The Homecoming (4 page)

Katherine shook her head no.

“But you can still come to visit, right?” asked Patrick.

“I don’t know,” she said. “I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.”

At that, Shawn’s father cleared his throat in a message-sending manner and said, “Okay if we say the blessing? I’m hungry.”

After everyone had eaten dinner and downed a delicious slice of cheesecake, Mrs. Fortini ushered them into the living room for coffee and to hear all about “Shawn’s wonderful story of when he escaped from the Germans.” She even made Patrick a cup of hot chocolate and warned the elder Collins not to even think about lighting a cigar. Then she insisted Shawn sit in a dining room chair in front of the radio, so everyone could see him clearly as he talked.

Shawn’s insides were doing somersaults. He wasn’t sure what they expected to hear. He had barely thought about his “escape story” since it happened. How could he begin to explain what he’d been through? How much should he share, could he share? Their ideas about war, he was sure, were fueled by all the stupid Hollywood war movies they kept turning out. What he experienced was nothing like the movies; it was the difference between real life and comic strips. Shawn looked at their faces, all smiles and bright eyes. The only thing missing was the popcorn.

God, don’t let me say too much
. He knew he’d have to hold back most of the details. Some of the images were already drifting through his mind. There were some things that happened on that last mission that Shawn never wanted any of them to know.

“Okay,” Shawn said, “where should I begin?”

Six

Three Weeks Earlier

The savage battle raged on, high above the German skies, just beyond the outskirts of Bremen. On their way in to the target, eighteen bombers had been shot down. Dozens of young men in the prime of life had already died. Everyone knew these missions must be flown. There was no other way to take the fight to the Germans. For the first time in military history, all the battles in a war were being waged in the air instead of the ground.

Tucked deep inside this aerial battlefield, Shawn wrestled the controls of his B-17, nicknamed
Mama’s Kitchen
. The entire formation had already dropped their bombs and were heading back to England by way of the North Sea. Before reaching safety, Shawn knew what lay ahead. They must fly through a hundred more miles of Nazi-occupied territory, at a speed that felt as slow as a flock of geese.

For a few moments, the sky was quiet. The formation had flown beyond the flak gunners’ range. But Shawn knew the enemy fighters would soon return. There was no hiding the presence of several hundred planes flying overhead. The sound on the ground was deafening, and, high above, majestic contrails of water vapor peeled off the planes’ wingtips for miles, like big white arrows.

“Nick, how’s Anderson?” Shawn yelled into the intercom. “Is he conscious?” Nick Manzini was their starboard waist gunner.

“Let me check, sir.”

Shawn’s eyes shifted through a half dozen checkpoints, including the plane’s airspeed, the bombers all around him, and a picture of Elizabeth and Patrick.

“Anderson’s awake now, sir. Looks like the bleeding stopped. He ain’t gonna be any good on his gun though. Maybe he can still work the radio.” Hank Anderson had taken some flak in the leg on the way in and had almost bled out before Manzini patched him up. But Hank wasn’t their first casualty. Tommy Hastings, the other waist gunner, had been hit by an even bigger piece of flak and was killed instantly.

Shawn turned to his co-pilot, Jim MacReady. “You’re gonna have to get back on Anderson’s gun, Jim. I can fly without you, but we’re gonna need guys on every gun. We’re gonna get pounded by those fighters any minute.”

“Here they come,” said Manzini. “Kraut fighters, three o’clock high. You guys see ’em?”

“More coming in at ten o’clock,” shouted Bill Davis, the bombardier.

Man, that was fast, thought Shawn. “All right, you guys know what to do. Don’t waste your ammo.” Suddenly a black shadow flashed by above them, an enemy fighter. It was so close, Shawn ducked. He looked up to see a stricken B-17 with one engine on fire, banking to the right. The bombers around it moved to one side or the other to avoid colliding.

Shawn’s eyes followed the bomber as it drifted below them. Suddenly it began to spin. It looked unreal, like a child’s toy. Two chutes opened. The plane exploded in a fireball. Shawn’s head snapped back. He looked for more chutes but didn’t see any. The two survivors floated down through the cloud of smoke and debris. Shawn followed the scene, mesmerized, until they faded out of sight. It had all happened in a matter of seconds.

Just then, he heard a loud explosion inside their plane. Then screams throughout the intercom. His flight controls began to shudder. The plane veered to the left. Shawn kicked hard on the rudder, trying to get it back in line. They were starting to lose altitude. He fought hard to hold it steady.

“Jim, you better get back here. Pronto. I’m losing her. What happened back there? Damage report . . . somebody.”

“Took some cannon shots from a 190, sir. Looks bad.” It was Rick Adams, the flight engineer. “Came up from below us. Bosco, you all right?”

No response. “Bosco,” said Shawn. “Check in, Bosco, you okay?”

Still no response.

“Captain, Bosco is gone,” said Manzini.

“What?”

“That 190 took out our ball turret on that last pass,” Manzini said. “Bosco is gone, the whole ball turret got blown away, sir. It’s just . . . gone.”

For a few moments, no one made a sound. Shawn knew what they were thinking. Could have been me. Might be me the next time. Then . . . poor Bosco.

“Anyone see a chute?” Shawn asked. “Jim, where are you? I need you up here now.”

“Almost there. Climbing through the bomb bay now.”

“No chute, sir. I’m looking down, but I don’t see anything.” It was Tim Hatcher, the tail gunner. “Can’t believe Bosco’s gone.”

It took all of Shawn’s strength to keep the plane flying level. They were definitely losing airspeed. He looked out his window. Both engines on his side seemed fine. But he could see the bombers beside him slowly pulling away.

“Three bogies coming in from the rear,” said Hatcher. “Six o’clock. Anyone see ’em? Rick, you see ’em?”

“I see ’em, Tim,” said Adams. Gunfire erupted.

As he fought to hold the controls steady, Shawn felt helpless; there was nothing he could do. He heard a loud boom and looked up at one of the higher squadrons. Another B-17 had just been dealt a death blow by a German fighter. It had lost two engines and was on fire, smoke pouring off both wings. Shawn saw something like a package fall out of the waist-gunner’s window. He shuddered as it smacked into the tail section and dropped out of sight.

Was that a body?

Something else broke loose from the other side of the plane, a piece of flaming debris. Something shot up from it. Shawn realized it was a parachute, the owner engulfed in flames. The flames consumed the chute as soon as it unfolded. Shawn cringed and looked away. Moments later, the entire plane exploded. Huge chunks of smoking metal sailed off in different directions; some pieces hit the planes beside and below it.

Shawn could barely contain his terror. His arms were just about to give out from the strain when MacReady sat down and grabbed his set of controls.

“Sorry it took so long, Shawn.”

“Let’s see what we can do here, Jim. How your engines looking?”

MacReady looked out his side window. “Oh, man. Engine number four is dead. It’s just feathering, no power at all. Big holes all through it.”

For the next several minutes, both men fought together, trying to maneuver
Mama’s Kitchen
back to her place in the formation.

“She’s not keeping up, Cap,” MacReady finally said.

Shawn knew what this meant. If he and MacReady couldn’t keep
Mama’s Kitchen
in formation, if they had to pull away . . . the German fighters would go after them like a pack of hyenas. It was common knowledge back at the base—you drop out of formation, your chances of survival drop from slim to none. He’d seen it himself, many times. Planes sustaining serious damage who radioed in their position as they faded out of sight.

No one ever heard from them again.

But Shawn had a plan, something he’d worked on many hours back at the base. A plan for a scenario just like this. Oddly enough, it came to him after reading a passage in the book of Proverbs. He didn’t have it memorized, but it went something like “A prudent man sees the danger ahead and protects himself; the naïve go on and suffer for it.”

Shawn knew the “danger ahead” for them occurred every time they took off on a mission. He couldn’t stomach the thought of their plane being the one that slowly faded out of sight, only to get shot to pieces by German fighters. If that happened, the best he could hope for was everyone bailing out before the plane blew up, and they sat out the rest of the war as POWs. Or worse—maybe even more likely—the plane could just fall from the sky, spinning like a top, trapping them all inside. Shawn had thought of a way to protect himself and his crew from either fate.

But would it work?

Seven

Shawn looked at his co-pilot. “Jim, we’re losing airspeed and altitude every second that ticks by.”

“I know,” MacReady said with the weight of a judge banging a gavel. In the background, they heard guns firing off every few seconds, the crew trying to pick off enemy fighters that flew by.

“I have an idea,” said Shawn. “If it works, we might still have a chance of getting out of this thing alive.”

“I’m all ears,” MacReady said.

“You’re gonna have to get back on Anderson’s gun again. You know what’ll happen when we start to pull away.”

“They’ll be on us like flies. You don’t need me up here?”

“Not anymore. I did when I thought we had a chance of keeping up, but it’s too late for that. Head on back. I’ll inform the men.”

MacReady nodded. He hooked up a portable oxygen bottle and headed back.

Shawn turned the interphone on so everyone could hear him. “Men, listen up. I’m not going to fool with you. We’re in bad shape. One engine’s gone, the controls are all shot up, and we’ve got a slow fuel leak on the starboard wing. No way
Mama’s Kitchen
’s getting us back to England tonight.” He paused to let the words sink in. “But I’ve been working on a plan back at the base for this very thing, and we might have a fighting chance of staying alive. Hopefully, not ending up in a POW camp by nightfall.”

“We’re with you, Cap.”

“Whatever you say, sir.”

“Just tell us what to do.” One by one, the men checked in.

“Okay, in a minute we’re gonna radio in that we’re pulling out. Then we’re on our own. Kraut fighters will come after us like easy pickings. We’ve got six working guns and seven healthy men left. I’ll fly the plane, but I need every one of you guys on the guns. But fellas, hear me on this—do not waste that ammo. The goal here is to chase planes away, not shoot them down. Get greedy and we’ll run out in no time. Keep just enough fire on ’em so they don’t get too close.”

“But Captain, what about Bosco’s spot? We got no guns on our belly.” It was Adams, the flight engineer. “Any Krauts come up from below, we’ll be sitting ducks.”

Shawn had thought about that. “That’s where my plan gets a little sticky. I figure we got about ninety more miles before we reach the sea, but we’ll be going a different direction from our group. The only way this works is if I fly low enough to avoid enemy radar. The upside is, flying that low will keep enemy fighters from getting below us for a shot.”

“That’ll work,” said Hatcher.

“But there’s a big downside,” said Shawn. “Once I go down on the deck, we’ll be flying too low for anyone to bail out. You follow me?”

“So it’s all or nothing,” said Manzini. “We bail out now, before we get too low, and we end up as POWs . . . maybe. We do it your way, and there’s no chance of bailing out anymore.”

“That’s right,” Shawn said. “But if we can keep this thing together, keep from getting too shot up, I can navigate us to a place I picked out near the coast of Holland. As best I can tell, it’s far away from any German bases. We might just have a chance of avoiding capture, steal a boat and get across the English Channel. But I’m not going to order anyone to do this. You guys have to decide. Anyone wants to play it safe, no hard feelings. You can bail out now, and the rest of us will just take our chances.”

For several moments, Shawn heard nothing but static and the drone of the three remaining engines.

“I’m in,” said Manzini.

“Me too,” said Adams.

“Not going anywhere,” said Hatcher from the tail spot.

“We’re with you,” said MacReady, his co-pilot. Davis and Ted O’Reilly, the navigator, weighed in the same.

“Okay, guys, then let’s do this,” Shawn said. “I’m calling it in. We’re officially pulling out. Look sharp. Things could get pretty rough here in a few minutes.”

As soon as Shawn pulled
Mama’s Kitchen
out of formation, as expected, the fighters came pouring in like hornets. They came in groups of three, it seemed from every angle. After their attacks, they’d peel off then come back around one at a time. All the while, their guns blazing. His crew called them out over the intercom—“Two o’clock high, see ’em? . . . Six o’clock, coming in straight and level . . . Nine o’clock, look out, comin’ out of the sun.” Each time, the guns from
Mama’s Kitchen
fired back. The noise was deafening. Shawn sat alone in the cockpit, trying hard to keep the plane on a steady dive away from the formation, shouting out reminders to his crew to conserve their ammo.

It was the scariest twenty minutes of his life.

He looked up and saw dozens of B-17s growing smaller and smaller, fading in the distance. Would he ever see any of them again?

As he banked, he glanced at the ground below. At least a dozen large bonfires burned across the countryside, heaving thick black clouds into the sky. Shawn realized the fuel for these fires were other B-17s, shot down on the way in to Bremen. The sight soured his stomach. After a few moments, the radios and guns of
Mama’s Kitchen
went silent. “How’s it looking, guys?” Shawn asked. “Somebody talk to me. Everyone okay?”