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Authors: Dan Verner

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On Wings of the Morning

BOOK: On Wings of the Morning
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Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Flying—July, 1928

Chapter 2

Lessons: October, 1931

Chapter 3

A Change Comes to Pioneer Lake—August, 1934

Chapter 4

Pioneer Lake Airport—September, 1934

Chapter 5

High School Days—November, 1935

Chapter 6

Hidden Talent—April, 1936

Chapter 7

Flight Lessons—May, 1936

Chapter 8

Solo—September, 1936

Chapter 9

The End of High School—May, 1938

Chapter 10

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors—July, 1938

Chapter 11

Nazis and Spies—March, 1939

Chapter 12

Adjustments—June, 1939

Chapter 13

War—September, 1939

Chapter 14

Pitched Battles—1940

Chapter 15

Remember Pearl Harbor—December, 1941

Chapter 16

Last Days—March, 1942

Chapter 17

Basic—late March, 1942

Chapter 18

Advanced Basic—June, 1942

Chapter 19

Primary Flight Training—September, 1942

Chapter 20

Basic Flight training—December, 1942

Chapter 21

Advanced Flight Training—March, 1943

Chapter 22

Champaign-Urbana—June, 1943

Chapter 23

Intermezzo—July, 1943

Chapter 24

Across the Pond—August, 1943

Chapter 25

Set to Go—Mid-September, 1943

Chapter 26

First Blood—Late September, 1943

Chapter 27

Sweet Alice—Early October

Chapter 28

Building Time—Early February, 1944

Chapter 28

Day In and Day Out—Late February, 1944

Chapter 29

Come Live with Me and Be My Love—Mid-March, 1944

Chapter 30

Mission 23: 0603 hours Zulu, Late March, 1944

Chapter 31

Into the Mix—1027 hours Zulu

Chapter 32

Falling Fast—1227 hours Zulu

Chapter 33

The White Room

Chapter 34

The Burn Unit—April, 1944

Chapter 35

Conversations—April 8, 1944

Chapter 36

May 15, 1944

Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree with Anyone Else But Me

Chapter 37

Going Home—Late July, 1944

Chapter 38

Fall and Winter—1944-45

Chapter 39

A Letter Arrives—February, 1945

Chapter 40

A Chance Encounter—early March, 1945

Chapter 41

Teach Me Tonight—Late March, 1945

Chapter 42

Unexpected News—Early April, 1945

Chapter 43

Life Goes On—May, 1945

Chapter 44

War’s End—August, 1945

Chapter 45

Northwest Airlines—November, 1945

Chapter 46

Serendipity—January, 1946

Chapter 47

M & M Airlines—June, 1946

Chapter 48

On the Wings of Eagles—December 14, 1946

Chapter 49

Flying—December, 1946

Acknowledgements

About the Author

On Wimgs of the Morning

By Dan Verner

Copyright © 2013 by Dan Verner

Cover Copyright © 2013 by eLectio Publishing

 

The author is hereby established as the sole holder of the copyright. Either the publisher (eLectio Publishing) or author may enforce copyrights to the fullest extent.

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold, reproduced or transmitted by any means in any form or given away to other people without specific permission from the author and/or publisher. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please return it to your eBook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

This eBook is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

 

 

eLectio Publishing wishes to thank the following people who helped make these publications possible through their generous contributions:

Chuck & Connie Greever

Jay Hartman

Darrel & Kimberly Hathcock

Tamera Jahnke

Amanda Lynch

Pamela Minnick

James & Andrea Norby

Gwendolyn Pitts

Margie Quillen

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Chapter 1
Flying—July, 1928

Otto was flying. Seated erect in the co-pilot’s seat, he rested his left hand loosely on the throttles of the Ryan twin, peering into the darkness of the Pacific night. He caught flashes of lightning among the towering thunderheads, which illuminated the biggest storm cells well enough for him to steer away from them.

In the pilot’s seat, Colonel Charles Lindbergh slept, exhausted from preflight preparations and rounds of interviews and picture sessions with the international press eager to get the story of the most famous aviator in the world and his attempt to cross the Pacific. This time Lindbergh was in a twin engine craft, and this time he had a co-pilot. Otto smiled as he remembered the questions about his qualifications.

“Colonel Lindberg, why are you taking along an eight-year-old co-pilot?”

Lindberg fixed the reporter with his eagle eye. “Because Otto Kerchner is the best pilot available to help me make this historic trip.”

That silenced all questions. There was only the pop and flare of flash bulbs as the photographers took pictures of the two aviators.

A close cloud-to-cloud lightning flash brought Otto back to the present. He must maintain his alertness. Colonel Lindberg depended on him, and he would not fail.

“Otto! Otto!”

Someone called his name in a heavy German accent. He glanced over his shoulder down the fuselage filled with the giant fuel tanks which kept the twin Wright Cyclone radials running at full bore. There was no one there.

“Otto! Otto Kerchner!”

The voice came from somewhere below him, but that was impossible. There were only thousands of feet of turbulent air and storm down there. No human being could be suspended below their racing aircraft.

“Otto! Answer me! It is your vater!”

The night sky through the windscreen wavered and disappeared, replaced by the dusty dimness of a barn hay loft, illuminated by shafts of late afternoon sunlight. Otto knew where he was. He was on his father’s farm, hiding from the chores he detested, reading in the loft about his hero Charles Lindbergh. He must have been dreaming about flying with “Lucky Lindy.” He had to answer his father and quickly, or his father would take his books away from him.

“Ja, Papa, I am in the hayloft,” he called.

“Vell, come down here, you lazy kinder. There is much for us to do!”

Otto sighed, and with his book in his hand, leaped to his feet and ran the short distance to the edge of the loft. He launched himself into the air. He was flying once again. At least for a while.

Otto had jumped from the hay loft dozens of times before. He had not counted on the floor of the barn, packed by thousands of cattle hooves, being harder than usual because of the drought. It was, in fact, like concrete.

He landed with one leg extended and both heard and felt it break. Something like an electric shock ran up his broken leg and he thought he was going to faint for an instant. The shock was like the one he received when he moistened his fingertips and stuck them on the terminals of the battery that powered their radio, only much, much worse. He lay there, unable to move, almost unable to breathe.

His father ran over from the barnyard where he had been standing, calling to Otto. He knelt by his son, but he knew from his service in the German army during the Great War that the leg was broken. He held Otto down as the shock began to wear off, and the boy started squirming.

“Gott in Himmel,
Otto, how many times have I told you not to jump out of the hayloft? You’ve broken your leg. Some help you’ll be now! MARIA! MATA!” he screamed at the top of his lungs. “It’s Otto! He has broken his leg. Come quick!”

Otto’s mother and sister came on a run, his mother dropping to her knees as she started to cradle her boy. Hans shoved her back. “No, don’t move him until I immobilize the leg. Mata, go tear a board off the fence! Maria, go get some strips of cloth and then bring the truck around. This will require a doctor.”

Otto lay there, staring up at the sky. His father put a hand on his shoulder. “The only thing we have to give you is whiskey and I can’t give that to a child. Doctor Carter will have something for the pain.”

Mata returned, holding one of the fence pickets about the same time her mother arrived carrying strips of cloth. Maria dropped them at Hans’ feet and tore off for the Model T parked at the side of the garage. She barely knew how to drive, but Hans had showed her how to crank the engine without breaking her arm or thumb. She set the spark and the throttle, ran to the front of the truck, pulled the choke wire and then gave the crank protruding from the radiator a half turn. The engine caught, and she leaped for the driver’s seat, retarding the spark and the throttle. She put the truck into gear and slowly pulled it near Otto and Hans. Mata stood there, wringing her hands, almost in tears.

BOOK: On Wings of the Morning
8.75Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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