Scareforce (15 page)

It was kind of like the cockroach of the air. No matter how many times you stepped on it, it just kept coming back for more.

Everyone on the crew got to know the major. He always showed up when everything got darkest. He was kind of like our own personal
silver lining.

He was known by all the bomber crews as “Dad” because on the radio he referred to everyone as “Son.” It was getting to be
pretty regular. We’d get jumped by a bunch of Krauts. The pilot would get on the horn and start calling for the cavalry. Then
all of a sudden we’d hear that voice of confidence on the radio, “Don’t worry, Son, here come the good guys.”

The major and his boys’d be all over those Nazis. They seemed to be coming from all directions at once, with their fifties
blasting, just tearing that German sheet metal to shreds. And Dad would be right in the thick of things, leading by example.
He was easy to pick out. He had a great big bull’s-eye painted on the side of his Jug. It was a joke. It was like he was taunting
the Germans, saying bet you can’t even hit me when I’m in the center of the target.

Him and his boys were so accurate and deadly that the word got around even among the Germans. More times than not we’d see
the Messerschmitts turn tail and run when they recognized Dad and his squad. The worst mission would start to feel like a
milk run the minute we found out that Dad would be guarding our six.

Just when it felt like some of us might even survive to terrorize the girls back home, somebody decided to tweak it up a notch
to damn serious.

We started to notice a whole lot more senior officers sitting in on our target briefings. They were just falling all over
themselves to give us dire speeches about the seriousness of our missions. And there wasn’t a smile in the bunch of them.
The targets got to be the you-gotta-be-kidding-me variety. What made it even worse was that they started sending us up against
the same target area two or three times in a row. If you think the bad guys were mad when we went after their ball bearing
plants the first time, you should have been there for the second go-round. They were seriously pissed off.

If it hadn’t been for guys like Dad to count on, we would have been highly depressed about the whole thing.

Then came that briefing that topped them all. We knew we were in trouble when we pulled up to the briefing hut. There must
have been ten cars with little flags on them. The tail gunner took one look and started to cross himself at about ninety miles
an hour. One of the waist gunners, who always professed to be a devout holy terror, started to beg the tail to teach him how
to do that.

When we saw our target we all got real quiet. The only sound was the snap of jaws hitting the floor. One pilot, who suddenly
looked about ten years old, raised his hand and asked if we wouldn’t be outflying our escorts just a bit. He was relieved
when the answer was in the negative. His relief only lasted a couple of seconds. The briefer went on to explain that there
would be no cover for this mission. It seems that another bomb group was to act as a decoy for us, to draw the attention of
the German defenses. All the available cover would ride with this group to make it seem like the real thing. Then he said
something that really scared us. “Don’t worry, guys, it’ll be a piece of cake.”

Since military units were first put together, the words “piece of cake” have been used as shorthand for a genuine, gold-plated,
no-bull suicide mission. Nobody whistled on the way to work that day.

We took off and quickly formed into the defensive units that made the B-17 so formidable. If it held together, the combat
wing left little space for the bad guys to maneuver between the airplanes. Then our massed firepower would hold them at bay.
But the Nazis were always thinking up new ways to break up the formations. Even if the formation held together, we got stuck
in the worst possible position. We were in the outside tail end charlie position in the high group. Seventeens who flew in
this position were known as fighter bait.

As we flew out of the right country into the wrong one, everyone was concentrating too hard to talk. We were straining to
pick out those little dots that meant we had company.We all wanted to believe that the fake by the other bomb group would
work, but we didn’t dare count on it. That was like believing a weather forecast.

It seemed like the brass had finally called one right. We were already entering Germany without being jumped by a single fighter.
Maybe this would be a piece of cake after all. In fact things were going so good that the number four engine decided to take
the day off. Without a warning, the big twelve-hundred-horsepower Wright on the outside of the right wing just quit cold.
The pilot scrambled to compensate and he and the copilot spent the next ten minutes trying to restart it.

“Well, guys, I knew things were going too smooth,” the pilot said. “I think we can make it to the target in formation, but
it’s going to be difficult to keep up going home.”

That was not good news. Stragglers were fair game to any predators around. Our only hope was that the fighters stayed engaged
with the decoy bunch.

When the blue sky started to get dirty with the black puffs from antiaircraft fire, we all calmed down a bit. It was a well-known
fact that the German fighters stayed out of their own flak fields. It was too easy to get hit by your own gunners. Today it
was a well-known fact that somebody forgot to tell the Nazis. They jumped us from all directions at once. They had just been
playing possum, trying to lure us into a trap. And it worked. Suddenly the well-kept formation ceased to exist. It was every
man for himself.

Our pilot threw the ship in the evasive maneuver known as “go every way at once.” It must have been intended to throw the
Germans off by making them think we were crazy. And it was working, too. Then the bombardier had to ruin it with those terrible
words. “Level out, pilot, target coming up.”

The chorus of “are you out of your mind” was interrupted by the pilot.

“Shut up, everybody. Bombs is right. We didn’t come all this way just to be a target.” He paused for effect. “Besides, Herman
the German would never expect us to do something that dumb. Just might confuse him.”

We leveled out and the bombardier took control of the ship. Every gun blazed at the multiple targets. It looked like a flying
circus. For once it looked like the target might actually be as important as intel said it was.

Just as we hit zero in the countdown and the bombs started to fall away, I saw a bad guy start his run. He was definitely
lining up on us. He was coming in low from the left, which was a shame, because that was the way we were supposed to turn.
I opened up with my gun and yelled for the pilot to break to the right. The SOB just kept coming. I don’t think he even paid
any attention to my machine gun blazing away. I watched him squeeze his triggers and at almost the same instant I felt a jolt
as the number one engine exploded.

The pilot whipped the big bomber into a tight right spiral away from him but the damage had already been done. The only good
thing that happened was that the sudden descent put out the flames. But it didn’t save the engine. We had just become a two-engine
bomber. A lonely, two-engine bomber. When we broke right and descended, what was left of our defensive formation broke left
and climbed.

We were now way out on a limb. We were damaged, slow, and all alone. You could almost hear the sound of the coffin slamming
shut.

The pilot eased her around and headed for home. We decided to run low and as fast as we could to avoid as much trouble as
possible. But with only two out of four left we couldn’t get much speed out of the old bucket.

It felt like the whole crew was tiptoeing, trying in vain to hide from the Germans. It didn’t work. I looked high and saw
four little specks about the same time that the tail gunner announced that he had five of them heading our way. It looked
real grim. The specks just kept getting bigger and bigger until they became angry-looking members of the Luftwaffe. They weren’t
happy about losing the target and it looked like they were going to take it out on us.

“Where the hell did he come from?” the pilot yelled. A big green monster roared over the top of us heading back toward the
Germans.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say that was a Jug,” guessed the nav. “But I didn’t think they were going to be joining us today.
Not that I’m complaining.”

Everyone started cheering at the same time. Now they could see the star on the wing that assured them that he was on our side.
The Germans were as surprised as we were. It looked like a pack of rabbits suddenly being jumped by a dog. The whole bunch
of them scattered, heading every which way. We saw the fifties on the wings of the Thunderbolt open up. One, then two of the
fleeing fighters burst into flame and spiraled toward the ground. The Jug seemed to be everywhere at once. Before we knew
it he had run them all off and was turning back to check us out. As he flew over and dipped his wings in a paternal nod, the
nav yelled over the intercom.

“Hey, did you guys see that? It’s Dad.”

As soon as he said it I caught a glimpse of the bull’s-eye painted on the side of the P-47. So Dad had come out to take care
of his prodigal children.

He slipped above us to ride shotgun on the way home. Twice more, we saw the bad guys lining up to jump us as we limped back
to the home drone. And twice more Dad jumped them and scared them back to where they came from. I had never seen a pilot fly
like that. He seemed to be everywhere at once. He made that Jug do things that the designer never even thought of. It was
like watching an air show. But it was an air show that saved our butts individually and collectively.

Finally, as we crossed into Merry Olde England, he whipped the big Jug into a fast pass and dropped off to return to his base.

We limped in and landed on the field to the amazement of all the guys who had gone off and left us. They had surmised that
we wouldn’t be coming to dinner that night. Everyone wanted to congratulate us and shake our hands for bringing the piece
of junk back home. But to a man all ten of us had only one thought in our minds. We headed for the nearest phone to call and
thank our guardian angel for getting us back.

It was kind of like the three stooges, or rather the ten stooges, all of us trying to talk on the phone at the same time.
Finally the pilot did something that he rarely did. He took charge and ordered us to back off.

He took over the call and finally, from the way he kept saying sir every two seconds, got hold of someone in charge. He started
to tell whoever it was that we were calling to talk to Dad. Then he got real quiet. He was able to say “I see” a couple of
times and then his face went white and the phone dropped from his hand.

“What did they say? Why didn’t they put Dad on the horn?”

“They didn’t put him on the horn because they couldn’t,” the pilot said. His voice was low and quiet and it gave me a chill.

“It wasn’t Dad who came to our rescue today.”

“What do you mean, it wasn’t Dad?” demanded the nav. “It was too. We all saw him. You did too, pilot.”

“Yeah, I saw him, but according to his commander it couldn’t have been Dad. Dad didn’t make it to the combat zone. Dad didn’t
even make it off the ground. His left gear collapsed on takeoff. He crashed.” The pilot stopped and turned away, unable to
face us. “The Jug was full of fuel and ammo. It exploded. Dad is dead. He died before we even got airborne.”

“That’s some story, Red.” The young lieutenant took a sip from his cup of coffee, never noticing that it was stone cold. “Who
do you think it was?“

“Well, we found out that there sure weren’t any of our fighters in the area. They were all busy with the decoy group that
didn’t fool anybody.” The old gunner raised his head from the table and looked into the young man’s eyes.

“I think, no, I know, regardless of what happened, that it was Dad. Now I’m not what you would call a religious man and I
don’t believe in miracles. I don’t know how it happened. But I think that Dad saved my bacon that day. And I know nine other
old men who will swear to it right along with me.

“You know how pilots are. I’ll bet he wouldn’t believe he was dead until he got confirmation from higher headquarters. And
you know how slow paperwork can get during a war.”

I
’VE always heard that there are no atheists in foxholes. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been in a foxhole. But I know for a fact
that all flyers are superstitious. It’s because of the uncertainty of war. Every flyer carries some little icon, some little
lucky piece. Even if they really don’t help, they can’t hurt. And maybe some of them do work. Who knows?

When Larry Rogers came to the war in Southeast Asia, it was a very courageous thing to do. It was definitely a death-defying
act. It wasn’t the fact that he was going to a police action that had blossomed into a very deadly war that caused all the
concern. With Larry, it was the fact that he was traveling alone that increased the danger level to ridiculous heights. You
see, Larry was a klutz.

He wasn’t just any klutz. He was
The Klutz.
He was a star of klutzdom. He was clumsy, uncoordinated, absentminded, and wholly unaware of the dangers of his surroundings.
When he walked through a room, you could follow his progress by the disasters. He seldom tried anything new without hurting
himself and any innocent bystander who had the misfortune to bystand Larry.

When Sharon, his wife of one year and several contusions and abrasions, put him on the plane at Travis Air Force Base, it
was with severe misgivings. She wasn’t really afraid that the war was a threat to her husband. She was more afraid that the
airliner was a threat. She thought Larry would probably fall down the boarding ramp and kill himself before he ever got a
chance to go to war. In fact, as the aircraft taxied to the runway, she had to turn away. She couldn’t bear the thought of
all those innocent people so near the danger zone around Larry for so long a time.