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
The sunken eyes stared, and the thin lips continued to move without
making a sound. Dawson clenched both fists helplessly.
"If there were only something we could do for him!" he groaned. "A
couple of sulfanilimide pills, or even a First Aid kit. But we haven't
a darn thing. And I'm afraid it's too late, anyway. Dartmouth! Please!
Hang on, fellow, hang on. You've got to tell us what it's all about."
As Dawson's pleading voice died away to the echo the very silence of
Death seemed to hang in that room. Then, suddenly, sound began to come
from between the dying man's thin moving lips. Both Dawson and Farmer
leaned close so that they would not miss a single word.
"Fire!" the man said. "Fire bombs that destroy everything within a mile
of where they strike. It is true! I--I have seen it with my own eyes.
Flame throwers of the air. That's what they are like. But they are
dropped like bombs. Special chemicals. Nothing can extinguish them.
They must burn themselves out. But--but they explode and spread out
in all directions. It is liquid fire. Nothing can stop it. Nothing
can stop those devils now. Their secret weapon. That devil! That Herr
Baron. He is back in Duisburg again. I know! I saw him. He cannot fool
me, no matter what he does to his face. The twenty-fourth--tomorrow.
Tomorrow they strike, and we will be helpless to stop them. It--it will
not win them the war, no! They will never win. But our planes--our
pilots--our crews. Hundreds--thousands! Three fourths of England's and
America's bombers--wiped out in minutes. It will make the war go on
five years longer. Dear heaven, I was so close. So close to stopping
them!"
The dying man stopped speaking and his eyes became glazed. A hundred
thousand questions sprang to Dawson's lips, and to Freddy Farmer's
lips, too. But neither youth dared to speak them. Death was so very,
very close, now. They could almost smell the Grim Reaper's clammy hand
reaching out. They hardly dared breathe for fear that doing so would
speed the end. They were helpless. The battle had to be fought alone
by that man under the single dirty blanket. No other power on earth
could help him. He would win his own fight, or he would lose, and his
knowledge of the horrible doom poised to descend upon England would be
sealed in his brain.
Tears of helpless agony stung Dawson's eyes, and his lips moved in
fervent, silent prayer. He could feel Farmer's breath on his cheek, and
he knew that Freddy was also praying with all his heart and soul.
And then, as though a curtain had been drawn aside, the glaze vanished
from the dying man's eyes. They were bright and clear as they looked
at Dawson and Farmer. The man drew breath deep into his lungs, and
there was no longer the heart-chilling rattle of death in his throat.
It was as though in his greatest moment of need he had reached out and
received new strength from his Maker.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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