In the frozen skies of World War Two Europe, two mighty air forces fought in a deadly ballet of sudden death. The Americans attacked with their bombers again and again, dropping their deadly cargoes on factories, cities, homes. The Germans defended with their fighters day after day, charging the deadly guns of the bombers, defending their factories, cities, homes...
A Wisconsin farm boy with a flying father learned to pilot airplanes before he could drive a car. Answering the call after Pearl Harbor, John Miller learns to fly the B-17 Flying Fortress, with its ten heavy machine guns. In the massive formations over Europe, the interlocking fields of fire were devastating to any attack.ers. The son of a butcher, Otto Thielmann, is a boxer who learned to fly gliders as a teenager. When Germany called, he answered...and became a fighter pilot.
Miller's and Thielmann's lives were so different, but so similar, they had to try to kill each other.
From the author of the Stella's Game Trilogy, Crop Duster: A Novel of World War Two brings you visions of air combat, of the devastation of air bombardment to the targets, the attackers, the defenders, and the survivors
Long is the way, and hard,
That out of hell leads up to light
John Milton
The weather was cool and misty when the C-130 gently broke through the light overcast and landed on the rain-slicked runway. With a slight squeal of brakes and a roar of turbofans, the plane rolled to the end of the runway in an otherwise unremarkable routine landing.
This aircraft finished a flight that began a lifetime before, in a freezing maelstrom thousands of feet above the earth.
Several men quietly waited by the Military Mortuary hangar opening, watching as the plane taxied towards them. A man in a worn tweed coat asked the one in the latest Armani, “Where’d they find him?” Despite their apparent differences, their tone was of old friends in private conversation.
“The Germans were building a bridge over a river about where we crossed it and a couple of bones and his tags turned up,” the Armani replied. “DNA in the bones types to his daughter. That satisfied the DoD and my sources.”
As the plane’s ramp descended, it revealed an Air Force Lieutenant General standing in front of the plane’s only cargo: a single, flag-draped casket. An Army and Air Force honor guard entered the plane to carry the casket out. “PreSENT…hARMS,” a sergeant loudly whispered, and, as one, a squad of armed guards alongside the ramp snapped up their rifles in silent salute.
At the edge of the hangar, a small man in a long leather coat slowly brought his feet together and snapped his right arm into a closed-palm salute.
As the honor guard carried their burden out of the airplane, five who waited stood at the foot of the ramp. The honor guard transferred their burden to a cart brought to the ramp’s edge.
The pallbearers pushed the cart slowly, carefully, as if they were afraid to harm the occupant. Though the journey from the ramp to the hanger was short, for these once-young men it had been thousands of miles and decades. They included a prominent writer, an engineer, a powerful New England congressman, the Lieutenant General, an arithmetic teacher, and an industrial tycoon. A gust of wind ruffled the uniforms, the loose-fitting suits and coats, the hat brims of the civilians and the wrinkled skin of the civilians, the fine hairs and the dipped colors of the military.
The pall-bearers felt the wind not at all.
“Or…DER hARMS,” the sergeant whispered, and the rifle squad snapped their rifles back to their sides.
Once inside the hangar, the Lieutenant General placed a jagged, slightly curved, green-painted piece of aluminum adorned with a large script letter “D” atop the coffin.