Soldier From the Sky, Book Two: Italia Mia

By M.C. Clary

Soldier From the Sky
A Twice-Told Warriors’ Tale
World War II. Nick Mancuso, a Brooklyn-born, deadeye gunner on a B-24 bomber is severely wounded in aerial combat, bails out over the wintry Apennines and loses consciousness while still in his parachute, his last thoughts on his lover, Theresa.
He awakens displaced in time, under the care of Italian partisans. By ancient magic and force of fate he’s become his own medieval ancestor and leader of a peasant rebellion in collusion with the tyrant's dangerously enchanting daughter.
To return to Theresa and parallel existence Nick must fight for his life in a world of hidden treasure, superstition, star-crossed love, intrigue, brutality and betrayal, and show fierce bravery in an epic battle for gold, glory and survival in 14th Century Italy.

Book Two: Italia Mia
It's 1943, Brooklyn. Nick Mancuso is a emerging wise guy. He has a gold flake in his right eye, a reputation for fast fists, a wish for sleek clothes and the high life. He's just out of high school and recently fallen in love with neighborhood girl Theresa. He joins the Air Corps as a gunner, is quickly singled out for hyperacute, deadly aim and picks up the nickname 'Flash'. He learns the betting odds are against survival and, before flying out on a B-24 bomber, roughly breaks it off with Theresa, leaving her tearful, and telling her not to look back.
Nick is assigned to a crew on the 'Bobbie Jean', sent to an airbase in the heel of Italy, and is soon shooting Nazis out of his ancestral skies, happy to do so, with cold-blooded smile. Aerial combat is bloodbath. When the Bobbie Jean is shot down, Nick is gut shot, and bleeding to death as the wind takes his parachute toward the wintry Apennines.

• Language: English
• Publisher: M.C. Clary
• Release date: Dec 1, 2015

M.C. Clary

M.C. Clary is a world traveler, shepherd of strays, visitor of the night, singer in the rain, bronco buster, gold digger, hell raiser, zombie killer writer of fact and fiction in all their many forms, He lives and works in a crow's nest looking over Manhattan.

Book preview

Soldier From the Sky

a novel in six books

by M.C. Clary

c2015 Michael Clary

All rights reserved

Cover design by Larry Carroll

This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for use of brief quotes in a book review.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Generations of men are like leaves,

In winter, winds blow them to earth,

But when spring comes again,

budding wood grows more. And so with men.

One generation grows, another dies.

Homer, The Iliad, 6:181-5

∞

Book Two

∞

Italia Mia

Italia Mia

Chapters

6

7

8

9

10

11

New World People

USA 1944

Giuseppe Farini, Nick Mancuso’s grandfather

Angela Farini, Nick Mancuso’s grandmother

Giulietta ‘Skinny’ Mancuso, Nick’s sister

Theresa Mangiardi, Nick’s girlfriend

Carmine Gitano, dock crime boss

Colonel Kenneth Sessions, Commanding officer, Fort Burke, Alabama

Colonel Hollis Hayes, Commander 448th Bomber Group, 15th Air Force

Joey Staluppi, Nick’s pal while training, Winslow Field, Nebraska

Crew of the Bobbie Jean

Pilot: Captain Lucius ‘Lucky’ Cokenauer

Copilot: 2nd Lieutenant Ozzie Patterson

Navigator: 2nd Lieutenant Robert Charlton

Bombardier: 2nd Lieutenant Jimmy ‘Woody’ Clark

Radio: Cpl. Charlie Duffield

Dorsal gun, Flight Engineer: Cpl. Howie Fox

Left waist gun: Sgt. Jack Griggs/ Sgt. Billy Joe Kirven

Right waist gun: Cpl. Angelo ‘Chico’ Melchiorre

Tail gun: Cpl. Vernon Elsworth

Nose gun: Cpl. Johnny McDonough

Belly gun: Pvt. Nick ‘Flash’ Mancuso

∞

6

The summer Frank Sinatra was all over the radio singing You’ll Never Know, every street punk and actual wise guy in Bensonhurst knew the score, and sang the tune that came down from Carmine Gitano and the other bosses. The war was everybody’s business. We can’t allow this two-bit fuck Hitler to win. Fuck the old ways. We’re all Americans now, and everybody’s gonna do better after this war. The blood feuds in Sicily and Naples will be finito and some guys over there will get straightened out. With our connections over there we can help get weapons to the resistance and aid the invasion. We ally with the Allies and the Feds will show their gratitude once Hitler’s kaput. It’s all being worked out now.

Here’s the play. Everything stays copasetic for now. We’ll go over there, take out Mussolini, Hitler and those other cocksuckers, them Fascist pricks in black uniforms and chauffeured limos, wearing Lugers on patent leather belts and jackboots, pushing paesanos and pensioners around with rifle butts, jailing and killing anybody who speaks up, dumping them into mass graves. Mussolini is a mad dog. Cane pazzo. Making deals with the wrong fucking families, like they did before Garibaldi came along, allowing Germans into Italy. Coward fuck. Bringing shame on all of us. Mussolini’s nuts. He’s dead. Go do this now, end this shame, and there will be a place for you on the docks, on the trucks or somewhere in the street business when you come home.

Two days out of Abraham Lincoln High, Nick Mancuso took the subway to Borough Hall, intending to enlist in the Army. He wanted to be a sniper. He had been target practicing with his grandfather’s Winchester, he and his friends, Muddy and Gino, shooting at melons and tin cans out on the Coney Island dunes. He was a crack shot and liked feeling the bullet whiz out the barrel, how it stirred the air, and exploded the melon to wet smithereens. He imagined himself sitting in a bell tower, barely breathing, steady as steel, finding Il Duce and Adolf in telescopic crosshairs.

Ka-blewie! I’d blow both their fucking skulls off, he told Gino and Muddy.

On the subway, he sat next to a hopped up airman in previously creased but now wrinkled khakis who was flashing his wings, trying to make time with a pretty girl with big red, banana lips and hennaed hair, and not having much luck. He was bantamweight, about Nick’s size, had a southern drawl and was telling her what a sharp dresser she was, and could she dance, and he would take her jitterbugging in Manhattan, to Toots Shor’s and The Stork Club. I’ll show you how to dance. And how, Sister!

She batted her brushed out eyelashes, leading him on, blushing and giggling into her shoulder pads about her boyfriend in the Navy. You flyboys are all crazy! She pushed his busy hands away and when she stood to get off at Union Street, he followed her, hoping to change her mind until the doors shunted closed between them.

The flyboy grabbed hold of the upright pole and swung down in the seat next to Nick, smiling at her through the window. He thumbed the silver wings on his collar. The dolls love the wings, brother.

I was rooting for you, Nick said. She’s a killer.

Yeah, too good for a swab. If I had five more minutes, she’d forget all about him for the night. So what’s buzzin’ cuzzin’, you sign up yet? He was looked hopped-up, was talking a mile a minute.

Headed there now.

Go Air Corps, brother. His hand streamed skyward. Man oh, man, there’s nothing like it.

I don’t know. Nick hadn’t given the Navy or Air Corps more than passing thought. I’ve never been in an airplane. Not sure I’d like it.

Nothing to it. Like riding the subway. Except you’re at twenty-five thousand feet -- that’s above the clouds, Mister -- and some Kraut’s coming at you, shooting thirty calibers at you. Tatatatatat! He had manic eyes and glaring smile. You’re not going to see action like that on the ground. He sized Nick up and down. What are you five six?

Mention of his size made Nick stiffen, and automatically tighten his fists. Five seven.

Yeah, if you say so on a good day. The guy laughed harmlessly. I’m five six. Air Corps is recruiting guys our size. We can move around in the gun turrets. Fact is smaller guys are faster on the guns. He pretended to pivot and fire twin machineguns, pressing imaginary thumb triggers. "You get flight pay and flying is better than slogging and digging latrines with the infantry. I pity those suckers. That is shitfuck duty with no glory. You’re eating tank fumes. Way I figure it, if you got to fight; you might as well get the