Kinch had been fussing for a while with the radio's headset, which still wasn't working properly for some as yet unidentified reason, when Colonel Hogan and Captain Luck both re-entered the main room. Whatever conversation they'd had didn't seem to have gone well, given the stormy expressions on both their faces.

Their two crews immediately picked up on the tension between their COs. The easy banter among Newkirk, LeBeau, and Carter stilled. Burgin, who was still shaving over the basin of water and small mirror they'd provided, paused to exchange an uneasy silent glance first with Toft, then with Watts, whose lips parted slightly but who mercifully kept his mouth shut. The younger Hogan, seated on a box, pulled his head back slightly, eyes narrowed, a small gesture that was eerily familiar to Kinch, who had glanced over at him just in time to see it. Lieutenant Smoot, sitting on the bunk near the radio, edged over to make room for Captain Luck, who crossed the chamber and plunked down hard next to him, then sat staring off toward the emergency tunnel.

Ignoring the captain, Hogan came over to Kinch. "You get the message off?"

"Yes, sir, and they acknowledged receipt. No answer yet, Colonel."

Hogan gave one curt nod, then turned to face the other men, lifting his head, crossing his arms in front of him, and taking a breath to calm himself. His voice was even when he spoke.

"Okay, we need to start preparing all of you to move out. After you finish washing up, LeBeau and Carter will interview each of you to see what kind of cover will work best for you and get our forgery team to draw up false papers that will match it. Newkirk will get your measurements, so we can get civilian suits made for you to wear. Once we have backstories worked out for you and the right clothes, Carter will get photos of you for the IDs and papers we'll be making. While we're working on all that, Kinch will run language instruction for you; we can't get you anything like fluent, of course, but we can get you drilled on questions you're most likely to run into and some short common answers to them. Any questions?" He scrutinized Luck as he asked.

The captain shook his head, and his crew followed suit.

Their compliance won a small smile from Hogan. "All right, everybody, get moving."

Leaving Carter, Newkirk, and LeBeau to divide the guests up for their various tasks, Hogan turned back to Kinch and placed a hand on his shoulder. Bending slightly and pitching his voice low, he added under the cover of the other talk, "Tell them to prioritize clothes and papers for Luck, Smoot, and Burgin, then Toft, then Watts. With any luck we'll be sending the last two back with . . . well, on the plane, and won't need papers or clothes for them. But keep that information just to our team for the moment."

Kinch nodded slightly. "I'll spread the word as I get a chance."

Hogan squeezed his shoulder lightly in appreciation, then dropped his hand. As everyone went about their business, the colonel drifted over to his son, who had been watching him guardedly from his seat on the box by the wall. "We've got some time now," Hogan said quietly. "How about we do some catching up?"

The lieutenant looked over at his crew mates. "Shouldn't I be getting outfitted too?"

"There's six of you to work on, and three of them still need to get cleaned up like you already have. It's going to take a while. No reason you can't go later, so you and I can use the time now."

The lieutenant swallowed. "Okay. I guess."

Pretending not to notice the apparent lack of enthusiasm, Hogan led him back to the sleeping alcove. It didn't offer much privacy, but at least they were out of everyone else's direct line of sight and a little way down the tunnel. The buzz of conversation from all the others would be loud enough that they wouldn't be directly listened to. He gestured at the rough bunks, and they both sat down on the edge of one.

"It's good to see you, Bobby," Hogan started off. "I never dreamed. . . ."

"I don't go by Bobby anymore," the younger Hogan interrupted.

"Not a man's name?" Hogan asked with a small smile.

"Well, yeah, that—plus it's yours."

Hogan paused. "So, Bob now? Not Rob, like me?"

"Neither," the young man announced defiantly. "When I joined up I switched to using my middle name and shortened it to Ted. Smooty and Watts started ribbing me that I was too young to be Ted and tried calling me Teddy, then Teddy Bear. I didn't like that; they're always giving me a hard time about my age because all of them are so much older than me. But Captain Luck told them to knock it off, and they all mostly call me Ted now."

"I see." Hogan hesitated, then added reluctantly, "Well, I'll try to stick to Ted. But you'll have to be patient with me—I've thought of you as Bobby for nineteen years now."

"Really? I didn't think you'd thought enough about me to make switching hard."

Hogan sighed heavily. "Look, I know you're mad at me—you've been angry since you turned sixteen, and probably younger. And I won't say you don't have some reason. But you're not being fair, son. I've written you over and over, and never heard back from you either."

"You're lying." The younger man's voice shook. "I haven't heard a word from you since you left for England!"

The color drained from Hogan's face, then his eyes hardened. "Bobby, I swear I've written—maybe not as often as I should, but I've sent several letters every year since I came over. First from London, then from here."

"It's Ted. And why haven't I gotten any of these supposed letters?"

"At the moment, I would guess your grandparents haven't passed them on to you," Hogan ground out, his hands fisted on his knees.

"Pops and Mama wouldn't do that," Ted averred, shaking his head. "They know how much it'd mean to me."

"That's probably exactly why they haven't passed them on!" Hogan snapped. "If you haven't gotten a single letter from me in nearly four years, then that's what had to have happened, because I sent them," he insisted, lowering his voice. "And it certainly explains why I've never heard from you."

"I figured you weren't interested in hearing from me, if you wouldn't write," his son muttered.

Hogan pulled off his cap, ran his hand through his hair. "Of course I was. And I did write." He put his cap back on. "Look, we can't resolve or fix that, so let's set it aside for now. There's lots that can't get put into letters anyway." He leaned forward. "Like I said earlier, I'd like to catch up. We have a chance right now."

Ted wasn't mollified. "What do you care? I haven't seen you since summer 1940, and hardly at all before that anyway. That's nearly four years ago—I'd just turned 16 the week before. You weren't there when I played pitcher on the baseball team or to meet any of my girlfriends or when I graduated from high school or when I—when I . . . did anything!"

"No, I wasn't. I know that, and I'm sorry about it, if that makes any difference to you. But I couldn't help it. C'mon, Bobby, you know I couldn't be: I was assigned over to London in 1940."

"You volunteered. You told me that last time you came to see me. You didn't have to go, but of course you couldn't wait to get as far away as possible—you couldn't even wait for the U.S. to get into the war! You just up and went. It wasn't even our fight yet!"

"It's not that simple!" Hogan countered angrily. "Hitler had destroyed every democracy in Europe but Britain by June that year, and it wasn't at all clear that Britain would last once Germany started hammering them. The British needed our help, even if it was as unofficial as familiarizing them with the planes they were buying from us, observing, and making tactical recommendations. I was one of the most experienced officers in the Air Corps at the time for that job. I had to go. And believe me, after two years here in Germany, in Nazi hands, I've seen first-hand why that maniac in Berlin has to be stopped!"

"Well, you might not have gotten shot down and caught if you hadn't had to be the first in the air!"

"That's not how it happened, Bobby—" Hogan started.

"It's Ted now. Not Bobby!" his son interrupted heatedly. "I told you that earlier. R. Theodore Hogan. I'm not using your first name anymore! I'd rather use Pops'! It's bad enough I have your last name! I oughta be a Mahoney! And besides, it wasn't just the war—you weren't ever around before that either!"

"C'mon, Bob– I mean, Ted, you know it was difficult. I was stationed mostly out in California, and Ohio, and down in Virginia, and couldn't get home much when you were young. Not to mention that your grandparents didn't want me around even when I could. I spent every leave I could with you." Hogan sighed and leaned back against the tunnel wall. "Maybe it doesn't seem like much to you, but I did the best I could," he added resignedly.

"You could have done something else. Some other job." Ted's voice was low and resentful, his eyes on his father.

"Some other job?" Hogan's eyebrows shot up in disbelief, and he sat forward again. "Kid, did you somehow miss the Depression? I was damn lucky to have a career that gave me a job—and one that let me visit you occasionally, I might add. There were plenty of other boys your age who saw their fathers a lot less than you saw me!" Hogan could hear the heat in his voice, and tried to clamp down on it, but somehow couldn't stop himself from adding, "I can understand you thinking that when you were eight or ten, but a nineteen-year-old Army lieutenant ought to know better." Shouldn't have said that, he thought to himself regretfully the moment it was out of his mouth.

Ted jerked like he'd been slapped. "Yeah. Guess I should. Guess I shouldn't have ever thought when I was lying in bed at night that you'd want me too, might take me with you when you visited. But no, you were too busy with your career, not to mention making time with whatever floozies you could pick up."

"I never saw any women when I was with you! The time I had to spend with you, I kept for you, and just you," Hogan protested indignantly.

"Yeah, except for picking up girls at the local bar every night. Pops' friend Mr. Crider saw you down at the Fantail, and not just once, either, so don't try to deny it."

Hogan's eyes hardened. "I'm not denying it. Yeah, I went to the bar in the evenings—because your grandparents chased me out of the house the moment you were in bed. You know damn well they wouldn't even put me up at their house when I came to visit you, wouldn't even let me sleep on the couch. And after listening to your grandfather Mahoney all evening, yeah, I had some drinks—needed them and enjoyed them. And yeah, I chatted up pretty ladies at the bar while I was drinking them. I like women, and I enjoy their company, always have. But that had nothing to do with you, and my time with you." He tried to gentle his voice as he finished.

But Ted was shaking with pent-up emotion. "I heard Mama say that at least with my mother going when she did, she never had to put up with you catting around on her with every woman in sight."

Seething with fury, Hogan stood up abruptly, took two steps away, then turned and came back, raising his leg to put his left foot on the bunk as he leaned over the younger man. "I'd never have cheated on Katie," he hissed. "I won't pretend to be a saint, but I honor my word, and I'd have honored our vows and never looked aside. But your mother's been gone a long, long time, and I'm not going to live like a monk, for all that I've never found a woman that held a candle to her. So yeah, there've been women in my life since then, quite a few of them, in fact, given how much I've moved around. You planning to live the next twenty years of your life without even looking at a girl, Ted?"

Ted looked back up at him, eyes dark with resentment, but he shook his head.

"Then don't expect me to," Hogan snapped and pulled back to standing up, glowering down at him for a moment before turning and dropping back on the bunk beside him. He breathed deeply a couple of times, trying to calm himself.

For a moment all was quiet between them. Ted eventually broke the silence.

"I used to wonder if you'd take me with you if you got married again. I wondered if you'd want me then, if you had a wife. Or if you still wouldn't."

Hogan frowned again. "I wasn't interested in getting married again. And it wasn't a matter of me not wanting you. I was moving so often . . . as your grandparents pointed out, over and over and over, it just didn't seem fair or right to try to do that to a kid, especially when you wouldn't have a mother or any other family to look after you when I was working on base. Much as I hated to, I had to agree with them."

"I'd have managed," Ted muttered.

Hogan crossed his arms and raised his right hand to his forehead, rubbing at the ache he could feel growing there. "Really? I don't know that I would have."

Ted glared at him. "So there it is. You really didn't want me!"

Hogan dropped his hand and glared back. "I meant that I'd have been worried about you, not knowing what you were up to, not having a way to check up on you for hours and sometimes days at a time. You were better off with the stability your grandparents could provide. Besides, you aren't thinking this through. "

"I think you're just making excuses, just like you always have. You had a freer life and were just happier without me. It was just easier for you to be a single guy, not a single dad. Not to mention a lot easier for you to chase women."

"Okay," Hogan admitted in exasperation, "maybe you're right. Maybe I took the easy way out. Maybe I could have taken you. Maybe I should have." He leaned toward Ted again. "Now you tell me, kid, since what I should have done is so simple and obvious to you—would you really rather have grown up moving from base to base with me, with never the same friends from one year to another? A different school every single year—or two a year sometimes, maybe even three? Always the new kid? Being alone in whatever quarters we were assigned for hours on end, making your own meals, putting yourself to bed, getting yourself off to school every morning, whenever I was on duty?"

He put his hand on Ted's knee, but the younger man shook it off impatiently. Hogan drew back, jaw tightening. "How about not having grown up with your uncles? You mean as much or more to Roy as any of his older siblings—last time I saw you, you told me yourself he'd said so. You two aren't even a full two years apart, and you're as close as brothers. I've always seen that between the two of you, whenever I visited. Do you really wish you'd grown up hardly ever seeing him, not really knowing him? And while we're on the subject, kid, just what would you do if a family dropped a baby on your doorstep, told you he was yours to raise, right now, all by yourself at nineteen. Would you? Huh?"

Ted stared at the floor, his mouth tightly compressed.

Hogan sighed. "Yeah. It's not so easy to choose in that situation, is it?"

"Well, I wouldn't just give him away as though he didn't matter," Ted muttered.

Hogan shifted further back on the bunk, banging his head against the boards that reinforced the tunnel wall, then shaking it. The two men sat mutely for a moment, with only the filtered voices of the other men down the tunnel filling up the empty air between them. Hogan finally sighed again and broke the silence.

"You always mattered. And okay, I wasn't around back when you were a kid. Maybe I should have been. Maybe I made the wrong choices. I'll say it again if you need to hear it again: I'm sorry. But I'm here right now. We've got a chance, you and I, a chance beyond any hope or expectation I ever had . . . not to make up missing time, I won't pretend that. But to catch up some. And I want to hear everything, every bit you can tell me. Please."

Ted nodded slightly, but still didn't say anything. Hogan scratched his head.

"My parents told me they'd heard you'd joined up, they thought in the Army, but they didn't know what branch of service for sure. You haven't kept much in touch with them either," he couldn't help adding somewhat censoriously.

Ted looked embarrassed and lowered his head.

Hogan shook himself inwardly and veered away from that, before he opened a new can of worms. Another source of conflict was the last thing the two of them needed. "How about you tell me how you wound up in the Army Air Corps," he suggested, making his voice sound as coaxing as he could.

"It's Army Air Force now, not Corps." Hogan thought he heard a small note of amusement in Ted's voice.

"Yeah, I know. But that's another old habit that's hard to break." Hogan grinned a little, then leaned back against the wall and pulled his legs up on the bunk, resting his forearms on his knees and folding his hands together between them. "C'mon, Ted, tell me what got you up in the air."

He got a sidewise look from his son. "Um . . . you remember an officer named Mitchell Hewlett?"

"Mitch? Sure. He was at March Field out in California with me, back in '35. A good guy."

"Yeah. He remembered you too. He saw my name while I was in basic training in Virginia, asked if I was related to you. When I said yes, he suggested I train as a pilot—said if I had your reflexes and stomach I'd make a good one, that he'd recommend me for it." Ted bit his lip, then shrugged. "You'd been shot down earlier that year; I hadn't heard yet if you were alive or not. I remembered how much you'd loved flying, and that one time you took me up in a plane, that summer I was fourteen. I figured, well, there ought to be at least one Hogan up in the sky."

Hogan swallowed hard, staring at his folded hands. "That's . . . well, I didn't expect that."

Ted pulled his legs up onto the bunk too, unconsciously mirroring his father's casual position. "Well, what I really wanted was to fly fighters. I got trained on bombers, though, because the need was greater. And that's fine, because I'm on the best crew and the Lucky Strike is the best plane. . . ." His voice died away, remembering the Lucky Strike's fate the day before.

Hogan reached over to squeeze his son's shoulder gently. "I'm sure she was terrific. And she stayed aloft when hit, gave you and all the others the chance to get out, which kept you all alive. You and she did right by each other."

"Wish we'd been able to keep her going," Ted said softly, his voice rough. "But she'd been hit by so much flak . . . she was tearing apart as we jumped, the metal just screaming. . . ."

"So you've liked flying—you trained as a pilot, not a navigator or bombardier." Hogan deliberately steered the conversation away from the loss and defeat of the previous day. "Why did you want fighters? What do you like about the Marauder? I haven't flown one of those."

Ted looked over at him. "What did you fly—a B-17?"

Hogan nodded. "Yep. She deserved being called a 'Flying Fortress,' too. I never flew anything that matched the power of one of those babies up in the sky." He looked away, his eyes distant.

"Hmm. I always thought you'd like fighters better. More like that Curtiss-Wright Junior you took me up in back in '38." He paused, smiling at the memory. "That was the best day ever. You surprised me so much—when you'd promised me a tour of the airfield, I was so excited. Even more when you let me actually get in the Curtiss-Wright. When you said we were going for a ride, I didn't believe it, even after strapping in, not till you actually signaled your friend to start the propellers. I thought you were having me on."

Hogan smiled also at the shared memory. He bumped his right knee against Ted's left. "You took to it like a natural. I knew when you didn't get sick while I did those loops that you were a born flier."

Ted grinned back at him. "The loops seemed amazing. I know now you were being careful, but at the time it was wild beyond imagination. All the kids I knew envied me when I told them about it later."

Hogan laughed. "That's the fun of small planes. I flew a Hurricane once while I was in Britain, and a Spitfire a few times. I loved that one—I could throw that plane all around the sky." He smiled nostalgically.

"Don't you miss flying?" Ted asked, brow furrowed in puzzlement. "I'd have thought you'd do anything to escape from this prison camp, get back to England and back up in the air where the war is."

"Yeah. I miss it." Hogan's eyes had a faraway look to them, and he fell silent for a moment, remembering his life as a pilot and commander before he was shot down. Then he shook his head slightly. "But the work we're doing here is important, even if—no, especially because it's ground based, behind enemy lines. Flying . . . well, I'll do it again when the war's over. At least I won't have to worry about anyone shooting at my plane then." He glanced sidewise at Ted. "I'm glad that you've learned to fly. It sounds like you enjoy piloting as much as I have."

Ted cleared his throat. "There's . . ." He stopped short, and looking over at him, even in the dim light Hogan could see a faint blush staining his cheeks.

"What is it?"

"I don't know what you'll think. It's just, I've always looked for a way to explain how I felt, that day you took me up in the Curtiss-Wright, how a successful training flight even in the Marauder makes me feel. Not flying in combat," he added in a lower tone. "That's different."

Hogan nodded. "Good flying's hard to describe in words. Especially for people who've never felt it themselves."

"I found the words, once. It's, uh, it's a poem. By a pilot." He glanced over at his father, checking his reaction.

Hogan bumped his knee again lightly. "I'd like to see it sometime. Anyone who can catch that feeling in a way another pilot would recognize . . . that'd be something worth reading."

Ted looked down at his hands again, cheeks flushing an even deeper red. "Actually . . . I have it memorized."

Hogan smiled affectionately. "Then let's hear it."

Ted glanced cautiously out towards the tunnel corridor and the main room, checking the conversational buzz to make sure no one else would hear. Hogan repressed his amusement that Ted was so obviously concerned that his crewmates might overhear him reciting poetry. Then Ted started to speak softly, his voice lingering over the lines in a way that suggested he'd run through them many times.

"It's called 'High Flight.'

"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of Earth
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds—and done a hundred things
You have not dreamed of—wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle, flew;
And, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space,
—Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."

Hogan covered his mouth with his hand, nodding as he listened. "That's it," he responded, his voice hushed. "That's just exactly it. It's perfect. Who wrote it?"

"John Gillespie Magee. He was an American. He, uh, enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1940. Flew Spitfires in Britain, actually." Ted was looking studiously back at his hands.

"Was an American?" Hogan queried, after digesting that.

"Yeah. He was killed in a mid-air collision in '41, hit by a training flight." Ted swallowed. "He was nineteen when he died."

Hogan stood up abruptly, took two steps forward, then turned back. Wrapping his arms around his torso, he stared at Ted, who had also risen to his feet, then shook his head. Ted stared back at him, silent, but challenging.

"I'd better check on the others," Hogan said vaguely, looking back toward the main tunnel. "But . . . we'll talk more. There's still . . . a lot more to say."

Ted looked down at the floor, then nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah. Guess I'd better get measured for my suit and everything too, for the trip back to England."

Hogan looked away again. "Yes. You do that." Then he walked out of the alcove, as Ted followed him.

ooOoo

Author's Notes:

1) John Gillespie Magee (9 June 1922 – 11 December 1941) did write the sonnet quoted above; his background is accurate so far as Ted reports it. You can easily find more information on him via the internet, if interested, though I first encountered the poem and Magee's story in L.M. Elliott's realistic, gritty, and wonderful novel, Under a War-torn Sky, about a nineteen-year-old American flier whose bomber is shot down over France and who survives with the help of the underground and sympathetic locals.

2) My vision of Hogan's early assignment to Britain is much influenced by Syl's brilliant (though unfinished) "A Connecticut Yankee in the RAF," which I recommend if you haven't read it. You can find it here on the ffnet site.