Dave Dawson with the Eighth Air Force

by Robert Sidney Bowen

The sunken eyes stared, and the thin lips continued to move without making a sound. Dawson clenched both fists helplessly.

"If there were only something we could do for him!" he groaned. "A couple of sulfanilimide pills, or even a First Aid kit. But we haven't a darn thing. And I'm afraid it's too late, anyway. Dartmouth! Please! Hang on, fellow, hang on. You've got to tell us what it's all about."

As Dawson's pleading voice died away to the echo the very silence of Death seemed to hang in that room. Then, suddenly, sound began to come from between the dying man's thin moving lips. Both Dawson and Farmer leaned close so that they would not miss a single word.

"Fire!" the man said. "Fire bombs that destroy everything within a mile of where they strike. It is true! I—I have seen it with my own eyes. Flame throwers of the air. That's what they are like. But they are dropped like bombs. Special chemicals. Nothing can extinguish them. They must burn themselves out. But—but they explode and spread out in all directions. It is liquid fire. Nothing can stop it. Nothing can stop those devils now. Their secret weapon. That devil! That Herr Baron. He is back in Duisburg again. I know! I saw him. He cannot fool me, no matter what he does to his face. The twenty-fourth—tomorrow. Tomorrow they strike, and we will be helpless to stop them. It—it will not win them the war, no! They will never win. But our planes—our pilots—our crews. Hundreds—thousands! Three fourths of England's and America's bombers—wiped out in minutes. It will make the war go on five years longer. Dear heaven, I was so close. So close to stopping them!"

The dying man stopped speaking and his eyes became glazed. A hundred thousand questions sprang to Dawson's lips, and to Freddy Farmer's lips, too. But neither youth dared to speak them. Death was so very, very close, now. They could almost smell the Grim Reaper's clammy hand reaching out. They hardly dared breathe for fear that doing so would speed the end. They were helpless. The battle had to be fought alone by that man under the single dirty blanket. No other power on earth could help him. He would win his own fight, or he would lose, and his knowledge of the horrible doom poised to descend upon England would be sealed in his brain.

Tears of helpless agony stung Dawson's eyes, and his lips moved in fervent, silent prayer. He could feel Farmer's breath on his cheek, and he knew that Freddy was also praying with all his heart and soul.

And then, as though a curtain had been drawn aside, the glaze vanished from the dying man's eyes. They were bright and clear as they looked at Dawson and Farmer. The man drew breath deep into his lungs, and there was no longer the heart-chilling rattle of death in his throat. It was as though in his greatest moment of need he had reached out and received new strength from his Maker.

"Do not speak," he said in a clear voice that made Dawson's heart leap with joy. "Just listen to me, because I cannot last long. I know it—inside. I failed, but perhaps it is not too late. Perhaps you will succeed. You must. Listen to me! Ten miles along the Duisburg-Dortmund highway there is a little group of hills. They form a ring, and the valley in the middle is flat as a table. You cannot see it from the air because it is perfectly camouflaged. The spot has never been bombed because it is out in the country. Our bombers wouldn't give it a second look.

"But it is a military objective. The most important this moment in all Germany. In that camouflaged valley there are a hundred British and American heavy bombers. Yes! British and American heavy bombers, I tell you. I have seen them. For months the Nazis have been planning this blow. They call it their secret weapon. It came out of the mad brain of the one they call Herr Baron. Who he is no one seems to know. But it is rumored that he was a famous Luftwaffe pilot shot down in the Battle of Britain. That he was horribly burned about the face. But he lived, and became the man of many faces. Some say he was a great actor before the war. I do not know. But I have seen him many times, and every time he looked different. Once I was almost able to kill him, but I failed then, too. To think, if I had only succeeded, this terrible thing might not be hanging over England, as it is."

The man stopped talking and stark terror gripped Dawson and Farmer again. But the man only paused to draw breath into his dying body. He went on speaking again, a wild light flaring up in his eyes.