Dave Dawson with the Eighth Air ForceBowen, Robert Sidney
General
Dave Dawson with the Eighth Air Force
Bowen, Robert Sidney
World War, 1939-1945 -- Juvenile fiction
"Not at all, sir, though there's not much to tell," the Yank
Intelligence officer replied quickly. "Frank Bowers was the C.O. of a
Flying Fortress Group. And the right kind of a C.O., too. I mean that
he flew on just as many raids as anybody else, and did his paper work
as C.O. to boot. I knew him back home in Detroit, where we both hail
from. Always crazy about flying, and when the big chance came he soon
showed his worth, and went up the promotion ladder fast. Well, it was
May of last year to be exact. I believe the date was the seventeenth.
He led a Fortress raid on Lorient, in Occupied France. Flak and enemy
fighter opposition that day were extra heavy. We lost several planes,
Frank's among them. Pilots who got back reported that his ship suffered
a direct flak hit. The thing went down in pieces. One pilot said that
he saw some parachutes float down from Frank's plane, but he wasn't
positive, as there were a lot of our boys going down by parachute that
day. Well, we received no word at all about the fate of Frank and his
crew. I gave their names to Swiss Red Cross, but they reported that
they could locate none of the fellows in any of the German prison
camps. That was that. A man who was as fine a leader as he was a pilot
was gone forever, with all the members of his Fortress crew. But--"
Major Crandall stopped, tapped the picture with a finger, and looked
questioningly at Colonel Fraser. The British Intelligence chief nodded
slowly.
"Quite, Major," he said quietly. "Perhaps your friend was killed, but
the Nazis _were able_ to get hold of his papers. But tell me, Major?
Would you say that those papers were the property of the real Colonel
Bowers?"
"Definitely," Major Crandall said, and held one up. "All but this one.
This one stating that he was of recent date attached to Air Forces
Intelligence is faked. Frank wouldn't have served with Intelligence,
unless by Presidential order. He wanted to get out into the open and
fight. He was that kind of a man."
"And to think I let that stinking, no-faced Nazi slip through my
fingers!" Dave Dawson groaned. "I should be sent to the rear rank for
that blunder!"
"Oh, no, not at all, Dawson," Colonel Fraser said. "After all, had you
not gone out on the roof after Farmer, he might have met with a very
nasty finish. There were two of them, you know, and--"
The colonel suddenly choked off the rest and gaped wide-eyed at Dawson.
And well he might, for Dave's face had suddenly become the color of a
four alarm fire, and he looked for all the world like a man seeking a
hole into which he could crawl before pulling the hole in after him.
"Good heavens, man, what's wrong?" the colonel cried, and started up
from his chair.
"Me, sir!" Dave replied with a grimace. "I guess I should be broken and
sent back to the rear rank. I clean forgot. Funny, too, considering I
remembered everything else so clearly. Maybe it was that smack on the
head."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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