Dave Dawson with the Flying Tigers

by Robert Sidney Bowen

He shook his head, refusing to finish the horrible thought. It did little good, however, to brush that unfinished thought from his brain. Another one popped right in that was equally heart-stopping. The thought, the realization that he was completely lost in the North Burma jungle with no telling what was lurking in wait for him. If he didn't get out and complete his trip to Chungking, it would be just the same as though Freddy and he had been killed in that German U-boat, or by that Jap near Pearl Harbor, or by the little brown rats at Legaspi. Yes, to fail now would be just as bad as failing right at the very start. And he might—

"Cut it, cut it!" he rasped savagely at himself. "Words won't help a darn bit. Action is what's needed! Snap out of it, you sniveling punk. Get going! Stop crying for your Mama! Get going!"

The commands from his tongue put his muscles into action. He took a quick glance at the position of the sun, and then headed north, and slightly to the east. He had a hunch that the Salween River lay in that direction, and until he was proved wrong the only thing he could do was to play hunches.

An hour later, though, the soul-crushing torment that comes to men lost in the jungle was closing in on him from all sides like an invisible army of demons. With every step he had practically walked hand and hand with Death. Every step? His travel through the thick jungle growth could hardly be called steps. It was more falling forward, scrambling forward, lurching, twisting, and virtually clawing and tearing his way through the hanging vines. Hard ground would be beneath his feet at one moment, and in the next he would be up to his knees in muck and mire. Clouds of insects attacked him every inch of the way, and there was the constant danger of the needle fangs of deadly snakes. He spotted at least a dozen of them in the nick of time. But as the year long minutes dragged on and on, he ceased to care about what might be in his path. And there was so much pain in all parts of his body that he would have been unable to feel any new pain from the fangs of a striking snake, or any other jungle animal.

And then, when his brain as well as his body was hovering on the verge of a complete breakdown, he stumbled out onto open ground. But for a moment or two his befuddled brain was unable to grasp that truth, and he continued lurching and reeling forward until his foot tripped over a stone, and he fell flat on his face. It was the sharp, jarring pain of meeting hard ground that shook the red cobwebs from his brain, and pulled away the grey-green curtains from in front of his eyes. Yet even then the brain was not quite ready to function as it should, and he stared blankly up the bare slope of a hill without realizing what it was.

Eventually, though, it registered on his brain. And he also took note of the fact that a thin column of oily black smoke was mounting high into the still air from around the left side of the hill. A little door in his brain seemed to open up and tell him that that smoke must be from a burning plane. His plane, or Freddy Farmer's? He didn't know. The thin column of smoke was simply a welcoming beacon. Something tangible between a lost man and a world he had once known. He only knew that tears were streaming down his cheeks, that gagging sobs filled his throat, and that a pair of legs that had been on the point of quitting completely a moment or two before were carrying him at full speed around the base of the hill.

The gleefully jeering gods of war refused to let him alone, however. As he skirted the base of the hill, jungle growth leaped up in front of him to block off what was at the ground end of that mounting column of smoke. It forced him high and higher up the hill, and made him travel a good two miles toward a spot that was actually a short six hundred yards from his starting point. But eventually he reached a spot where the heavy growth ceased abruptly, and he found himself staring down the hill at the burning wreckage of a plane on the edge of a fair-sized plot of barren level ground. It was as though Nature had taken a pair of shears, started some three hundred yards back in the jungle, and cut a perfect swath through the jungle and right up the side of the hill.

Yes, that's what it looked like, but Dawson didn't tarry one fleeting instant to observe and marvel. He didn't for the simple reason that he saw the figure of Freddy Farmer standing a little off from the burning wreckage. Freddy Farmer spotted him at almost the same instant, and started jumping up and down, waving his arms wildly, and shouting like a maniac. But Dawson didn't wave or shout back in reply. He didn't wave because he was using his arms to pump his body down the hill. And he didn't shout because the air he sucked into his lungs was needed to keep his piston rod legs going at full speed.

As a matter of fact, when he finally reached Freddy Farmer and practically fell into the English youth's arms, there wasn't the air in his lungs to permit him to say anything. Nor could Freddy speak, either. The emotions of both of them had hit an all-time high, and they could only cling to each other and struggle for control and sanity.

"Freddy, Freddy, boy!" Dawson finally managed to force out past his lips. "Am I happy to see your ugly mug! Say, am I happy?"