A Higher Call: An Incredible True Story of Combat and Chivalry in the War-Torn Skies of World War II (23 page)

SEVERAL MONTHS LATER, SEPTEMBER 1943, WEST TEXAS

U
NDER THE BURNING
late-day sun, a rider sat atop a horse on a dry desert hilltop. His horse began to whine and stir. The rider grabbed his wide-brimmed hat and doubled his grip on the reins. The crusty soil below the horse’s hooves reverberated. The rider looked upward as a B-17 thundered over him, its landing gear hanging down, its prop blast swirling the dust around him. Downhill from the rider, the bomber drifted onto the runway of the sprawling Army air base called Pyote Field, a place known through the Army Air Forces as “Rattlesnake Bomber Base.” The rider galloped away.
^*

The bomber’s tires hit the runway with a
chirp, chirp
. The plane rolled and slowed. Its engines blew a cloud of tan dust from the white runway. The bomber taxied behind a seemingly endless line of B-17s
parked wingtip to wingtip, opposite five hangars with elegantly arcing roofs.

At the bomber’s controls, Charlie leaned his head from his side window. Ground crewmen guided him with hand motions. The B-17 spun ninety degrees to park alongside the other bombers. Ground crewmen pulled up in two trucks with opens beds. They parked one truck at the bomber’s nose and another at its tail to pick up its crew. The mechanical ticking sound of hot metal echoed from beneath the plane’s wings. A hatch swung down beneath the bomber’s nose, the officers’ quarters. A canvas flight bag fell to the ground, followed by a parachute in its olive-colored padded pack. An officer in a green flying suit, his sleeves rolled back, dropped from the hatch, his heavy brown boots landing with a thud. He wore sunglasses and a crush cap with a gold eagle on the front. His cap was crumpled like a veteran’s even though the man had not yet been in combat. He was Charlie’s new navigator, Second Lieutenant Al “Doc” Sadok. Doc hailed from New York, although he looked like a Texan, with the face of the Marlboro man—a strong jaw, small nose, and permanent squint. Doc had been to college, unlike anyone else on the crew, and was well spoken and sometimes cocky. He rode in the nose of the bomber with the bombardier, Second Lieutenant Robert “Andy” Andrews, who dropped to the ground next.

Andy was a lanky kid from Alabama, with a narrow face, pointy ears, and slender dark eyes that sloped downward, giving him an analytical look. He followed Doc everywhere, although the two could not have been more different. Andy spoke with a soft Southern drawl, never drank, and never swore. Doc spoke with a Yankee twang and did not mind drinking and swearing. Andy was sensitive and Doc headstrong. But together in the bomber’s nose, they made a balanced team.

Charlie and Pinky were the last to swing from the hatch. At the rear of the bomber, Charlie’s gunners carried their machine guns and handed them up to ground crewmen who stood in a nearby truck bed.
Charlie had received his crew at Pyote two months earlier and had flown training missions with them every day since.

The mission that day had been like so many others. Charlie had followed Doc’s course out to the base’s thirteen-thousand-acre range, where Andy dropped practice bombs on white Xs that had been painted on the desert floor. All the while, the plane’s gunners shot at wooden targets that stood on bluffs.

Charlie’s top turret gunner, Sergeant Bertrund “Frenchy” Coulombe, approached him. Frenchy looked like a boxer, with eyebrows that hung low over his eyes, a small flat nose, and a square chin. Quiet and tough, Frenchy was from Massachusetts but often broke into a Creole-style French accent to amuse the crew. He doubled as the bomber’s flight engineer, the expert in the plane’s vital systems. He was also the gunners’ spokesman. Frenchy reported that the men were loaded up and ready to depart. Charlie gave his permission for them to leave.

By the plane’s nose, Doc and Andy waited in the truck. They helped Pinky aboard. Before Charlie could reach for a hand, a noise stopped him, the sputtering of engines twice as angry as those of his B-17. A green, cigar-shaped bomber on tricycle landing gear pulled up and parked alongside his B-17. The plane was a twin-engine B-26, the hot rod of all bombers. Charlie grinned. He had long wanted to fly a B-26.

The B-26’s massive four-blade prop wound to a halt. Charlie saw the short, stubby wings that made the B-26 dangerous to fly but capable of fighter-like speed. Her pilots referred to the B-26 by a variety of nicknames: “the Widow Maker,” “the Flying Prostitute,” “the B-Dash Crash,” and “the Baltimore Whore.” The Army preferred to call her “the Marauder.”

A pilot dropped from the B-26’s belly. He wore a seat-pack parachute and an unusual white flight helmet and blue coveralls. Charlie walked toward the B-26 to talk with him, then stopped in his tracks, jaw dropping. When the bomber’s pilot removed “his” helmet,
shoulder-length brown hair with curls tumbled forth. The pilot was a lady and a pretty one.
^*

Charlie turned mid step and scurried back to the truck. Leaning over the side railing, he asked his officers if they had seen what he had seen. They nodded eagerly. Charlie asked Pinky to come with him to talk to the girl. With a look of dread, Pinky shook his head. Charlie turned to Andy.

“No way, I’ll screw it up,” Andy said, unblinking. Andy and Pinky looked to Doc.

“Sure,” Doc said to Charlie. Charlie faked a smile. He had never planned on asking Doc. Charlie had heard Doc tell stories about his girlfriends. It seemed he had a few on every base he visited.

Sweat dripped from Charlie’s cap as he approached the female pilot. At his side, Doc chewed a toothpick. The female pilot turned to greet them with a friendly smile on her bright red lips. Her face was oval, her nose turned upward, and her dark eyes almost disappeared as she squinted.

“That’s a beautiful aircraft,” Charlie said. The girl asked Charlie and Doc if the B-17 was theirs. With a reluctant tone Charlie said it was.

“There’s nothing wrong with the Fortress,” the girl said cheerily. Looking back at her plane, she added, “The Marauder is no prize. With its small wing surface it has a tendency to drop out of the sky. On approach you’ve got to land really hot.” Charlie nodded, his eyes fixated on the enthusiasm that poured from her face.

“This is our skipper, Charlie Brown,” Doc said, introducing Charlie. Charlie chuckled, having forgotten such pleasantries. The girl wiped her hand on her flying suit then shook Charlie’s hand and Doc’s. She introduced herself as Marjorie Ketcham. She was a WASP based out of Romulus Army Air Field in Detroit. Charlie said he had
heard of the WASPs, the Women’s Air Force Service Pilots. They were the girls who flew planes from factories to training units and deployment points to free up male pilots for combat. Marjorie was a graduate of the first WASP class, “the trail blazers.”

Charlie asked Marjorie what planes were her favorites. She said she flew whatever the Ferry Command gave her but enjoyed big planes like C-47 transports and B-24 bombers. “The best part about flying them,” she said, “are the looks I get from my copilots when they discover they have to fly with a woman! Usually it’s a stare that says, ‘Oh my gosh, don’t tell me she is my pilot!’”

Charlie was about to ask how long Marjorie had been flying, when Doc cut in. He reminded Charlie that the crew was waiting and suggested that Charlie and Marjorie continue their chat at the officer’s club. Charlie agreed and looked to Marjorie.

“I’d enjoy that,” she said, smiling. She and Charlie made plans to meet that night.

As Charlie and Doc walked to the truck, Doc whispered, “You did good but you’ve got to hold something back to keep them coming back.” Charlie nodded but had no idea what Doc was talking about. At the truck Charlie climbed in first and gave Doc a hand up. Andy and Pinky tried to act like they had not been watching the two Casanovas. As the truck carried them away, Charlie looked back and saw Marjorie shoulder her parachute and walk toward a separate truck. Charlie could not stop smiling. He was very shy and a date was a rare thing for him. “Thanks Doc,” Charlie said. Doc just gave Charlie a nod then pulled his crush cap down over his eyes.

C
HARLIE AND
M
ARJORIE
sat at a table in the center of the dimly lit officer’s club. Charlie wore his green dress blazer and Marjorie a rich blue skirt and jacket with a gold pin affixed to either collar that spelled
WASP
. A row of pilots conversed loudly at the bar. Every time Charlie looked their way, he caught sets of eyes looking at Marjorie.

Over drinks, Charlie told Marjorie how nice she looked. She said with a laugh that her uniform had cost her a fortune. Charlie looked confused. “Doesn’t the military equip you?” he asked. Marjorie explained that WASPs were considered civil service employees and were required to buy their own uniforms. “If I die in a crash, my fellow WASPs will have to pass the hat to pay for my funeral,” Marjorie said. “Since I’m outside of the military, my coffin can’t even have an American flag on it.”

Charlie shook his head in disbelief. Marjorie said that some people considered WASPs to be expendable. “When I pick up a plane from a factory, it’s supposed to have been checked out and flown for fifteen minutes by a test pilot,” she said. “But due to the high volume of aircraft production, some test pilots just run the plane for fifteen minutes on the ground and log that as flight time. When we fly a new plane, often it’s for the very first time.”

Marjorie asked Charlie about himself, how old he was and where he was from. He said he was from Weston and told a white lie, that he was twenty-four. Marjorie groaned and said she was twenty-five. Charlie tried to look nonchalant. Really, he knew he could not tell her his true age or she would walk out. He was twenty. When he had been introduced to his crew, he had padded his age so his men would not panic at the notion of flying under a pilot so young. Now he had to stick to that story.

Charlie told Marjorie about his crew, whom he called his adopted family. He never made his men salute him on the ground, but in the air he made certain they knew who was in charge. “The other crews call us ‘the Quiet Ones,’ because we’ve never been caught doing anything out of line,” Charlie said. Marjorie told Charlie about her pilot class. Each of the twenty-three girls had been a civilian pilot with an average of one thousand hours of flight time before enlisting.

Charlie and Marjorie lost track of time until a waiter interrupted them and handed Charlie a folded note. Marjorie looked at Charlie with concern. He read the note aloud: “Crew in trouble—need help.
At the front door. Ecky.” Ecky was his tail gunner. Charlie cursed his luck. Marjorie faked a smile and told him to go look after his men. Charlie reluctantly stood to leave. He knew Marjorie would be laying over at Pyote for three more days, bringing the B-26’s new crew up to speed on the plane before returning to her base. He asked her if she would meet him at the O-Club the next night, at the same time.

“Yes,” she said with a good-natured grin. “If you get going!”

O
UTSIDE, UNDER THE
stars, Charlie found Sergeant Hugh “Ecky” Eckenrode pacing back and forth. Ecky was the crew’s shortest and quietest gunner, with a face that looked sad even when he was happy. Charlie and the rest of the crew loved Ecky, a simple kid from the hills of central Pennsylvania.

Ecky apologized for spoiling Charlie’s date but said that two of the crew—Blackie and Russian—had gotten into a brawl in town. The MPs were questioning them and going to lock them up. Charlie suspected Ecky was involved, because liquid drenched the front of his shirt and tie.

Ecky led Charlie toward an idling jeep. Charlie’s left waist gunner, Sergeant Lloyd Jennings, sat in the passenger’s seat, his head leaned back. He hopped from the vehicle and saluted when Charlie arrived. Of “the Quiet Ones,” Jennings took the prize for silence. His face was square and his chin thin. His tiny lips seldom parted, and when they did, he spoke in a proper, polite manner, as if he were British. Charlie saw that Jennings’s lip was bleeding and knew he must have caught a stray punch, because Jennings was a teetotaler and, like Ecky, the last person to fight back. “Lloyd, go get some ice on that,” Charlie told Jennings as he steered him out of his way. Jennings nodded and wandered off.