"Yes, but he lost the fight. We've won."
CHAPTER 17
"Fasten your seat belts." The light flashed on in the passenger cabin of the Canadian Pacific Airlines jet. We were going down through the overcast. Vancouver was ten minutes away.
"Did you enjoy your flight, Colonel?" the stewardess asked me as she came by for a last minute check.
I smiled up at her. "The best part comes in ten minutes," I said, "but it certainly has been fast."
Ten days previously we had been lifted out of the fishing boats by the crew of a U.S. Navy destroyer and taken to Okinawa. The casualties were admitted to the Army hospital for treatment and the rest of us, also at the hospital for observation, were given baths, clean uniforms and a meal. Everywhere we went we were kept under isolation precautions and we were guarded as carefully as a basket of over-ripe eggs that might break momentarily.
A week in isolation convinced the officials that we were free of the bleeding death. By that time too, we had been drained of our information.
"When can I go home?" I asked, the day we were informed of our release. "I've got a wife due to have a baby anytime. I'd like some emergency leave."
That night they put me on a Military Air Transportation Service flight out of Kadena Air Force Base to Japan where I picked up a seat on the CPA flight recently resumed for military purposes only.