"What was that for?" The flight engineer gave him a strange look.
"Wounded aboard," he said. "We fire a flare when we have wounded aboard." Ignoring the pain that shot through his knee and leg when he worked he rudder pedals, Bitter turned the B-17 onto its final approach path, retarded the throules, and had several hasty, terrifying thoughts, Flaps! What the hell kind offlaps do I use? Are they working?
The gear! How is this big sonofabitch going to handle when I put the gear into the slipstream?
The flaps and the gear.
Am I now going to dump it, after having brought it this far?
How am I going to steer this sonofabitch on the ground if my knee goes out?
Or If aint?
Should I go around and pick up altitude and let the others bail out?
One of the questions was immediately answered, "Gear going down," the flight engineer's voice said, then, "Gear down and locked."
"Twenty degrees flaps," Bitter ordered.
The airspeed immediately began to drop, and control went mushy.
He pushed the throttles forward.
"Twenty degrees flaps," the flight engineer reported.
He was now lined up with the runway, approaching the threshold.
He was afraid to cut power. He suspected the seventeen might sink like a stone without it. He would fly it onto the ground, as a fighter is landed on the deck of an aircraft carrier, and pray that he would be able to stop it once he was there.
But almost instantly he recognized that had been the wrong decision.
The B-17 was high above the runway. He reached out for the throttle quadrant and puxed the levers toward him. And still it wanted to fly.
He pushed the wheel forward and the wheels touched and chirped, and then it bounced into the air again. His hands on the wheel were shaking.
He touched down again and raised the nose, and it bounced again into the air, then touched down a third time and stayed down. He tapped the brakes, tapped them again, and again, and was aware that every time he pushed hard he was making an animal-like noise--a cross between a moan and a shriek--when the knee flamed with pain.
But finally, with five hundred yards of runway left, the B-17 shuddered to a stop.
He gunned the port inboard engine enough to get him off the runway, then he chopped the throule again and flipped the MASTER switch to off.
He exhaled. When he inhaled, he smelled the vomitus in his lap, and something else foul. And there was a stabbing pain in his knee and leg. And he felt a clammy sweat soak his face and back and was sure he was going to pass out.
But instead, without warning he threw up again. He was dimly aware that crash trucks, and ambulances, and a parade of other vehicles were heading toward the airplane. He looked at his wristwatch. His whole arm was trembling so severely that he could not see where the hands were on the face of his watch.
FOUR] When It. Commander Edwin H. Biter, USN, exited the aircraft, It. Commander John B. Dolan, USNR, was there to greet him. But his welcome was not exactly what Bitter expected.
When Bitter put his arm around Dolan's shoulders to take the weight off his knee, Dolan's strong arm went around Bitter, and he looked at him with concern and compassion. But what he said was, "Goddamn you! I told you, you should have told that little shit to fuck himself!"
"The liale shit's dead, Dolan," Biter said, and made a vague gesture toward the airplane.
"We thought you were all dead," Dolan said furiously. "The last tit ne anybody seen you, you had two engines on fire and you was in a spin.
The Air Corps's not too smart with spins. I was just geting up my courage to call Canidy."
"Did you?" Bitter asked. Over Dolan's shoulder he saw Sergeant Agnes Draper, standing beside the Packard.
"I was about to, goddamn it," Dolan said.
Biter saw medics carrying a blanket-covered body to an ambulance.
He looked at Sergeant Draper. She was chewing her lips. And then she started to walk toward him.
And then It. Colonel D'Angelo was there.
"Are you all right, Commander?" he asked. "Something wrong with your leg?"
"I hurt it in the Orient, "Bitter said. "I must have strained it again. I wasn't hit. I'm all right. I was lucky." D'Angelo went into the aircraft, then returned as Sergeant Draper walked up and said, "I'm very glad to see you, Commander. Are you all right?"
"Sergeant Haskell just told me you brought it home," D'Angelo said.
"I didn't have much of a choice, did I?" Bitter said.
D'Angelo handed him a miniature boule of Jack Daniel's bourbon.
Bieer unscrewed the cap and drank it down. He felt the warmth in his stomach.
D'Angelo handed him another and he drank that down, and that was a bad idea, for he threw up again without warning.
The humiliation was bad enough, but he saw pity in Sergeant Draper's eyes and that made it worse.
"Get a jeep, Dolan," Bitter ordered.
"A jeep?"
"Look at me, for God's sake!" Biter said, gesturing at his blood-covered flight gear. "I don't want to mess up Canidy's goddamned Packard!"
"We'll just get that high-altitude gear off you, Commander," Dolan said, and very gently started to undress him.
"When he's through with the crew," D'Angelo said, "III send the debriefing officer over."
"I don't know what the hell I can tell him," Bitter said.
"I'll tell him to make it brief," D'Angelo said. "What I want to know is how you got it out of the spin." Biter looked at him.
"The last sighting had you in a spin," D'Angelo said.
Bitter was genuinely astonished at his response, which came without thinking.
"I'm a naval aviator, Colonel," he said. "They teach us how to get out of spins." D'Angelo's face flashed surprise and even annoyance.
Dolan chuckled heartily, and D'Angelo glowered at him, but then smiled.
"Dumb question," he said, "dumb answer."
"I'm sorry, sir," Bitter said. "I don't know why I said that."
"Raise your leg, Commander, please," Sergeant Draper said, and Bitter felt a tug at his leg.
Sergeant Draper was on her knees in the muddy grass. His sheepskin trousers were down around his ankles.
Colonel D'Angelo put his arm around Biter's shoulders to steady him.
"Right now, Commander," D'Angelo said, "I think you have the right to say any goddamn thing you want to." Sergeant Draper pulled the sheepskin trousers off his feet, and then stood up and smiled at him.
"You're in pain, aren't you?" Agnes Draper asked--challenged--softly.
"If Dolan can come up with some ice and a rubber sheet, it will be all right," Biter said.
"Well, let's get you home, Commander," Dolan said, and wrapped his arm around him. Agnes took Biter's other arm and put it around her shoulder.
And between them, Bitter hobbled to Canidy's Packard.
FIVE] When they got to the BOQ, Dolan sent a white hat after ice, "I don't want any excuses, just come back with ice." Then they set Biter down gently on his bed.
Dolan gave him three ounces of rye, straight, with an almost motherly admonition, "Drink it all, it'll be good for you." The ice arrived in a garbage can carried by one of the white hats and Lieutenant Kennedy. A moment later, the other white hat came in with an oilskin tablecloth.
"I didn't know where to get a rubber sheet," he said.
Biter raised the lower part of his body so the tablecloth could be put under it, while Dolan made an ice pack with a torn sheet. Then, very matter-of-factly, Sergeant Draper ordered Commander Bitter to loosen his belt and undo his fly.
She took off his shoes, then pulled his trousers off.
There was only a moment before a major arrived for post flight debriefing. He handed Bitter a miniature I.5-ounce bottle of medical bourbon. Surprising himself, Biter twisted the cap off and drank it down.
Agnes Draper took the ice pack from Dolan and gently patted it in place on Bitter's leg.
The debriefing officer was good at his work. He skillfillly drew from Bitter the story of what had happened on "Danny's Darling." Twice, Agnes Draper took Biter's glass from him and added rye.
And both times he found himself looking into her eyes.
And then he caught himself staring at her as she stood leaning against the wall, her breasts straining the butons of her blouse, her stomach pressing the front of her skirt. And he sensed that she knew what he was looking at and didn't care.
But she left with the others when the debriefing officer was finished.
"If the leg is still giving you trouble in the morning," she said on the way out, you'd better send for the flight surgeon. Right now, what you need is another belt of rye, and some sleep. Biter fell asleep wondering what Sergeant Agnes Draper's belly looked like when she wasn't wearing a unifomm skirt.
When he woke up, Sergeant Agnes Draper was sitting on his bed, pinning his shoulders down.
"You were having a nightmare," she said.
"Yes," he said.
"It will pass quickly, I think," she said.
He pushed himself up in the bed, so that his back was resting against the wall of his room.
"It wasn't about today," he said.
"Oh?"
"Years ago, flying with Dick as a matter of fact, I rolled a trainer close to the ground. When I was upside down, the engine quit.
That's what I was dreaming about."
"I see."
"I'm sorry I woke you, Sergeant," he said. "I'll be all right now."
"Actually," she said levelly, ayou didn't wake me. It was only that when I came in here I found you thrashing about."
"I appreciate your concem, Sergeant," he said.
"Do you think you could bring yourself to call me by my Christian name?
Or would you rather I left?"
"I don't quite understand," Biter said.
"Yes, you do," she said.
He met her eyes but found himself unable to speak. After a long moment she nodded, then stood up and walked to the door.
"Agnes!" Bitter called.
She stopped and was motionless for a moment, and then turned around and ran quickly to the bed. sxx] At 2115 hours Lieutenant Commander Edwin H. Biter, USN, came to the attention of the Public Affairs office of the Naval Element, SHAEF.
Commander Richard C. Korman had the duty. Six months before he had been Vice President, Public Relations, of the Public Service Company of New Jersey. Komman was writing a leter to his wife on his typewriter when he received a telephone call from a public information officer of Headquarters, Eighth United States Air Force.
"Commander," his caller announced, "this is Colonel Jerry Whitney.
I'm in the PIO shop at Eighth Air Force."
"What can the Navy do for the Eighth Air Force?"
"We're about to decorate one of your officers, and the Chief of Staff said it would be a good idea to touch base with you."
"Tell me about it."