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Show - 0 (SdDED IS MY tel CdD-PHILdDT CJ JCol. Robert L.Scoff vRtutAjt This story is sponsored by the Eddington Canning Company for the enjoyment of our men and women in the armed forces and their friends here at home. hU1, and w th. "-?'l- wrecka-e of the two ships that rd flown together; the natives were sLnding ahout looJ at what had come out of the sk ies. Is I took my formation into the fir and followed out the mictions mic-tions the General had given l me. I realized that for all practical pur Poses he Was in the fighter with me; I was merely Ple&ed to press the trigger and send the en my into the ground and destruction. destruc-tion. Yes, the General rode with me on those flights in more ways than one. If we kept following out his tactics we'd hold our ratio of twelve-to-one over the Japs as we battled them in China. None of us in China was foolin himself-we knew that what little we had accomplished against the enemy would have small bearing on the outcome of the conflict But under General Chennault we had made the most of what we had. We had developed tew with an urge for combat and the aggressive Spirit of battle. We had bases in China from which to attack at-tack other bases in China, that were Japanese. With more equipment equip-ment we could hold our bases and we could take the bases farther East, from which we could bomb the heart of Japan. And from them we could flank the enemy supply lines to the Solomons and Atralia. and to Saigon through find a bottle of Haig & Haig. pinch bottle, that the Soong sisters sent us for Christmas. We're going to open that and celebrate." We were celebrating when Dr. Tom Gentry came back and began to ask the General why he wasn't in bed with his fever. The General looked so happy, I guess, that Doctor Doc-tor took his temperature again. Then he gave me a funny look. "Normal," he said. "Sometimes I think if you all shot down a few Japs every day, the General would even get to where he could hear as well as he could when he was a boy in Louisiana." The General filled his glass again and handed me the bottle. Then he raised the glass at me and said, "How!" We drank to the victory of the afternoon. Early next day I went over again with Holloway, just in case the Jap came again. We learned that the victory had not been without cost. Lieut. Mooney naa been found dead, close to the wrecks of two burned airplanes a Mitsubishi Jap bomber and his P-40. We now knew from the different dif-ferent stories of pilot witnesses that he had gone down on the tail of one Japanese bomber against the withering fire of several planes. He had shot one down, but had evidently been hit badly himself, for his plane was smoking. smok-ing. Mooney's speed had carried him on past the enemy formation, and he had come back for a head- HY NO PHIS 4 CHAPTER XVIII: Col. Scott shoots 1-H of the biggest geese he h;il ever w.-en meat for Christmas Christ-mas dinner- and gets his 12th confirmed enemy ship. They frustrate frus-trate the Dee. 2lith attempted bombing of Yeching. CI IAFTKR XXIX Hut from the patrol that had been at the Mekong and from the "probahles," w knew that we had not let one Jap escape from the December 26th attempted bombing bomb-ing of Yeching. I felt so good I wanted to radio the General, but waited until we checked up on those who were missing, so that 1 1 could go and tell him in person. Our victory had not been without with-out loss. Lieut. Couch, who had led the rear attack on the bombers, bomb-ers, had failed to return. His wing man had seen him pulling up over ; the tail of the bomber formation after shooting down one of the Japs; but they had concentrated their fire on him and had shot him down in flames. No one knew whether or not the Carolina pilot had gotten out. In the speed with which that attack had moved you didn't have time to see parachutes opening. Another pilot, ' Lieut. Mooney, had been seen to shoot one bomber bomb-er down, and then, in another head-on attack, had either collided collid-ed with another of the enemy or had exploded it so close to his own ship that the observing pilot had not been able to see Mooney's P-4 again. Sending out the usual search parties, I took off into a setting sun for Kunming. My heart was heavy with the loss of two fine pilots, but there was still hope that they had gotten out. And at the same time my spirits were singing with victory. I landed at the headquarters in the dark and went to the General's Gener-al's house. Over the rough road which traveled the supplies to Burma. Bur-ma. There was a supply problem, yes but that problem, just like any other problem that developed in this war that had to be won, was a "must." I expect I wouldn't have been much good in combat that day if it had come, for I was doing too much thinking, and fighter pilots can do only one thing at a time. Even when I landed and walked about among the Chinese dead from the Christmas Day bombing, I just kept on thinking. That afternoon at two o'clock I got all our ship in the sky again. I rode on Holloway's wing over the top of them all, and we watched watch-ed and waited for our interceptors on the Mekong to yell, "Here they come." Nothing happened I guess General Chennault was right again. "You destroyed their group on run against a single plane after the formation had been broken. They had either flown together because be-cause of Mooney's determination to keep coming until he shot the Jap down, or Mooney had been badly hit. The opinion of two of the witnesses was that he had flown his fighter into the Jap. Perhaps when the chips were down others besides the Japanese could take just one more enemy with them when the end was near. We rolled Lieut. Mooney in his chute and placed him aboard the transport for Kunming. There would be another funeral in the graveyard of the 23rd Group with a formation, and the Chinese bugler bug-ler blowing taps. Couch had had better luck and that led there, my mind was on the speedy happensings since I had driven out to the ship that morning. Then I drove past the guard at the gate, who smiled and yelled, "AVG ding-hao." I called a cheerful greeting to him, for everything was good now. There was a full moon rising in the sky a "bombing moon," the Chinese call it and the cedar trees around the house that Gissi-mo Gissi-mo had built for the General were casting long shadows in its light. I tossed my flying gear on the bed in my room and hurried to the General. I saw "Gunboat", the houseboy, coming out of the General's Gen-eral's corner room. He said soft-, soft-, ly, "General still feel pretty bad." I went in. country could have awarded me officially. I realized too that though the coastlines of this country coun-try were in the hands of the enemy ene-my though the lands to almost every side were hostile, the hearts of this people were free and would be free forever. Later I learned that the group had walked all through the night before from a village twenty-odd kilometers away. Now they were on their way home again. I believe that if I had thought about a tribute tri-bute like that in combat, I would have gone head-on into a Japanese Japa-nese fighter or closed to point-blank point-blank range with a bomber with a smile on mv face. General Chennault was in bed, propped, up by pillows. He glanced up from a map and looked at me. "Well, Scotty," he said, "I hear there was a fight over Yeching this afternoon and I, see blood on your face, so I know you made contact. What happened?" Trying to look real stern, I told the General that 19 Japs had come in, just as he said they would, at the same time as the day before only this time we were higher than they and were waiting for them. "General," I said, with a tremor of pride in my voice, "we shot 'em all down." The General was looking more like a well man every moment. He asked about our losses and I told him about the two missing pilots. He thought a minute, then started to get up. "Scotty, if you'll look over behind be-hind you in that pretty box, you'll was m the hospital. I went up to see him as soon as we assigned the "aerial umbrella" of P-40's that were going to patrol the skies for a recurrence of the Jap raids. Lt. Couch was badly burned but was resting easy. He told me that the bomber he had fired on had begun to smoke and he'd taken his plane in very close to make certain that the Jap burned. This had been a mistake, he knew, for the guns of three or more of the enemy had converged on his fighter, and when he dove out he was on fire; the flames streaming out of his engine covered the canopy. From some reflex action he had done the wrong thing again he'd rolled the canopy open and the flames had been sucked into the cockpit, into his face. He had already unlatched un-latched his safety belt in order to jump and in dodging the flames he was thrown about in the pilot's compartment, though he must ev- yesteraay, ne naa sam uiai miming. mim-ing. "We've got them worried, and they'll have to wait for their long supply line around to Burma to send some more planes." When the sun got low on the blue hills of Yunnan, I began my thinking again. There was no use fooling ourselves the situation in China was bad. All of China that was developed at all was in the hands of the Japanese. The Jap had worked with extreme foresight fore-sight in preparing for this war, and the "heart of the octopus" was going to be hard to get at. But it could be done more easily from China and it had to be done. These people, who with their stocial bravery had seen their cities bombed for over six years, deserved more help. We must equip their land armies, help train them and give them air support. I got to thinking about something some-thing that had occurred a few days before, when the Christmas season was approaching. I had just had my twelfth little Jap flag The sun was going down now, even from our vantage point up there at 25,000, where Holloway and I were patrolling. We called to the other ships to land, and as we saw them go into the Lufbery circle and the rat-race that fighter fight-er pilots like to land from, Holloway Hollo-way rolled over and dove straight for the ground. I started to roll with him then I turned back for one more look at the setting sun. Down on the earth, to those earth-bound earth-bound creatures, the sun was down. There the shadows of the approaching night covered the ground, but up here I could see above the mountains, and the sun still shone on my fighter. I pulled almost straight up in the steep climb that I like" to make before diving home, and looked into the vivid blue of the Yunnan skies. Some verses were running through my thoughts. Against the durm-ming durm-ming of the engine I heard my own voice repeating the words of another fighter pilot, John Magee, who had died with the KAJ' in the battle of Britain. "Up, up the long delirious burning blue I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace Where never lark, or even eagle, flew, And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod The high untrespassed sanctity of space, Put out my hand, and touched the face of God." (THE END) idently have got the canopy closed again, for the flames were held out by the glass. Couch went through long seconds sec-onds of torture as he was thrown about in the bottom of the spinning spin-ning plane the rudder pedals had struck his burned face and sharp projections hurt his shoulders and back. He struggled to his feet again, rolled the hatch back and was thrown out and away from the burning ship. For Couch, however, the peril was only beginning. He told me that his chute opened with a "crack" and at the same time he heard his P-40 strike the top of a mountain, just under him. He was so close to the wreck that he was burned again as his chute drifted over the burning plane. He then struck the ground heavily, just down-wind of the fire. As he fought back to consciousness, he could hear the roaring of the flames in the underbrush; the wind was blowing them towards his position. With a desperate effort, ef-fort, for the force with which he'd hit the ground had almost paralyzed para-lyzed his legs and arms, he somehow some-how wrapped the opened chute about him. In the mernpry of half- painted on the fuslag of my P-40K. Each of these represented a confirmed con-firmed victory over the enemy, and my crew chief was as proud as I was. But I learned that day that some one else was sharing in that pride too. On my way to work that day, driving from the Genera? s house to the operations shack, I had seen a crowd of Chinese around my ship. They were sitting there silently si-lently and waiting, and I wondered wonder-ed at them. But the old American answer came to me "We never can figure them out" and I went on. As I passed by during the morning the Chinese people were still standing around my plane in the drizzling rain. Finally I called for my crew chief and asked the meaning of the crowd. With a puzzled look, he replied re-plied that he didn't know: they had told him through an interpreter interpre-ter that they just wanted to sit there and wait for the pilot of the ship. I sent one of my interpreters interpre-ters to investigate and learned that they were really waiting for me; they had received permission from the Chinese Commandant to enter the field. Some time later I walked over to where they were still standing in the slow rain. As I approached my ship they bowed as the Chinese do, by standing at what we would call "Attention" and nodding the head in respect. As I smiled at them ragged children, old men and women, coolies from the fields and several who I thought were school teachers they raised their thumbs high towards me and yelled, "Ding-hao, ding-hao!" And they pointed with pride to my 12 flags. They were cheering me, a foreigner, for-eigner, for my fights over their homeland. I realized then, as tears mixd with the raindrops on my face that they had bestowed on me an honor that exceeded in importance im-portance any medal that their consciousness, he knew that the fire had burned up to him and had destroyed part of his chute. He remembered that he felt fear when he heard the explosions of the pistol bullets that he carried as extra ammunition for his Army 45 in the seat-pack of his parachute, para-chute, which was partly under him as he lay there. But the silk tightly tight-ly wrapped about him must have kept him from breathing the flames, for his lungs were unharmed, un-harmed, and his burns were going to be all right. Couch had been brought in by Chinese villagers who had climbed the mountain and had worked all night to carry him in to the little Chinese hospital. I congratulated him on the good job he had done in his attack, and we took him down to be carried to our hospital in Kunming in the same transport that was to take Mooney's body. Tex Carleton was just landing on the field. We tried the same defense to hold the advantage over the Japs if they should ccine again. During Dur-ing the first hours of the morning I flew low over the surrounding |