“I know all that, Blake,” Colonel Bullock interrupted with a smile. “I chose you and your crew after a good deal of thought, just as I picked Haskins and Bartlett and Smith. You’ve flown twin-engined planes in Advanced Training School and you’ll get the hang of your new B-26 on the way to Darwin. I’ll supply you with a first-class tail gunner to take the place of Tony Romani.... Now, gentlemen, for the last time, do you want the job?”
“Yes, sir!” chorused the four pilots.
The C.O. arose. One after the other he gripped their hands and wished them good hunting. In that moment he seemed more like a proud parent than their superior officer. The four young officers knew that they had found a lifelong friend in Colonel Bullock.
Rosy O’Grady’s crew, all except Tony and Cracker Jackson, were overjoyed at their new assignment. They lay awake talking it over until Barry curtly ordered them to “drive it into the hangar and get some sleep.”
“Rosy will be laid up for a couple of weeks’ repairs anyway,” Chick added in a loud whisper, “and so will Tony and Cracker. We’ll probably be back by that time. Nobody’s got any kick coming, so far as I can see—unless it’s the Japs!”
Out on the runway at five o’clock Barry’s crew found their new ship waiting, complete with tail gunner. The latter was a little bulldog of a man with the map of Ireland jutting fiercely out of his helmet. He was Sergeant Mickey Rourke from South Boston. He greeted each of his new crew mates with an undershot smile and a brief “Pleased to meet yiz!”
Later Rosy’s crew found out that Mickey was the lone survivor of a B-26 that had been sliced in two by a diving Zero fighter. Mickey had bailed out of his severed tail section unharmed and had swum ashore. After two weeks in the New Guinea bush he had walked into the Mau River base and calmly reported for duty.
The four Martin bombers took off by moonlight and promptly headed southwest. Barry found The Colonel’s Lady as Hap had named their new craft, strangely quick and light on the controls, compared with her big sister Rosy. Flying in formation with the other three Marauders soon cured his tendency to over-control, however.
As the sun rose, tinting the peaks of New Guinea’s high backbone ahead of them, he turned over the controls to Hap Newton.
“Easy on the stick, Mister,” he warned his big co-pilot. “Those crowbar wrists of yours work swell at the wheel of a Fortress, but this little lady won’t stand for rough handling.”