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Show .WHITE. W.N.U.TEATUfcE? er almost broke his neck.) I tumbled tum-bled in, and when I picked myself up I saw a soldier deliberately, slowly slow-ly walking up to it, but just as he stood at the lip he seemed to collapse col-lapse and came tumbling down. I thought the earth had caved in under un-der his feet. Then as he struggled to his feet I saw his whole hip had been blown away. Now he collapsed in the arms of a sergeant and a private and died before our eyes there was nothing we could do. "Meanwhile we are watching the Jap fighters. Near our ditch is a Fortress snugly in a revetment. "There is a sudden hammering of guns, and we see one of the Naka-jimas Naka-jimas has picked out this particular Fortress as his prey. "Again and again the Jap comes in making his approach (it was beautiful flying) after he has rolled out of his turn at about 150 feet but his flight path brings him down as low as fifteen feet above the Fortress' For-tress' wings. There is a routine about it As he straightens out from his turn and comes at the big motionless mo-tionless bomber, first his small .25-caliber .25-caliber wing guns open up with a rattle, filling the air with a skein of tracers. Then, when these white threads show him he is dead on his target, we hear him open up with his 20-millimeter cannon. VAnd as he pulls up off the target, tar-get, he sprays with steel the lip of the ditch right over our heads as THE STORY THUS FAR: Lieut. Col. Frank Kurtz, pilot of the old Flying Fortress, For-tress, known as "The Swoose," which escaped lrom Clark Field, tells of that fatal day when the Japs struck In the Philippines. Old 99, another Flying Fortress, For-tress, is struck down before it can get off the ground, killing eight of her crew. Kurtz explains how Old 99 was due for camouflage, then orders were countermanded, counter-manded, and instead they were to load t with bombs. Then he was ordered to Jerk the bombs and reload with cameras j for a reconnaissance trip over Formosa, j They get word over the air that bombs are dropping over Clark Field. Then all ! are electrified by the shout, "Here they i come!" CHAPTER m l "I hadn't long to wait, because the nose of that leading V had passed the bomb-release line, and now came the first, unmistakable whistle just as we'd heard it thousands of times over Muroc and then the dull cr-r-rump! The first bomb of their pattern pat-tern had hit way up the field, three thousand yards away. I didn't know then it had hit the mess hall I had just left, and killed Bill Cocke, our group engineering officer. "But now was the time to run for our lives, because here came more whistles, and the nose of the formation was over us now, like a huge cloud with giant hailstones falling fall-ing from it. "So now Glenn and I ran for the nearest foxhole. It was a shallow one, two feet deep, built to hold one man, but we both jumped for it, and not until later did we realize there was a man already in it. We could think, of nothing then except this earthquake roar and grinding and the whistling of a mighty storm moving mov-ing down the field. You see there were about seventy planes in that formation, and each plane was to drop a train of about twelve bombs, which made around eight hundred bombs that were to cover that rectangular rec-tangular pattern in about the time it's taking me to say a few of these sentences. Meanwhile we were bracing ourselves getting our arms and legs adjusted, worming as low as we could in tht shallow hole for what we knew was coming. I pulled my tin hat down to cover the side of my face and cheek against bomb fragments. Now it began. Not so much the thunderous roars as the shaking at its mildest, the hard dirt quivered like a steel-tired truck thundering over cobblestones, and at its worst, bucked and pitched like a bronco. I kept feeling if I could only stay on a little longer I would live, because death was very close now the grinding roars and whistles, whis-tles, the quivering, pitching earth was coming closer, was thundering over us. And then quite suddenly was gone the bomb trains had crossed the field, the pattern abruptly abrupt-ly ended a thousand yards beyond coming in lower and closer each time. As we spot him coming tearing tear-ing in for the attack we-yell out our orders and grovel on our faces as ! his wing guns rattle and his can- i non thump, followed by the ear-splitting ear-splitting roar of his motors as he swishes past over our heads we popping futilely at the racing shadow shad-ow with our .45's. "On the eighth pass his tracers found their target there was the hissing roar of gasoline, and from every one of the many bullet holes in the fuselage there billowed black smoke, enveloping her completely. But he made the great mistake of coming back just once again maybe only to see what he had done. But for whatever reason, at this point the antiaircraft opened up on him through a hole in the smoke. He seemed to jump a little in the air, and at the end of the run he didn't chandelle as he usually did, but kept on going and "Look! somebody said. 'A puff of smoke!' Sure enough it was only maybe he was only clearing his engine but three seconds sec-onds later it was a definite black trail behind him. "We held our breath as he wobbled wob-bled and wavered off like a wounded bird, and when he rolled over on one wing down behind the horizon, never nev-er to rise again, we let out a cheer that shook more dirt down the walls of our ditch. Because up to then it had been all their Saturday. "This seemed to signal the end of the attack, for now the Nakajimas and Zeros rose from the field like crows from a well-picked carcass and, falling into formation, disappeared disap-peared around Mount Arayat in the direction of their carrier, which lay somewhere out of sight off Luzon down under the horizon. "Now we climbed out of the ditch and started back toward Operations to report. But first we had to walk around the wreckage of the poor old Fortress. We walked wide not only because of the shimmering heat, but because it was a shameful thing we could hardly bear to watch, which no one will understand who doesn't love those big, beautiful B-17's B-17's as we did. There she was in her death agony the plates had weltered wel-tered quickly, leaving only her naked nak-ed skeleton shimmering in the heat, and licked by oily flame. It made you sick and you wanted to look the other way. "The rest of the field was littered with charred skeletons of planes. You'll remember the 19th Bombardment Bombard-ment Group had comprised thirty-five thirty-five proud Flying Fortresses. A dozen doz-en of them had been down at Del Monte Field in the southern island of Mindanao and so escaped this attack. Colin Kelly, who had come up from Australia, was flying one of them. But of all the rest which had been here on Clark Field, only five could be called airplanes any more. Even these five were badly damaged, and none of them could fly. But by pooling the five wrecks, replacing a wing here, a tail there. it, and the Japanese formation was moving off. "Yet even as the low hum of motors mo-tors died away we were afraid to move. I was afraid to take my tin hat from my face for another half-minute, half-minute, because maybe another V might be above us at its bomb-release bomb-release line, and other trains might start thundering down. "But the quiet continued and now we raised up in our trench. The black cloud of bombers was moving off, empty of its hailstones probably proba-bly just now closing their bomb-bay doors, wheeling in the distance to head back for home. It was very still except for a rising crackle of fire the smoke from our burning planes was just starting, the climbing climb-ing columns had not yet blossomed into thick black plumes. "But over this crackle we could hear another hum. Then we saw it, as we peered east over the edge of the field: a string of fighters they must be our P-40'sl We didn't know that all but a few of our P-40's had been bombed and shot down and their field ruined before the bombers bomb-ers came to us. "So we stood there brushing the dirt from our clothes (one bomb had hit only fifteen feet away from me) and watched this formation approach. ap-proach. They were coming around beautiful Mount Arayat in a long string like geese flying north in the fall, and at only a little higher altitude alti-tude say 2,000 or 3,000 feet. "Can you blame us for feeling good to see some of our own gang in the air at last? "All of a sudden Glenn Rice yelled, 'Look! For God's sake look at that red circle!' There it was on those up-cocked up-cocked wings not a lipstick red, but a kind of or3nge red, the Rising Sun of Japan. They weren't P-40's, as we now cou'.d see, but Nakajimas and some Zeros coming in from the direction of Corregidor, an attack string, each Jap leaning out as he circled to pick out which Fortress on the ground he would attack. "As they circled we could hear our ammunition dump going up it was like Fourth of July as the bombs burst in the heat and in between the bangs there was that rising crackle. "A three-quarter circle they made, like cracking a blacksnakc whip over our already stricken airfield, and then they began to peel off to clean up with strafing what few Fortresses For-tresses their bombers had missed. "Ahead of me I could see men disappearing into a ditch some diving div-ing head-foremost into it. (Bob Mey- He collapsed in the arms of a sergeant ser-geant and died before ear eyes. we crouch in the bottom.' Each time we glimpse the pilot as he rolls in for the attack. He wears a yellow scarf, but for the rest, in goggles and helmet, he might have been any of us. I don't think he notices us he is too intent on the Fortress. It is only that we are right in his line of fire, and each time as he starts to pull up, his guns spray our trench lip before he has time to take his thumb off the button. "But suppose he does s,ee us? Some of the men had been loading bombs when the attack came and have their shirts off their white backs are wonderful targets. So now we start to organize ourselves in our rat trap, pounding away with orders. If he does spot us, all he's got to do is come right down that ditch with his guns open. "What antiaircraft we have is thumping away now, but it isn't doing do-ing much good. In the first place it is so placed that the black smoke billowing up from the burning Fortresses For-tresses gets between the Zeros and the ground gunners, blanketing their field of fire. In the second place, it was never designed to operate at as close a range as three hundred yards. "So in our ditch we start a little war of our own forty of us versus the Imperial Japanese Air Force; or rather those of the forty who have .45's, which is the pilots and the bombardiers. Every time that Jap strafer comes over, we bang away at him I can't say we do any damage, and all we had to show for it afterward was a damn dirty pistol to clean, but it gives us some satisfaction. "Meanwhile from all over the field you can hear two sound sequences first the high rattle of the Jap .25-caliber .25-caliber wing guns as the tracers feel for the target, then the slower pounding of the cannon as they drive the main punch home that I've described de-scribed before. The other sequence was more heartbreaking. You'd hear a rising, hissing p-p-pf-f-f-o-O-FFF! which means a tracer has gone sizzling into the gas tank of one of our dear old Fortresses followed fol-lowed quickly by a great roar (everything (ev-erything letting loose at once), which means that the burning gasoline has exploded her bombs. "But the Jap pilot with the yellow scarf who is working on the Fortress For-tress in the revetment next us is now really cettins down to business, and taking two undamaged engines from a third, the Colonel hoped we could salvage in all, of the two dozen doz-en which stood on the field that morning, three planes which might get Into the air when the runway was cleared. "As for the boys who hadn't come back from the hills yet, the Colonel wasn't in the least worried. 'It's like any good hunting dog,' he explained. 'The first time you put steel across him, of course he's scared. But after aft-er that well, those fellows that ran away today will make as good soldiers sol-diers as they come.' "It was now late in the day, and he told me there was nothing I could do, and it would be al right to leave the target area until morning morn-ing in fact we'd better, because the Japs would probably be back tonight. to-night. "Lieutenant Elmer Brown happened hap-pened to be standing there with me, so we decided to go out together, and I. left my bike, because it wouldn't be fair to Brownie. Brownie, Brown-ie, who always has had a comfortable comforta-ble amount of money, said he'd call a taxi. But I knew nothing would come of that. The servants and almost al-most everybody else were back in the hills, sorne of them still running, run-ning, and anything you wanted done that day you had to do for yourself. your-self. So we collected a bedding roll apiece at the barracks and started off down the road. We'd walked for quite a while when at a crossroads we came on a convoy of trucks it was an antiaircraft outfit being moved back into position, I suppose where they could better protect the charred carcasses of our bombers. "So we hooked a ride on one of these trucks, which was headed for a little native village around the other oth-er side of our field and a reasonably safe distance sway. We got out when they stopped and, going to the nearest house, by signs asked the owner if he had a room for the night. He was a very nice fellow and took us upstairs to his own. I don't know where he slept. We unrolled un-rolled our bedding on the bamboo floor and spread our mosquito nets, and Brownie went right off to sleep. "I lay awake. That ack-ack convoy con-voy was still moving in and getting settled. Now and then a truck-driver wouldn't hear a sentry call "Halt! ' and would go rumbling by, and you would hear a rifle crack a couple of times. (TO EE CON'TINX'EDV |