The Soldier Spies (Men at War 3)

Later Major Emmons as much as said it straight out to his friend Captain Ross that Canidy was one more of the glory-hunting headquarters sonsofbitches who liked to pick up missions (twenty-five missions and you got an Air Medal and went home) by inviting themselves along as “observers.”They got in the way, and they added two hundred pounds to the gross weight, and they picked and chose the missions to observe, generally short, safe ones.

Emmons was a little sorry that General Lorimer had this Canidy’s number. Special-124 was going to be short, but it wasn’t going to be safe. A P-38 group attempting to skip-bomb the Saint-Lazare pens had lost sixteen of twenty-nine attacking aircraft. Major Emmons would be happy to send some chair-warming sonofabitch trying to pick up a mission out on one like this.

Major Canidy arrived at Horsham St. Faith at three o’clock in the morning, sleeping in the back seat of a Packard driven by an English woman sergeant. Major Emmons was surprised to see that the sonofabitch did have wings pinned to his tunic. But that was all. Just wings. No ribbons. The sonofabitch apparently hadn’t even been here thirty days. If he had been, he would have had the ETO (European Theater of Operations) ribbon.

First Canidy asked for coffee and then something to eat, then promptly began to tell the crew how to fly this mission. And right in front of the WRAC sergeant, too. That pushed Emmons over the edge.

“Excuse me, Major,” he said. “This mission is classified.”

“I know,” Canidy said. “I classified it.” And then he understood. “Does Agnes look like a German spy to you, Major?”

“How much B-26 time do you have Major?” Emmons flared. “If you don’t mind my asking? To tell my men how to fly this mission?”

“Actually no B-26 time,” Canidy said.

“But he does have several thousand hours of pilot time,” the WRAC sergeant said sweetly. “And both the American and the English DFC.”

“Shut up, Agnes,” Canidy said.

“And before we came here, we were with Major Douglass, who led the P-38 strike on the pens. He and Major Canidy were Flying Tigers in China.”

“I told you to shut up,” Canidy repeated.

“Richard,” the WRAC sergeant said, undaunted,“the major obviously believes—and, worse, is communicating his belief to these gentlemen—that you’re a… How does Jimmy put it? A candy ass.”

“Cahn-dy Ah-ss” in the WRAC sergeant’s dignified, precise English was comical. That broke the ice a little, and both Emmons and Canidy chuckled. The B-26 pilot, a lieutenant who looked as if he belonged in high school, laughed out loud, like a boy.

“I guess I owe you an apology, Major Canidy—” Emmons began.

“Don’t be silly,” Canidy interrupted.

“—but when General Lorimer said that you were not under any circumstances to go on this mission, I got the idea you were one of those guys who like to collect missions by going on the easy ones.”

“Lorimer said what?” Canidy asked.

“That you are not under any circumstances to go along on this mission,” Emmons said.

“Oh, that sonofabitch!” Canidy said.

“He meant it, too,” Emmons said. “I’m sorry.”

“He outfoxed you, Richard,” the WRAC sergeant said, obviously pleased to learn that. “He knew very well all along that you planned to go.”

Canidy looked at the boyish B-26 pilot and shrugged his shoulders.

“You just tell us what you want, Major,” the young pilot said. “And how you think is the best way to get it. We’ll give it the old school try.”

Saint-Lazare was on the English side of the Brest Peninsula, 375 air miles from Horsham St. Faith. The B-26 stripped for aerial photography cruised at 325 knots. It would take a little over two hours in all for the trip. The boyish B-26 pilot broke ground at 0538, and the B-26 reappeared at Horsham St. Faith a few minutes after eight. The return trip had taken longer than the way out. The port engine had been ripped off by flak.

A “wounded aboard” flare went up from the B-26 as it lined itself up with the runway.

When the wheels came down, even from where they stood watching, it was clear to both Emmons and Canidy that the starboard gear had been damaged and was not going to lock in place.

An attempt to radio the pilot to go around, pull up his gear, and belly it in failed. And in any event, there wasn’t time. It came in, in a crawl, and touched down, skidded off the runway, toward the bad gear, and spun around and around and around across the grass.

When Canidy and Emmons, in a jeep, reached the aircraft sixty seconds ahead of the crash truck and ambulances, the air was heavy with the smell of avgas. Thirty seconds after they pulled the limp body of the boy pilot through the canopy, the gas ignited.

But the photographers had tossed the film canisters out of the gun-and-camera ports in the fuselage the moment the plane had stopped moving, and thus MA (for Mission Accomplished) could be written in the records after Mission 43-Special-124.