The Devastator.

It was late 1941 and we’d just finished a sortie over Southern France and were beating it back to the base when my pilot abruptly pulled the plane up to 12,000 feet and leveled off. It didn’t take much knowledge of aerial warfare to know that this was a bad, if not fatal decision. We were low on fuel, out of ammo and riddled with holes. We were slow too, and needed to stay low, so I figured my pilot was either wounded, unconscious or dead.

I should stop and point out that as the rear gunner in a two-man bomber, I had my back to the pilot and was facing the tail of the airplane,  these old ‘Devastators’ don’t come with much of a view, and they’re not exactly nimble planes either.

Our mission had been a full-blown disaster, out of a contingent of 16 bombers, only three remained. The GAF (Luftwaffe) had been expecting us and we had just enough time to drop our ordnance, pull up and make a run for the coast, but it was clear that we had busted open a hornet’s nest. I had 3 different Stuka’s in my gunsights, and each in turn, had me in theirs. We were close enough for me to see the expressions on their faces. But for all the ammo we fired, I don’t think any of us scored a single hit on anything. Each of them pulled away in succession and I expected to see a Spitfire or P-40 waving us off when instead, one of those yellow-nosed bastards rose ominously into position behind us.

I couldn’t see the pilot and he didn’t fire immediately. ‘Perhaps he’s out of ammo,’ I thought. But he wasn’t. He was simply closing the gap, ensuring an easy kill. I screamed into my comm unit for my pilot, Captain Corey to take evasive action. Perhaps he didn’t see the 109 in pursuit. At the last moment he pulled us hard to port and up, just as the 109’s guns lit up.

The guns twinkle at you, that’s how you know they’re firing. For many, it’s the last thing they ever see.

And when one of those rounds hits the airplane, it plows all the way through and out the other side, if you’re lucky. The Wing Commander liked to tell us, with a bit of British mirth, ‘the only time you’re screwed is when a round hits something hard enough to stop it, like your engine, fuel tank, or your pilot’s thick skull.’

But through some small miracle, Captain Corey managed to shake that 109 in all the smoke and confusion. He was a decent chap, with lots of confidence but little combat experience, much like the rest of us. Despite our good luck, I regret to admit that I said a quick prayer, asking the good Lord to assist my rookie Captain in any way possible to get me home safe and sound that day.

I’d been keeping an eye on the other two bombers as we left the coast behind us, intent on recording their position should either of them have to ditch their planes. We were told that the sea was full of merchant and Navy ships, and theoretically, we fly-boys could get plucked from the drink before we surrendered to the ocean’s icy depths, (but it rarely happened that way.)

That was my status as my pilot suddenly took us to 12,000 feet. The maneuver broke my visual contact with the other two bombers. The fuselage was shredded, the intra-plane comm unit was down, the radio was all shot up as well. I couldn’t see the pilot or turn around without risking injury, death or dismemberment, (and a court-martial if I succeeded,) but after several frustrating attempts to get a response from the pilot, I stopped struggling and looked out the window at the blue-gray expanse of the North Atlantic Ocean. What a marvelous thing to behold…

It’s hard to imagine anything so vast and featureless until you’ve seen it. Especially at 12,000 feet, it’s like staring into the face of infinity.

Up close, the ocean is a deep and beautiful blue, but as you shift your attention further out, things get duller and less distinct. At the horizon, the sea and sky merge into a featureless gray void. There’s no detail and no point of reference. You can’t find anything to get a fix on.

I spotted one tiny ship in the distance, or rather its wake, a singular speck of irrepressible humanity in all of that open water and found it hard to imagine the courage, or stupidity it takes to sail a ship into that indefinable void. I was not particularly religious, I think, but with not much else to do, I said a prayer for that ship and all of her occupants too.

I felt sleepy. The harmonic drone of the engine rose and fell like the chanting of monks. The cold was numbing. I began to suspect that I was alone…

… with very little time to live.

A loud thump on the canopy turned out to be the pilot of my craft, or what was left of him. He must’ve been trying to bail out when a couple of 50 caliber rounds cut him in half, but the blood-spattered torso that remained was wearing an intact and serviceable parachute. My own chute was hopelessly snagged and tangled in some jagged pieces of the radio. It too was a bloody mess, but completely useless, so his was like a gift from God.

I don’t know what he was snagged on, but he and the chute were being buffeted madly in the plane’s airstream, and luckily, my canopy slid under his, so I was able to open the rear of the cockpit, disengage my frayed harness, and grab the pilot’s remains in a bear hug, parachute and all. The engine sputtered once and then ran out of fuel.

While trying to get up and out of the pilotless plane, (no easy task) something, perhaps a broken flap, pushed the plane’s nose up high, then it stalled and rolled, gently spilling me and the corpse safely out of the cockpit. I had my hands around the pilot’s chest, and held him in a death grip as I pulled the ripcord. He was nearly torn from my grasp as the chute snapped open. It was a long way down but my grip was like iron and never faltered.

The water was choppy, with bits of ice in it. I disentangled myself from the pilot and his chute, and watched them get towed away by some great underwater beast of unknown size and appetite. I was so cold and weak, I tried to get its attention but my arms failed me. I merely wished for the creature to eat me too.

I came to my senses in the warm, smelly confines of a hospital ship, steaming for port.

I still send a card to Captain Corey’s family every Christmas, of course, as well as the submariners who snagged Corey’s chute and pulled me from the drink, but I don’t ask God for favors anymore, and I’m not too fond of the ocean either.