Dave Dawson with the Commandos

by Robert Sidney Bowen

"He didn't," Dave chuckled. "He didn't say a thing—to me. He just walked off, muttering something about all Yanks being a little balmy."

"And he wasn't far from wrong!" Freddy Farmer leaped at the opening. "Particularly in your case. But let's start on back to the tarmac, shall we? They should be starting up the engines for a brief warm-up soon. And it isn't good to, give the other chaps the idea that we're trying to snub them."

"Nuts!" Dave snorted. "Those guys are regular. They wouldn't think anything like that, ever. But let's get on back, anyway. I want to give my bus one more check, just for something to do. Oh-oh! There go some of the egg boys. Happy landings, fellows! And smack them plenty, the bums!"

As Dave spoke the last he and Freddy threw back their heads and stared up into the dark sky that was suddenly filled with the roaring thunder of many bombers winging out across the Channel to "lay" their "eggs" as planned. For a couple of minutes both sky and earth trembled from the steady thunder of powerful engines. Then gradually it faded away in the southeast.

"Boy! That was a bunch of them!" Dave exclaimed with a whistle. "The whole raid area will probably be flat as a pancake by the time the Commando troops arrive. Gosh! I hope their eggs don't scare von Staube and von Gault away!"

"Or make the blighters hide in some bomb shelter where we can't find them!" Freddy echoed with a little nervous laugh. "Well, let's buzz over. There's the first of the Merlins starting up. Getting close now, Dave."

Dawson didn't comment. He licked his suddenly dry lips, swallowed hard a couple of times, and hurried with Freddy across the drome to the line of twenty-one Spitfires on the tarmac. Pilots gathered in small groups were breaking up, each man going over to his plane. Dave went over to his, and Freddy to his own which was next to it. Both knew their planes by heart, but from force of habit they each made one last and final check, and found every little thing just as they knew it would be.

Then they met between the two planes and waited for the engine fitters to climb in the pits and kick the Merlins into life. The whole drome, now, was echoing and re-echoing to the roar of Merlin engines. But to Dave and Freddy, and everybody else for that matter, the thunderous roar was the sweetest music on earth.

"Well, have you two got it all straight, eh?"

They both spun around at the sound of the voice shouting above the Merlins' roar. Squadron Leader Parkinson stood there dressed and ready for flight. He was calmly smoking a cigarette, but there was a flashing, eager-to-be-off look in his eyes. Dave nodded and answered for himself and Freddy.