The Ruining Heaven

By J Hardy Carroll

The Ruining Heaven takes the reader on a wrenching first-person trip through the savage air war over WW2 Germany, showing what combat does the minds and souls of the men and women who experience it.

It's dangerous work dropping bombs on strangers from the nose of a B-17. At 25,000 feet the temperature is 40 below

• Language: English
• Publisher: Grapnel Interactive LLC
• Release date: Dec 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9781087952659

Book preview

A picture containing handcart, stove Description automatically generatedA picture containing text, outdoor, weapon Description automatically generated

(To Walker Evans.

Against time and the damages of the brain

Sharpen and calibrate. Not yet in full,

Yet in some arbitrated part

Order the façade of the listless summer.

Spies, moving delicately among the enemy,

The younger sons, the fools,

Set somewhat aside the dialects and the stained skins of feigned madness,

Ambiguously signal, baffle, the eluded sentinel.

Edgar, weeping for pity, to the shelf of that sick bluff,

Bring your blind father, and describe a little;

Behold him, part wakened, fallen among field flowers shallow

But undisclosed, withdraw.

Not yet that naked hour when armed,

Disguise flung flat, squarely we challenge the fiend.

Still, comrade, the running of beasts and the ruining heaven

Still captive the old wild king.

—James Agee, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men

Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you’re not a good soldier.

—General Curtis LeMay

How nice—to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive.

—Kurt Vonnegut

We men are wretched things.

—Homer

This is a work of fiction. While many of the events and missions occurred, the specifics are entirely the work of the author’s imagination. 

The 351st Bomb Group based out of Polebrook flew both Schweinfurt missions in 1943, and the resulting carnage is not exaggerated.

The OSS did have several special training operations for officers and men, but as far as I know they never had any special program for Air Corps officers.

Several of the people in this book are historically real, but the depictions of them in this story are wholly fictional.

Clark Gable really did fly missions with the 351st, and he really did get the heel shot off his boot. The movie he made about his experiences is available to watch on YouTube.

For my father, who loved B-17s almost as much as telling stories

ONE

SAGAN, SILESIA

December 1944

Here is hunger.

It grinds away at my innards until I am a hollow shell, weak and brittle. Hunger is always here, coloring every thought, every conversation. There is no escaping it.

So I walk, my breath pluming in the cold. POWs call it beating the circuit, an endless stroll along the warning wire strung on posts thirty feet inside the camp’s double fence. If I step over this Streng Verboten the guard is supposed to shoot me, but out of defiance I walk so close that my trouser leg brushes against it. The guard swivels his machine gun on its tripod, tracking me like a tin duck in a shooting gallery. I’m not worried. The guard is Gunter, an elderly veteran of the first war called back to service despite his missing eye. When not on tower duty, he often sits in the huts with the prisoners, smoking and warming his bones by the coal stove. He’s a disgruntled soul, cynical and dejected. I doubt he’s even bothered to load his gun.

Most of the prison camp guards aren’t proper soldiers at all. Many are like Gunter, old men who already lost one war for the Fatherland. Others are Poles or Lithuanians caught on the wrong side of the border and forced into service at gunpoint. There are five or six veterans wounded in the Russia campaign but not allowed to muster out because they can still walk a post. Their morale is worse than ours. Like us, they are bored and cold and hungry. They also know their side is losing.

Unfortunately, the rest of guards are teenage boys in too-large uniforms who should be in school but instead get to play soldier with real weapons. They are too young to have empathy. Last week one of them shot a prisoner who stepped over the wire to retrieve a ball. As the man was carried away by his friends, the boy pointed the machine gun at them and pretended to fire, making gun noises with his mouth and laughing like the child he was.

I beat the circuit whatever the weather, mile after mile to take my mind off the hunger and boredom and despair. The circuit is the only place in camp where I can be alone. No privacy when five hundred men get crammed into camp the size of two football fields. Even the latrine is not private, the men shitting next to one another on a ten-hole bench in a dark shack. Some days the walking helps.

Today it doesn’t. Hopelessness envelops me as I look out across the rows of ragged stumps outside the wire. Last month, the Germans cut down a couple hundred feet of timber so would-be escapees couldn’t hide in the trees. They needn’t have bothered. Nobody has tried to escape in months. We’re deep inside the Silesian wilderness six hundred miles behind German lines. The only road goes to a small village where the married guards keep their wives. There’s a single rail line connecting the village to Germany. Other than that, it’s total isolation.

And winter is coming. The ground is still bare, but the leaden sky is heavy with impending snow, the wind numbingly cold. Trekking through the snow-choked forests with no food and no money would be stupid, all the more when the German civilians hate the men who drop bombs on them. The Germans warn us about atrocities inflicted on captured escapees by distraught parents or grieving widows. Besides, we all know the war will be over soon, so escape is an unnecessary risk. Patton’s tanks will roll through Germany. We just have to survive a few more months. Or so we hope.

I round the corner of the camp hospital when I hear somebody yell my name. Hawser! Have a minute?

Lieutenant Davies waves at me from the doorway. He’s a black-market guy, a man who can get things. Sometimes I overhear Davies telling a prisoner that he, as a former fighter pilot, flew escort for the prisoner’s bomber squadron. Bombers never fly close enough to their fighter escorts to see them as anything other than glinting specks in the sky, so Davies is full of shit. He’ll say anything to get men to like him, flattering them and bragging about himself so they’ll do business with him, buy cigarettes and food and whatever else he is selling. He’s a vulture.

He jogs up beside me. For Christ’s sake, will you slow down? 

Why? 

I need to talk to you. Five minutes. 

I look down at his combed red hair and pressed uniform. I wear the usual POW rags, cast-off battle dress from the last war: old combat trousers so baggy I use a rope to keep them from falling down, a blue Belgian overcoat two sizes too small, wooden shoes with a hinged insole because the Germans confiscated my handsome RAF flying boots when I was shot down. 

Davies is going to keep following me, so I pull up short beneath one of the towers. The guard leans out over his machine gun, one of the teenagers. I can see his acne.

What? I say.

Not here, hisses Davies, jerking his thumb toward the guard.

I start walking again. He trots along. We need to talk about your watch, he whispers.

That hits me in the gut. I didn’t think anyone knew about it, my platinum Longines chronograph, a gift from Uncle Tick when I left for the war. It is the only thing I care about, my only possession. I keep it hidden in a space beneath the floorboard under my bunk.

Beyond any sentimentality, I need the watch. I have lost the ability to sleep. Every night I lie in my bunk exhausted from hunger and boredom, but as soon as I close my eyes the nightmare starts. I fall out of the sky with my body trailing a plume of fire like a burning plane. I lurch up with a dry mouth and galloping heart and lie there in the cold dark until I am sure the other prisoners in the barracks are asleep. It is only then that I allow myself to reach down to the hiding place and take out the Longines. I cradle it in my fingers as I wind it. I watch its luminous second hand go around and around. I hold it to my ear and listen to the musical meshing of its minute gears and cogs. It’s one of the finest timepieces ever made, with a tachometer ring and snap second hand.

I don’t have a watch, I say.

You do. A Longines Calibre.

No.

Look, Hawser. I know you have it. Brushed platinum case. Swiss movement.

I stare down at his little rat face. What the fuck are you talking about?

He spreads his hands like a sage. I find out about every valuable item in this camp sooner or later. It’s my business, Hawser.

Don’t call me Hawser. I start walking again. Only my friends call me Hawser.

He trots alongside. I am your friend. That’s why I’m telling you this. This watch ain’t doing you no good, is it? A man doesn’t need a watch here.

Fuck off.

You should hear me out. I have information you might want to know. Like how the food ration is about to be cut in half.

People always say that. It’s never true.

Yeah? Well, do they also say there won’t be no more Red Cross parcels? No more, ever again?

And you know this how?

I got a couple goons trade me information for cigarettes. They say the bombing cut the supply lines. Red Cross parcels don’t get through no more. Goons are keepin’ what’s left for themselves. Cuts in our rations, too. Reprisals.

If this is true, we truly are fucked. The Geneva Convention stipulates POWs are to be fed the same as the captors’ combat troops, but the Germans give us just enough food for painful, prolonged starvation. Breakfast is two slices of black bread with a smear of sour margarine and a cup of ersatz coffee made from burned acorns. Lunch is two potatoes with some gassy cabbage. Dinner is the same as breakfast except sometimes there’s only one slice of bread. Every so often we get blutwurst made from grease and rancid blood. It’s so nasty we barely can choke it down, starving or not. If this is how the Germans feed their own troops, I understand why they’re losing. These Red Cross parcels are the only thing keeping us alive. Every month we get a big shipment of boxes containing tea, bully beef, tinned jam, sweet condensed milk, Spam, coffee, half packs of cigarettes, saltines, and Crisco. The senior officers pool the boxes and ration them so every man gets a decent meal every couple days. It’s not a feast, but it’s a lot better than what the Germans give us. Without the Red Cross parcels, we’re doomed.

I see I have your attention, he says. You know that Germans are always willing to trade food for cigarettes. They love American smokes. Lucky Strike in particular.

No more parcels means no more cigarettes. 

That’s right. But I happen to have two cartons of Luckies stashed. Got ’em from a new guy came into the camp last week. Unopened cartons. That Longines ain’t gonna help you if you’re dead. Look at yourself. You’re a fucking skeleton.

He’s right. I haven’t seen a mirror in a long time, but I can feel my bones through my coat.

You think it’s tough now? he continues. This is nothin’. Couple weeks, four potatoes and black bread will seem like a luxury.

Assuming I had this watch, why wouldn’t I trade it for food myself? Cut out the middleman.

Davies acts insulted. Middleman? Listen, pal. I’m a broker. A go-between.

Sure you are. What did that uniform cost you? How’d you pay for it?

I dress like this so the goons leave me alone. I take a big risk every day, but this makes them think I’m a model prisoner. Listen, Hawser. That platinum Longines is one of a kind. It’s too valuable to trade for food. Not even goon officers would take the risk on such a big transaction. It’s like real estate. But the Lucky Strikes are like cash. Liquid. You can trade ’em out by the pack or even one at a time. You could get a lot of food with ’em. Maybe enough to save your life.

I suppose so.

Well, then. We have a deal? He offers his hand. I ignore it.

No.

Why the hell not?

I don’t smoke.

His eyes widen so much I have to suppress a laugh. What the fuck? he says. That don’t make sense. You wouldn’t be smoking them anyway.

You want the truth, Davies? I don’t trust you. We’re not friends. I don’t buy your fighter escort bullshit. I think you’re a parasite. What’s in it for you?

Only my fee, Hawser. Ten percent.

All this risk for ten percent.

I’m a businessman. 

I grab his lapels and shake him. Who told you about my fucking watch? 

He blinks. Ok. Ok. There’s a guy. Friend of yours.

What friend?

A guy knows you from before. He has the Luckies. It was him who told me about the Longines.

What’s his name?

Franklin. A lieutenant. His face is all burned up. Krauts have him locked up in the cooler.

I don’t know any Franklin.

He knows you. Says you flew together in the 351st. 

The rage drains from me, replaced by a chill that goes all through my body. Feeling ridiculous, I let go of his jacket. He straightens his tie. Okay, then. Yes or no?

Let me think about it.

Think fast. It’s a limited-time offer.

* * *

The next morning, I tell Davies he has a deal if he throws in six Hershey bars. He tells me to bring the watch to the latrine. Check the rafters above the last hole. I’ll stash the goods there. Leave the watch in the same place. I suggest going at lunch so it will be empty.

He’s as good as his word. I find two unopened cartons of Lucky Strike and six big bars of chocolate wrapped in a blanket. I set my watch on the rafter, button the cartons and candy into my coat and drape the blanket over my shoulder. I walk back to the barracks with a bitter taste in my mouth. For a mad second I consider taking a run at the wire, let the gunners open up on me. It’s a fleeting thought, stupid. The war will be over soon. And it’s only a fucking watch.

The barracks are empty, so I stash the Luckies and chocolate in the floor panel and stretch out on my bunk. I try not to think about what will happen in the night without my watch to calm me down. I close my eyes. Davies knew about my watch. Knew the make and model. There was never any Franklin in the 351st, at least not one I flew with. It must be an alias, but for whom?

There’s only one answer, but he is dead. He has to be dead. He’d better be dead.

To distract myself, I reach under my bunk and take out my book. The goons give us all kinds of books, one of the few things we have plenty of. They want us to improve our minds. This book is Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, a collection of photographs and words about the Depression stamped Ypsilanti Public Library. It still has the index card in it. Nobody ever checked it out. I guess nobody in Michigan wanted to be reminded of Dust Bowl Okies.

Walker Evans’s photography is beautiful, even as it shows hopelessness and despair. Agee’s writing is great. Some of it is journalism. Some is more like a novel or poetry. It is not a book that demands continuity. I open it at random.

Not yet that naked hour when armed,

Disguise flung flat, squarely we challenge the fiend.

Still, comrade, the running of beasts and the ruining heaven

Still captive the old wild king.

The running of beasts and the ruining heaven. The captive king.

A pair of worn-out flying boots clomps up to me. I look up to see Horseface holding his chessboard. Horse is my best friend in camp, a genial man with bright unsmiling eyes. He is a short, round lieutenant, nothing like a horse. How’d you get that nickname again, Horseface? I sometimes ask. Every time he answers, jes’ a nickname.

The only complaint I have with him is his chess obsession. I usually beat him in twenty moves, but lately he’s been trading cigarettes for lessons from Major MacGregor, the former Scottish national champion. I played Mac only once. He trounced me three games in a row and refused to play me again. Laddie, you’re just good enough to be boring, he said in his Glasgow brogue, and boredom is the one thing I’ve plenty of.

Horse thumps the board with his grimy fingers. Why don’t you put that book down and have a game with me? Mac showed me a new opening. I’m gonna skin you.

It’s something to take my mind off the watch, so I heave myself up and toss the book onto the bunk. We sit at the rough-sawn table in the center of the hut and I choose the white pawn from one of Horseface’s outstretched fists and we begin. My mind wanders. I am filled with a terrible dread. It reminds me of the hunger, cold hands creeping around my guts, twisting me into knots.

Horseface chuckles. Usually you move quicker than this, Hawser.

Sorry. I wasn’t paying attention. I move my bishop. Check.

I got you now, sumbuck. He slaps a knight I didn’t notice onto my piece, knocking it off its square. Ha!

After that it goes fast. I try for a stalemate, but he avoids it with a clever pin that he must’ve learned from Mac. I topple my white king in surrender. He smiles and offers his hand. Then, suspicious, jerks it back. You sure you didn’t throw that game just to get me off your back?

I didn’t throw it, Horse. I—didn’t play very well.

He smirks. That’s an understatement. You played like a fifth-grader. No, a third-grader. I’m not complaining, mind. I’ll take it.

He lays the chessmen into a decorated box. He carved the pieces from bits of wood he found around the compound before he could find anyone to teach him the game. He was shot down in early 1942, one of the first American POWs, so he’s had plenty of time to learn. Some prisoners memorize entire Shakespeare tragedies, learn to play a violin or guitar, become fluent in a foreign language. Nothing here but time. And hunger.

He sets the box on a shelf and takes up a worn first baseman’s mitt, donated by some stateside school. The Germans are also big on sports. Big on everything but food. I’m gonna go see if I can get a game up. You interested?

Too cold for baseball, Horse. Too cold for anything.

Suit yourself. A little exercise warms the blood, even in December.

I lie back down and look at my book without reading. I miss my watch and it isn’t even dark yet.

* * *

The next week brings the snow, wet and heavy enough to make the tin roof creak and moan. I lie awake as the tower searchlights probe the camp outside, their floating white circles shining through the gaps in the blackout shutters, the bright bars of light sliding along the frozen faces of my sleeping bunkmates. Icy wind whistles through the floorboards and the chinks in the pasteboard walls. Gooseflesh, numb fingers, frozen feet. 

The days are all alike. I am generally bored and always hungry. The hunger is a menacing monster that chews my insides like a river eroding a hillside. It can’t be bargained with or wished away. It is always there, awake or asleep, insatiable, infinitely patient.

The routine is unchanging, summer and winter. Every morning at 06:30, Nazi marching music blares over the camp PA. Our Kommandant tells us he is the proud father of four sons, so he always plays the Hitler Youth anthem to wake us up. The goddamned song is so long that it takes up both sides of the record. A scratch on side two sometimes skips, repeating three seconds of music again and again until somebody unsticks it. The guards sing along in tuneless roars as they slam open the blackout shutters, stomp through the barracks and bang on our bunks with rifle butts until we climb out of bed.

Appell is Nazi roll call. Every morning and afternoon they make us assemble in the barren square to make sure we’re all here. Appell makes no allowance for weather or sickness or anything else. Sometimes a man will be so weak that he needs to be supported by the men on either side of him, their arms around his shoulders like a drunken buddy.

This morning the black the air is so cold that our breath drifts to the ground like snow. Shivering in ragged blankets, we don’t look like Air Corps officers. We look like refugees from a disaster. A helmeted sergeant counts us off in rows of four. Eins, zwei, drei, vier. Eins, zwei, drei, vier.

Sometimes a man is missing. Usually, he is dead in his bunk, a victim of hunger or sickness. It takes the goons awhile to figure out who he is and send someone to find him. They make us stand there until he is accounted for. Sometimes the sergeant has miscounted, so an officer comes to count us again, sometimes cursing the sergeant. This can take a couple hours.

It was worse back when there were escapes. Escapes made the goons furious. They cursed and yelled and threatened, blaming us for the missing men. The Kommandant would step onto his porch and make a speech in German about how rotten it was for us to trick our captors, how dishonorable it was, the translator struggling to keep up with the shouting. German is a great language for shouting.

When they finished with that, they’d set out little tables onto which they stacked boxes of ID photographs taken when we first got here. They made us line up in the standard alphabetical groupings. You’d give your name to the officer, who would then search the boxes to find your photo, hold it up and stare at you to confirm your identity, glancing back and forth until he was certain. It took a lot of time, since nobody resembled the well-fed fighting man in the picture. The hunger transformed us into skeletal ragamuffins with long hair and scruffy beards. Sometimes a joker might give a name like Shan DeLear or Ben Dover, but our captors are as humorless about this as anything else. Anyone who gets on their nerves gets sentenced to ten days in the cooler, a six-by-ten solitary confinement cell in the block next to the guardhouse where you get one meal a day and are forbidden to talk. You also have to shit in a bucket that maybe gets emptied once a week. Ten days in the cooler is no joke.

After an escape, it took most of the day before they let us go back to our barracks. We rarely saw the escapees again but knew better than to believe any of them had made it back home. The odds were too long for a starving American to make his way across an immense and hostile country filled with soldiers, Gestapo agents, and a vengeance-hungry populace. 

Today Appell is brief. I grab my mess kit from the barracks and head over to the dining hall for breakfast. The main meals are dispensed—served is too grand a word for the black bread and ersatz coffee—at the main kitchen block. The dining hall only seats a hundred, so the rest of us line up along the side of the building awaiting our turn. Yesterday there was no jam or margarine, so I guess Davies was right about the Red Cross parcels. My stomach clinches at the thought.

The dawn sun is still below the horizon, the cloudless sky an icy pink. I’m in line behind a lieutenant I’ve never seen before. He has an open, friendly face and a clean uniform. He looks well-fed and even cheerful. All appearances show him to be a new prisoner, but the Germans sometimes plant stooges in American uniforms to gather intelligence about escapes and black-market trading. These men speak English like natives, some of them having lived in the States.

Camp policy is to freeze out a new man unless a known POW vouches for them. Our S-2 intelligence officers grill all new prisoners to check their stories and verify their identities, but since the bombing ramped up there have been so many of them that S-2 are way behind in their interrogations. The new guy turns to me, all smiles. He holds out his hand. Lieutenant Ray Friday. 356th fighter group. Got in last night.

He seems okay. Besides, I might be able to get some fresh war news from him. I give him a cursory handshake. Hawes.

Nice to meet you, says Friday. You an airman? I was in P-47s. Ground attack, mostly.

Why are you telling me this?

He looks hurt. Just making conversation. I been cooped up in solitary for two weeks with nobody to talk to. 

Except the Germans.

His face clouds. The hell you say. I’m no turncoat, pal. 

Simmer down. They encourage you to talk. Try to make you feel safe. They piece information together. Better to keep things like your unit and equipment to yourself. The Germans don’t fuck around.

Friday looks sheepish. Guess you’re right. Name, rank, and serial number. Thanks.

Behind Friday I notice two guards escorting a prisoner from the cooler. Something about the way the prisoner walks bothers me. At first I can’t place it, but then I do.

It’s Colley. Bile racks my throat. 

Colley is studying the men in the breakfast line, searching their faces. I want to hide, but there is nowhere to go. His gaze slides over me and then returns to lock on my face like a searchlight. My heart seems to stop.

I have been found.

I was so sure he was dead. When our B-17 was spiraling down in flames over Schweinfurt, I’d kicked him in the face, knocking him back into the burning nose. I was barely able to make it out of the plane before it crashed, was in fact so low when I jumped that I tore up my leg when I hit the ground. In the German hospital, a badly burned man had been in the bed next to mine wrapped head to toe in bandages. He died without regaining consciousness, and I never saw his face.

I was certain it was Colley. Everything fit—the burns, the size of him. I was so relieved. 

But here he is at Stalag Luft, after more than a year.

The question is why.

But I know why. Colley found out where I am and for some reason disguised himself as a lieutenant to come after me. Colley knew about my watch. He has to be the mysterious Lieutenant Franklin.

They walk past us, the guards stiff as tin men. Colley is a chilling sight. If not for his rolling sailor’s gait, I’d never have recognized him. The entire left side of his face is a scar, the ruined brow and cheekbone a mass of twisted tissue. Half of his mouth stretches into a rictus grin, the teeth exposed in a permanent snarl. The scars are devil red and shiny like an apple. His left eye peers out from beneath the scars like a poisonous eel in an undersea cave. The right side of his face is untouched save for a lick of crimson across the cheek. He even has half of his thin mustache left. He looks like a Hollywood monster. Lon Chaney. Boris Karloff.

Poor bastard, says Friday.

TWO

RAF POLEBROOK 

June–August 1942

I wanted to be a pilot after I read an article in Life about the American Eagle Squadron fighting the Luftwaffe. I saw from the photographs that most of the guys were around my age, so in January 1941 I dropped my sophomore year of college and enlisted in the Army Air Corps. 

My instructors determined I couldn’t fly worth a damn and washed me out of flight school. My hopes sank further when I learned I couldn’t un-enlist, but the C.O. was sympathetic. He told me to try for the new bombardier training. You’ll master a difficult skill and graduate with a second lieutenant’s commission, he said. Personally, I think the bombardiers are the future of the Air Corps. 

I’ve always been good at math, and the mechanics of precision bombing were fascinating to me. After weeks of classroom instruction, we trained on sleds that rolled across the gym floor while we stared through the lens. After that, we flew in antiquated B-18 Bolo bombers and dropped sandbags onto targets painted on the ground. Those who passed muster were flown to the range in the California desert where we spent a week dropping live bombs onto brick and concrete structures built for the purpose. I had a talent for acquiring the IP, the initial point that started the bomb run. The other fellows kidded me about it, but I knew they were envious. It was fun, challenging stuff, and even though I wasn’t a pilot I loved every minute of it.

I graduated at the top of my class and received two weeks’ leave before moving on to unit training. The bombardier school was located just outside my hometown of Tucson, so I was aching to go somewhere, anywhere else. I hatched plans with my classmates to hop a train to San Diego, the nearest exciting place. We bought tickets for the next day, December 7th. 

With the attack on Pearl, our leave was canceled. They confined us to base and told us to stand by. As trained bombardiers, our value to our country had just increased considerably. They wanted to keep us close. I considered swiping a jeep and driving out to the ranch to tell Uncle Tick I was shipping out but thought better of it. We’d said what goodbye there was to say. He probably wouldn’t have been there anyway. Tick was a man prone to long, unexplained absences.

My orders took me to Rapid City, South Dakota, where I trained on the new B-17 Flying Fortress, a four-engine giant with many improvements over the B-18s. My crew was tight-knit, but in March they broke us up and shipped us all over the country. I spent a few weeks in Tacoma, then was sent to Smyrna, Tennessee, for five months, training with a variety of different crews in the 504th bomb group. I got good at high-altitude bombing, earning special marks for speed and accuracy. There was a general feeling the real war would be starting soon. 

One day I was summoned to the major’s office. He sat behind his desk with a grim expression on his ruddy face. Lieutenant Hawes, I have some good news for you. You’ve been chosen for a special group heading overseas immediately. I can’t tell you anything more than that.

The whole squadron, sir?

Just you. I recommended you for it. Consider it an honor.

Thank you, sir. 

Go to your barracks and get your gear. The train leaves in a half hour.

Can I say goodbye to my crew?

No time for that, I’m afraid. I’ll pass on your regards.

Forty minutes later I was aboard a crowded troop train bound for New York. I felt bad about not letting the guys know I was leaving, but excitement outweighed regret. A great feeling of anticipation saturated the train. There weren’t enough seats, so men lolled in the aisles, joking and singing and passing illicit bottles back and forth. We were young warriors going into battle, like the Roman Legions of old. Eventually I made my way back to the baggage car and fell asleep atop a heap of duffel bags.

I woke up as the train pulled into Penn Station. I stepped onto the platform between the steaming locomotives and walked up an iron staircase into the magnificent arcade. Latticed iron columns stretched to a ceiling of green glass, the soft light falling across the marble floor like mist. In the center arch hung an enormous Benrus clock. The atrium was crowded with people of every description, but the sheer size of the hall conferred on their conversations a church-like hush. I walked out onto the landing and stood at the top of the stone steps between the towering Greek columns.

On the street below, a group of soldiers was lining up by a battered bus. I shouldered my bag and made my way down the stairs and through the crowd. I stood in line and gave my name to a sergeant holding a clipboard. He checked his list and put me aboard. At the harbor was another sergeant with another clipboard, a long wait, then up the narrow gangway to the ship. 

Eight days later I hobbled down a different gangway onto the quay of Portsmouth Harbor feeling ten years older, thin and shaky from a wretched seasickness that had overcome me soon after we weighed anchor and had stayed for the whole voyage. A British sergeant found my name on his clipboard and put me aboard a train bound for Northamptonshire. I fell asleep right after my butt hit the seat, glad to be on dry land again.

The train arrived in Peterborough some hours later. I wandered around the deserted station, unsure of where to go. My orders said Polebrook, but I had no idea where or what that was. The only other American was an angry-looking lieutenant who got into a taxi before I could talk to him.

I walked over to the stationmaster’s booth. Any idea where Polebrook is? I asked.

He looked at my uniform. Do you mind if I take a peek at your papers? 

Sure, I said, handing him the folded orders the sergeant had given me. He read them and handed them back.

Sorry about that, he said. We’re trained to be discreet about aerodromes these days. Can’t be too careful. Polebrook is about fourteen miles south, near the village of Oundle.

Where can I get a taxi?

Looks like your countryman snapped up Old George. He’s the only cabbie in Peterborough. No telling if he’ll be back. Like as not he’ll spend the night at the Three Lions.

I suppose I’d better get walking, then. The seasickness seemed to be coming back. 

Let me see what we can do for you, sir. 

He came back a few minutes later. You’re in luck. Chaunce is available. He’s our local boy who does deliveries. If you can spot him a few shillings for petrol, he’ll run you out there.

I haven’t had a chance to change my money. I only have dollars.

I’m sure that will be fine.

We walked around back of the station. There was a tiny red MG with a dented fender parked by the stone wall. This was his brother’s motorcar, said the stationmaster. Poor chap died at Dunkirk. He held out his hand. We shook. We’re awfully glad you’re here, he said. Jerry’s a rotten bastard. It’s time he got served out.

Chaunce came around the corner, a short boy who didn’t look old enough to