Read Online Once a Warrior by Fran Baker - Free Book Online Page B

wash before following. The knot of tension in his stomach tightened as the plane surged forward and the crew checked off.
    “Gear up.”
    “Wing flaps up.”
    “Climb configuration.”
    John tasted rubber, cold and bitter, through his oxygen mask as they lifted off. He’d seen so many aborted takeoffs, with at least two resulting in aircraft and bombs exploding at the end of the runway, that he couldn’t relax until they’d passed the first danger point in the mission. When they were finally airborne, he sighed with relief.
    “Bombs activated,” Pat notified the pilots after they’d begun their hour-long assembly into box formation.
    John’s stomach tightened on hearing the statement. He couldn’t count the number of hours he’d spent in the States practicing precision bombing until he could hit a “pickle barrel” from twenty-five thousand feet. But where he’d grown up believing that war involved only military men and military targets, he sometimes found himself bombing industrial towns that were largely populated with working people much like the members of his own family. So whenever the bombs dropped away and his aircraft leaped forward, free of its burden, he had ambivalent feelings. While he was glad to have a more maneuverable plane to fly, he felt guilty at the thought that he’d probably just killed a lot of innocent women and children.
    On the lighter side, the sky was clear in all directions. People on the ground looked up. Some had their hands shading their eyes against the rising sun as they watched the growing air armada assemble. Others waved to them for luck.
    John wished he could wave back. A war-weary Italy had surrendered last September, allowing the Allies to set up their air bases in the south, but the Germans were still fighting in the north. Bridges had been blown, villages destroyed and railroad ties demolished in an attempt to slow the Allied advance. It was that devastation, coupled with the abject poverty of the Italian people, which helped to remind him that he was on the right side of this cursed conflict.
    “Oxygen check,” Bob called fifteen minutes into the flight.
    “Pilot OK,” John replied as he relinquished the controls.       
    Disembodied voices crackled over the intercom—tail gunner OK, nose OK, right waist OK, left waist OK, radio OK, top turret OK, bombardier OK, navigator OK.
    The squadron flew in tight formation over the Adriatic Sea and into Yugoslavian airspace. It was the best protection they had because it maximized their firepower against the emplaced German gunners on the ground. But with the good came the bad. When a plane in close formation was hit by flak, there was a chance of it taking another one down with it. To minimize the risk, they usually relaxed the formation over target and then reformed for the trip home.
    “How are we doing?” Bob asked.
    John checked his watch against the clock on the instrument panel. “Exactly on time.”
    The outside air temperature showed minus forty-eight degrees Centigrade, warmer than the minus sixty degrees that they’d recorded last week over Knin. The only clouds in the sky were the white contrails streaming from every wing tip.
    “Oxygen check,” John called when it was his turn to resume control of the plane.
    “Co-pilot OK,” Bob confirmed.
    A few miles ahead, John spotted several cushiony puffs of flak below the formation. He didn’t worry about the flak he could see, though. It was the flak he couldn’t see that was the killer.
    “ Too-ra-loo-ra-loo-ra ,” Pat warbled.
    “Bing Crosby, you’re not,” Norm cracked.
    “ Too-ra-loo-ra-li . . . ”
    “Hush, I’m going to cry.”
    Because time passed so slowly over enemy territory, some of the guys sang or told jokes or talked about the wives and sweethearts they’d left back home.
    John just tried to think about the mission. When that didn’t work, he talked to the Man Upstairs. He prayed that he would do the right thing in an