Dave Dawson on the Russian Front

by Robert Sidney Bowen

Dawson glanced impulsively over at Freddy Farmer, and quickly realized that the English youth had spotted the approaching storm clouds, too, and obviously had the same thoughts. Because even as their eyes met Freddy nodded violently, and banked around, and stuck his nose down in the general direction of the eastern side of the village of Tobolsk, just out of sight over the horizon.

"Well, there's one thing, anyway," Dawson grunted as he quickly followed suit with his own plane. "The darker it gets, the better the chances of Nazi eyes not spotting us. Yeah, sure! But if that storm beats us to it, there'll be a ground wind that will knock our chances higher than a kite! And I don't mean maybe!"

That last most unpleasant consideration was uppermost in Dawson's brain as he and Freddy Farmer went tearing all out toward the southeast. And with every foot his Messerschmitt cut through the air, doubt and dread built itself up higher and higher within him. It was almost as though the gods of good fortune, and Lady Luck, had decided that they had done enough to help, and had quit cold on the job. Though Dawson's Messerschmitt was rocketing down across the shadowy sky, the storm clouds seemed to possess twice his speed. And with each rushing toward the other, the distance between them just shriveled away like snow in a blast furnace.

Eyes grim, and jaw set at a determined angle, Dawson hunched forward over the controls and searched the ground ahead and below. The bouncing lead came back to the pit of his stomach with a gleeful vengeance, for the ground was now almost lost in the swirling shadows of the approaching storm. It was almost impossible to pick out Tobolsk itself, to say nothing of the location of Nina's house in the Y of the two intersecting roads.

Suddenly, though, a voice seemed to cry out at him from nowhere; cry out to look down and to the left. Just exactly what urged him to do that, he didn't know. But he obeyed the sudden impulse, and his heart started pounding with wild hope again. Down there to the left he saw the Y formed by the two roads. He even saw Nina's house, if that pile of timber and stone could be called a house. And he was able to catch a fleeting glimpse of the small but apparently smooth field just to the left of the Y. Just a fleeting glimpse of the field before a moving sheet of rain cut across his vision. The advance guard of the storm had arrived. The race had turned out a tie, which to those two fighting eagles up in the air was just about the same as losing the race.

"But down we go!" Dawson roared out aloud. "Down we go, just the same. And, please, God, we've got to make it!"

As he gulped out the prayerful plea, he peered over at Freddy Farmer, who was still hugging close to his right wing tip, storm or no storm. At the same instant the English youth turned his own head Dawson's way, and then nodded it violently as though he had read the Yank's thoughts. Dave nodded back, lifted one hand in brief salute, then turned his face forward again, and gave every ounce of his undivided attention to his Messerschmitt.

An hour, a day, or it could have been a year passed before he had practically pushed the Messerschmitt down and around so that it was heading for the long way of the field, and into the snarling wind. He didn't know, and he didn't care, he was too busy working his throttle to maintain forward speed, and prevent the Messerschmitt from stalling. At times his forward speed matched the speed of the wind, and his plane almost stood still in the air just off the surface of the ground. And then suddenly his wheels touched. The plane bounced wildly, but he goosed the engine, and checked a disastrous second meeting with the wind-swept ground. When the wheels touched again, the Messerschmitt stayed down, and Dawson taxied it at a fast clip straight ahead and then off to the side to get out of the way of Freddy Farmer right behind him.

As a matter of fact, he had no sooner killed the engine, and leaped to the ground, while the Messerschmitt still trundled forward, than he saw the English youth's plane settle. Settle? It started to do just that, but a savage cross-wind caught it, and the aircraft came down like five tons of brick dumped off a high building. A wild cry of alarm rose up in Dawson's throat, but his zooming heart won the race to his mouth and choked it off. For a lifetime, it seemed, he could only stand rooted helplessly to the ground while Freddy Farmer's Messerschmitt jumped and leaped crazily about like a chip of wood on the crest of a raging sea. A dozen times the aircraft seemed to start over on its back, but somehow the English youth managed to keep it top side up. True, it skidded around in half-circles, first one way and then the other. But the wing tip didn't quite catch and grab on the ground to pile up the whole works in a heap. And then suddenly something seemed to shoot right out of the cockpit of the bouncing and dancing plane and down onto the ground.

Dawson blinked twice before he realized that that something was Freddy Farmer in the flesh, and that the English youth had raced over to where he stood, while the storm wind gleefully picked up the Messerschmitt and carried it the rest of the way down the field and smacked it up against some trees.