling and incontrovertible proof of a maximum effort: a real lemon that had aborted every mission flown so far, and had never dropped bombs on its target. It had been renamed No Way. They had assumed before it had appeared next to them looking shaky and ready to go that it was to be cannibalized for spare parts.
“We got the 2,780 blues,” Lewis said. He had apparently not finished with the topic of extra ammo; 2,780 was the number of gallons of fuel the B-17 held. “We got the fuel. We got the bombs. We got all this ammunition, we got the ten of us. Takeoff in that situation is a real interesting proposition. It’s like I strap twenty-seven gallons of fuel to your ass, fill your pockets with lead sinkers, and ask you to jump that fence.”
They watched Ball and Piacenti heft a box into the waist.
“No, I’m not gonna argue for more weight,” Lewis said. There was a crash from within and Piacenti said, “Lift it! Lift it, for Chrissakes!”
“Imagine all the bullets that are going to Schweinfurt?” Bryant said.
“I know.” Lewis headed for the hatch near the tail. “We may not hit any fighters, but we sure might knock a few cows silly.”
According to Hirsch it was coming up on 5:15 a.m. Bryant climbed aboard and went through the flight engineer’s panel with Tuliese, and then ran through his checks with Gabriel and Cooper. Finally there was nothing more to check, and Tuliese turned the plane reluctantly over to them and climbed out. Bryant could see him gazing back at Paper Doll like someone who’d left family heirlooms in the hands of vandals.
Ball and Lewis were up beside him, for no reason, it seemed, before going back to their stations. Ball hesitated at the catwalk over the bomb bay, waved, and held a thumbs-up signal. “I guess it’s like it’s in the hands of God, now,” he called.
“God didn’t pick Schweinfurt,” Lewis said. Ball stopped halfway across the catwalk and knitted his brows to indicate he hadn’t heard, and then his face brightened and he pretended he had, and he nodded.
“Idiot,” Lewis muttered. He shook Bryant’s hand. He crossed the catwalk to the radio room and shook Bean’s hand. Bean removed his headphones for the occasion but Lewis didn’t say anything, and disappeared through the door to the waist.
Bryant climbed into his turret sling for a quick test and raised his head into the Plexiglas. The black guns and the glass encased him like a pickle in a jar. He connected his interphone. Cooper was already checking the stations over it, and he gazed ahead at all the dark bustle. The clouds were surprisingly thick and low; it was like being in a vast room. He noticed without enjoyment the beauty of the lights of the trucks and the tower spindling out and intersecting, and the arrayed red and green lights of a runway full of B-17’s.
Willis Eddy seemed to be filing or sawing something up in the nose, the sound coming rhythmically over the interphone as a background to his voice. “Anything’s better than a month of going after U-boat pens,” he said. “The way I figure it. Solid concrete.”
“What are you doing?” Gabriel asked him. “What’s that noise?”
The noise stopped.
“0530,” Hirsch announced.
The ceiling had lowered still more. North of the tower the clouds were dropping and were now so low that the term “ceiling” seemed a little foolish.
“This is fog,” Eddy called from the bombardier’s perch. “What’re they talking about, no fog?”
“Stormy,” Bryant lamented. “What happened?”
“It’s always the weather nobody figures on,” Gabriel said. The lights all around them were reflecting in carnival-like patterns on the cloud wall above. The grayness drifted in to the point of easing No Way into a shadowy uncertainty beside them.
“We can get up in this,” Cooper said. “But I hate to think about assembly.”
“We try to assemble in this,” Lewis said from back in the tail, “we’re gonna have a few unplanned mergers.”
“It just came over,” Gabriel said. “We wait.”
They piled out and sat or lay around the hardstand on excess equipment. Bryant sat on a coil of rope. Snowberry sat on a squat twelve-gallon drum of hydraulic fluid. Ball settled in Indian style against an empty fifty-caliber box and was eating his candy. Piacenti wagged a finger and warned him he’d wish he had it later.
Audie appeared out of the fog, nosing her way over. Bryant said, “Hey, Audie, where you been?” and the dog’s tail wagged and she padded gingerly over to him. She lay down to wait with them, her muzzle tucked between her front paws. Bryant gave her one of his Baby Ruths. She chewed exaggeratedly, the caramel sticking to her molars.
Bean was down on his hands and knees as though he had lost something or was studying the surface of the hardstand. He threw up, bracing himself with his hands spread wide, and shuddering, and then made an effort to clean it up.
“National League,” Snowberry said. His hands were together between his knees and he was looking out toward Bryant. “Goobers Bratcher. Chops Broskie. Played for the Cards and Braves. Skeeter Scalzi. The Giants. Bunions Zeider. Spinach Melillo, Inky Strange. Podgie Weihe. Yam Yaryan.”
Bean rose and worked his way unsteadily down to the nose. He sat by himself.
“I think Bean asked that girl to marry him,” Piacenti theorized.
Lewis was flicking small stones into the mess Bean had made. “That’s one way to solve your problems. How do you know that?” They all gazed at Bean, a small Buddha out in the fog under the nose, crosslegged in his heavy jacket.
“He showed me. He gave her a ring I think he got at Woolworth’s. Probably turn her whole arm green.”
“Jeez,” Ball said, wrapping the end of his Oh Henry! and repocketing it. “Married. Jeez.”
They were silent. Someone slammed a hatch door violently way off in the fog.
“American League,” Snowberry said. “Inch Gleich. Bootnose Hoffman. Whoops Creeden. Boob McNair. Ping Bodie.”
“Ping Bodie,” Lewis said. “I remember Ping Bodie. Somebody once asked him what it was like rooming with Babe Ruth. He said, ‘I don’t room with Babe Ruth. I room with his suitcase.’ Ping Bodie.”
Bryant gave Audie another pat and got up and went over to Bean. He sat beside him and Bean nodded and rubbed an eye with the back of his hand. Bryant wondered whether or not to congratulate him. Bean was looking out into the fog, concentrating on something. “Habe,” he said. “Ich habe ein … injury,” he finally added. “I don’t remember the word for injury.”
“How you doing?” Bryant asked. “You all right?”
“Oh, I’m okay,” Bean said. He sounded tired and sad. “I just hate this waiting.”
“It stinks,” Bryant agreed. “You know what Lewis is always saying—as long as it keeps happening quickly.”
Bean seemed further discouraged and Bryant regretted bringing Lewis up.
“You know, in some way, this is just worse odds,” Bean said. “We’re all gonna die, you know, someday, and anything could happen. This is just worse odds.”
“That’s a good way of thinking about it,” Bryant said quietly.
“Except it doesn’t help,” Bean said.
“I have some extra candy,” Bryant said, although he didn’t. “Want some?”
Bean shook his head. “You know, I don’t really think about getting killed,” he said. “I’m scared of getting hurt. I can imagine disappearing, or not being around anymore. But I don’t
want to feel it. Imagine how some of those guys felt?”
“A lot of guys say that,” Bryant murmured. “Me, I worry about dying, too.”
“The one thing I can’t figure,” Bean said, “through all of this, is why Lewis signed up to go through it again. Even Lewis.”
Bryant thought about it. A jeep swept by, the mist soupy before its headlights. “He told me once he’d rather listen to us idiots talk about the war than the idiots back home,” he offered. “So I guess he wasn’t happy there.” It sounded obvious and lame.
“One night he had this horrible dream,” Bean said. “You know, like Snowberry has. We were alone in the hut, sacked out early. I woke him up. I asked him then. He said, ‘Harold, it’s a shithouse bind. You become a real American by fighting in another country.’ Then he tried to go back to sleep.”
“What’d he say after that?” Bryant said. “Was that it?”
“I said, ‘So then what?’” Bean continued. “And he said, ‘So then you lose that America.’”
Bryant looked back over his shoulder at Lewis. He was a ghostly form in the fog, part of the equipment he leaned against.
“Gabriel’s come out,” he said. “Something may be up.” He stood.
“Let me know,” Bean said. He continued to look off into the grayness. It was lightening, and closer to the ground visibility was better.
Back with the group Gabriel and Hirsch had more news. “It’s postponed again,” Gabriel said. “But we’re still on station.”
“What time is it?” Lewis asked.
“After six,” Hirsch said. He returned to the plane with Gabriel. Tuliese had come back and was poking distractedly at the number four engine from below.
Lewis resumed what he had evidently been talking about. “They want to pull off a big one. They need to pull off a big one. Put up or shut up time. I think it’s like they been comparing the losses to the accomplishments and we’re not doing so good. Maybe this whole idea of bombing during the day is hanging on this.”
