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Show THE RICH COUNTY REAPER, RANDOLPH. UTAH dPUEEMS IME PIMHUUDEY 'TtfiitS - are left of them still like to hope THE STORY THUS FAR: Lieut. Col. Frank Kurtz, pilot of a Flying Fortress, tells of that fatal day when the Japs struck in the Philippines. Eight of his men were killed while fleeing for shelter, and Old 99, with many other Forts, was demolished on the ground. After escap-in- g to Australia, what Is left of the, squadron flies to Java, where they go on many missions over the Philippines and the Java sea. The Japs learn the weakness of the E model Fortress, but gun In the the boys stick a navigator's compartment. Kurtx senses he Is being watched In Java and one night wakens at the glare of a flashlight The band that held It also held a dagger. The would-b- e assassin gets away. maybe he succeeded in landing on that Bali beach, which looks so nice in the travel folders, and will turn up grinning some day, telling them what a social success he was with the natives. But it was pitiful. We lost almost all our dive bombers there, and about half our 0 fighters. Of course Bud and his gang made the Japs pay ten to one for taking that airfield but the Japs had it to pay. With the Japs holding that Bali field, they could send bombers and fighters into every corner of Java, and we knew it was almost over. But anyway the Forts could now bomb our own field the Japs had taken from us very convenient, because we knew exactly where everything was. When I got back late to the hotel there was that beautiful Dutch girl, the one with the black hair and the pale face which was so wistfully sad in repose. Only there were no sudden little smiles lighting it up now. She was at the table where she and John Robertson P-4- CHAPTER XVII We dreamed and prayed for this. And as a matter of fact the Navy did make an attempt. An aircraft and tender was loaded with started out from Australia. But what P-4- 0s happened was just what was feared. Those were in crates stacked on her decks, so she had to high come clear in through skies the Jap bombers ruled. She went down with her entire crew and those crated forty miles off the southwest coast of Java but Im sure the Navy was doing the best it could for us with what they had. The next night a Navy man who had just got in from our little fleet told me what had happened to the Marblehead and the Houston, those two beautiful cruisers which had been the nucleus of our Asiatic Fleet helping the Dutch and Australians defend Java. With the rest of the fleet theyd been out in the Java-SeWhen they sighted a Jap recco plane overhead about noon, they knew they were in for trouble. They had no carrier, of course, which could send a fighter up to shoot it down. He said the Jap bombers presently came over them from their bases in Borneo and the Celebes (our bases they had captured) in three waves, spaced about half an hour apart. By skillful maneuvering they dodged the bombs of the But the third, first two waves. which crippled them, caught them just at sundown, and chewed their superstructures into steel spaghetti. In the darkness, they were able to crawl away out of range, and the Marblehead eventually got back to the States. But troubles of our own were looming ahead. The boys in Navy Patrol Wing 10 came in with the report that their planes on reconnaissance had sighted a force of six Jap transports and five warships headed toward Bali Strait, which divides Java from Bali. They were after the Den Passar airdrome on havBali our last stepping-ston- e ing already occupied the airfield at Timor. This was, as maybe you now begin to see, a war of airdromes Clark, Del Monte, Kendari, Sama-rindKupang, all of them lost pearls in the United Nations defenses, and now Den Passar. Next it could only be Malang, KNILM, Gno-rand Madiun all we had left on the strand. All I can say is the Dutch and Americans were ready to defend Bali with what we had. Our little surface navies moved in that night to clip them a glancing blow on the run, as theyd done at Macassar Straight, and our submarines did a grand job in the moonlight. The Colonel sent his Fortresses out and down to 5,000, to paste them from the air. We left two transports burning in the moonlight, and a crippled cruiser. Next morning it was up to the Air Force alone, because the Navy was too tiny to venture out by day. The Forts went over, of course in fact everything we had, to smash at those Jap transports as they poured thirty thousand troops onto the beach at Bali. The were led by Bud Sprague himself. That morning he got his commission as a lieutenant colonel. He paused just to scrawl his before the take-of- f signature on his papers, but he didnt take time to pretty himself up in his new silver leaves; I guess he was satisfied to die in his old gold ones. Because what they desperately needed was dive bombers, and about all they had was a fighter plane which was never built as a stable platform to launch an egg from. But all right, there the job was to do, and so Bud climbed into the cockpit. How many passes at the target are we going to make? someone P-4- 0s P-4- 0s o, P-4- 0s P-4- 0s asked. Depends on how many wild hairs Im sprouting when we get over her, says Bud with a grin, that Jap barrage over the Bali beach Hell! back here, the people dont know that boy ever did a thing out there and the other boys saw him go down in on his run and never come up again. Yet his boys what entire charge of completing the arrangements. Nothing remained to be done except the most important thing of all: the officer before leaving had been unable to find a radio operator for this last ship. Without one they could not start, because unless they gave a prearranged .radio signal when they approached Corregidor, the Rocks guns would blow them to pieces. Could the Air Force possibly let them have a radio operator? Since the mission was a dangerous one, the assistant said he would pay a man who volunteered a bonus out of the money his chief had left in the bank. Now asking our Colonel for a radio operator was like asking him for his right arm. But Java was caving in, the situation was tense. Our Colonel hesitated, and then said that while he couldnt order anyone on so dangerous a mission, he thought, even after we explained clearly what it was, we could get a volunteer. And we did. We told the men the mission was most dangerous but of the greatest possible service to our country. And out of the line g kid stepped a clean-cu- t, called Sergeant Warrenfeltz. , Only after this did I tell him of the bonus. We let Warrenfeltz go down and look over the ship, loaded with surgical equipment, food, drugs, and three hundred thousand rounds of ammunition, so that she was practically a floating bomb. He talked to the captain (a Swede) and looked over the Negro and Chinese crew. There were two one for topside dressed like Javanese natives so the Japs might mistake her for a fishing trawler. Then Warrenfeltz came to me with written orders from the bomber command and I told him the ports of call. They were to slip out at night, down the north coast of Java, through Lombok Strait, then along the Netherlands East Indies, then cut up east of the Celebes, running the Jap blockade into the Philippines till they came to Manila Bay entrance, where they would be challenged by the Rock. And he was to answer on the radio with the proper signal. He knew what he .was getting into. Wed been flying over those waters for months; he knew just how thick the Jap surface ships were, and also that they had hardly a fifty per cent chance of escaping being blown up by a Jap mine just outside the breakwater. Why did he do it? To help those poor devils in the infantry, dying on Bataan. Hed seen the cargo. And then the money he told me exactly what to do with that, and the message 1 must send, but well come to it later. Of course it was all pretty irregular, paying a man for heroism. Maybe when peace comes, somebody in a swivel chair. in Washington will start writing us letters asking us why we did it, and I dont know what well say. And then it all ended happily for us, because the money Warrenfeltz was supposed to receive for trying to do what he did was never paid. But that comes later. Meanwhile we had other things to worry about. The Japs had put a little landing force ashore on a tiny island sixty miles north of Surabaya, and taken over its radio station. quiz with answers offering information on various subjects A a 7. What bird is mentioned most frequently in the Bible? 1. Approximately how much of the total land acreage of the UnitThe Answers ed States is covered with forests? d of 1. Approximately 2. What is a peccadillo? with covered is States United the 3. When was FDR first inauguforests. rated? A 2. fault. petty 4. With what group of men is the 3. March 4, 1933. name Ethan Allen associated? 4. The Green Mountain boys. 5. What physical force throws 5. Centrifugal force. at turntables off revolving people 6. Both were admitted to the amusement parks? day, Novem-- ' 6. What state, North or South Union on the same ' , ber-21889. Dakota, was admitted to the Union 7. Dove. first? one-thir- , r JUST WIIAT HE WANTS! .30-calib- er Caught them just at sundown and their superstructures into steel spaghetti. chewed usually sat, alone. When she saw me she jumped up and came running across the room. Had I seen John? she wanted to know, in her pretty broken English. Out in the lobby they had told me John was missing. Hed been out on reconnaissance patrol in that lumbering slow old Navy flying boat, and there had been two messages from him: Many Zeros sighted, and then about a minute later a final one: Zeros closing in. That left only three of the ones I knew in gallant Patrol Wing 10, Commander Peterson, Bill Hardy, and Duke Campbell. None of them had been able to tell her, and when I looked at her face I found I couldnt either. Because it was the face of someone frozen with fear in a nightmare so frozen you knew she darent move to accept the truth if you told her, so I too was afraid. In all the evenings that were left (there were not to be many) I avoided that lobby, because it was haunted by a ghost a pretty, pale, fear-frozface that came running up to you and asked, with hope forced into a frightened smile, if you had seen John. To me the most frightening ghost of all the ghost of a dead love which will not die. But theres something else that should be told, only I must go back in the story a little. The Army had sent a high ground officer to Surabaya on a special mission of great importance, and with about a million dollars deposited to his credit in the Javische Bank. With this he was to buy and equip with supplies three blockade runners which would carry "to Corregidor" ammunition;' medical supplies, and food for those poor devils on Bataan who were still fighting on. Two of the ships had already left. A third was almost ready to go. This officer left Java the twenty-sixt- h of February. The day after he left, his assistant, a young d lieutenant, called me up in considerable anxiety. His chief, he explained, had paid him the compliment of leaving him in Surabaya in en sec-ion- A WONDERFUL WAY TO SEND YOUR r (TO BE. CONTINUED) "MAN-IN-SERVIC- E" A Letter and Fine Razor Blades -- a Gift and a Greeting in One! This is what servicemen want most: Letters from you and fine blades. And this is the way to send bothl You give them a double thrill when you write them on Blade Mail the clever ready-to-ma- il folder with 10 fine , Precision Blades attached. There's plenty of space for your letter plenty of space to paste in a photo plenty of shaving luxury in the PEftSONNA-Bladethat are attached the finest shaving edges known to science. They'll give him more comfort than anything you could send him. s I Blade&ttek Easy to send Seals like an envelope Mails like a letter They hadnt told us yet, saic the Bombardier, but we smelled it. Rumors were running all over the place that we might evacuate any time now. Madiun, where I was based, Wes' being bombed every day now wed go out on a mission anc always come back to find craters in our runways. When wed land, immediately thered be another alarm and wed have to hop off the fielc without servicing the planes or loading more bombs. Also, instead of going out to targets in formations, we now were going singly. As soon as wed get one ship on the ground long enough to get it gassed and bombed up, wed take off by our little lonesome, dodging Zeros to pick just any targe from the countless transports tha were swarming off Java. In the last week I got a light cruiser anc a transport blew the end off the transport. Nothing was sure, except the faci; that all those Jap ships moving toward Java werent pleasure yachtsL and that we didnt have any reception committee to meet them. On what turned out to be my last day I got my plane loaded with bombs and took off, headed for a huge convoy wed heard was coming down toward us from Borneo. We met ii; the plane ahead of us halfway was already pasting it when we arrived. We came in at 28,000 watching this first ship plunking direct hits on two parallel strings of transports seventeen in each string, thirty-fouin all, with fifteen or twenty naval craft circling them. ? ? alert-lookin- a. a, i The Questions W.N.U.TEATURES .WHITE and they were off. 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