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  Naval Magazine, Port Chicago

  Wednesday, November 15, 1944

  Helen tapped her fingers on her desk, mimicking the rain on the roof of the repaired administration building. Now that his assignment for the trial was over, Vic had been reassigned to Port Chicago, his punishment for being on the wrong side, he insisted. But Helen knew he had a purpose. His presence had a soothing effect on the men, since they knew he fought for them.

  With no surviving witnesses, the Naval Court of Inquiry couldn’t find a conclusive cause of the explosion but decided it was due to the presence of fused ammunition, rough handling, or the failure of a boom.

  Helen had finished her typing and filing and had nothing to do until Vic returned from the clemency hearing with Admiral Wright. She hated to use work time for personal correspondence, but she couldn’t stare into space for an hour.

  She slid open the bottom desk drawer and removed her letter to Ray. She scanned the page, puffed her cheeks full of air, then blew it out. If any letter would scare him away forever, this was it, but she had to get out the last ugly scrap of truth.

  Both Madame Ivanova and Jim blamed me for their abuse. Madame said if I were a better dancer, she wouldn’t have to switch me. Jim said if I were a better wife, he wouldn’t have to beat me. In public he blamed my injuries on polio-induced clumsiness. Even my father believed my clumsiness was to blame. Well, not one of those injuries was my fault.

  But Jim’s death is my fault. Oh, Ray, I prayed to be released. I actually prayed for it. When the war started, I saw my chance to be free for the duration. I appealed to Jim’s patriotism, I gushed over the uniforms, and I fretted over what would happen if Uncle Sam assigned him in the draft.

  If I hadn’t influenced him, he never would have been on the USS Laffey on November 13, 1942. I killed him as surely as if I’d fired that torpedo myself. And I laughed in relief when I received the telegram—I laughed! Jim deserved to be punished, but he didn’t deserve to die. He deserved the chance to repent, to change, to be forgiven by God and by me, but I never gave him that chance.

  A drop of water smudged the ink, and Helen glanced up. Was the new roof leaking? She blinked away haze, and tears dribbled down her cheeks.

  Never—not once in the two years and two days since Jim died—had she cried for him.

  She stuffed the letter in her pocketbook and pulled out a handkerchief. “Lord, how can you forgive me for murder? Please, please forgive me.”

  She stood so fast her chair wobbled. She had to find work. In Vic’s office she straightened his diploma from Boalt Law School and the cross-stitch of Augustine’s quote, then whirled to his desk and sorted pencils. Didn’t even one of them need sharpening?

  There! On the corner of his desk, a stack of papers. Why wait until he asked her to file? She clutched them to her chest, went to her desk, and sorted them into piles.

  She frowned. She recognized that paper—the medical form for Carver Jones signed by Dr. Thompson, the pig. Shouldn’t that have gone to the admiral for the hearing?

  The door creaked open. Vic marched past, gave Helen a nod, and entered his office. He’d been quiet and distracted since the conviction.

  Helen went to the doorway. “Um, Vic, I found this while filing.”

  He sat down, flopped his briefcase on the desk, and held out his hand for the paper.

  She gave it to him. “It’s Carver Jones’s medical form. Didn’t you need that today?”

  Vic pursed his lips. “No. They—they’d already seen it. Helped some. Admiral Wright reduced the sentences to twelve years for most of the men, and to eight for Carver and a few others.”

  Helen’s chest crushed and forced out the words. “Eight years? But he didn’t do anything wrong. He should be acquitted.”

  “Yeah. Well, he wasn’t.” He opened his briefcase with a snap that matched his voice.

  “You’re appealing, aren’t you?”

  “I’ll file an individual appeal as soon as possible.”

  Helen sighed and glanced at the sampler as she returned to her desk. “Let justice be done though the world perish.” What if the world turned its back on justice?

  25

  Bury St. Edmunds Airfield

  Sunday, December 24, 1944

  “Finally finished our tours.” Leo Goldman dipped his brush in blue paint and wrote “30” on Ray’s forehead.

  He winced as the paint froze on his skin, and he hiked his scarf over his mouth.

  “Too cold for you, California boy?” Sig Werner unzipped his flight jacket and puffed out his chest. “This would be a fine spring day in North Dakota. Real winters make real men.”

  “Yeah? Well, this fake man wants hot coffee.” Ray motioned to the GMC truck. “Let’s take our celebration indoors.”

  The men lugged their flight gear to the truck, jostling each other and erupting in the loud laughter of men who had cheated death.

  Ray lagged behind and gazed at Ascalon, to be passed to another crew when he returned stateside. Where was his joy at beating the odds, proving himself, and going home?

  Vague uneasiness wormed inside, as it had since December 16, when the Germans launched a surprise offensive in the Ardennes, and heavy fog and ice had grounded the strategic Eighth Air Force, the tactical Ninth Air Force, and the RAF, leaving the Allies without air cover.

  His discomfort lifted with the weather on the twenty-third when he could fly again. The Battle of the Bulge proved the war was far from over—but Ray was going home. The uneasiness returned to squirm in his stomach and twitch in his muscles.

  “Come on, Pops. Your chariot awaits.” Buffo beckoned from the back of the truck.

  Ray sent an acknowledging wave. His flying boots crunched through the snow, and his breath left icy prickles on his scarf. Light fog hovered over the airfield, pewter gray in the twilight. Over an hour ago, Ascalon had landed with the fifty planes the 94th had dispatched for the maximum-effort mission, and still, dozens of engines droned overhead. Since First Division’s fields lay farther inland, socked in by heavy fog, most of their planes were landing at Third Division fields in East Anglia.

  Landing lights circled the field, haloed by fog, as close to Christmas lights as Ray would see this year.

  He slung his flight gear into the truck and climbed in.

  “Lousy Krauts,” Goldman said as the truck pulled away. “Did you hear they dropped spies behind our lines in GI uniforms, speaking perfect American English?”

  “Yeah, but we caught some of them,” Radovich said. “Shot the stinking sons of Satan.”

  “Summary execution.” Buffo shook a cigarette from his pack. “Fitting punishment for espionage and sabotage. However, I disagree that there is such a thing as perfect American English.”

  Ray massaged the sore spot on his cheek where the strap for his oxygen mask rubbed. “At least the Battle of the Bulge shows something good.”

  Nine pairs of eyes swiveled to Ray.

  “Good?” Werner said. “They railroaded us, pushed us back fifty miles, surrounded the 101st Airborne at Bastogne, killed or captured who knows how many.”

  “Yes, but why did they do that?” Ray said. “Remember what Colonel Dougher said at briefing? The Germans are driving for oil. They’re desperate for it. Those rugged missions we flew to oil targets at Merseburg, Magdeburg, Bohlen—they worked.”

  “What a cost though.” Werner’s voice dipped low.

  An explosion boomed in Ray’s ears. He craned his head out the back of the truck. At the end of the main runway, a fiery plume rose in the darkening sky, eerie in the fog.

  He let out a deep sigh. “Fort crashed on landing.”

  Quiet curses filled the back of the truck. In such weather conditions, the crash could have been anyone, even a crew on their last mission.

  The truck came to a stop. After the men turned in flight gear and picked up coffee and corned beef sandwiches from the Red Cross girls, they entered the smoke-filled briefing room. Ascalon’s crew crammed arou
nd a table with Captain Winchell, an intelligence officer and one of Jack’s friends.

  Winchell poured shots of whiskey to relax the men and facilitate information gathering.

  Goldman held up the flask. “Say, Pops. You wanted to warm up, didn’t you?”

  Ray smiled and sipped his coffee, letting his lips defrost on the rim of the mug. At 23,000 feet the thermometer read fifty degrees below zero. Ascalon’s aluminum skin, a pathetic cabin heater, and layers of flight gear only took the edge off cold like that.

  Over the next half hour Winchell extracted mission details. Me 109s had attacked over Liège but were driven off by the “Little Friends,” P-51 Mustangs escorting the heavy bombers. Low visibility over the target airfield at Babenhausen led to H2X bombing, but flak was light and the Luftwaffe didn’t reappear. No Forts from the 94th were lost.

  “Good job, boys.” From behind, Jack set his hands on Ray’s shoulders. “Congratulations on finishing your tour. Can I talk you into a second tour?”

  The men groaned, cussed, and waved him off.

  Jack laughed. A thin laugh.

  Ray glanced up. Jack’s cheeks—usually ruddy from cold after a mission—were pale, and a tic shuttered one eye.

  “Are you done, Winch?” Jack asked.

  “Done with the interrogation.” A smile crossed Winchell’s square face. “But the party’s just beginning.”

  “Ray, can I speak with you alone?” Jack asked in a low voice.

  “Sure.” He stood and sent his crew to the mess. Then he frowned at Jack. The uneasiness coiled into a hard lump in his stomach. Had a buzz bomb hit Walt’s station? Had Jack received a telegram from home? Grandpa and Grandma were getting on in years.

  “Let’s go to my quarters.” Jack led the way out of the packed room. As air executive, he enjoyed a private room, while Ray and the others slept twenty-four to a Nissen hut.

  They stepped out into the frosty evening, and Ray snugged his scarf up around his mouth.

  “New scarf?” Jack asked.

  “Christmas present.” Ray’s smile rubbed against the soft gray wool, the silver lining Helen said she’d promised to knit for him. “What’s up?”

  Jack gazed at the men passing by. “Let’s wait. They’ll know soon enough, but . . .”

  The knot in Ray’s stomach shifted position. It was war news, not family news.

  “Can’t take long,” Jack said. “Seventy extra planes are landing here tonight, even a squadron of RAF Lancasters. We’ll have seven hundred extra men to feed and house. Poor fellows will have to sleep in the briefing room, officers’ club, the Aeroclub.”

  “Guess we’ll share our turkey dinner tomorrow.”

  “Mm.” Jack’s eyes took on a focused look.

  They turned down a road cleared of snow by hundreds of boots. They passed under trees frosted white and draped with icicles, beauty too great for words, but he’d try for Helen’s sake.

  Jack entered the hut shared by the other top brass and opened the door to his room, luxurious by military standards with a cot, desk, wash basin, and coal stove. He punched a finger through the ice in the wash basin. “I’ll start a fire.”

  While he chucked a bucket of coal into the potbellied stove and lit it, Ray pulled out the desk chair and straddled it backward. “Bad news?”

  “Times two.” He brushed coal dust off his hands and sat on the bed. “Both will hit the men hard.”

  Ray pulled down his scarf and gave a slow nod.

  “Glenn Miller flew out on the fifteenth to give a concert for the troops in France. His plane never landed. We don’t know if it was shot down over the Channel or went down in the weather. The men will find out tonight.”

  “Oh no.” Ray’s eyes drooped shut. Although he’d never met the man, he felt as if he’d lost a friend, and he wouldn’t be alone. Glenn Miller was more than a celebrity, he was one of their own.

  “And Colonel Castle—I mean, General Castle.” Jack raked his hand through his hair. “I can’t believe it. He was only promoted a week—no, ten days ago. Ten days.”

  Brig. Gen. Frederick Castle, former CO of the 94th, commanded the Fourth Combat Bomb Wing and led the wing that day to Babenhausen. “What happened to Castle?”

  “His plane went down. Seven chutes.”

  “Oh no.” Like the captain of a naval ship, a pilot never left until all his men did.

  “Looks like he leveled off to let the men bail, but then—then he didn’t have time. The plane exploded.”

  A crushing sensation in Ray’s chest. “Oh no. I’m so sorry.”

  Jack leaned his elbows on his knees and gripped his hair in fists. “When he first came to Bury, I didn’t think much of him. He was a supply officer, for heaven’s sake, no combat experience, soft-spoken, not what a commander should be. But then . . . he’s the best man I’ve ever worked for. Ever. Intelligent, firm, caring, courageous. He flew all the toughest missions, all of them, made good changes around here. He disciplined me when I needed it, but he never, never gave up on me.”

  The only other time Ray had seen Jack this devastated was the previous Christmas when he thought Charlie was dead.

  He got up, sat next to his brother, and draped his arm across slumped shoulders. “Lord, we know you have a purpose in everything, but sometimes we can’t see it. We hurt. Please comfort my brother. Hold him tight and help him be strong for the men. We need you, Lord. Help us rest in your sovereignty, in the knowledge that you are good.”

  Jack raised haggard eyes. “Thanks. I needed that. I hate to ask—I know you’re eager to go home, but could you wait a week or so? The men rely on you. Chaplain Miller—he thinks of you as an extra chaplain around here.”

  Ray’s hand dropped onto his lap. The uneasiness had a name—incompletion. His work over here wasn’t done yet.

  Sure, the ground troops needed the air campaign to succeed, but it ran deeper than that. The war had kept him from the pulpit but not the ministry. This was where he was needed, to help men in their grief, sin, and moral dilemmas.

  And Helen’s healing had progressed, but right now she needed him as a counselor from afar. A tiny sapling of hope poked green against the snow. A few more months and she’d be ready for him in person, maybe even ready for the fullness of his love.

  Ray gazed into the glowing red embers in the stove. “I’ll be here longer than a week. I’m flying a second tour.”

  “What?”

  “I’m a trained Pathfinder pilot. If I leave, you’ll have to pull another man from combat for a month to train.”

  “Oh no. Oh no, you don’t.” Jack jumped to his feet and glared at Ray. “Everyone will think I talked you into it, that I’m up to my old manipulative tricks again.”

  “I’ll tell them you tried to talk me out of it. But it didn’t work.”

  Jack huffed and glanced at the ceiling. “Mom will kill me if anything happens to you.”

  “I’m in God’s hands, not yours.”

  “Yeah, as if Mom would see it that way.” He gave the stove a little kick. Then he turned to Ray with a trace of a smile. “Say, if you fly a second tour, you’ll be promoted to captain.”

  “So?”

  “And you’ll get a thirty-day furlough at home first.”

  “I won’t take it. The more planes we have over here, the sooner we finish this war and go home for good.”

  Jack rubbed his hand over his mouth and regarded Ray for a long moment. “All my life I thought you were the least stubborn of the Novak boys.”

  Ray lifted an eyebrow. “Guess again.”

  26

  Antioch

  Monday, December 25, 1944

  “For my Della, my beautiful princess.” Mr. Carlisle set another gift on his wife’s lap and kissed her on the mouth.

  “Oh, James, you shouldn’t have.” Her adoring smile was blocked by a welt on her cheek. Heavy makeup disguised any redness, but not the swelling.

  Helen’s stomach churned. Two nights ago she’d heard yelling and crying
, and now the profusion of gifts and compliments sealed it—Mr. Carlisle beat his wife. Helen had once been foolish enough to fall for Jim’s apologies and gifts and flattery after a burst of violence.

  “Hold it up, son,” Mr. Carlisle said. “Show us what Santa brought you.”

  Jay-Jay shredded paper, frowned, and held up two black pumps.

  Helen dashed to his side, forced a laugh, and searched for the tag. “Goodness, sweetie, those are for Mama. See—H for Helen. That’s Mama.”

  His lower lip pushed out and quivered.

  “Lookie here.” Mr. Carlisle waved a box wrapped in green paper. “This is for my boy.”

  Helen returned to the side chair and opened the box from Papa and Mama, which held brand-new black leather pumps and a chic suit in wool the color of wine.

  Tears pooled in her eyes. Since rationing only provided two pairs of leather shoes per person each year, Helen used her portion on Jay-Jay’s growing feet. This gift meant Papa and Mama had sacrificed for her. She missed them so much. Papa got mad at Mama sometimes, and he growled and slammed doors, but he never raised a finger against her.

  But Papa was Helen’s physician. Didn’t he wonder why Helen’s accidents increased after her marriage, ceased when Jim enlisted, and returned on Jim’s furlough? Didn’t he see? Didn’t he care?

  Granted, most of her injuries didn’t require medical care, some weren’t visible, and all were easily explained away. But still, why didn’t he see?

  Or did Papa think she deserved it too? He’d never truly forgiven her for catching polio, as if the doctor’s daughter should have been immune, should have been healthy and strong like Betty, should never have stooped to wearing braces. Some parents coddled their invalids, but not Papa. He’d been harder on her, required more of her. And it was never enough.

  The doorbell rang. Helen sprang to her feet, composed herself, and opened the door.

  Dorothy Wayne stood on the porch. “Merry Christmas. I brought gifts.”

  “Come on in. Where’s Susie?”

  “I didn’t bring her. I can’t stay.” She leaned in and waved to her parents. “Merry Christmas.”