Dave Dawson at Truk

by Robert Sidney Bowen

"Yeah, my guns went haywire for some unknown reason," he said eventually. "So I had to down the rat the only way I could. But what do you mean you wouldn't have let him get away?"

"Well, I don't think so," Freddy Farmer said. "True, I was still quite a bit away when you barged into him, but I think I would have caught up with him. I screamed blue murder at you over the radio, but I guess your set was balmy, too."

"Didn't hook it up," Dave said. "At the start, I mean. Decided to keep radio silence. I ... Hey! Then you got the same idea as me, huh? You lost him in that fog, and then decided to light out for the Truk area?"

"Quite," young Farmer said. "I lost you both. My radio was on and I heard all our planes recalled. I ignored the order, knowing blasted well that that Nazi beggar wouldn't go back. I didn't think you would, either. I fancied it would be a three-plane race to the Truk area. And that's the way it turned out. Not bad flying for any of us, what, to get there almost at the same time. But, do you know something, Dave? Know why we didn't spot that blighter sooner?"

"Because we were blind, I guess," Dawson grunted. "Or maybe he spotted us and hid behind something every time we came along."

"No, it wasn't that at all," Freddy said. "It was because he wasn't aboard any of the carriers until the middle of the afternoon of the day we spotted him."

"He what?" Dawson gasped. "But how come...?"

"One of those crazy bits of luck that people have without asking," young Farmer said. "Or perhaps the beggar did have some kind of a premonition that we were coming after him. Anyway, when the force was one day out from Pearl Harbor one of the scouting pilots aboard one of the cruisers came down sick. Word was sent to the Trenton for a replacement pilot to be sent over. And our friend was the one sent. The flight officer on the Trenton handled the business, and Vice-Admiral Macon didn't know a thing about it. That was natural, because he had bigger things to worry about. The officers under him took charge of minor details. Anyway, the sick pilot got fit for duty again, and our friend came back aboard the Trenton. In the cruiser's motor launch, of course. I sort of half remember seeing a motor launch pull alongside us that day. But maybe it's simply my imagination, now that I know there was one. Anyway, his name on the Trenton was Brown. Yes, Brown. A nice old American name, with never a Nazi hint about it, the blighter!"

"Well, for cat's sake!" Dawson exploded. "Why didn't somebody tell us that one fighter pilot had been sent to a cruiser to double for a sick guy? What were we supposed to be, mind readers, or crystal ball gazers, or something? If...!"

"Easy, old thing!" Freddy Farmer said in alarm. "You're in bad enough shape as you are without blowing your top. It was just one of those things. The press of shipboard duties made them forget about Brown's transference, and the vice-admiral didn't know. Perhaps the ones who could have told us didn't take the spy scare very seriously. I'm thankful enough that he was from the Trenton and not from one of the other carriers. Otherwise he would have returned to it that day and we'd never have spotted him. But if I'm getting you all riled up, Dave, I'd better get out of here and have the surgeon pop in and give you something to put you back to sleep."