s u m m e r
shuttle to poltava
phone call
Thursday afternoon brought another cup of coffee to counteract the cold coming out of the west and the dreary sky overhead. It still felt like 9:00 am when the phone rang at 4:37.
"I won't keep you long. Can we meet tomorrow?"
the meeting
I woke up Friday and made country ham and eggs, had a smoke on the porch out back and thought about who was coming up the highway. Not more than 45 miles away at that point.
It didn't make sense at all. After all these years why now? Why ever. But, I got a call...and a visit from a most unexpected person. The crew chief for Dangerous Dan, that fated B-17 that keeps coming in and out of my life.
(pause)
I can't tell this right and try to make it sound like fiction. I can't tell it right and make it sound like the truth. I know they say the truth is stranger than fiction, etc. But I've had an odd moment here. The chief got my name from my Mom, who cleans his teeth.
He called me up needing to talk. About Dan, and other things. The subject of Dan was short lived. He wanted to tell me about Dan's landing, he remembered being one of the first to that field and how the farmer was complaining about his beet field and compensation until a larger fella picked him up by the collar, told him to shut his trap, and go home.
I told him I knew about the field, produced the picture I had of Dangerous Dan, lying there in an English farmer's beet field, and we both just sat there for a few moments.
See, it hit him just as deep. He didn't know I had any of that. Didn't know anything. And yet, it was the first time he'd seen the plane in almost 60 years. Sitting in my living room. Right there over coffee.
shuttle to poltava
It was a few minutes until he found any words and when he did they had left England behind.
"You know they flew us to Poltava. The Russians didn't have half the shit they said they were gonna have, but that was how it was back then ya' know? We didn't know one day from the next. And that night coming back from the airfield just north those fighters came over and lit up that field like an erie green daylight."
"We had no fighters. No AAA, except for a few 50 cals mounted on some half-tracks which the scared Russians fired until the barrels turned red hot and bent."
"We weren't allowed to fight, and to be honest," he fumbled with a loose shoelace, "I was really trying to remember where the hell my slit trench was. "Hell we didn't even have rifles but, I could have shook hands with those German pilots."
"Boy they really messed us up good that night and part of the next day too. They hit all 60 planes we'd ferried over. Lucky we didn't take any more than a couple casualties, most of the fellas were off the base."
"We came back by truck to the south, sometimes only a hundred miles from the front. Across Africa, finally leaving Morocco for Liverpool in an liberty ship."
that's how it went
And it went on like that for hours until he finally had to leave. I gave him the picture of Dangerous Dan. He said he remembered removing equipment and gauges from that plane like it happened yesterday. He said he could still feel the soft earth of that plowed field under his feet.
I got to thinking about the kind of experience it would take to make me remember the feel of a certain metal or moist soil 60 years from now.
And then I wondered if I've already had it.
I thought about the chief, and his need to talk. To let someone else know the things he knows. Someone who would understand. There aren't many left. None of his buddies are still around. Strange as it sounds I'm his only link to that past that I can still only wonder why I share with him.
goodnight 4.19.00