A Distant Melody

by Sarah Sundin

  “Hear that, Pete?” Walt asked. Pete was large, strong, and a medic to boot.

  “On my way.”

  Walt and Cracker exchanged a look—relief that their friends were alive, worry that they wouldn’t be alive when they reached Thurleigh, and fear that they’d never get back.

  “Fighters forming up. Four o’clock high, coming round for a pass,” Harry said from the waist, where he now had two guns to manage.

  They had no forward protection at all. Not only had they lost their nose gun, but their top turret gunner was occupied.

  “J.P., get up here,” Walt said.

  J.P. scrambled up the passageway, reconnected to the oxygen system, and entered his turret. “Here they come. Three bogies. Twelve o’clock high.”

  Walt stood his ground. Bomber Command frowned on evasive maneuvers, which broke up the formation and subjected everyone to danger.

  One, two Fw 190s let loose on Flossie. Bullets pierced the right wing between engines three and four. J.P., Harry, and Al returned fire.

  Harry whooped. “Got him!”

  Walt jiggled the controls—still responsive. Fuel gauges holding steady. Good thing those bullets hadn’t hit the control cables or fuel tanks.

  The third fighter dived in, its single propeller a shimmering disc. Tracer bullets flashed in an arc toward Flossie.

  “Get him.” Walt eyed the enemy as if his hands were on a gun instead of the control wheel.

  Black puff. The fighter exploded in a flurry of noise and metal and flame, nabbed by his own flak. Walt cheered.

  Then a chunk of wing soared toward Flossie, clipped the number three engine. The prop ripped off, cartwheeled, and struck the right cockpit window. Walt whipped his head away, flung up his hand, felt sharp bites in his right cheek above his oxygen mask.

  Cracker cried out. Walt snapped back to see Cracker clawing his face, his eyes.

  “Cracker! Cracker, you okay?”

  “Can’t see! Can’t see!”

  “Pete, we need you up here.” Walt huffed in frustration. Cracker needed help, and he couldn’t do anything, couldn’t leave the controls.

  Pete came up from the nose with a yellow oxygen bottle slung across his back. “Cracker, calm down. You’ll make it worse. Let me look.” He straddled the crawlway and grabbed Cracker’s hands in his fists.

  Cracker screamed.

  “J.P., hold him down. Let me get the glass out, get him some morphine.”

  Walt had to shut down engine three. On the center console he turned off the mixture control for number three, flipped off the ignition switch, shut the cowl flaps, and closed the throttle. All the while he braced himself against Cracker’s cries, Pete bumping into him, and the tinkle of bloody glass flung to the floor.

  “You’re gonna live, Cracker,” Pete said. “You’re gonna live, okay?”

  “I can’t see! How can I fly if I can’t see?”

  Pete glanced down at Walt and shook his head.

  Walt looked around. Forts falling, fighters swarming, flak exploding. One engine down and a gaping hole in the nose. With three officers out of action, Walt was on his own.

  Allie gazed down—down through a blue sky. A patchwork spread below her with tiny toy buildings, so much like the ride in the biplane. However, this time she didn’t feel peace and exhilaration, only dread gripping her heart.

  Little clouds floated about her, black clouds, and birds, a flock of birds, diving at her, spinning, spitting birds with cruel faces.

  Flossie lagged behind the group. Couldn’t be helped. Couldn’t keep up.

  The Luftwaffe had left to harass another squadron, but they’d be back when they saw stragglers. Walt glanced at the fuel and oil gauges. Once J.P. was done with first aid duties, he could transfer fuel out of engine three. If everything held, they’d make it back.

  Pete had taken Cracker back to the waist section, and J.P. had joined Bill in the nose. Grunts and shuffles rose from the passageway. Bill emerged with his arms hooked under Abe’s shoulders.

  “Abe’s the worse off,” Bill said. The bombardier lay unconscious against Bill’s chest with cuts to his forehead and bloody shredded flight gear.

  “Get him to the waist. Afraid you’ll be crowded back there.”

  Bill plunged backward with Abe’s limp body. J.P. came out next and grabbed Abe’s feet. Bill and J.P. huffed their way through the narrow door. In a few minutes, they returned for the injured navigator. Louis had fewer wounds. He groaned as Bill bumped him over the metal floor.

  That groan was the best sound Walt had heard in hours. “Hey, Fontaine, no sleeping on the job. Wake up and help me out here.”

  J.P. climbed out of the passageway and looked Walt in the eye for the first time in months. “Even if he comes to, he can’t help. Two broken arms, Pete said.”

  Flossie was a big plane to land with all this damage. Walt locked his gaze on his flight engineer. He’d let the kid down, but this was no time for resentment. “It’s you and me if we want to get out of this alive.”

  J.P.’s face twitched, but he nodded, and then he and Bill lugged Louis back to the waist section, now an infirmary.

  “We’ve got a visitor,” Mario said. “Seven o’clock high, coming forward.”

  The Fw 190 circled at a distance. He’d come in high and head-on where Flossie had no manned guns. Walt could make evasive maneuvers since he was alone, but while Flossie was sleek, she wasn’t built for a dogfight.

  “J.P.? Could use you up here.”

  “He’s coming, Preach,” Bill said.

  The German climbed for the attack. Walt felt like a sheriff in a Western who meets the villain in a showdown, reaches for his gun, and finds his holster empty.

  “Father in heaven, help me.” The fighter swooped down, and Walt put the B-17 into a climbing roll to the left.

  Bullets sprayed toward Flossie, clattered around in the nose compartment, blasted into the cockpit, shrieked past Walt, pounded into the bulkhead. Walt’s right arm snapped back—searing pain.

  “Take that,” Mario said. “Got his rudder. He’ll leave us alone now.”

  “Good,” Walt whispered, breath shallow, eyes fixed on three holes in the window in front of him. Missed him by inches. He turned, his motions slowed as if in a vat of syrup. Three holes punctured the bulkhead, right behind J.P.’s position.

  J.P. came through the door.

  “Good thing,” Walt said, his voice thin and foggy. “Good thing you weren’t here. You’d be dead.”

  J.P. didn’t look for proof. He stared at the floor.

  A red pool spread and froze on the olive drab floor. Walt laughed, a strange sound, from another room, another person. “Hydraulic fluid. Remember Al on our first mission? Not blood, hydraulic fluid.”

  “Novak. Your arm.”

  Walt looked to his right arm, to dripping red smears on his hand, his forearm, his elbow.

  J.P. pulled on his headset, his brown eyes wide. “Pete! Novak’s hit!”

  Walt clutched his arm. Pain wrenched through his arm, his body. A long, low moan convulsed its way out.

  39

  Allie woke with a start. What a terrifying dream. How could she have fallen asleep when she was supposed to be praying? Faint light illuminated the edges of the blackout curtains.

  Never before had her dreams been so vivid, so frightful. She folded back the covers and dropped to her knees on the rug beside her bed. “Oh Lord, he’s half a world away. He belongs to another woman, but you want me to pray for him, and I’ll do so.”

  Allie burrowed her forehead into the mattress and prayed harder than ever. She could feel her prayers swirl about her, mingle with the Holy Spirit, and waft across a continent and an ocean to the man she loved.

  “Come on, Preach, hold still. Gotta get the tourniquet on.”

  Walt screamed, and his body contorted, but he raised his arm to let Pete work. This was nothing, nothing like any pain he’d felt before, like hitting his funny bone, but it wouldn’t go away.


  Pete cut through the sleeve of Walt’s heavy B-3 flight jacket and eased it off his arm. The wool shirtsleeve, no longer olive drab, came off next. Pete wrapped a tourniquet above the elbow and bore down hard.

  Walt cried out.

  “Yeah, I know. We’ll get you a new jacket.”

  He tried to smile. “You’d better.”

  “The cold will do you good, help close up the wounds.”

  Somehow in his pain-wracked head he remembered hearing about a B-24 gunner in the 93rd Group whose backside had been filled with flak over Vegesack. The crew saved his life by sticking the injured part outside through a hole in the fuselage.

  Pete sprinkled sulphonamide powder on the wounds. “I’m ready for the morphine, J.P. Got it thawed?”

  J.P. sat in the copilot’s seat, his hands on the wheel. He reached inside his shirt and pulled out a syringe. “Yeah. Looks good.”

  “No morphine,” Walt said. “Gotta fly this plane.”

  Pete leveled clear blue eyes at Walt. “You can’t fly if you can’t sit still.”

  He groaned and nodded. “All right, but not too much.”

  “Yes, sir,” Pete said, but he sank the entire contents of the syringe into Walt’s upper arm.

  Walt sighed. Now he’d have to fight drowsiness as well as pain and blood loss. He was the only one left who could fly the ship. J.P. knew the mechanics of the bomber, but he’d never been behind the controls. Walt was the crew’s only hope.

  While Pete wrapped bandages around his elbow, forearm, and hand, Walt tried to engage his brain. It was 1430, an hour and a half past the target, and at least two hours from Thurleigh.

  “Well, Pete, Flossie should make it to England, although it’ll be tight. What about me? You think I can last two hours?”

  Pete’s pause didn’t assure him. “Sure. I just—just need to stop the blood loss.”

  Walt screwed his eyes shut. “We’ve got about half an hour to decide. That’s when we reach the Channel.” They were over the North Sea with the continent in sight to the south, and they could drift over land to bail out. It’d be a tough jump with four wounded men, two unconscious. Most would survive, although as prisoners of war.

  On the other hand, ditching a B-17 in the Channel was tough—not as bad as a B-24, which disintegrated when it hit the water—but still tough. Even if they got out of the plane in time, they had only a 28 percent chance of rescue, and the injured men wouldn’t last in the icy water.

  Before long, the morphine kicked in, and the pain lessened to a throbbing ache. The sensation of moving in syrup intensified. When he tried to look from the altimeter to the tachometers, his eyeballs took a second to respond.

  “Good news, Preach,” Pete said from back in the waist section. “Fontaine woke up. He wants to know what’s for breakfast.”

  Walt looked at J.P., who grinned back under his mask. “Tell him he has a choice between German rations or American.”

  “American.” Louis’s voice came through weakly. “Y’all know the Jerries won’t have Tabasco sauce.”

  “Okay, but we’re alone up here. I need your help to plot a course. Can you do that?”

  “Sure. Can’t write with these broken arms, but Bill can help.”

  “Anyone want to bail now?” Walt said. “Our chances aren’t great, and Abe would do better on land than in the water.”

  “Are you crazy?” Louis said. “He’s Jewish. Once he said he’d go down with the plane rather than face the Nazis.”

  “All right,” Walt said with a sigh. “Pray hard, everyone. ‘The Lord is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust.’” Psalm 18:2, inscribed on the nose of the B-17 and in Walt’s mind and heart.

  The continental coast faded behind him. He studied the fuel and oil gauges and made his fogged mind do the calculations. J.P. had transferred fuel from damaged engine number three to number one, but they needed every drop of fuel, every bit of airspeed.

  Walt took Flossie down to five hundred feet. “Okay, men, let’s lighten our load. Dump everything we don’t need anymore— oxygen equipment, masks. Bill, get rid of whatever radio equipment you can. We’re below German radar, so ditch the guns, the ammo. Al, go down into the nose, make sure that’s clear.”

  “Okay,” Al said. “But you ain’t gonna get me to dump my fifty cases of whiskey.”

  For a moment, laughter took Walt’s mind off his pain and his dilemma.

  While the crew heaved equipment out the hatches, Walt talked J.P. through landing. J.P. shook his head at the mass of instruments on the panel. “You have to stay awake. I can’t do this alone.”

  “I’m trying.” Walt blinked hard against the fatigue. “But if I don’t, you’re in charge.”

  J.P. frowned. “We can’t bail out over England. We’re too low for a jump. But I can’t land this plane.”

  “Don’t say that. I know you can.”

  J.P. shot him a skeptical look.

  Walt winced and shifted position on his seat-pack parachute. His arm lay numb, heavy, and icy in his lap. “Yes, I lied to you, and you have no idea how much I regret it, but I never lied about your ability. You’re one of the smartest, most capable men I’ve ever met, and I’d rather have you up here than half the commissioned pilots I know.”

  J.P. snorted and glanced out the window.

  This was why Walt would never lie again. “Listen, you have to admit I’ve never been a flatterer.”

  J.P. turned dark eyes to Walt and nodded.

  “So do it. Land this bird.”

  “I’d rather have you around to do it.” One side of his mouth hiked up, and Walt smiled at the glimmer of friendliness.

  “All clear down here,” Al called on the interphone from the nose.

  “Thanks. How’s the back, Bill?”

  “Stripped to the bones. The only dead weight remaining is Worley.”

  “Preach, tell Bill I heard that, and I’m coming to get him.”

  Walt laughed, a mistake, used up too much energy. His lips tingled, and his vision darkened. He dropped his head to the control wheel until the sensation passed.

  J.P. leaned over and tightened the tourniquet. “How are you doing?”

  “Okay.” He raised his head and looked to the gauges. They’d gained some airspeed. Good.

  “Two B-17s approaching,” Mario said from the tail. “Squadron letters VK—yeah, 303rd Group. Oh. And an escort.”

  “Spits? Thunderbolts?” They could guide Flossie to an airfield, or at least notify Air-Sea Rescue if she went down.

  “Um, no. Fw 190. Oh no. He changed course. Coming our way.”

  Allie’s alarm clock on the bedside table read seven-thirty. She needed to get dressed, take a long bus ride, and get to March Field by nine o’clock.

  Her legs were cramped from kneeling so long. She got up, winced at the pins and needles, took a step, and slipped on papers underfoot—Walt’s last letters. She retrieved them and crossed the cool hardwood floor to her desk.

  Walt’s portrait gazed at her, professionally stoic but good-natured. No wonder Emily fell for him. Allie added the letters to the thick stack in the top left drawer—for the last time. Something broke inside her.

  She picked up the tiny grand piano and her face crumpled— “Für Allie. W.J.N. ’42.” Although he didn’t love her, he’d been the dearest of friends.

  Allie stroked Flossie’s wooden cockpit. Her prayers hung unresolved, like six notes in a musical scale.

  What about the hospital?

  Allie sat at the desk and opened her Bible to Psalm 91. As a volunteer, she could be admonished but she couldn’t be fired.

  “No guns,” Walt whispered.

  “We’re dead,” J.P. said.

  Walt hated pessimism, but in this case it was warranted.

  “Six o’clock level,” Mario called.

  Attacking a Fort from the rear was suicidal, and the German was too far off to know they had ditched their guns. Either he was confi
dent or stupid.

  “He’s closing,” Mario said.

  Walt rolled to the right, but he was too low to dive. The left wing shook, and the fighter climbed up and away. Walt righted the plane. Oil pressure fell in number two, and the engine slowed, sputtered, and stopped. The prop windmilled, as useless as a child’s pinwheel.

  He had to get that prop feathered, couldn’t afford the drag.

  He ran through the feathering procedure but he didn’t know why he bothered. The Fw 190 cut a loop in front of him, then a graceful saddle-shaped chandelle. Showing off. The German circled Flossie clockwise and pulled alongside the cockpit on Walt’s side.

  What was he doing? Inspecting the damage? Fine. Maybe if he saw the shattered nose, the two dead engines, and the lack of guns, he’d let them die of their own accord. No need to finish them off.

  The pilot flipped up his goggles, squinted at Flossie’s nose, and pulled off his oxygen mask. The man had a square chin and wide-set eyes, and his lips moved as if reading something out loud. Strange that the enemy was human.

  Walt scanned the Fw 190’s yellow nose, the black cross on the fuselage, and twenty hash marks on the rudder. Swell, an ace.

  “Hey, Preach,” Mario called. “I’m up in the waist. Cracker’s pistol! I’ve got Cracker’s pistol. I can get a shot in.”

  “Wait, no! Hold your fire.” Walt whipped his gaze back to the Luftwaffe pilot, still moving his lips. He was reading the verse on Walt’s plane. “Dear Lord, help him translate.”

  “Preach, have you lost your mind? You know I’m a good shot. I can get him.”

  “Tagger, no. That’s an order.” He met the eyes of the enemy. With his left hand he brought his shattered right arm up in a salute, biting back a scream from the pain that shot through him.

  The German nodded and raised a traditional military salute, not a stiff-armed “Heil Hitler” salute. Then the fighter wheeled away.

  “He’s gone! He’s really gone,” Harry said from the waist. “What happened?”

  “We’re not worth the ammo.” Cracker’s voice was feeble.

  “No,” J.P. said, eyes on Walt. “It was the Bible verse— Novak’s Bible verse. He read it and he left.”