Like a flooding tide the mighty crest of America’s war effort was sweeping everything before it. More planes than ever were needed at the fighting front. More planes were going there—and that meant more pilots. Twenty-four hours was the limit of Barry Blake’s time at home.
It was all like a dream. Walking up Craryville’s old main street, Barry felt like a beardless Rip Van Winkle. He had left there a green kid of eighteen. Now, an inch taller and ten pounds heavier, he passed neighbors who didn’t know him—until he spoke. And, speaking to them, he hardly knew himself. Professor Blake’s gangling offspring, who’d been the high school valedictorian, who had jerked sodas on Saturdays in the corner drug store—what had that self-conscious kid in common with Lieutenant Barry Blake, pilot of multi-engined bombing planes?
There was Mom and Dad. He’d never be different to them, or they to him. To the kid sister, he was a hero, of course, but Betty was only fourteen. She’d changed, too, in the past seven months. Barry wondered what in the world she’d be like when he came back again, after the war ... if he did come back. There wasn’t time for such thoughts, though. Half of his twenty-four hour visit was gone already!
When the train pulled out of Craryville next morning, Barry the high school kid was only a dim memory in the mind of Lieutenant Blake. His orders were to report at Seattle, Washington, where he would join the crew of a new B-17F as co-pilot. It was better, far better, to keep his thoughts fixed on that. Otherwise, recalling the good-bys just ended would be a bit too much to bear.
CHAPTER FIVE
SWEET ROSY O’GRADY
His pulses pounding with excitement, Barry Blake gazed across the long runways of Boeing Field at his first fighting ship. The great Flying Fortress seemed to perch lightly on the ground, despite her twenty-odd tons. Her propellers were turning slowly, glinting in the sun like the blades of four gigantic sword dancers.
Despite her drab coat of Army paint Barry thought her beautiful. The slim, torpedo-like profile, the high, strong sweep of her tail assembly—even the fishy grin produced by her bombardier’s window and forward gun ports—thrilled her young co-pilot to the core. This was the ship of his dreams. Her name, Sweet Rosy O’Grady, was painted just above her transparent nose.
Hurrying forward, he saluted the long-legged, lean-faced pilot who stood by the Rosy’s armed tail.