Dave Dawson at Casablanca

by Robert Sidney Bowen

"Good gosh, no!" Dawson gasped, and hurled the no over and around to avoid the flaming inferno as it went plunging past. "Did I get him, or did the guy go haywire? Hey, Freddy! Did you see that?"

Silence greeted his question, and terror was his again as he twisted around in the seat. What he saw brought no yell of joy to his lips. On the contrary, it brought a sob of alarm, because Freddy Farmer was slumped over like a sack of wet meal against the side of the cockpit. One upstretched hand still clung to the trigger guard of the rear guns, but the English youth's face was deathly pale, save where it was spattered with drops of blood. His eyes were closed.

"Freddy!" Dawson shrieked. "Freddy! Speak to me, pal! Oh, dear God, no! Please, oh, please! Freddy! Freddy, boy!"

Dawson's voice faltered, and the only sounds he made were dry sobs that struggled up out of his throat. He turned front, and hot, stinging tears fell from his eyes. On the ground was a sight that should have brought shouts of joy to his lips and filled him with wild, surging happiness. The secret desert-oasis field was now completely covered by clouds of dirty black smoke that were slashed every few seconds by the bright red and orange flames of newly exploding bombs. Each time a flash of flame slashed its way up through the clouds of dirty smoke, bits of plane wreckage came hurtling up after it.

Yes, Goering's Snoopers were doomed. They would never fly to Casablanca, or to any other place, for that matter. But that wonderful, thrilling realization left Dawson untouched. Somehow, he was beyond all feeling. His brain was numbed, his heart was dead, and there was hardly the strength in him to go on living. His tattered tunic was now drenched with blood. Drops of blood fell from his fingers curled about the Messerschmitt's controls. A gray curtain seemed to hover before his eyes, and it took every ounce of effort that he possessed to peer through it and make out the instrument panel.

"Can't be done, can't be done!" He heard his own mumbled voice as though from miles and miles away. "We plastered them for keeps. But—but they got old Freddy. And maybe they got me, too. Oh, dear God, I'm so tired, so darn tired. I—I can't fly this thing back to Casablanca. I just—I just want to quit now, and go to sleep. What does it matter, anyway? Freddy's gone. And without old Freddy, I—"

His mumbling voice trailed off, and there was nothing but the continued thunder of the Daimler-Benz engines in his ears. Suddenly he heard another voice. A voice? Or was it something inside of him speaking?

"Quitting, huh? Just like that! You get a couple of scratches, and you want to let down and quit. Isn't that just dandy? So Freddy's gone, huh? How do you know? You can't tell from here! But, no, you don't even want to try to get back to Casablanca, where maybe he could be saved if he's still alive. No! You just want to quit and make sure that he dies. Okay, quitter! There's hard earth down there. Dive in and make sure of death!"

The little voice kindled a spark of anger within him, and it flared up into a bright hot flame. Quitter, huh? The heck he was! Maybe Freddy wasn't dead! Please, God, let that be true! He'd get Freddy back. Honest he would. He'd get Freddy back, no matter what. This wasn't the end for either of them. Remember how they had once kidded that the Nazi was not yet born who could polish off either of them? Well, that was true. Yes, doggone it, that was true! Casablanca? Okay! You bet! It was hard to move, and that darn gray veil made things hard to see. But he'd get through just the same. Casablanca, here we come! Here we—

The wheels of the bullet-riddled Messerschmitt 110 touching hard ground seemed to snap something inside Dawson's head, and drag him back from another world. In a daze he looked about and saw that he was rolling along the Casablanca field. Above him, the air was filled with Allied aircraft. A sharp stab of fear passed through his heart when he realized that this Nazi plane had been in the air with those other aircraft. He vaguely remembered they had spotted him way out from Casablanca, closed in, and then dropped into escort position.