Command Decision Read Online Free PDF Page B

damned world.”
    “What else will you tell them?”
    “That you lost forty bombers, four hundred men, by deliberately sending us a hundred and sixty miles beyond fighter cover yesterday. This morning, when we’re entitled to a milk run, you order us a hundred and eighty miles beyond the fighters.”
    “Why do you think you’re entitled to a milk run?”
    “After yesterday’s losses? Besides, I can read a calendar.”
    Dennis knew now that the boy was going to fight to the end, as anyone would fight for his own life. He was working toward his one chance. Dennis couldn’t tell yet whether it was transparency or purpose that had made him expose this chance a little, almost as if to show its strength. Under the letter of the law he was doomed and he was not going to fight the law. He was going to fight Dennis himself.
    “What’s the calendar got to do with it?”
    “You big boys think flak fodder like us can’t even read, don’t you? Where does the Air Corps get all those lovely new statistical records for sorties and tonnages that General Kane announces every month? They get ’em on milk runs, the last three or four days.”
    “So you would have gone on an easy one today?”
    “I’m entitled to it.”
    Inwardly Dennis was torn between immediate relief and a darkening sense of the ultimate hopelessness of this. There had been from the first the possibility that he was dealing with a sincere, stubborn, martyr. The boy might have been risking personal fate to lighten for the others the severity of their official sentence.
    “Eleven other crews took this for their last mission.”
    “That’s their business,” said Jenks. “If you big shots are entitled to a record racket so am I.”
    His brief immediate relief faded into a heavier sadness. The contingency he had probed would have been troublesome; this was going to be tragic.
    “Did it never occur to you, Jenks, that there might be another reason for these particular record missions?”
    “What?”
    “Destroying something that can kill a lot more than four hundred boys.”
    For the first time Jenks shifted uneasily on his feet.
    “Everything in Germany is made to kill people. Why can’t we hit targets under fighter cover like General Kane promised?”
    “He didn’t promise that.”
    Jenks hesitated. Dennis knew now that he was cracking the case the boy had worked out for himself in the guardhouse. Jenks made a further effort to sound reasonable, persuasive.
    “Well, everyone who knows the army knew what General Kane meant in the press interview after that rat race over Bremfurt six weeks ago. That day we lost nineteen and the whole Air Corps turned itself inside out explaining. Yesterday we lost forty and today will be worse…” Jenks hesitated. Then, as if realizing the irrelevance of all this, he lowered his voice insinuatingly.
    “How do you think the public is going to like this?”
    Dennis had to fight down that feeling in the pit of his stomach. They were coming to the end of it. Possibly the boy’s corruption did derive from the prevarications of the army’s press and public relations policy. But Dennis had to deal with his behavior. He spoke curtly.
    “The public isn’t my business.”
    Jenks misread his short silence for intimidation.
    “What would the press say if they knew you ordered both these attacks on your own authority when General Kane was absent from weather conferences at his headquarters?”
    “That isn’t your business. You were ordered to go. After learning the target, you refused.”
    He saw Jenks stiffen under the gaff of the stripped, naked truth and then slowly go limp. His voice became defensive.
    “I’ve been to plenty tough targets.”
    Dennis tapped the file. “You aborted from the two toughest missions prior to yesterday.”
    “For mechanical malfunctions.” Jenks was breathing hard.
    “One engineer’s examination said: ‘Possibly justifiable.’ The other one said: ‘Defect not