Geri Krotow - Navy Christmas

“I can and I have. The president is making sure the right pilots sign up for this special mission I’ll be part of. I’m working for a civilian, a contractor, who has a flying mission overseas that’ll pay way more than the Army Air Corps, and I’ll get experience I’d never get Stateside. I can always go back to the Army Air Corps after this.”

“Can we still move overseas with you? I thought American civilians weren’t going to Europe anymore, not with the war and all.”

“No, honey, you and Dottie can’t come with me. You knew that, Sarah. I’m headed for the Pacific.”

She bit her bottom lip and couldn’t keep the tears from spilling.

“But you said...you said it would all be okay once we saw each other again, Henry. You said you might be a career man and they’d send us all together to the same places.”

He raised her chin and wiped the tears from her cheeks.

“Isn’t it good, this time together?” He kissed her.

“How long will you be gone?”

“A year at the most. I ship out to Burma within a week or two, and then I’ll get so many flight hours back-to-back I won’t have to stay that long.”

Doubt weighed down her joy at being with him again.

“You can’t possibly know how long it’ll be, Henry. These past eight months without you have been awful.”

“I know, Sarah, and I can’t thank you enough for being such a wonderful wife, waiting for me, and for being such a good mother to Dottie. She’s so beautiful, Sarah. I hope we get to have more babies together.”

“I do, too.”

“We will, honey, as soon as I get back. Listen, I’m going to be making a lot of money. I want you to save it up for us, and when we get back we can build an addition to the farmhouse. It’ll be the biggest house on Whidbey! And use it for your parents, too, Sarah. They’ve worked hard to be able to give us the place. I want to thank them somehow.”

“Thank them by coming back as soon as you can and making their daughter happy.”

“I will, I promise.”

As they made love, Henry’s hands caressed her as if she were the most precious woman in the world. As if he couldn’t get enough of her. She had no doubt that she was the woman of his dreams. That he loved her beyond measure.

But it wasn’t enough to keep him home.

Mingaladon, Burma

January 1942

THE AIR SIREN woke Henry from a dead sleep. He jumped out of his rack and shoved his socks on before jamming his feet into his flight boots.

“Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” Cappy Smith sang out with glee. Cappy was his new best friend since they’d gone through Army Air Corps training together and both left the Army to join Chennault’s Flying Tigers. They all lived for the missions. Mingaladon, Burma, was hot, muggy and tens of thousands of miles from home. Not what any of them had signed on for. They’d volunteered to fight the enemy.

Since last month their enemy in the Pacific was clear: the Japanese.

It still stung that they’d been hit on U.S. territory, in Pearl Harbor.

“Wake up, Henry!”

“I’m up, I’m up!” He zipped up his flight suit on the run. They all slept in their suits when they were on ready alert, prepared to go in an instant. Gravel and jungle compost crunched under his feet as he pounded toward the runway.

Fifteen pilots crowded into the ready room, a makeshift shack near the end of the runway.

They all stopped in shock as they recognized their briefing officer.

General Claire Lee Chennault. Founder of the American Volunteer Group—AVG—that made up the entirety of the Flying Tigers. General Chennault was famous for showing up, unannounced, for briefings just like this one.

The mission had to be crucial.

“You’re launching in five minutes, gentlemen. The Japanese are on their way to take out Rangoon.” Rangoon was a port city crucial to the Allied war effort. Henry and his colleagues were silent. While no mission was ever the same as the last, their past several had been to protect Rangoon. Three of their P-40 Warhawks hadn’t come back in the last mission he’d flown, thanks to the murderous pilots who flew highly maneuverable Ki-43s against them. It was overwhelming to think about the sheer numbers of war machines, both on the water and in the air, that the Japanese had. But one good hit could take an aircraft out. That was Henry’s job and what he had to stay focused on.

He wanted to get in, take out as many of the enemy as possible and get back to base before they even knew what hit them.

The general finished his briefing and within twenty minutes Henry was clawing for altitude in his P-40 Warhawk on Cappy’s wing on the way to Rangoon. It was pitch-dark, but by the time they got there, the morning sun would be their guide to the bombers they’d take down.

Henry didn’t like the transit part of any mission. It allowed too much time to think, even during the short twenty-to thirty-minute run to Rangoon.

He pulled out the photo of Sarah and Dottie that he kept in his front right chest pocket and gave it a quick kiss before turning to the last leg of their ingress.

“Bandits ten o’clock!” Cappy’s voice crackled, and Henry watched him break hard to port to go after the Japanese fighter. Another Ki-43 was headed straight for Henry. He aimed, fired, and knew a bittersweet satisfaction when the aircraft took a hit and started to spin out.

“Cripes, they’re hard to hit!” he shouted into his mike, warning his squadron mates that the Ki-43 was every bit as maneuverable as the general had warned, and a challenge to the AVG. On previous missions the Japanese Ki-21 “Sally” bombers had been unescorted by the Ki-43 fighters and been easier targets.

Henry took out two more fighters, maneuvering to get the enemy bombers in his sights. One was in his line of fire but he needed to close the gap. After a tense five minutes of outshooting a second Ki-43, Henry fired on his first bomber of the mission. It didn’t go down right away, but when his ammo hit its fuel tank, a fiery ball engulfed the aircraft. Henry throttled back and turned to starboard, avoiding the debris of the explosion and coming face-to-face with a second bomber. He had to fly under the belly of the bomber and throttle back before he could line up on the bomber, firing into the cockpit as he raced by the port side of the war bird as it jerked into a nosedive.

“Come on, where are you?” Henry looked for more fighters to take out until the second wave of Japanese bombers showed up.

Thwack.

It was much quieter, stealthier, than Henry would have expected. His bird had been hit, and he watched in horror as smoke from the burning engine began to fill up his cockpit. He’d lost control of his plane, and was headed toward the ocean at deadly speed.

“No!”

He had to get back to Sarah.

The fighter who’d hit him was below him to starboard, obviously not concerned that Henry had a chance at survival. With what little maneuverability he had left in the bird, Henry tilted the wings to give him a chance of hitting the bastard. Henry gritted his teeth and pulled up on his throttle. Nothing.

“Damn it!”

He wasn’t in a dive; that was a small consolation. He’d lost too much altitude to bail out, however. He was going down with the aircraft.

The ocean raced past him and he made out several spots of white sand circling lush green growth on the horizon.

“Aim for the islands,” General Chennault told them during training at this last brief: if they had to go down, land on one of the uninhabited islands that surrounded southern Thailand.

Henry aimed for the one with the widest beach and prayed he’d be able to land without the bird flipping over and trapping him in the cockpit during the inevitable crash landing.