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Show FROUID) LIT -"S? .WHITE W.N.U.TEATUOEJ "Anamaet is the courageous one. He walks forward, puts up his hand, and says simply, without a quaver, Thanks for all you have done. We have tried, but we are finished.' Gravely, and with no bitterness. "I ask him why he and all his boys don't come out with us. We'll find room for him in the planes. Then we can continue the war from Australia. He shakes his head. "Now our boys are loaded in the truck, and presently we're out on the main highway, headed across Java, but just then we hear a familiar fa-miliar drone Jap dive bombers. Smelling their way into Java, they've finally found this field. It's only luck they hadn't found it before. be-fore. Our boys crowd against the tail gate of the truck to watch them peel off one by one, assume that 40-degree angle toward the ground, let go the little egg, pull out of their dives and then r-r-r-umpf, the bomb takes hold. It punctuates the lesson les-son we'd been trying for days to THE STORY THUS FAR: Lieut. Col. Frank Kurtz, pilot of a Flying Fortress, ells of that fatal day when the Japs struck In the Philippines. Eight of his -men were killed while fleeing for shelter, shel-ter, and Old 99, with many other Forts, was demolished on the ground. After escaping to Australia, what is left of the -squadron flies to Java, where they go on many missions over the Philippines and he Java sea. The boys in Java hear what happened to the Marblehead and the Houston and morale sags. The Dutch 1)low up their ammunition dumps, and the order comes through to evacuate. The little Dutch navy fights a losing fight in the dark. Java collapses. Sgt. War-fenfeltz War-fenfeltz never gets his money. CHAPTER XIX "When I said I hadn't got it, he said if it ever did come . through, I wasn't to open It until he got back, or something like that. He'd meant ' -every word of it, and yet now it seemed he didn't want me to see it. I couldn't understand. But it didn't seem to matter. Because what did any letter matter, now that we could talk, all we wanted to, around the world?" "It was long after midnight when we finished," said Frank. "But it was some satisfaction to know it would cost the Japanese maybe five hundred dollars, and I only hoped I'd be out of Java so they couldn't collect from me. "Then I got back to work on the Dutch military, who of course were up all that night. They knew what -was coming tomorrow even if the civilians were only beginning to suspect. sus-pect. It, was two o'clock in the morning when I got Major Fisher out of bed with the news that already al-ready the landing barges of one flank of this invasion force had been sighted right off the beach. "After a final desperate call to the Dutch General van Oeyen. he agreed our boys might leave, turning turn-ing their P-40's over to the Dutch fighter pilots, provided that before they went they strafed the Jap landing land-ing barges. Without verbal orders Irom the Dutch commander, they would not have gone. "So I rustled two cars and a truck to transport them, and by four o'clock we were headed for Gnoro. We got there a few minutes before iawn, to find our boys were up and out on that final mission, although they did not know it was their last. "Again we telephoned Van Oeyen in Surabaya to tell him the orders . , had been obeyed, and he told us re- 1 luctantly to bid them Godspeed and J .good luck; they had fought the good V fight, and those who returned from r this mission were now free to go to f ' ' Australia. If there was a way. "I hoped there still would be. The Colonel had told me the day before that if I could get them across Java to Jockstrap by noon, they would find three Fortresses which he had ordered back from Australia to pick them up. However, he couldn't guarantee guar-antee that these Forts would dare wait on that field beyond noon. "As we stood on the Gnoro Field of course I got tense. Would those kids come back alive and in time to get across Java by noon? If we were late, would the bomber pilots get jittery and maybe pull out without us? Not that I'd blame them, for today no plane would be safe on any field in Java. "The Dutch pilots are grave, but they make us welcome. "Then comes the roar of P-40's and here is the first flight in out of the Rising Sun as though fleeing from it. Jack Dale is its leader. W grab them. What happened? "It looks bad, they tell us. There were so many barges. And when they started spraying them, the barges threw up horrible cones of fire, in great masses. There was a cross fire, too from Jap shore batteries, bat-teries, already landed. At last they had set their ugly, crooked teeth into the fair white coastline of Java. "Then Jack said, in a low voice, "When in hell will we get out of here, Frank?' "I said I had news for him, but Just then the next flight comes roaring roar-ing In it's three Hurricanes flown by Dutch pilots, all that is left of the Dutch Air Force this final day, except of course they had plane-less plane-less pilots who were to take up our abandoned P-40'. "Now here's the third flight, buzzing buzz-ing In low P-40's this time, and the American boys still have their old spirit left because they buzz up the drome, come roaring in right over the roof of the operations office for a fighter pilot it's like knocking at the door. They're still the old 17th Pursuit Group or what's left of them. "I looked at the P-40'. They are so full of holes they should be condemnedthere con-demnedthere is hardly one the Dutch would dare take up again. We were leaving them little enough. "Now my boys are gulping coffee. They grab an apple each and sandwiches sand-wiches to take along, and cram things in their bags, and I suppose it's time for goodbys. Captain Anamaet, Ana-maet, leader of the Dutch fighters, tall, thin, dark-haired, with a finely chiseled face, nervous like many fighters, is standing silent at one side. His Dutch boys are with him. "What can we say? Our American boys have fought with them like brothers for weeks. We're now mak- j ing a dash for safety. I Finally I know from the map we must be approaching Jockstrap. But on what side of the town is the field? We can't waste precious minutes min-utes uselessly fighting its narrow streets. "Then, to one side, I see leaping flames and a column of smoke. That's all the marker you need to find an airdrome at this stage of a war. I tell the driver to steer for the smoke and he'll find the field. "And at first it seems all to have been for nothing. There are the hangars, split wide open six or seven Forts burning merrily. Also the water tower is hit. Professionally, Profession-ally, I admire it as one of the best bomb runs I've ever seen. The Japs seem to have made a perfect job of cutting off our retreat but no! There remains a single Fortress! "It seems Lieutenant Vandevan-ter Vandevan-ter managed in the nick of time to get her off the ground, and flew out to sea until the raid was over. Luckily Luck-ily they sent only bombers, and no Zeros which could shoot him down. Here he is now, perched on the edge of the field. "But at the utmost he can carry only a third of us. I dispatch about fifty in the trucks to Madiun Field, hoping- it isn't blown up, and that two Forts the Colonel tells me are due In from Australia can get them out. "And now we have a bonfire of everything we couldn't take with us, but which we don't want the Japs to have all our photographs, every official paper, the entire records of the 17th Pursuit Group for the Java and Philippine wars. It all goes up in those flames on Jockstrap Field forever except what the few remaining boys standing around that fire can remember of what the others oth-ers did. We even chuck in a few bomb sights that were kicking around for luck, and for kindling. "But just as the flames were leaping leap-ing highest, the air-raid siren started start-ed to scream. We dived for a drainage drain-age ditch, and I think I got my worst scare of the war. Because up above were two Zeros approaching, approach-ing, and down here on the field was our solitary Fortress our last chance to escape sitting in front of God and everybody (including those Japs) mother-naked and defenseless. defense-less. How long I held my breath, staring up into the sky, I couldn't say now. But for some reason they hadn't dived on us yet, and then when one rolled up to let the other take a picture I realized it was only a recco flight, to take the damage they'd done a few hours before. "I began loading the boys into that plane. But I did one final thing. I couldn't forget Captain Anamaet, standing there on that Gnoro Field watching us pull out,' and if I'd wanted to, the others wouldn't have let me. So with the Dutch liaison officer there at Jockstrap, we made arrangements that if tomorrow night we could get any planes through from Australia, they would circle our old bomber field at Malang. The liaison officer was to notify Anamaet, Ana-maet, so that if his Dutch fighter pilots could get there, and Malang wasn't by then in Jap hands, they would light a bonfire on its field as a signal that it was safe for our Forts to come in and pick them up and take them out to Australia, where we'd have another chance to fight the war together. "We kept the date. The next night Captains Bill Bohnaker and Eddie Green slipped through to Malang. For forty-five minutes they circled our old field. But there was no bonfire. Maybe Anamaet's boys had died during the day, giving their all for Java. Maybe they'd got to the field just ahead of the Japs and were now prisoners, unable to light their bonfire but listening in the darkness as Bill and Eddie circled and circled above them. What happened hap-pened we never knew. But I'm glad we couldn't have foreseen that darkened field at Malang as we all climbed into our own Fortress, turned off the Jockstrap field, and headed east for Australia, flying into a rising moon." "Nothing much was going to happen hap-pen on that flight to Australia," continued con-tinued Frank, "although we couldn't know it All had to cram forward for the takeoff, of course, for with that big load in the rear we'd never have got her tail up. We manned battle stations, and only after we were halfway across the ocean did the gunners leave their turrets. 1 rode up in the pilot's compartment, and there were at least seven of us there, chree sitting on the floor. "At two o'clock in the morning we sight the coast in the moonlight, which gives it a ghostly hue. It's just flat desert, but finally we find the liltle town of Broome. We circle cir-cle it and finally a flare path breaks out below they're tossing kerosene flares out of a moving aulo to show us the runway, so we circle and come in. "I couldn't sleep. The mosquitoes were making me groggy, and also 1 was thinking of our planes circling Malang Field for Anamaet. After a while I got up and looked out th hangar door. The first pale dawn was breaking over Broome, which I could now see consisted of a general gen-eral store, a gas station, two houses, and this hangar shack perched out here on the edge of nothing, where the red sand desert of Australia meets the blue salt desert of the sea. (TO 3F. -i' , I It was two o'clock in the morning when 1 got Major Fisher out of bed. drive home to the Dutch infantry generals that the field was now untenable. un-tenable. It was only the weather which kept the Japs out of it yesterday. yes-terday. "But now we have worries of our own. There are seventy-six of us in this little caravan fifteen of them pilots. We have only one road map, so the drivers' instructions are to drive carefully and stay together. to-gether. It's a long drive at the speed we can make. A close squeeze to make it by noon. Then, in spite of the road map, we get lost not badly, but two or three times we must backtrack. Then I see we'll never make it by noon. The boys, tired from many weeks of fighting, try to doze standing up in that jolting jolt-ing truck. I don't sleep, but I have nightmares. At every crossroads cross-roads I wonder if lightning-fast light Jap tanks mayn't come sliding in on us. Even if we had time to turn and run before they open fire with their turret guns, they would have cut off our escape to Jockstrap. "My wrist-watch hour hand seems to race. These tired boys, bouncing bounc-ing in that truck, trust me. The Air Corps got them in here; now the Air Corps is getting what is left of them out They don't doubt that a big bomber will be waiting with its door open on the Jockstrap runway to take them to Australia. Suppose we get there to find the bomber pilots have waited past the rendezvous hours, and then gone on back to Australia empty and we look at a vacant field knowing the Japs are closing in behind us? "My watch hand races toward noon and we're still hours from Jockstrap, but I have an idea. We're not far from what shows on my map as a fair-sized town which should have telephones from which, while the boys have lunch, I can call the Colonel and tell him we're on our way that those bombers must wait. "The town is a sleepy little place built round what at a quick glance one might mistake for a Middle Western courthouse square. War hasn't touched it, and you'd think could never come. In the hotel they stare at our uniforms they're the first American ones they've seen. The boys order, while I hunt a telephone tele-phone to call the Colonel at Jockstrap. Jock-strap. "But minutes tick by and they can't locate him. Nor anyone else who can deliver a message that we are coming, and those bombers must wait. "Do I waste more time calling? Or do we hurry on, hoping we'll get there before they are frightened from the field? That seems more sensible, so we forge on. I haven't the heart to tell them I couldn't ' reach the Colonel. "They're all tired in the cars, there's no wrestling or kidding, which is amazing for fighter pilots. |