Smoky the Brave by Damien Lewis

Author:Damien Lewis
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2018-12-03T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

Wynne reached out to touch the haversack in which Smoky was riding. He had to resist the urge to reach in and retrieve her, for the wildly pitching warplane was no safe place for an unsecured dog. She was better off in her bag-cum-hammock, which served to cushion the Catalina’s vicious lurches and rolls. Even so, he couldn’t help but marvel at how she could retain such equanimity when they were in the grip of such unrelenting violence. Possessed by a preternatural calm, the little dog had barely moved a muscle.

For what seemed like an eternity the flying boat fought her way east through the howling, wind-whipped darkness. The Catalina was thrown around like a toy in a giant’s hands, the airframe groaning and shrieking with the strain. Gripped as they were in the heart of the tempest, daylight, sunlight–the air itself, it seemed–had been banished. The storm front was a thing of the night, and it dragged darkness inchoate and screaming in its wake.

Occasionally Wynne sought out the aircraft’s tortured wing-tips, but they were lost in the storm, and he was blinded by the rain that drenched the Plexiglas blister. The Catalina’s extremities had been swallowed by the tempest. Visibility was limited to less than a few dozen yards, which would make the job of navigating nigh-on impossible.

Somehow, after four hours entombed within that terrifying force of nature, the Catalina finally shook herself free. Achieving something close to a miracle, the Catalina’s navigator had steered them safely to New Guinea through several hundred miles of perilous skies.

As the aircraft thundered into the airspace above Biak Island, the weather before them cleared. Majestic and apparently unscathed, the Catalina touched down at Mokmer airstrip, to be welcomed by a sunlit calm. It was as if the storm had never taken place at all, such were the vagaries of the weather in this part of the world.

For several minutes the crew sat within their trusty plane, taking stock and calming their thoughts. After the trials of being trapped in that storm for hours on end they needed a moment to get their pulse rates back to a little more like normal. Eventually, Wynne reached over and unhooked the haversack that held his dog. He ran a hand along the underside, feeling the warm bulge of a living, breathing animal.

By the regular rise and fall of Smoky’s chest, he could tell that she was fine. She seemed to have weathered the storm better than most of them. He shouldered the bag and clambered down the ladder, giving thanks that they’d come through alive. Sadly, they’d found no sign of his friend, Bardsley, but at least eleven other lives hadn’t been lost while searching for the missing airman.

Four days after Bardsley disappeared another of the squadron’s fliers was listed as MIA. First Lieutenant Lee G. Smith–the pilot who’d executed the abortive recce mission over Cape Gloucester, at the time of Smoky’s discovery in the foxhole–was reported lost somewhere to the south of the Talaud Islands.

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