Armageddon - Leon Uris

Scott took it like a gentleman and with a sense of relief that he would soon be free of this trap. And all the while Barbara was cutting their ties, she loved him.

“You haven’t got the courage to live in this world and take your share of its responsibilities and its bitterness. You think you can go on living in the clouds, but you’re fooling yourself. One day life is going to catch up with you and you’ll crash harder than you did on that jungle airstrip and when you do there will be a lot of people whose hearts you have broken standing on the side lines and cheering.”

Scott justified the final phase with Barbara by saying he was a lousy husband and she deserved better.

Scott flew off with his infectious smile and easy way, seeking the thrill of new conquests, and he left a trail of damned fool women like Cindy who thought for a moment the wings of the eagle could be clipped.

Chapter Thirteen

SCOTT CUT ENGINES AT the hardstand at Rhein/Main and growled for Nick and Stan to secure the craft. He was weary. He stretched, looked forward to a hot soaking tub, securing a three-day pass, and shaking down Frankfurt for quail.

As the last craft of the squadron cut engines, a burst of activity erupted. The planes were engulfed by ten-wheel army trailers whose crews began pulling out the cargo; first sergeants assembled the squadron personnel on the apron, and maintenance men queried each captain on the condition of his ship.

Colonel Matt Beck, head of Operations and chief pilot on Stonebraker’s staff, met Scott at the bottom of the ladder.

“Would you come over to Operations with me, Captain,” he said. “We want to run down the personnel and condition of the craft.”

“Excuse me, Colonel ... what’s the fire?”

“These ships will be worked on tonight and stripped of certain components. They’ll be flying cargo to Berlin tomorrow.”

“We’re beat, sir ...”

“You’ll bed down on the field tonight and be ready to fly tomorrow.’’

Scott’s bath and the great treat that lay in store for German womanhood went up in smoke. He got into Colonel Beck’s jeep, drove down the row of Skymasters.

The first thing Scott saw of Rhein/Main was a coal dump fifteen feet high covering an acre of land, and a field of antennas that covered another acre. He had never seen anything like it. Bustle was everywhere. Huts were being hammered together for enlisted personnel like a Gold Rush boom town. Maintenance docks, hangars, warehouses, fire stations were being erected; roads were being built on a base of mud. They passed an immense park of the transportation corps jammed with newly arrived trucks and trailers. The sign read: 24TH TRANSPORTATION TRUCK BATTALION, UNITED STATES ARMY. Negro soldiers were shaking them down.

Across the road, Colonel Beck pointed to a small city of displaced persons who were the laborers. The movement, the gray dinginess, the mud that encased the entire field, the temporary structures all reminded Scott of wartime. Rhein/ Main was a far cry from the neat lawns and hedges of Hickam Field.

Matt Beck stopped before another temporary building marked 7497th airlift wing. He was asked to wait in the colonel’s office. The place meant business, he thought. He stretched and tried to doze.

Hiram Stonebraker, who had been inspecting the new building projects entered the office wearing a pair of grimy fatigues. “You the chief pilot of the 19th out of Hickam?”

Scott blinked his eyes open.

“What’s the status of your craft?”

He didn’t answer.

“What the hell’s the matter with you. You tongue-tied?”

“So far as I know, you’re a kindly middle-aged gentleman in dirty dungarees. I never give them classified information.”

Stonebraker looked at his coveralls, stifled a smile. He walked out of the office right into Matt Beck, who had heard the end of the conversation in horror. “I’ll tell him who you are, sir.”

“Never mind. Get his record over to Wiesbaden, then shoot his ass over there.”

The thing that ultimately made Hiram Stonebraker a major general while other men remained majors was his gift of selecting and using men.

He read the book on Scott Davidson, found two men in his Headquarters who knew of the captain personally.

Scott was a hot pilot, guts and ice water. He had knocked down eleven Jap Zeros with a P-38, and later, flew a Thunderbolt. He had more strafing and ground-support mission on Marine and Army invasions than could properly be recorded.

He had survived a miraculous landing in a badly damaged craft, suffered wounds that might have finished a lesser man. He made an even more miraculous recovery, as the medical record showed, to fly again for ATC and MATS, where he was considered a superb pilot.

Hiram Stonebraker liked what he read ... except for certain things on the fitness report: THIS OFFICER IS A POTENTIAL LEADER BUT IS LACKADAISICAL, IS ALWAYS LATE WITH REPORTS, AND AVOIDS RESPONSIBILITY.

“We met earlier today, Captain,” Hiram Stonebraker said.

The two silver stars adorning each shoulder were much in evidence now. “I had a sort of feeling I may have made an error in judgment ...”

“You were within your rights. I’d have chewed you out if you hadn’t demanded proper identification.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Captain, I’m going to recommend you for a temporary appointment as chief pilot of the Wing at Rhein/Main. It’s a big job. Cut the buck and I’m sure it’s yours permanently. You’ve got a lot to be briefed on to get the picture of what we’re up against here, so I’ll turn you over to Colonel Beck again.”

“General... I ... uh ...”

“Well?”

“Sir, I appreciate the General’s confidence ... even on a temporary basis. However, sir, I’m afraid I might let you down. I’m just not much on the administrative end of things.”

“You can speak better English than that.”

“If the General gives me leave to speak.”

“The General does.”

“Sir, I made myself live when I should have been dead so I could fly again,” he said with a southern charm, sincerity, and appeal that could melt the hardest heart. “I lay there in a bed for six months while they were pulling lead and aluminum out of me and pumping me full of blood. The only thing that made me pull through was the thought of flying, General ... I’m just not cut out to play wet nurse to boy pilots or pin up numbers in a chart room.”

Crusty knew the breed all right. The old crushed-hat gang, a direct descendant of the barnstormer. They would fly into a brick wall and the eye of a hurricane, but you couldn’t give them a command or make them make decisions.

But Hiram Stonebraker also knew men. He liked something in this boy and he wanted to believe he could get the best from him. Scott was the first in with the Skymasters and certainly the best pilot who had shown up so far.

“You’ll do what I tell you to do. Now get down to Operations and learn your goddamned job.”

Throughout the night weight and balance supervisors removed excess items from the craft in from Hawaii. The long-range navigation equipment, navigator’s stool, wash water, forward fuselage tanks, bladders, partitions, troop benches were peeled out to make room for another ton of pay-load cargo to Berlin.

Matt Beck personally briefed the new arrivals and would take the number one craft today to Berlin as their time bloc approached. Ten planes would make the flight. The eleventh was to remain at Rhein/Main for a special detail, Captain Scott Davidson to fly it. Clinton Loveless briefed him on the plan.

“Bomb coal!” Scott cried. “Somebody’s out of their goddamned mind.”

“Captain, this is the general’s idea. No matter what happens to this experiment, you must keep your mouth shut. You’re too cute to have your head shrunk.”