“I have grown older and wiser, Dolan,” Bitter said.
“Tell me about the Limey broad with the marvelous breasts,” Dolan said. “She going to stay? How’d you talk Canidy out of his Packard?”
“Canidy wanted to impress a SHAEF admiral with the car,” Bitter said.
“G. G. Foster,” Dolan said. “He was a prick when he was a j.g. Watch out for that sonofabitch.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“He was nosing around,” Dolan said. “Treated me like a long-lost buddy. He thinks this war is between the Army and the Navy. He wanted me to be a spy for the good guys. I told him if I ever saw his ass around here again, I’d turn his ass in.”
"I had lunch with him today,” Bitter said.
“Did Canidy say anything to you about a place called Richodan?”
“He mentioned it in passing,” Bitter said.
“Pay attention, Commander Bitter,” Dolan said. “Very careful attention.”
“I read you loud and clear, Commander Dolan,” Bitter said.
Dolan punched him affectionately on the arm.
“You were telling me about the Limey sergeant with nice breasts,” he said.
“Canidy sent her to drive the car,” Bitter said. “And probably to report on what I said to Admiral Foster and vice versa. Is there some place we could put her up tonight, maybe for two nights?”
“You’ll be crowded, two to a GI cot,” Dolan said. “But sure.”
“Dolan,” Bitter snapped,“I’m not sleeping with her.”
“I thought you got shot in the knee,” Dolan said. “What the hell is the matter with you? That’s the best-looking Limey I’ve seen since I’ve been here.”
“For one thing, Dolan,” Bitter said. “I’m a married man. And for another, she’s a sergeant.”
“Oh, I see,” Dolan said, and smiled, and Bitter knew that Dolan thought he was a fool.
You can put an enlisted man in an officer’s uniform, Bitter thought self-righteously, but that doesn’t make him an officer.
“Come on in your office,” he said. “I’ve got some good bourbon.”
“I don’t think that’s my office, Dolan,” Bitter said. “I’m just here to look around.”
“Canidy said you would be around for a while,” Dolan said. “And you’re senior.”
It didn’t seem worth arguing about, and he didn’t think he should refuse the drink Dolan offered when he had ushered him into the small office. Dolan poured an inch of bourbon into two water glasses and handed one to Bitter.
“Welcome aboard, sir,” he said. He drank it down neat, then raised his voice and called out,“Go find Mr. Kennedy. Ask him to come meet the new skipper.”
"Who’s Kennedy?” Bitter asked.
“He’s the only original asshole I kept,” Dolan said, then corrected himself. “He was the only one of the originals who was not an asshole, I mean. That’s why I kept him. He’s a reservist, and he doesn’t have much time, but he’s a good man. And, considering the few hours he’s got, he’s a pretty good pilot.”
A few minutes later, Commander Bitter, watching Lieutenant Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr., USNR, through the hut window, saw that he was first and foremost a gentleman. Kennedy stopped by Sergeant Draper and asked at some length if he could be of some assistance to her. But finally he came into the hut.
“Joe,” Dolan said,“this is the Pentagon candy-ass Canidy sent us. He flew with Canidy and Douglass in the AVG. He got nine kills before he caught a slug.”
“I think maybe I better go out and come in again and report properly,” Kennedy said. “I thought I was being summoned to meet yet another of Dolan’s old salts for yet another tale of the Old Navy.”
“So far as you’re concerned, Lieutenant Kennedy, Commander Bitter is an old salt,” Dolan said.
Kennedy was unrepentant.
“In that case, I suggest we go splice the main brace before we chow down,” he said. “How’s that for old salt talk?”
“Remind you of anybody we know, Commander?” Dolan asked.
There was obvious affection between the two, Bitter saw. That spoke well for Kennedy. Dolan, like Canidy, liked few people.
“MIT, Mr. Kennedy?” Bitter asked. Kennedy had, like Canidy, a slight Massachusetts accent.
“Across the street,” Kennedy said. “Harvard.”
“Commander Dolan and I will try not to hold it against you,” Bitter said, offering his hand.
“I like your driver, Commander,” Kennedy said.
“So do I,” Bitter said, then realized he was sounding proprietary. Quickly he backed away from that. “Why don’t we go get a drink?”
[FOUR]
The 503rd Composite Squadron, the name assigned for bureaucratic purposes to the Aphrodite Project, had too few officers and men to justify its own mess hall. Thus the officers and men were fed in the messes that served the B-17 Heavy Bombardment Group based at Fersfield.
Dolan’s rank entitled him to a place at the senior officers’ table in the mess. But because of Kennedy, who would not be welcome at the senior officers’ table when they went to dinner, Dolan led them to a table in a corner.
Almost immediately, a very young-looking major and an even younger-looking lieutenant colonel, both wearing high-altitude sheepskins, joined them without invitation. The colonel turned his chair around and rested his arms on the back.
“Dolan,” the colonel said,“I’ve told you and told you that when you don’t eat with me, everybody thinks you’re mad at me.”
Dolan stood up.
“Colonel D’Angelo, this is Commander Bitter,” Dolan said. “Colonel D’Angelo is the Group Commander.”
“And the base commander, Dolan,” D’Angelo said. “Don’t forget that.”
“How do you do, sir?” Bitter said. “It was my intention to call on you in the morning.”
That isn’t exactly true, Bitter admitted, but he rationalized that by telling himself he probably would have thought of a courtesy call tomorrow.
“Danny Ester,” the major said, offering his hand. “I’m the exec.”
"Actually, Commander, we knew you were coming,” D’Angelo said. “General Lorimer called a while ago. He said three fascinating things about you: That you are riding in a Packard. That the Packard is driven by a gorgeous sergeant. And that you were a Flying Tiger.”
Bitter was uncomfortable.
“Guilty on all counts, sir,” he said.
“He also said I was to cooperate with you,” D’Angelo said. “Do you suppose he just said that? Or have you been carrying tales, Dolan?”
“No, sir,” Dolan said.
"Danny,” D’Angelo said,“I think it would be easier all around if you went and brought over the ‘Field Grade Officers’ sign than for us to change tables. ”
“Yes, sir,” the major said. He walked across the room, picked up the sign, and walked back with it. When the other officers saw what he was doing, there was laughter and applause. Major Ester turned and bowed deeply from the waist.
“‘Every cooperation,’” Colonel D’Angelo said, “and for that matter, the drinks I would love to have with you. But that’s out of the question for tonight. We’re scheduled for tomorrow. Unless there’s anything really important? ”
“That’s very kind of you, Colonel,” Bitter said,“but there’s nothing I can think of now. Tomorrow, Commander Dolan and Lieutenant Kennedy are going to show me around. When you get back, however, I would like to ask a favor.”
“Name it,” D’Angelo said.
“I’d like to go along on a training mission,” Bitter said. “I’ve got almost no experience with bombers. I’ve never even been inside a B-17.”
“You know how to fire a .50-caliber Browning, Commander?” Major Ester asked.
“Sure,” Bitter said.
“Unless you’ve got your heart set on a training mission, Commander,” Ester said,“there’s one way to get a hell of a lot of experience in a hurry. Come along with us in the mo
rning.”
“Wouldn’t I be in the way?”
“You’d replace one of the waist gunners,” Ester said.
Bitter was aware that everybody at the table was waiting for his response.
“I’d like that very much,” he said.
Actually, he didn’t want to go on a B-17 mission in the morning. And this bothered him a lot. He could already feel his stomach tighten with the fear.
“I’ll get you a copy of the Dash-One,” Colonel D’Angelo said. “You might want to glance through it later tonight.”
“Thank you,” Bitter said again and smiled at him, wondering if D’Angelo could see how frightened he was.
The manual, TM-B-17F-1 Operating Manual B-17F Aircraft, was produced before he left the officers’ mess.
On the way back to their area, Dolan said, “That was a shitty thing for that little shit to do to you. If I were you, I’d tell him to go fuck himself.”
“Meaning what?”
“You’ve paid your dues,” Dolan said. “You already know what it’s like to get shot at. You don’t have to get shot at while you’re taking a familiarization hop.”
“If I didn’t go, Dolan, you know what that little shit would start saying.”
“Fuck him! What do you care what he thinks?”
“I’ll go,” Bitter said. “Leave it at that.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” Dolan said.
There was something in Dolan’s tone that annoyed Bitter. And then he remembered what General Lorimer had told him about Colonel Stevens ordering Canidy grounded when he wanted to fly the photorecon mission.
“Dolan, you stay off the phone tonight,” Bitter said.
“What?”
“You know what I mean,” Bitter said.
“Shit,” Dolan said.
“‘Shit, sir,’ Commander.”
“Canidy’ll have my ass if you get yourself blown away,” Dolan said.
“And I’ll have your ass if I don’t make that flight tomorrow,” Bitter said.
When he got to the hut, he could see Sergeant Agnes Draper through a window. Inside, he found her room and knocked on the door. She answered it with her hair down, wearing a heavy, old, and unattractive bathrobe, obviously chosen for warmth, not style.
“You’ll have to amuse yourself tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll be spending the day with the base commander. You fixed all right for everything? Money, in particular?”
“Yes, thank you, I am.”
“Good night, then, Sergeant.”
“Good night, Commander,” she said.
He went to his room, arranged the light as best he could over the bunk, and started to read the manual. Compared to what he had been used to in the Navy and the AVG, it was astonishingly simple, like a children’s book. The manuals Bitter had used presumed that the reader was a qualified pilot with a fairly advanced knowledge of aerodynamics, physics, meteorology, and mathematics. The Dash-One for the B-17 presumed the opposite.
This one was closer to the owner’s manuals in glove compartments of new cars than anything else. He quickly grew bored with it and turned the light off. But he couldn’t sleep. And he decided he couldn’t just lie in the dark and worry. That made things worse. So he turned the light on again and read the Dash-One until his eyes teared.
At three o’clock in the morning, he was awakened by a sergeant who told him he was Colonel D’Angelo’s driver and that he had been sent to take him to the briefing. The sergeant was carrying an armful of high-altitude clothing, bulky, crudely made sheepskin trousers, jacket, boots, and helmet.
As he walked down the narrow aisle of the hut, somewhat awkwardly because of the boots, Sergeant Draper’s door opened and she looked out. Her heavy bathrobe was unfastened, and he could see her nipples standing up under her cotton nightgown.
“I don’t think going on a mission was quite what Dick had in mind for you, Commander,” Sergeant Draper said.
“Is that your concern, Sergeant?” Bitter snapped.
“I suppose not,” she said, taking his words as a question and not a reprimand.
He nodded curtly to her and went out to the jeep.
The briefing was well under way by the time D’Angelo’s sergeant led him to the briefing room. He immediately understood that he could not catch up by listening to the officer delivering the lecture, so he began to study the map covering the wall. He couldn’t read the name of either the target or the alternate from the map, but they were well inside Germany. The bomber path was jagged rather than in a straight line. He guessed this was in order to fly around known heavy antiaircraft installations.
And then the lieutenant colonel on the little stage was holding his pointer in both hands in front of him—like a cavalry officer’s riding crop, Bitter thought—and said: “That’s it, gentlemen. Good luck.”
D’Angelo came to him.
“Good morning, Commander,” he said.
“Good morning, sir,” he said.
“You’re going with Danny Ester,” D’Angelo said. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride out to the line.”
D’Angelo dropped him without a word under the nose of a B-17F sitting just outside its sandbag revetment. Bitter saw that it had been christened “Danny’s Darling.”
The enlisted members of the crew were already there beside a pile of parachutes. They were wearing unfastened sheepskin high-altitude gear.
“Good morning,” Bitter said.
The only response was a nod from one of them.
He took a closer look at “Danny’s Darling” itself. It was almost new, but there were seven bombs (each signifying a mission) and four swastikas (each signifying a confirmed downed German aircraft) painted on the fuselage just below and forward of the cockpit windshield. Just below these was a painting of a raven-haired, long-legged, hugely bosomed female. There were three large patches on the fuselage. The ship had been hit, and by something larger than machine-gun fire.
For the first time he remembered that he had not, as he had promised, written Sarah the moment he arrived in England. And he also realized that he was right now torn between two obligations: There would have been no question of flying a mission he had been ordered to fly. He was an officer. But he hadn’t been ordered aboard this B-17. As Sergeant Draper had pointed out, it “wasn’t what Canidy had in mind for him.” And if he got killed, that would deprive Joe of his father, as well as Sarah of her husband. Did he have any right to endanger his life when it affected the lives of other people? Did he really have to make this mission so as to better discharge his duty with the flying bombs, or was he simply being a romantic fool?
It was very easy for Ed Bitter to conclude that he was a professional warrior, and what professional warriors did was go to war. He put Joe and Sarah from his mind. Major Danny Ester and the officer crew arrived on a weapons carrier a few minutes later. Ester introduced him, then went through a perfunctory examination of the crew’s gear, and then ordered everybody aboard.
IX
[ONE]
Fersfield Army Air Corps Station 0415 Hours 10 January 1943
One of the crewmen helped Bitter put the Browning .50-caliber machine gun in its mount, then asked him if he had ever fired one before.
“Yes,” Bitter said.
That was not the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. But at Annapolis he had fired an air-cooled .30-caliber Browning machine gun. Functionally they were the same. And he’d fired enough rounds from the two fixed .50-caliber Brownings mounted in the nose of his Curtiss P-40 Warhawk in Burma and China to acquire some expertise with the trajectory and velocity of the bullet. The only difference was that if he had to fire this weapon, he would aim the weapon itself rather than the whole airplane. That would probably be a good deal easier.
The crewman took him at his word.
“Major Ester said when you were squared away, you could go up front,” the crewman said.
Bitter nodded and smiled. Then he heard the roar of a B-17 taking off. He looked ou
t the oblong window and saw a wildly painted B-17 just breaking ground. The fuselage and wings were painted bright yellow, and on the yellow background was painted a series of black triangles. The paint job obviously had been designed to make the aircraft extraordinarily visible, but aside from concluding that it was used in some sort of training, Bitter had no idea what it could be, or why a training aircraft should be permitted to be taking off at the same time as a bomber group.
He made his way forward and stood just behind the pilot’s and copilot’s seats, then looked at the controls and instrument panel. There was an awe-some array of instruments and levers, but that was because there were four engines, each requiring its own gauges and controls. The panel really wasn’t all that complicated. When the time came, he imagined he’d be able to make the transition into B-17s without much difficulty. An airplane was an airplane. Five or six hours in the air with a competent instructor, and he could be taught to fly a B-17.
He watched Major Danny Ester go through the checklist and get the engines started. When he decided he could do it without getting in the way, he asked him about the yellow B-17.
“Some people call it the Judas Sheep,” Ester said. “Because it leads the lambs to slaughter.”
“I don’t understand,” Bitter confessed.
“We use it to form up,” Ester told him, and then explained. Most B-17 pilots were pretty inexperienced. Only a very few of them had 300 hours in the air. Many of them had become aircraft commanders with no more than 150 hours total time, including their primary flight training. And there were very few really skilled navigators. So the wildly painted aircraft were used to form the squadrons once they were airborne. The Judas Sheep took off first and then flew in shallow climbing wide circles around the airbase. One by one, as the bombers of the mission rose, they formed up behind it. When all the aircraft were in the formation and at altitude, the Judas sheep took up the course the bombers were to take to France, or Germany, or wherever, and then dropped out of the formation. The system, Major Ester told Bitter, had greatly reduced in-flight collisions, which had caused nearly as many casualties as enemy fighters and antiaircraft.
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