Robert Conroy - 1920 - America's Great War

Josh rather liked being driven around in a staff car by an enlisted driver, even though the driver was an Army private who must be wondering just what Josh had done to deserve him. At any rate, they drove in relative luxury until, about ten miles outside of town; they exchanged the car for a motorcycle and sidecar, with Josh in the sidecar. At this point, the driver turned into a lunatic who drove as fast as he could over the rutted dirt roads that rapidly deteriorated into crude paths in the dense and rugged woods.

Josh hung on for dear life as he was pitched back and forth. More than once his head hit the windscreen and he wondered if the bruises would qualify as yet another wound. When he questioned the driver, he was told that he was supposed to get Josh to the site by three. Josh thought they could have left a little earlier and driven more slowly, but such was life in the military.

A few minutes before three, they pulled up before a log gate that was guarded by a pair of grim-faced soldiers armed with Thompson submachine guns. Other guards were visible in the woods behind, and barbed-wire fencing ran as far as he could see.

The guards checked their ID and let them through. They drove down a hillside and into a valley. A tent city was at one end along with a crude airfield. Chalk outlines and rough structures that looked vaguely familiar were scattered about. Several dozen small biplanes were scattered about. From the miscellany of colors and styles, he assumed they were civilian craft, but what the devil were they doing in an army installation?

He would find out in a minute. He got out of the sidecar, checked his bruises and limbs to see that all was there and promptly snapped to attention. Colonel Billy Mitchell stood beside him.

“At ease, Lieutenant. How was your trip?”

“Sir, about as frightening as the thought of going up in one of those little planes.”

Mitchell chuckled. “We will arrange a ride to complete your education.”

Josh was about to say something when he realized that Mitchell was serious. “Sir, the admiral only said you were working on something to harm the German fleet and that I was to talk to you about your progress. May I ask what that is?”

Mitchell glared at him. “Certainly you are not alluding to my attempts to sink warships with bombs are you? While my attempts might have failed, I do believe such will happen and in the not to distant future.”

“As in the next few weeks, sir? I would dearly love to see the German fleet destroyed,” Josh asked hopefully.

“As I told your admiral, absolutely not,” he said as they walked over to a two-seater biplane. Josh was suddenly filled with dread. “Get in the rear and take two of those bags of flour with you.”

Josh did as the colonel ordered. A grinning mechanic handed him two bags of flour and then showed him how to use the speaker tubes to communicate with the pilot, Mitchell, if he didn’t feel like screaming at the top of his lungs. Mitchell started the engine and the mechanic spun the propeller, and they started bouncing down the dirt field.

“Don’t worry about freezing to death, Lieutenant; you won’t be up all that long.” They cleared a stand of trees by a few inches and climbed only a little. “And we won’t be going so high that you won’t be able to breathe. That doesn’t happen until about ten thousand feet.”

Josh didn’t know whether to feel reassured or not. The plane banked and Josh had a marvelous view of the camp and what he presumed were targets. He’d quickly realized that the shapes were intended to be ships and the collections of poles and canvas mimicked warships’ superstructures. The size of the targets told him that German battleships were what they were going to go after.

“Lieutenant, what we are going to do is very simple. I’m going to fly over the target and you’re going to drop a flour bag and try to hit the damn thing anywhere you can. The bags weigh twenty-five pounds each and will be awkward to handle, so just do your best. I don’t expect accuracy from you, only an understanding of what we’re doing out here and what we’re up against.”

Mitchell banked the plane again and came straight in on the port side of a target ship. “Drop when you’re ready,” Mitchell said.

Good god, Josh thought, we’re only about twenty feet off the ground, or ocean, he corrected himself. The bag was heavy and awkward to handle, but he managed to hold it over the side.

“Some day soon would be nice,” Mitchell snapped.

Josh dropped the bag and twisted to see. The plane banked and he spotted a white blob and a puff of dust on the ground about a hundred feet short of the outline of the hull.

Mitchell laughed. “Actually, that wasn’t half bad for a first try by someone who’d never been on a plane. Grab another bag and we’ll do it again.”

They did and, this time, Josh dropped with more decisiveness and confidence. He still missed but was much closer. Mitchell landed the plane and they got out, which was just as well as Josh was starting to feel very cold. Now he understood why pilots were heavily bundled up even in warm weather.

“Not bad at all for a rookie,” Mitchell said. “A few more tries and you’d be hitting the target with monotonous regularity. Now you can tell Sims how easy it is. But tell me one thing, Lieutenant.”

“Sir?”

“Could you hit the target at night with fires burning all around you and with a score of assholes with machine guns trying to blow you out of the sky? And, oh yeah, your target might just be moving erratically at twenty knots an hour in an attempt to shake you off.”

Josh saw the point. “I hope I would give it a helluva try, Colonel.”

“Good answer. Now watch.”

A group of small planes lifted over the hill and descended in an attack pattern. The flour Josh had dropped had been washed away by the ground crew and the new pilots had a clean target. Twelve bags were dropped and seven of them hit.

“Good, but they can and will do better. Thank God we don’t have a shortage of gas or, for that matter, flour.”

Josh looked around at the number of other pilots who’d gathered near them. He was shocked to see that some were women. Mitchell commented that, yes, a dozen or so were women, but that all were civilians.

“And if Admiral Sims is concerned about the fair sex getting into combat, tell him not to worry. I have no intention of letting women fly when we do attack.”

Josh understood. Mitchell was covering his ass. When push came to shove, there would be little anyone could do to prevent a civilian woman from getting into her plane and doing whatever the hell she wished to help her country. Josh felt a surge of pride for the volunteers, male and female.

Sunlight was just starting to fade and Mitchell said that Josh would stay the night. When he protested that he really should get back to San Francisco, Mitchell laughed.

“Why I’ll bet you got a girl back there, don’t you? Well, I’ll just bet she’d like you alive and in one piece, now wouldn’t she? You saw how miserable that road was in the daytime, now think of your driver trying to navigate that dangerous trail in the dark. You crash and your body will be eaten by bears or cougars before you can say jack shit.”

Bears? Cougars? All of a sudden a night with a bunch of crazy civilian pilots didn’t seem like a bad idea after all.

A few dozen yards away and obscured by shadows, twenty-three-year-old Amelia Earhart watched the two men converse. She was surprised to see the lone junior officer gain access to the field. Mitchell was obsessive about security, so the young man must represent someone important. Sims, she concluded.