“Where’s Danny Hale?” Barry asked, the moment they gave him a chance to speak.
Silence, as stunning as a blow, answered him. Barry’s face went white.
“Tell me, boys,” he muttered through stiff lips. “You—you mean that Danny—that he....”
“He got transferred, Barry,” Curly Levitt said quietly. “It was just after the medical-corps men carried you back to the dressing station on Grassy Ridge. A bunch of us were trying to capture a Jap field gun. We ducked into a slit trench and started tossing hand grenades, but the Japs chucked them right back at us before they could explode. One landed in our trench. Danny covered it to protect the rest of us—and just then it went off.”
“Thanks, Curly,” Barry said in a choked voice. “Sorry my question brought it all back to you. It—it is easier, somehow, to think of Danny as simply transferred.... Have they sent us a bombardier yet?”
“They sent him—such as he is!” replied a strangely familiar voice.
Barry jumped as if he had been shot. Through the hatchway dropped a small, bandy-legged man whose short blonde hair bristled like the fuzz of a newly hatched duckling.
“Chick Enders!” Barry cried, making a grab for his old friend. “How did you get here?”
“The same way Hap Newton did,” answered Chick, grinning from ear to ear. “I was the bombardier who bailed out with him from the B-26.”
“Boys,” said Barry Blake, turning to face his crew, “I know that in a few seconds I’m going to wake up and find myself back in my little hospital bed. The sawbones will be looking solemn and saying: ‘That chunk of shrapnel went deeper than we thought. It’s affected his brain!’”