Chapter 7

.

Dale's Passion, 1917, No Man's Land.

Not a great place to be.

Upon command thousands of soldiers will march straight into the crossfire of thousands of guns while the endless rain keeps pouring down.

But high above the mud and blood of the battlefields there was another war going on, the war for superiority in the air between the daredevils of the sky known as the aces.

.

.

.

"Hay man, they hit the fuel tank, turned it into Swiss cheese! I'm almost outta patches, there ain't nothin' much left I can do!" The grind of the engines, spitting machinegun fire, and unimpeded winds that blew into the open cockpit made communication next to impossible; the crew of three had to yell at the top of their lungs just to hear each other even though they were only feet apart within cramped quarters. Louie had abandoned his position at the nose gun for the sake of keeping the bomber in the air. He crawled through the gangway and opened a side service door which allowed access to the left wing and engine of the stolen and custom crew-modified and repainted Gotha bi-plane bomber aircraft. The disturbed winds blustered his face as he crawled out onto the slippery wing amongst fire from enemy and allied fighters dogfighting for their territory. The physically fit orangutan reached for and swung from one support beam to the next using nothing but his hands to prevent him from being carried away by the turbulent winds gusting over the wings until he arrived at the damaged smoking engine which was heavily leaking fuel. He ducked as a spray of bullets narrowly missed him, however the canteen of oil on his side was not so lucky. He used his final patch to seal the largest and lowest bullet hole before returning and crawling back into the main body of the plane, shutting the service door behind him.

Louie wiped his forehead of sweat even through the wind had kept him dry before looking up in response to his name. "Louie! How much time we got? Will she last?! Can we make it to the target or am I going to have to work another miracle?!" Baloo was a nineteen-year-old and seemingly immortal combat pilot who, after a lifetime of growing up in orphanages, had finally found his home amongst the skies and on the battlefield. Though he lied about his being eighteen when he enlisted in the Air Corps three years ago, he had joined the 101st Airborne at age sixteen and had been assigned as a pilot due to his apparent knack for the job. Fighters, scout planes, bombers, Baloo could and did do it all. He was a slim and muscular grey bear who had impressed all his commanding officers and trainers with his inherent knowledge for and instinctual skills in the air. The war had taught him much about aviation, but this should not be surprising when the penalty for failure on a mission was death. Training was skimpy at best, there was only so much a new pilot could learn on the ground in a makeshift mock cockpit that was rattled and pushed back and forth by fellow recruits or in a controlled flight situation in friendly territory. Ultimately it came down to a simple mantra: Fly or die, fight of fall, learn or get learned. Only the best pilots made it home and the bar for the best only got higher as the war raged on.

Baloo was a wild fighter pilot with an even more erratic style of flying in dogfights that outmaneuvered all his enemies, though he was starting to prefer the camaraderie of his bomb runs. He had joined this war alone but, God willing, he would go home with two buddies who had become the closest things to a family he had ever had. And speaking of going home, he had considered turning around and limping back to the airstrip with his damaged engine but what with knowing that these bombers were not designed to land with bombs in their bomb bay, the likelihood of the landing gear supporting the shock of impact with four thousand pounds of extra weight was smaller than the war ending by the time that they reached their target drop zone.

"I dunno man, we should! The left engine is leaking fuel fast, but as long as we don't take any more fire, we should be fine! It's the return trip that's worrying me! As long as these escorts keep those damn fighters off us, we might make it home in time for tea!" Baloo grimaced at the concept of having tea-time, clearly a British custom Louie had picked up in town during their RnR. Louie wasn't much more than a few months older than Baloo; he had enlisted on his eighteenth birthday and had arrived in Francia at the airfield a little over a year ago. While he wasn't the best pilot or mechanic in the world, he worked well under pressure and liked constant action; he thrived on it. He was surprisingly accurate with a mounted machine gun on the bombers, and his agility and the fact that he never forgot anything made him reliable in combat to perform some in-air-repairs which would mean the difference between mission success and failure and with it, life and death.

Just then a lion with a small mullet and waistline came clambering up through the gangway from the back of the bomber and poked his head up though the rear cockpit behind Baloo's seat. "Yo! I'm out of ammo! Managed to get one down with my final spray. How much farther!?" Wildcat had always loved to tinker and build. As for mechanics there was none better than he. Like a mother to her child, he always kept his lucky wrench and hammer tied to his side and he had come up with some creative solutions to the ever-changing variables of the air. On their last mission, for example, Wildcat had disassembled his tail gunner machine gun and used the pieces to fashion a replacement support beam for the right wing which had been damaged nearly to the point of critical failure. It was just as well for as they landed back at the airfield, upon contact with the ground, the wing had snapped off causing the craft to become unbalanced. It tilted to the left, the left wing dragging on the ground causing the plane to drift off the runway. They had made it home, but the bomber was out of commission until repairs could be made which did not take Wildcat but about a week. In the meantime, Baloo and Louie were temporarily reassigned to fighter escort missions.

Then they all heard it, the machinegun fire had stopped, and the sound of ambient engines grew softer. The three looked around and saw the enemy fighters suddenly withdraw and their own escort fighters rise up into the clouds. They all knew what laid ahead of them. They looked at each other but no words were spoken for they had only seconds until the clear skies erupted with flame and shrapnel like a minefield after a single misstep. They all looked around at the other bombers one final time as they wondered who would be the first to fall, but they did not have to wait long for an answer. Suddenly, all three snapped out of their trance of apprehension as the bomber next to them exploded in a ball of blinding light and heat as it took an anti-air round directly into its bomb-bay from the enemy cannons on the ground below and was consumed in a display of turbulent flame that shook all surrounding aircraft and caused them to veer off course with the force of the atmospheric shockwave disturbance. Baloo corrected his flight path and restabilized the craft as Louie and Wildcat zoned back into their senses after having been stunned from the explosion that they were both sure had killed them.

Without wasting another moment, Louie ducked back down into the gangway and crawled to the nose of the bomber and took a look down into the bombsight and compared what he saw through the clouds with the map coordinates and reconnaissance picture he had previously marked. Once having a clear understanding of location, he popped back up though the front cockpit and started barking orders; from now until the bombs were delivered, he was in command, and this was his bomber. "Baloo! Right six degrees! Wildcat, Open the bomb bay doors! Sixty seconds! Mark!" The three set their minds in motion as they synchronized their thoughts and pocket watches.

Baloo nodded and turned after placing his pocket watch in the middle of the yoke, Wildcat ducked down and pressed the bomb bay door release button opening the belly of the bomber to enemy fire below; this way they would stay until they were shut by hand back at the airfield. The first airplane had only been invented fourteen years earlier and at this early stage in their development mechanical devices to shut them in flight would add too much weight to the aircraft. Wildcat returned up top with his pocket watch in hand. "Doors open!"

"Thirty-five seconds!" Louie held up both hands one with a thumb and two fingers extended, the other with all five. Flack cannons continued firing down below and what was once a clear and blue sky had become a surprise scattered display of lethal explosions, black smoke, and sharp and searing hot shrapnel soaring every which direction. The shockwaves from the aerial explosions rocked the bomber and threatened to knock them off course, still though, Baloo kept his crew on target.

There were no more words, everyone knew what to do in this critical moment, this was why they were here. Louie had gone back into the gangway and took his position at the nose of the plane. With one eye he counted down the seconds on his pocket watch which lay to the left of the scope, with his right eye he gazed into the bombsight and observed as the target came into alignment, his adamant will keeping him from flinching from the flack cannons and shockwave explosions that were coming within feet of blowing them out of the sky. Wildcat was below in the gangway too, standing by next to the manual bomb release, all his attention on awaiting command to deliver their payload. As for Baloo, this was the part he loved and hated the most. He loved that within seconds he could turn around and go home, his mission accomplished, his task complete. He hated it because this moment was the scariest moment of the mission. It was the scariest because for these few short minutes his command of the bomber was stripped from him, and he felt completely powerless; useless. He was being shot at but could not perform any evasive maneuvers to ensure a greater chance at success or survival, he could not give orders to his crew, and he could do nothing but fly straight and hope the guns below missed them. He had to maintain a steady course to ensure a proper bomb run. All of their hearts raced.

Louie held up his hand and one by one his five fingers counted down the seconds and then he looked up and back, pointing to his friend and crewmate. "Wildcat! Now!" Wildcat nodded and pushed the buttons one by one.

"One away! Two away! Three away, four away! Bombs away! Let's get the hell out of here!" Baloo heard the cry from below and felt not only his command of the bomber return to him, but the plane suddenly shed about two tons of weight. Baloo turned when suddenly his left engine backfired from its loss of fuel and died causing the aircraft to behave erratically until Baloo could compensate.

Wildcat was out of ammo, the bombs were delivered, and there was nothing to fix. With nothing to do or think about, idle thought and panic with no outlet took over. "Hay man, hay man, how far is one engine gonna get us!?"

"To the scene of the crash!" Louie started laughing hysterically and Baloo couldn't help but chuckle at the dark humor. Louie had already lit up a cigar and was smoking it down, as far as he was concerned, his job was done, he was in the same boat as Wildcat. The bombs were gone, there were no fighters to shoot at as long as the flack cannons continued to fire, and he had no more materials for which to repair anything. The heavy tobacco calmed him down and let him enjoy the rest of the flight. He leaned back in his chair and just watched Wildcat let out a concerned and nervous laugh. He considered handing Wildcat a lighter and one of his lucky strikes but felt that Wildcat's panic-show was far too good of a display of free entertainment to spoil.

Baloo flew this way and that maneuvering as best he could with one engine, sacrificing altitude for airspeed to make himself a harder target, but ultimately, he could only do so much. Due to their reduced speed and aerial agility, they had become an easy target for prey down below despite Baloo's best efforts. A flack shell had come up and hit their one good engine before exploding, taking it, a part of the back rudder, and the lower right front wing with it down into No Man's Land. The bomber started to spin out of control, though its fall was significantly slowed compared to a full bomber what with having dropped its bombs, expended ammo, and the loss of the heavy engine and fuel. Baloo did his very best to guide the bomber down to as soft a landing as possible, he still had three wings and half a rudder which made for more of a glide as opposed to an outright fall even if what was left of it was spinning, turning, and rolling as it went down. Disoriented and dizzy he yelled down into the gangway, "BRACE YOURSELVES FOR IMPACT! WE'RE GOING DOWN!"

Baloo was frantically flipping switches, turning knobs, and adjusting the foot pedals along with pulling up on the yoke in an attempt to guide the bomber down as safely as possible when in a flash he was suddenly not in the bomber anymore. He looked all about him and saw that he had been thrown from it; his seatbelt and by extension his seat was still attached to him, he was freefalling. "This is it!" Baloo gazed at the ground as the green and brown fields came into better focus as he drew ever closer, and the trees below became larger and larger. He took one more look to the sky before he died and closed his eyes in preparation for the end. He felt the warm sun upon his face, heard the air gust past his ears as the wind blew over his head and hands and tossed and turned him as he dreamt of the home he never knew, the wife he never met, the family he never had, and the life he never lived. And then, the sound of crashing and breaking branches, then finally, the silent dark.

Meanwhile, back on the swiftly and chaotically descending bomber, Louie, still casually leaned back in his nose gunner seat, still holding onto his slowly burning stogie and feeling totally mellow inhaled one more breath and blew it out before looking at a panicked Wildcat who, like him, had noticed that Baloo was no longer onboard. The plane was rotating and breaking up as it went down in a display of smoke and fire across the sky. Wildcat was grabbing ahold of whatever he could get his hands on in the small, partially enclosed gangway compartment. Louie looked at his friend and decided that if he was going to meet death today, he was determined that he would greet him as a respectable gentleman and the only way to do that was to end this life as such, and so he held out his open hand to Wildcat. "My friend, it has been an honor. I shall see you on the other side!"

Wildcat's eyes had been forced shut ever since Baloo had been ripped from the craft but he opened them upon hearing his crewmate address him. He blinked blankly at Louie's outstretched hand as he processed his friend's unexpected action and his hand came into focus. A second later he looked up and saw that still lit cigar sticking out of his mouth, the smoke evacuating the craft as quickly as it emerged from the tip, and the expression behind it was one of acceptance in the face of the inevitable. There were no more words spoken, there was no longer a need. The three of them had grown to love each other like brothers and now they were all meeting their end; both Louie and Wildcat knew they were going to die within seconds and there was nothing either of them could do to stop it. Wildcat inhaled deeply and nodded, reached out his hand and took hold of his battle-brother, letting go of his handhold and there as they approached terminal velocity, in the turbulent weightless fall with chaotic wind passing over them they floated, clinging like kids to each other.

Just then another shell assaulted the still falling craft, knocking the already freefalling bomber into an even more erratic spin and shearing the tail completely off, tearing the craft in half. Louie, his hand firmly holding onto the handhold by his station, had been forced up against the wall of the nose of the bomber from the centrifugal force, there he watched as his friend was torn from him in an instant and sucked out, not to be seen again. With only seconds left until the long drop came to a sudden stop Louie closed his eyes and said his prayer, "I'm commin' next boys. When ya'll get to them pearly gates, tell Saint Peter to hold my spot in line."

-END CHAPTER 7-