Dave Dawson at Casablanca

by Robert Sidney Bowen

Eventually, as though secret curtains had been pulled away inside his head, memory came slipping back, and he began to discover and realize things. The first realization was that he was hanging suspended in mid-air and slowly swaying this way and that. The second realization was that the darkness was the darkness of night. The third realization was that there was a dull throbbing on the left side of his head. And the fourth, and perhaps the most important realization of all, was that he was dangling at the ends of the shroud lines of his parachute, which was hopelessly fouled in the crooked and gnarled branches of a scrub tree. By throwing his head way back he could look upward and see his fouled 'chute and the tree branches silhouetted against the billions of stars that twinkled at him from high overhead. And when he looked down he saw that rocky ground was not over three feet from the soles of his flying boots.

That realization filled him with great joy, but it also made him gulp, and caused beads of cold sweat to break out on his forehead. Never as long as he lived would he be able to remember that he actually had pulled the rip-cord ring of his parachute whether or not that flying bit of Lockheed wreckage caught him on the side of the head. But he must have done that little thing, and by the grace of God and Lady Luck he had not been allowed to strike ground while still unconscious. To have done so, to have hit ground without being prepared for the landing shock would unquestionably have resulted in a couple of broken ankles, if not legs. Particularly because of the rocky soil under him. However, one chance in a billion had come to pass, and his journey earthward had been checked in the nick of time by the crooked and gnarled branches of the scrub tree.

"Or maybe it's just a dream!" he whispered hoarsely as he fumbled at the snaps of his parachute harness. "Maybe it's just a cockeyed dream, and I'm going to wake up stone dead!"

The words he spoke, however, were just a means of letting off pent up steam. He got the 'chute harness snaps undone, grabbed the straps with both hands and slowly lowered himself until his feet touched solid earth. However, his body had experienced so much swaying motion that his sense of balance was all upset. And no sooner did his feet touch, and had he let go of the harness straps, than he fell stumbling down onto his hands and knees, and his brain started to spin furiously.

For the next few moments he was content to sit on the solid earth and wait for his brain to stop spinning and for fresh strength to flow back into his body. Then finally he slowly arose and peered about in the darkness. Just where he had come to earth he hadn't the faintest idea, but it seemed a good guess that he must be somewhere in the region of that weird group of shrub-covered hills that marked the spot where he had seen those Junkers 88's go down to land. That guess caused countless little fears to start pecking at his brain. How close to that secret base was he? How come he had been left hanging unconscious on his parachute shroud lines for the rest of the day? Where was Freddy Farmer? Had Freddy really been trailing those bombers, too? Had he reported the location to Casablanca base? Or was his radio truly dead, and did Casablanca base still not know the truth? What time was it, anyway? Had he been unconscious for just a few hours? Or had it been for a day and a night, and had Goering's Snoopers already roared out from their hidden base to do their devilish dirty work?

Those and countless other soul-tantalizing questions whipped and spun through his head as he searched about him in the gloom. Suddenly he spotted the yellowish-orange glow once again. He judged it to be perhaps a mile away, but he was unable to see the base of the glow because of a rise in the ground. After one good look, though, he knew that it was flame. Rather, a column of flame-tinted smoke that rose upward into the night sky. Having seen that same sort of sight at night in other parts of the world, he was pretty sure that the yellowish-orange glow was from the burning wreckage of a plane.

"Mine, or that Nazi I nailed?" he asked himself the question aloud. "Or—Hey! I remember, now! Two Nazis went down, and I know darn well that I only got one of them. I—"

He stopped short, caught his breath and held it as though not daring to let himself speak.

"Freddy?" the whisper finally came out from between his stiff lips. "Was it Freddy who piled down and nailed that second Nazi? But—But what then? Where did he go? What did he do? I know he didn't have fuel to get back to Casablanca, but if only his radio worked, and he was able to tell them the story! Please, dear God, let Freddy have made good where I—I failed."

For a long minute he stood there motionless as though waiting for the answer to his question to come drifting down through the night air. Suddenly his hand flew to his holstered service gun, and he whirled around and down in a crouch. Behind him, he had heard the crackling snap of dry twigs, followed by the rattle of loose stones hitting together, and the faint thud of something falling to the ground.