Clayton Knight

“ André had not gone far when Patchou, his dog, caught up with him. The puppy gave him a playful nudge as if to say, “I’m sorry to be late, but I had to give that car a good, long sniff.”
[9] After walking less than a mile, André turned off and came to a group of camouflaged barracks. Inside the high wire fence, narrow buildings stood in long rows. A German sentry, his rifle held loosely, guarded the gate. He grinned at the boy and waved him inside.
As André entered, a Frenchman pedaling by on an ancient bicycle shouted to him, but a burst of Patchou’s barking drowned out the greeting. ”

“ Dobie hobbled out to the jeep and Weller followed. Several of the neighbors, including Father Duprey and Victor, had come to say good-by.
Patchou kept up a nervous barking, shocked by the departure of friends, until André put an arm around him.
Over the noisy complaint of the jeep’s motor, Captain Dobie thanked all those gathered there for their help. And he asked that thanks be given to the Gagnons.
“I’ll see you all again,” he smiled, clutching at his seat as the jeep leaped forward.
And up to the overhanging chestnut trees rang cries of “Vive l’Amérique!” and “Vive le Capitaine Dobay!” ”

“ Ice often formed with great rapidity, and knowing this both the Skipper and Jack watched closely for the first tell-tale sign. The engine was throttled back about a quarter to the best cruising speed.
There seemed to be no end to the storm. It had been nearly half an hour since they had left the clear sunshine and entered into this ominous twilight. They had held their altitude, knowing that it was no use to try to climb above the clouds, and having no assurance that it would be better lower down. Every little while rain would suddenly fall, and as suddenly stop. ”

“ Victor dived for the other pail and followed. “La Fumée, my mare that you have always been so fond of, you know,” he chattered, “she’s all harnessed and impatient to start off. You know how she loves adventure.”
Just then there was a definite lull in the shelling. André set the pails into the cool, stone-lined spring, taking Victor’s from him.
Victor caught his eye. “The noise is not so loud,” he said. “There is a trifling din, true, but it is less.”
“Perhaps the worst is over,” André said. “We could just start out, and if they tell us we can’t proceed, we can turn back....” ”

“ The Skipper now took this opportunity to ask Thorne more about this flying world in which they had landed.
Then Thorne began:
“This little kingdom of which you and Jack and Kiwi are now a part is composed entirely of aviators who, in the other world, gave their lives for the advancement of aviation. Among us here are men who made experiments with the earliest gliders, who tried to fly crazy contraptions built by the rule of thumb and flown more by confidence than by knowledge. There are also among us pioneers who tried to find ways and means of doing impossible things in the air. ”

“ His words were drowned in the shriek and explosion of a second shell, and the rending crash of roof timbers. The blast hurtled the three of them into a corner. A shower of falling lath and plaster filled the room.
The doctor and Pierre pulled Mme. Gagnon to her feet.
From outside, the desperate voice of the car driver shrieked, “Hurry, doctor! Come at once! I do not intend to wait till another explosion hits my car.”
Mme. Gagnon shook herself and with great dignity stated firmly, “I can walk. Observe your own step, Pierre. You, also, doctor.” ”

“ Men were hurrying to different parts of the field with what he knew to be fire-extinguishers.
The stage was set for the try.
As they circled around, heading into the wind, he felt Dad throttle back the engine and the long, slow glide to the field was started.
The spectators on the ground were no more tense than Kiwi, through the long seconds of this dive to uncertainty.
The silence, after the engine had been throttled down, was broken only by the rush of the wind through the struts. He braced himself. He felt Dad tip the plane over so that the left wheel would touch first. ”

“ André burst out. “Did he get in the fight with Raoul?”
Gagnon snorted. “Not in the fight. Unfortunately he came along just as Raoul picked up a stick and started for me. Victor was yelling at both of us, and suddenly we saw the German coming. Naturally we all shut our mouths like clams. Frenchmen do not fight Frenchmen in front of the Nazis—not even Raoul.”
“Perhaps there will be no more to it,” said Mme. Gagnon soothingly.
“If they do not send soldiers to snoop around the house,” Pierre grunted, “we need not worry.”
Marie returned, breathless, with a basin of water and clean cloths. ”

“ During one fight, when he was within a hair’s breadth of adding one more enemy machine to his score, his engine had stopped in the midst of a zoom, and the enemy, realizing he was getting the worst of it, had streaked for home, leaving the Skipper several miles behind the enemy lines with just enough altitude to glide down to No Man’s Land, where he had scrambled from his machine into a shell hole. There he crouched while the enemy artillery battered his plane to pieces with shell fire. ”

“ Marie, too, rustled in her new pale-yellow parachute gown.
Old cars had been rolled out of sheds where they had been hidden, and somehow brought to life. They began to ease into the busy military traffic and headed for Ste. Mère. Carts, bright with flags and flowers, and loaded with chattering villagers, thronged the roads.
Father Duprey and M. Blanc had gone to Ste. Mère still earlier in a borrowed car.
In good time, Victor, Mme. Lescot, and their daughter showed up at the Gagnon door with La Fumée. The fat Percheron whinnied when André led the family out to jam themselves into the cart. ”

“ Now, Kiwi, I am going to teach you to fly very much as I taught your Dad long ago. No harm can come to you here in learning to fly. But I know you would like to be just such a pilot as your Dad is, and so I am going to teach you, as he was taught, how to overcome the dangers which follow stalling a plane in the air and what you must do if the engine stops suddenly.
“I’ll take the plane off the ground with my set of controls, and after we get well up in the air I’ll let you fly it straight with your stick and rudder for a while. You know how it feels to be up. ”

“ By the time he and Patchou reached home, the last twilight had faded. The house was dark, for blackout curtains were drawn across the windows.
[11] Inside, his sister sat hunched alone in the wide, stone-floored kitchen, listening to music from a forbidden radio.
“Where’s Papa?” André asked.
Marie looked annoyed. “He’s gone off with Victor Lescot. That Raoul Cotein is making trouble again. Now he says our cows broke into his pasture. What an old weasel he is! Even the Germans behave better.” ”

“ In fact, they seemed to Kiwi a 25bit too spooky even in daylight. He seldom stayed long in any one of them. Dad had given him the feeling that they were crowded with the unseen presence of rollicking young fellows who had once stayed there, who had gone away, and had never returned. They had learned to fly, had mounted into the high heavens, had come to know a world apart—a world of mountainous clouds, with the ground far below blue-gray in the early morning—a silent kingdom of its own, its silence sometimes shattered by the rattle of machine-guns and the bursts of anti-aircraft shells. ”

“ He looked again for Slim and saw that he had turned his back to the fury of the coast and was staring toward Ste. Mère. As André stepped out Slim whirled and shouted, “Tell the cap’n—two Nazi tanks comin’ this way!”
But André had already heard the ominous clank of the tanks. Even through the battle sounds their threat rang out—a new danger.
As Slim raced toward him, André broke into a run for the house, shouting, “TANKS, mon Capitaine. Nazi tanks coming!”
Captain Dobie had risen and stumbled a step toward the window.
“Blast it!” he shouted. “Help me, Cimino.” ”

“ There were many other planes much higher than they, and Armbruster called out:
“Kiwi, do you see that little group of tiny specks to the right? That’s a crowd who are going off on a sight-seeing tour to some other planet. Next time they go we’ll go with them, for it’s lots of fun. You fly on and on through space, and the air turns blue and lavender and finally a clear, yellowish 155white as you approach the other worlds. The pull of gravity gets less and less until you feel as light as a feather and your plane is rocked this way and that by the whirling eddies of air. ”

“ Rifles cracked, and a bazooka at a far window flamed.
“We’re in a German trap,” the lieutenant explained to André hastily. “I sent out for help. I hope it comes. You get over in that manger, kid, and keep down.”
Then the lieutenant turned to shout orders and warnings to his men. “Don’t show yourself above that window again, Donovan! You want to get hit?”
“Two Heinies edgin’ around that wall,” screamed an unseen rifleman. “Watch it, Lieutenant!”
After a shattering fusilade of machine-gun fire against the old stone walls, a sudden silence fell. ”

“ When several of these bidders for long distance honors have failed to appear at their announced destination and when, after a frantic search has been carried on over land and sea, the world has been forced to admit that no trace—not even a stick of wood or a rag of fabric—can be found, then it is comforting to think, to hope, that somewhere, a safe landing has been made. ”

“ Also, there was a noise in the attic. “Must be a rat,” André said to himself, and decided to take Patchou up there tomorrow. “He’ll have some fun catching that little thief,” he thought.
His mother was roused again by the drone of plane engines coming in high overhead. Their lofty beating made the air tremble. Antiaircraft guns in near-by Ste. Mère Église began to boom. Their hollow wumpf, wumpf, added to the din of the sirens.
In a slight lull, Mme. Gagnon asked, “Is your father home? I do not like him to be away when there is an air raid.” ”

“ Only one machine was standing on the line, and the mechanics were half-heartedly turning the propeller over.
At their own hangar the two smudgy mechanics were still busy with the stream-lining. There seemed little chance that the plane would be ready much before noon.
Kiwi wandered up the line of hangars to see what other excitement he could find. He liked to listen to the flying talk that was practically the only topic of conversation around the field. He had learned to respect those rather dingy buildings, some of which were now in a sad state of disrepair. ”

“ Dense white smoke rolled over the hill and drifted through the trees lining the driveway to the château.
“It sounds as though we were moving directly into the middle of a battle,” Mme. Gagnon said.
M. Angell raised his head. “There is a skirmish there on the other side of the hill, which I do not understand,” he said.
[164] Pierre Gagnon stared around.
At a fresh outbreak of gunfire Mme. Gagnon begged him to lower himself.
But Pierre’s eyes were fixed wildly on a point near the cottages. His mouth dropped open and closed again excitedly.
“Maman!” he gasped. “Patchou! I see Patchou!” ”

“ He snatched up a shovel, and sighed in relief when the trumpet came up, green and smeared with damp earth, but unharmed. He nestled it comfortably under his arm and went to the barn door.
The cows had not lowed, and now he saw why. Balanced on stools beside the animals sat two lusty Americans. They were happily squirting streams into milk pails held correctly between their knees.
One of the soldiers looked up curiously.
At the sight of the horn under André’s arm he cried, “Well, if it isn’t Little Boy Blue, horn and all.” ”

“ He had drifted over to America, and had been working for several years at the factory that had built the engine for the Skipper’s plane.
When the factory head had received the order for a specially built engine for a particularly long non-stop flight, he had sent for Billings and told him that here was an engine that must be watched through all its construction, from the tiniest nut and bolt, to the moment of its great trial. Nothing must be overlooked. Everything must be tested and re-tested. ”

“ Come, Marie. You, André, clothes off and into bed. Lamps out, Marie.”
At Mme. Gagnon’s bedside a candle flickered. Pierre and Marie drew close beside the pillow.
“The Nazis have already begun to search houses on the other road,” Pierre whispered rapidly. “They are still a long way from us, but we can’t lose any time. Father Duprey has a plan. It is this. He will arrange with the hospital at St. Sauveur le Vicomte tomorrow for you to go there in an ambulance to have treatments. And we will hide the English flyer inside the ambulance.” ”

“ Kiwi felt elated that at last he was actually controlling a plane. He couldn’t resist pushing the rudder slightly with his foot to see what effect it would have. It startled him to find that the slightest pressure sent the nose of the plane skidding sidewise. He hurriedly tried to correct this with the other foot, and discovered that he was overdoing it and that they were see-sawing back and forth in a crazy fashion.
The voice of Armbruster came through the phones:
“There, Kiwi, not too much rudder. Rudders are dangerous things. They have caused a good share of all the accidents.” ”

“ Keep Weller with you. And you, Dobie, in future, try not to be so all-fired brave.”
The captain turned to catch Weller’s eye as the colonel marched across the road to his own hidden jeep.
“He sounds,” Dobie said, “a good deal like me talking to André, doesn’t he?”
But his smile was short.
“So Slim’s a sergeant at last,” he said. “Get him on the radio. Tell him to pick up fifteen or twenty men and we’ll meet him down the road.”
“But Captain,” Weller exploded, “the colonel said—”
“Ouvarski’s my lieutenant, and a brave one. It’s my job to see that he and his men get out alive,” Dobie snapped. ”

“ Among the numberless things that had been stowed away aboard the plane, Jack had provided himself with a powerful flashlight to use in such an emergency.
As they swooped low over the ship they could see the rails lined with passengers staring up at them. ”

“ But in this beautiful spring of 1944 the people of Normandy could not enjoy what they saw. They could only hear the tramp of German boots over their land. Nazi armies had occupied France, and for the last two years German camps had been set up over the countryside. French property had [7] been seized, and Nazi officers told the people exactly what they could and could not do.
The town of Ste. Mère Église sits almost in the middle of what is called the Cherbourg Peninsula. Most of the Norman people are farmers or dairymen. Some are fishermen, but the Nazis would not let them fish. ”

“ Kiwi’s spirits rose, for it had begun to look as though his flight might be postponed again.
On the ride over to the field in the car, Jack said:
“Well, Skipper, do we try out your comic stream-lining on the wheels today? Not many pilots have any faith in them. I cannot see myself where they will add much to our speed.” ”

“ After that he forced the car up a rise.
As they neared the top, the sound of machine guns and rifle fire, which had been muffled, seemed to explode all around them.
M. Angell brought the steaming car to a stop. He surveyed the landscape on all sides.
After a moment he said, “If you will be kind enough to alight, I shall lead you to safety—but on your own feet. We must abandon this vehicle to the mercies of Heaven.”
[163] Mme. Gagnon said to the doctor, “It is cause for rejoicing, doctor, that your cure was successful and I can walk. Stop frowning, Pierre. Each step I take leads toward home.” ”

“ If the engine stopped unexpectedly when flying straight, he must instinctively push the stick forward, keep the nose down, and keep his flying speed. If it stopped during a turn, he must rudder into the turn and keep his flying speed. Always he must do these things instinctively when the motor failed.
Dad and Armbruster and Jack all had stories to tell of some spectacular experience when motors failed at crucial moments in the air. Always when in the air the pilot’s ear is attuned to the steady beat of the motor and he listens for its first missing stroke. ”

“ He throttled back his motor to make the attempt. Now was the test!
No strain ever quite equals that of a pupil’s first landing. No matter who the pupil is, everyone within sight or hearing 159pauses tense until it is over. The group stared, fascinated, as young Kiwi glided down, flattened out a few inches above the surface, and settled down to a perfect three-point landing.
Kiwi had done it!
A shout went up and they pounded the Skipper on the back as he watched, almost unbelieving. Kiwi was a pilot! He had mounted into the air alone, had mastered the air, and had landed beautifully. ”

“ Marie came up through the old tunnel
[157] Captain Dobie nodded, speechless with relief. He pushed back his helmet, mopped his forehead, and switched on the radio. “I’ll cancel those smoke shells,” he muttered.
At that moment the air overhead whined ominously. A curtain of shells fell around the barn and exploded. A dense pall of white smoke drifted across the field.
“Where’s Weller?” the captain asked Slim. “And what about the Nazis still around that barn?”
He was interrupted by grenade and rifle fire and the thrashing of men breaking through shrubbery. ”