To Slip the Surly Bonds

by Chris Kennedy

  “I think about another hour or so will do it, Major,” Geiger allowed. He turned to his aide, and Connor didn’t miss the man’s subtle nod.

  While technically I don’t work for the man, I guess that’s my cue to follow orders.

  “Just how bad did the Aussies plaster that carrier anyway?” Connor asked. “I keep hearing different stories on the radio.”

  Geiger looked around. Satisfied no one was in ear shot, the general smiled. Connor suddenly felt a chill that had nothing to do with his fever.

  “They stopped her dead in her tracks,” Geiger said. “The Wasp’s strike finished her off.”

  “What happened with our folks?” Connor asked. He shook violently, feeling as if someone had placed a block of ice on his very soul. Geiger looked prepared to order him directly to the surgeon, but demurred.

  “Well, someone interfered with the Japanese’s Sunday Punch,” Geiger stated. “Which was a good thing, as Rear Admiral Kinkaid is an idiot. Hornet and Enterprise were both badly damaged, but they’ll probably survive.”

  Well looks like jumping that strike was worth it, Connor thought. Or, at least as worth it as losing four of my men could be.

  “At your request, I’m putting Captain McIntyre in for the Medal of Honor,” Geiger said. “General Vandegrift has heartily endorsed it.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Connor replied.

  “As for you, I think you’re going to be the first Army squadron commander to win a Navy Cross,” Geiger continued, causing Connor to look up in surprise.

  “Sir, I just did my job,” he said.

  “Major, you did a whole lot more than just your job,” Geiger replied. “You probably saved two carriers and thousands of men with your decisions. I’ll never say it again or acknowledge it in public, but your squadron may have saved this island.”

  “I think there’s an Australian who had a hand in it as well, Sir,” Connor replied.

  * * *

  Espiritu Santo

  1630 Local

  13 October 1942

  “You know, I think she likes you,” Major Leopold said, watching the slim French nurse walk out of the makeshift aid station. The building had formerly belonged to one of the island’s families before being appropriated to serve the war effort. Now it was the Australian forces’ rehabilitation center for men wounded badly enough to be off duty, but not so badly as to require further evacuation to the south.

  I’m not one to kiss and tell, mate, but I know she likes me, Ian thought. Not quite how I expected to use the French I learned during escape and evasion classes, but it works.

  “Noelle is just a friendly woman,” Ian replied with a smile. “I’m actually surprised they let you in here, given the rules your Vice Admiral Halsey put in place a couple weeks ago when he took over.”

  Leopold shrugged.

  “I have my ways,” he replied. “Most of them involving having been roommates with Lieutenant General Eichelberger’s aide and that man being on the island.”

  Ian raised an eyebrow.

  “General Eichelberger’s on the island?” Ian asked. “Color me surprised. I understand that Vice Admiral Ghormley and he never spoke. At least, that was the impression I got when they were briefing us on coming up here.”

  “I don’t follow the Navy’s dealings much,” Leopold allowed. “That also might be why Ghormley got fired.”

  “Ward, ATTENTION!”

  “At ease, at ease!” a male voice stated. Ian had just enough time to look at Major Leopold before the door to his own four bed ward opened.

  Well shit, I guess he is on the island, Ian thought, starting to struggle to his feet at Lieutenant General Robert Eichelberger strode into the room.

  “Please, please, don’t get up on my account,” the white-haired flag officer stated. He gave Major Leopold a puzzled smile.

  “Well, I wasn’t expecting to find you both together, but this does make my job somewhat easier,” Eichelberger said. Ian saw the man’s aide smile behind him as Major Leopold’s face briefly flashed realization.

  I think someone’s roommate was clearly a prankster, Ian thought.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” Ian said with a nod.

  “So, I’m told that the Marines are putting you in for a Navy Cross,” Lieutenant General Eichelberger said.

  Well that’s the first I’ve heard of it, Ian thought. Thankfully, the man continued.

  “Funny, I just happened to have seen a certain Vice Admiral, and he happened to have a supply of those things on hand.”

  The man reached behind him, taking the box his aide extended.

  “While Brigadier General Geiger thought that a Distinguished Flying Cross would be sufficient for you, Major Leopold,” Eichelberger continued, “thankfully the Marines still answer to the Navy.”

  Eichelberger took the first decoration out of the box. To Ian’s surprise, the man was very careful as he placed it on Ian’s tropical whites. For a moment, Ian thought of poor Davenport and the rest of his men. He fought back tears as he nodded at the general.

  “Thank you, Squadron Leader Montgomery, on behalf of a grateful American nation,” Eichelberger said. Ian nodded, too overcome by emotion to speak.

  “As for you, Leopold,” Eichelberger said. “Good work on being the first B-17 squadron to actually hit something.”

  Major Leopold colored slightly at that but maintained his bearing as Eichelberger pinned the Navy Cross on him. The general came to attention and saluted his subordinate, a gesture Leopold returned with clear surprise.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go talk with Vice Admiral Halsey about the next thing the Army can do to save the Navy’s ass,” Lieutenant General Eichelberger said. “That is, assuming he’s done ripping some poor rear admiral’s face off.”

  * * * * *

  Dedication

  To the men of the 67th Pursuit Squadron, U.S. Army Air Force. They did their best with what they had on Guadalcanal.

  * * * * *

  Author’s Note

  In our timeline, the Guadalcanal Campaign was a stubbornly fought series of engagements that resulted in a narrow American victory. Historically, General Hap Arnold, chief of the Army Air Forces, personally prevented any P-38s from being transferred to the Pacific Theater for most of 1942. When shipped, the fighters went to General MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific Theater command rather than to the Solomons. As part of that command, the Royal Australian Air Force employed its Beaufighters against the Japanese in the New Guinea area, not in the Solomons.

  Astute historians will note that the Battle of Savo Island is not as one-sided as it was historically. This is due to multiple sighting reports of Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa’s task force actually being relayed in a timely manner to USN forces rather than working through General MacArthur’s byzantine staff processes. Allied forces stymying Mikawa’s force, even at heavy losses, would have allowed for a more robust development of Henderson Field and the Marine perimeter. The “knock on” effects of this are subtly presented in the more robust strike capability available to the Cactus Air Force.

  * * * * *

  James Young Bio

  James Young holds a doctorate in U.S. History from Kansas State University and is a graduate of the United States Military Academy. Fiction is James’ first writing love, but he’s also dabbled in non-fiction with publications in the Journal of Military History and Proceedings to his credit. His current fiction series are the Usurper’s War (alternate history), Vergassy Chronicles (space opera), and Scythefall (apocalyptic fiction), all of which are available via Amazon. You can find him at his FB Page (https://www.facebook.com/ColfaxDen/), Twitter (@Youngblai), or by signing up for his mailing list on the front page of his blog (https://vergassy.com/).

  # # # # #

  Catching the Dark by Monalisa Foster

  Nachthexe. Nochnaya Ved’ma. Night Witch.

  Maria Mikhailovna Sutreva smiled at how poetic those words sounded. The Nazis were fascist bastards, but the epi
thet had a certain ring to it. More than a ring; it had power. A sense of satisfaction too. It meant that Maria and her sisters-in-arms had struck fear and inspired hatred in the enemies’ hearts. She leaned back in her office chair. Well-padded and comfortable, it creaked a bit, but she settled into its embrace. Steam wafted out of the cut crystal glasses set in their metal holders. Stirring the pillow-shaped tea strainer around in the hot water sent a few tiny tea leaves swirling around the sugar cube that was still dissolving in the center.

  She flipped to the next page of the intel report.

  Ha!

  According to the Nazis, the “Night Witches” were not just criminals sent to the front lines as punishment, but they were being given pills to give them a feline’s perfect night-vision. It was fantasy disguised as propaganda. The Nazis, already prone to superstition just like their Führer, needed a way to explain why they only heard the sounds of the wind whistling against the biplane’s bracing wires right before her crews dropped their bombs. And the soft “whooshing” did sound like a broomstick cutting through the air.

  Her unit’s official designation was the Tsarina’s Own Night Bomber Regiment. But “Night Witches” was oh-so-much better. She was of a mind to order that images of a witch riding her broom be painted on the sides of their Polikarpov U-2 biplanes. The rickety, wooden crop-dusters—which were more like coffins with wings than not—needed a little bit of panache. Decorating their U-2s would raise morale if nothing else.

  The sugar cube had dissolved. She sipped her tea and flipped to the next page. A dog-eared German newspaper clipping and its translation were held together with a prong fastener. An analyst had circled the relevant text with red ink: any German airman who downed one of the “Night Witches” would be automatically awarded the Iron Cross.

  Maria frowned; her previous amusement doused by what she knew of German culture. The Iron Cross was a huge motivator for Nazi troops.

  She set the report aside, uncapped her fountain pen and jotted down a note for the Tsarina’s public relations department, suggesting they use the Iron Cross incentive to play up the fear that the women of the Tsarina’s Own had inspired. They were all tools on two fronts—the war in the air and the war for the minds and hearts of the people. The irony of it stung Maria as she signed her name.

  Maria’s family had had to call in far too many political favors owed them and heap them atop her own impressive flying record to convince Tsarina Tatiana Nikolaevna Romanova to grant her an audience. Maria had not wasted her opportunity to make the case for forming an all-female regiment and letting them fly combat missions. The Tsarina had been more than reluctant. She had worked as a Red Cross nurse in the Great War. She knew what war did to soldiers and how much worse it could be for women. The Bolsheviks had made sure of that, and the Tsarina had never forgotten it. But ultimately, Maria pointing out the public relations coup had been the convincing factor.

  Russia had lost a lot of planes in Operation Barbarossa. Planes that had been caught on the ground. Russia was not short on pilots. She was short on aircraft. That’s how Maria’s unit ended up with U-2 biplanes. The U-2, already outdated by the time the war started, had been relegated to a training and crop-dusting role. It may have been made of linen and wood. It may have been so slow that newer, faster airplanes would stall out before they could match its speed, but the U-2 was maneuverable. Maria intended to take advantage of that maneuverability, that ability to turn on a razor’s edge. And there were thousands of U-2s spread throughout Russia. They could be spared.

  We will make do with what we have, she’d told the Tsarina. It’s what we do.

  As Maria dabbed at the fresh ink with a blotter her gaze fell on the framed picture of her brother, Andrei. It had been taken just before he’d joined the infantry. Fresh-faced, he smiled back at her in the way only a young man with the world at his feet could. Now he was gone, the world no longer at his feet, the future no longer before him. He was a pile of bones—if that—rotting under the soil of some battlefield, feeding her need for vengeance, sustaining her through the cold nights, the pain of loss, the rage she often needed to keep going.

  Most of the women in her unit had volunteered because they’d lost a brother or a sweetheart to the Nazis. It was loss that bound them together. When the darkness descended, they rose, shedding their femininity to become killing machines.

  Maria pulled Andrei’s picture to her chest, squeezing hard enough for the edges to dig into her palm, for the glass to make that soft, warning sound announcing its fragility. Andrei’s image, Andrei’s memory no longer made her cry. At first, she’d been grateful. Now, it terrified her. Someday the war would be over. Hitler would be dead. The Tsarina would put his head on a pike just like she had Lenin’s, Stalin’s, and Trotsky’s.

  On that day, Maria hoped she would be able weep for Andrei—for all Russians—once again.

  * * *

  Everyone thought that Junior Lieutenant Natalya Alexandrovna Ivanova was seventeen. She’d lied, making herself a year older because she didn’t think anyone would believe the number of hours on her flight log otherwise. Her family owned many parcels of land, mostly farms, and Natalya and her older sister had been taught to fly so they could dust the crops. At the small, rural flight school Natalya had found her calling, her reason for being. It was there she had learned that she could have the sky, the endless blue and the feeling of freedom that came with it.

  Crop-dusting wasn’t glamorous, but after the work was done, she was free to soar to her heart’s content. Sweet-talking Pápochka into the extra fuel for her thrill-flying hadn’t been particularly hard, especially as the youngest. He had given her wings and would not deny his little angel the use of them.

  The job of navigator wasn’t what Natalya had had in mind, but the pilot slots were full. At first, Natalya had been afraid that she’d overdone her “audition.” However, the evaluator, a middle-aged Georgian with thick sideburns, signed off and sent her to a training regiment with one piece of advice: follow the rules. She’d taken his advice to heart. There were far more volunteers than slots. She could behave if it meant she got to fly, because once the war had started, the price of fuel had soared and every precious drop was needed to help grow food.

  Following the rules had finally gotten her to the Tsaritsyn airdrome and into the Tsarina’s Own. She’d learned what to expect from her training regiment.

  It still hadn’t prepared her for this!

  Natalya stuck her gloved finger into one of the bullet holes peppering her Polikarpov’s canvas shell.

  “Thirty. Der’mo!”

  She kept counting even as the Sun rose over the windswept airfield.

  “Why do you do that?” Eva broke in sternly as she finished tying down the biplane.

  At twenty-three, Natalya’s pilot, Senior Lieutenant Eva Spozhnikova, was one of the oldest women of the Tsarina’s Own. Two weeks ago, after Eva had lost her navigator to anti-aircraft fire, they had been paired together, veteran and green, unproven recruit.

  “To know how often to thank God,” Natalya said. “Forty-one. Forty-two. Tvoyu mat.”

  Pain flickered in Eva’s eyes as she pulled off her sealskin cap and trudged off, shaking her head. Ever since Eva’s newborn daughter had died in the “morale bombing” of Tsaritsyn—along with her husband, parents, and siblings—she’d not just lost faith. She was angry with God. Probably angrier than she was with the Germans.

  Sometimes Natalya thought that the “tempering force” that was Eva was only there because of her need for revenge. The longer they flew, the more Germans they could kill. Ultimately that was everyone’s goal, but there was something in the cold efficiency of Eva’s flying, the fine line between risk and reward that made Natalya wonder what would happen if they were ever faced with a situation where their two lives could be traded for far more German deaths.

  How many Germans would she sacrifice us both to kill? What number would make her do it without hesitation?

  Natalya shudd
ered, suddenly cold despite the fur-lined flight jacket, the insulated coveralls, and the boots fit for an empress. What the Tsarina could not give them in aircraft, she had at least made up for by making sure they were well-dressed for their jobs. Of course, the clothes did not keep out all the cold, but were the difference between a little numbness and frostbite.

  Their two mechanics were already careening the motorized sardine-tin-on-wheels—what their American allies called a “Jeep”—onto the tarmac. Natalya shielded her eyes against the sunrise. Olga Tokranova’s blonde head barely peeked above the steering wheel as she swerved left and right again, going all the way off the tarmac with one set of wheels before pulling back onto it again. Still getting used to the steering wheel being on the left, their eighteen-year-old mechanic was more than a few centimeters shy of the height the Ford engineers had obviously had in mind for a driver. Her older sister Vera was in the passenger seat, holding on for dear life.

  Olga hit the brakes, kicking up a spray of dead weeds, dust and rocks, and leaving a streak of rubber two Jeep-lengths long. Tortured gears screamed in agony as she backed up like she was retreating from a German battalion, and came to a stop in a cloud of smoke and swirling debris. Vera stumbled out of the vehicle, her otherwise pale skin looking more like the vehicle’s green than not and glared at Olga.

  “That’s it,” Vera said, holding her forefinger out like a babushka threatening an errant grandchild. “No more driving for you.”