Command Decision Read online

Kane did not take the file. He had not been paying full attention through the recital and his next question shocked Dennis.

  “Have you talked to his Group Commander, Casey?”

  “You didn’t get yesterday’s reports, sir?”

  “No. I was at a meeting in London. Why?”

  “Colonel Ledgrave went down yesterday, sir.”

  He could see both Kane and Garnett recoil from the news as he had done when he took it over the phone.

  “My God,” said Kane softly. “Leddy… any parachutes seen?”

  “Two, coming out of the left waistgate, sir. But Leddy was riding with the bombardier and she exploded just as the waist gunners got out.”

  “Casey,” said Garnett, “is it necessary for… for our own people… to go so often?”

  “Yes.”

  Kane spoke again now, wearily but clearly.

  “Had Leddy never mentioned Jenks to you?”

  “Never, sir.”

  “That’s my oversight, Casey. I had meant to tell you as I told him, in confidence, that Captain Jenks’s uncle is on the Military Affairs Committee in the House.”

  3

  Colonel Haley was not the most perceptive of men but entering just then he could feel the surcharged tension in the room. Garnett and Kane were looking at each other tensely. Dennis was nodding his head slowly over the Jenks file.

  He noted that they all looked toward his entrance with a sense of relief for its distraction and he regretted that his errand would add to Dennis’s immediate worries. He would have preferred to report directly to Kane as ranking officer in the room. Haley did not agree with the new regulations on the Visits of Officers from Higher Echelons. He had made a note to write the Adjutant General a strong recommendation for change when there was time, after the war, to get things decently straightened out again. Meanwhile the rules were clear, albeit improper in his view. Ignoring the others he addressed himself to Dennis.

  “Two sightings, sir. First from the Royal Observer Corps. Thirty-nine coming over the Channel now.”

  “How did they look?”

  “Ragged, sir. Five feathered props reported.”

  “What’s the other?”

  “Two in the Channel, so far, sir. Air Sea Rescue has a good plot on one and Spitfires will cover the pickup.”

  Dennis nodded. Haley did his most formal about-face and closed the door quickly behind him.

  “How soon will you have a count?” asked Kane.

  “About forty minutes, sir. They’ll start landing soon.”

  Kane nodded and stepped over to the window for a look at the sky. There was tarnish on the old-style wings he wore but he always forbade his sergeant to polish them.

  “Am I right in surmising this sounds bad?” asked Garnett.

  “Ted says they plastered the target.”

  “I was thinking about losses.”

  “That’s one way of thinking of it,” said Dennis shortly.

  “Casey, what are you trying to do that’s more important than losses? I’m very familiar with your directive and this is your build-up period. Frankly, I don’t know what the United Chiefs will think.”

  “When did they start thinking?”

  “Casey!” Kane had turned now to regard him sternly.

  “Sorry, sir.”

  He knew he had that one coming. Kane seldom bothered to rebuke trifles. Now, as if regretting this, he came over to them and made his voice conciliatory.

  “Casey, Cliff here has been sent over with some pretty important dope for us. I think I’ll ask him to tell you the story just as he told it to me.”

  Dennis composed himself patiently, wondering which of Washington’s multitudinous apprehensions had catapulted his classmate across the Atlantic. He could still remember the solemn minions who had flown in by highest priority to insist that the “nipples and other anatomical portions normally covered” of the young ladies painted on Fortress noses be over-painted with clothing.

  Garnett appeared to have sensed his boredom. Instead of opening immediately he digressed for a short demonstration of the strength he represented.

  “I’ll tell Casey, of course, sir. But before I do I would like to be briefed on this Operation Stitch.”

  “Haven’t you told him, sir?”

  Kane thought before answering. “I thought it would be fairer for you to, since it’s so largely your idea, Casey.”

  The disavowal was so obvious that it startled Dennis. He decided that he must be touchy today as he always was when Ted was out. The hell with it. He strode over to the Swastika on the wall and tapped it.

  “Six weeks ago a German fighter, the one this came from, landed on the Number One Strip out there.” He pointed and Cliff glanced briefly through the window.

  “Shot up?”

  “No. The pilot was a Czechoslovakian engineer and test pilot. He’d been forced to work for them but when they sent him to the Baltic with this job for testing he flew it here instead. The weather was ten tenths and this was the first field he saw when he broke through.”

  “Accommodating,” said Cliff. “What kind of fighter was it?”

  “Focke-Schmidt One.”

  “Focke-Schmidt One?”

  “Remember the dope we got out of Lisbon on a new jet-propelled fighter… Messerschmitt wing, the new Serrenbach propulsion unit… forty-eight thousand service ceiling and six hundred at thirty thousand?”

  “Yes,” Garnett nodded, “but Wright Field said it was impossible.”

  “I know. This is what it does.”

  Walking over to the board, Dennis stripped back another section of curtain mask, wondering, as he did, how long it had been since Cliff had studied a performance curve. Garnett followed him to the board and ran a swift, expert finger along the co-ordinate lines of the big graph, inked on in different colors, while Dennis watched approvingly.

  “These are the tests,” said Dennis, indicating rapidly the red, green, yellow, and blue curves. “Thunderbolt, Mustang, Lightning, and Spit 12.” Then as he saw Garnett beginning to gape with comprehension he lifted his hand to the heavy black curve so obviously in a class by itself. “And this is the Focke-Schmidt One.”

  “Jesus Christ!” said Garnett. Then he caught himself and spoke accusingly. “Oh, I see, the German job’s in kilometers.”

  “No it isn’t. That’s miles, too.”

  Garnett wheeled from the incontrovertible evidence of the curve.

  “Who made these tests?”

  “Ted Martin and I.”

  “You two?”

  “Three turns apiece.”

  Garnett traced the black curve with an incredulous finger.

  “You did that in your… at your age?”

  Dennis had prepared himself for this. It was not widely known, even among regulars, that he had been forbidden both speed and oxygen under the bluntest medical warning. His friends were always careful, when something brought it up, to remind him that it was an honorable deficiency. He had burnt out his capacity for extremes in the service. But it still hurt to be less than he had been, to see reservations about himself in other eyes.

  In combat command it had been downright awkward. Kane had advised him to permit issuance of a public statement about why he never flew missions as most generals occasionally did. Dennis knew it was stupid but he had stonily replied that unless his superior believed that it affected the Command’s morale adversely he regarded his physical condition as a private matter. Kane had not forced him; he knew, as did the whole service, that in his present condition Dennis could work most men into the ground.

  “You shouldn’t have done it, Casey,” said Garnett.

  “I wanted to be sure. It gave me a week in the hospital to think things over afterward.”

  He was making a mental note to swear Cliff to silence about this when he saw Cathy on his return, but in the midst of it he remembered that he did not yet know whether Cliff was returning. Garnett was tracing the curve again with an awed, rueful finger.
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  “Well, of course the new Mustang will be a big improvement…”

  “This is not an improvement, Cliff. It’s a revolution.”

  “Yeah. But with enough Mustangs, and the new Thunderbolts…”

  “Can you arrange an armistice until we get ’em?”

  “When will the Germans get these?”

  “They’ve got three factories in line production now. Or rather,” he added with a brief smile, “they had day before yesterday. The Czech thinks they already have one group on conversion training. Our Intelligence has lost that group for a month.”

  “Have you lost any planes to it?”

  “Lost planes don’t report, Cliff. We’ve had no sightings from the bombers. But last week we wrote off three reconnaissance planes for the first time in months. They were stripped to the ribs and flying at forty thousand but something got them.”

  Kane spoke now with a petulance that Dennis understood. He had tried to resist this information himself.

  “Of course we don’t know it was this plane that got them.”

  “It wasn’t mice.”

  “What about this Czech, Casey? Could this be a double cross?”

  Garnett’s mind, too, was following the protesting pattern. He was begging for a denial of that curve. Grimly, Dennis went on to explain the other steps of his investigation. He told Garnett how with Kane’s permission he had gone down to Whitehall itself, where the gray-faced men worked deep underground behind doors behind doors behind doors. He had a deep respect for Intelligence, the men who dropped into darkness by parachutes, who counterfeited their way into faraway hangars and headquarters. He had come out graver than when he entered.

  He told Cliff how Intelligence had traced out the Czech’s genealogy, how they had put infra-red cameras on night fighters and photographed the Focke-Schmidts, which only came out of hiding after dark, on the aprons of three camouflaged factory airfields. Then, leaving the graph, Dennis pulled the mask from the operational map and revealed the little triangle of black dots.

  “Posenleben, Schweinhafen, and Fendelhorst. That’s Operation Stitch, for Stitch in time….”

  Garnett whistled. “They’re far enough in.”

  “Marshal Milch thinks better of us these days,” said Dennis ruefully.

  “What’s the present limit of fighter cover, Casey?”

  Dennis picked up a piece of blue crayon and swung the arc on the plexiglass map cover. Garnett didn’t even bother to reach for the measuring tape. The gap between line and dots was too clear.

  As he proceeded with his exposition Dennis noticed that Kane was studying Garnett as intently as Garnett was studying the problem. He had forgotten Cliff’s capacity for concentration and for absorbing information rapidly. The counter questions were pointed and pertinent. Dennis had time to reflect that the United Chiefs probably asked sharp questions, too. He could see that Kane, like himself, was trying to read the Chiefs through their secretary. But it was also part of the secretary’s business to keep his thoughts to himself.

  Dennis was sure, however, that Garnett comprehended the gravity of this. The struggle for aerial supremacy in Europe was measurable in the multi-colored lines that slashed those quarter-inch crossings of graph paper. It was impossible, of course, to graph so coldly the capabilities of the boys who would work out the proof of this hypothesis. Dennis ran through the last details and came to the climax.

  “This curve was made, Cliff, with four 30-millimeter cannon mounted.”

  He could see Garnett’s brief silence reducing this last arithmetic to its shocking significance in range and lethal burst.

  “Good God! How were they?”

  “Sweet up to thirty-five thousand. That’s enough.”

  It was. Garnett took a long breath.

  “Casey, why hasn’t this technical data been reported?”

  “It has. Through channels. You’ll hear from it in about a year.”

  A rueful nod. Then:—

  “What’s your honest opinion, Casey?”

  “This can run us out of Europe in sixty days.”

  Kane broke into protest.

  “That’s giving them absolute perfection in production, in testing, in crew conversion, in armament operation, in spotting, signals, control, tactics…” He paused, plainly groping for still further margin between himself and the blunt truth.

  “That’s giving them thirty days to get two groups operational and thirty more to catch one of our columns for just half an hour, sir. I put that in the report, Cliff.”

  “Why didn’t you send this report to us?” asked Garnett.

  Dennis did not answer. Garnett turned from him slowly for a deliberate, inquiring scrutiny of Kane. The Major General stirred like a man trying to shake off a bad dream.

  “I couldn’t endorse such alarming conclusions, Cliff. This would disturb the United Chiefs at the very time when everything depends on our getting well established here, on an acceptable loss basis, for the good of the whole service.”

  “You didn’t agree with the report then, sir?”

  “Nobody could prove these assumptions now,” said Kane angrily. “We have experimental jobs of our own that could be hotted up to test like that with Ted or Casey flying. I did send a preliminary appreciation that we could not exclude the possibility of encountering an unsuspected enemy capability.”

  “Did you approve this Operation Stitch, sir?”

  Kane’s ruddy face was dark purple.

  “I told General Dennis that this operation constitutes a tactical emergency within the scope of division commanders’ directives. If, in his opinion, the threat justifies countermeasures…”

  “That’s my opinion, Cliff,” said Dennis. “It’s my rap.”

  Kane flashed him a grateful glance but Garnett shook his head.

  “Your losses are the United Chiefs’ rap, Casey. As a matter of fact that’s what I’m over here about. A lot of our people were very upset, even before yesterday. A very substantial body of opinion still doesn’t believe we can succeed with daylight precision bombardment.”

  “A very substantial body of opinion didn’t believe in the Wright brothers, either.”

  “It isn’t quite that simple, Casey. This program is making a terrible drain on our overall resources of the very best manpower and matériel. I may as well tell you that the United Chiefs are having another Global Allocation meeting on Tuesday.”

  There was instant relief in realizing what had been wrong with Kane today. He had already known this, Dennis gathered.

  “Tuesday… I’ve had to wait three weeks for this run of weather, Cliff. You can only count on about one three-day run a summer here. But we got Posenleben yesterday and Schweinhafen today and this is only Saturday. Weather thinks it will be okay for Fendelhorst tomorrow. We can finish before that meeting can do anything to us.”

  “Have you thought what losses like this might do to that meeting?”

  He had been thinking of exactly that. Kane took up the slack of the silence.

  “This could upset the whole larger picture, Casey.”

  “Would you rather have Goering upset it, sir?”

  “That’s still an assumption,” said Kane plaintively. “The overall plan calls for me… for us to have the largest bomber force in the Hemisphere. These two days are going to be a terrible shock to the Chiefs, Casey. I’m not at all sure that, for the good of the whole service, I’m justified in permitting a third…”

  “You’ve got to, sir,” snapped Dennis. “Concentration is the crux of this matter. You agreed to that before I started.”

  “Why? Why just now?” inquired Garnett.

  “Weather,” said Dennis. “It may be a month before we can get back to Fendelhorst. These two attacks have tipped our hand. Half the rolling flak in Germany is probably on its way there right now. They’ll either make it impregnable or disperse that machinery until we never find it unless we get it in the next forty-eight hours.”

  Garnett nodded absen
tly but his frown reflected a detachment from such details as European weather. Kane and Dennis regarded each other stonily. Then even before their ears could hear the first faint roaring, the three men with one accord made for the windows as everything else in their minds gave way to the pressure of the returning Fortresses.

  Chapter 4

  They came fast and, this afternoon, low. The first seemed to spring out of the treetops across the field. The sight of them steadied Dennis.

  Two others darting in from another angle were already above him now, bulky and ugly as they always appeared at these deceptive short angles. Both were yawing jerkily from the grasping suction of gaping shot holes. But they had zigzagged that way from Germany and their motors were steady. They would make it to the ground. He dismissed them, extending his quick estimates to the next ones with the hot familiar pain kneading his stomach as he did.

  They were badly scattered. He knew that they usually broke formation about mid-Channel after a run like this one but more than drying gas tanks had spread them out today. As his eyes assessed the damage expertly he realized that he had not yet seen two of them which could have flown closely enough to each other to make normal formation safe… five… six… eight… he did not know that he was counting aloud unconsciously as every pair of lips on the station always counted. He could hear Garnett’s low exclamation distinctly.

  “Look at those props!”

  He had counted six feathered ones himself before the building shook with the wash of the planes immediately overhead and the Forts vanished, leaving the sky behind them still athrob with their receding vibrations. Dennis wet his lips and knew with minor comfort that he was not going to puke today, bad as it was.

  “I made it eleven.”

  “So did I,” said Garnett. “What’s squadron strength?”

  “Twelve, if it was a squadron.”

  Kane blenched visibly. “That isn’t the remains of a Group, is it, Casey?”

  “I can’t tell yet, sir.”

  Kane exploded: “Well, find out! Find out at once.”

  Dennis had to check himself. Kane was not as used to this as he was. Without risking a reply he strode rapidly through the Ops room door and closed it behind him. The room quieted; the vibration of this particular bunch was lost now in the gentle sea of lesser vibrations coming from every side as the remainder of the Division converged around the other near-by bases.