Yes, my little pistol-packin’ mama, the bunny girl. Well, she was from a comic book you only saw in the service. Wasn’t too common, you know, but everybody liked the characters. This cowgirl bunny was in one of the early issues... guess they were trying to balance out all the British characters. Anyhow, I liked this one, she looked just like a girl I met back in New Orleans just before we went overseas--damn, but she was cute! She was... well, never mind.

Anyhow, I had Fred, the base Michelangelo, paint her on my Lightning--the pose was his idea, and after that I kept her on all my planes--good luck, you know.

Well, yes, I guess I did knock down a strange assortment of Nazi planes. The Messerschmitt 262, that was just a fluke. Ordinarily those things could fly rings around us--the first twin-jet jobs, you know, they could outfly anything in the air at the time. But this was getting toward the end of the war, when I think the Germans were running out of experienced pilots, and had nothing to send up against us but green kids. Anyhow, I was just mooching around over northern France with Owl Eyes, my wingman at the time--his name? --Oh, his name was Minhevich, can’t remember the first name, everyone just called him Owl Eyes-- Anyhow, it was after D-Day, and we were just poking around looking for “targets of opportunity,” when I saw Owl Eyes waggle his wings and wave off to the right, and I looked back and down, and there was this 262 streaking up from behind us, below and to the side, apparently didn’t notice us at all--that’s why I think it was a kid.

Anyhow, he was on my side, so I horsed the old girl around like this (gesturing for a diving turn) and set up a deflection shot--it was tricky, he was moving so fast--let off a one-second burst, and damn if he didn’t fly right into it. I couldn’t have hit him with more than a few rounds, but he jumped like a scalded cat--and as soon as he got her in control again, he just rolled her over and bailed out! The plane didn’t seem to be hurt at all as far as we could see, just kept flying on in a shallow inverted glide, pulled ahead of us and curved into the undercast, and that’s the last we saw of it.

I split the credit with Owl Eyes, because he spotted it first and could have got it just as easy if it was on his side--he was a good pilot and a real good shot, but he just had lousy luck.

My last plane, well, she was an L Model, and say, she had cockpit heat that actually worked--what an improvement over those old flying iceboxes! I mean, the Lightning was always a good bird, but the old ones got damn cold at altitude. Anyhow, my L Model--that was Double Trouble IV--she had a natural aluminum finish, they didn’t bother with the warpaint that late in the war, and when I got her cleaned up she would shine like a new dollar, and just slip through the air like a razor.

Well, anyhow, you were asking about my ME 321, what the Germans called the Gigant. That was I believe April 1944, can’t remember the exact day, there’s no records, and that’s really the funny part of the story. I’ll tell you why later.

Anyhow, we were patrolling over Belgium, and I had somehow got separated from the flight--well no, that’s just not true, the truth is I was just looking for trouble, you see I had a good friend, my old wingman, Tom Hunter, and I’d seen him shot down in flames just a week or two before--well, never mind.

Anyhow, I was out with blood in my eye, the flight hadn’t accomplished anything much--shot up most of our ammo on piddly ground targets--and I broke off from the bunch on the way home to give the Nazis whatever grief I could with what little ammo I had left.

It was mixed overcast with broken clouds below, and I was sneaking along just in the base of the overcast, you know, so as not to give the flak too much of a break, while I watched the ground through the haze, when suddenly a long break in the overcast opened up, sort of oblique to my flight path, and in the instant I crossed it, I looked down and to my left, and coming toward me a couple miles off was the damndest thing I ever saw. It looked like a railroad car with a huge damn wing, teeny little cockpit up on top like a bug’s eyes, and a formation of ME-109s flying cover for it. It looked like a big old buzzard being mobbed by sparrows. Well, like I say, it only took a second to traverse that break in the clouds, so I just got a glimpse.

Well, it was crazy--I was alone and low on ammunition, and from all the 109s around it looked like that thing was protected for a reason. But I wanted that big old airplane, I wanted it like a kid wants a Lionel train under the Christmas tree.

As soon as I was back in the cloud base, I poured on the power to get more in an interception course, poked my nose down just a second to get another look. I mean, that thing was HUGE--had engines lined up across the top of that wing like buses parked on a London street. I noticed the 109s, about 10 of them, looked to be an elite bunch, they were flying such a pretty formation. I hoped they were paying more attention to holding formation than looking for trouble.

Now, all this took a lot less time to happen than telling it does. I had got two quick peeks to sort of triangulate their position, I was good at spatial thinking, so I just lurked there in the overcast while I was closing on them, counted, “one, two,” you know, then went into my dive, and when I popped out of the cloud I was right on top of them! The 109s had just completed a turn--zigzagging to keep from outrunning the big guy, you know--and I dove right under the leader’s nose, while the front of that big gray barn of a plane swelled up like a balloon, filling the windshield. I opened fire at the little cockpit up on top, stitched a seam of .50s and 20s all across it, and then back diagonally across that huge wing, saw pieces flying off a couple of the engines--then my pass carried me just over the back edge of the wing and I was through, I’d shot up the whole nine yards, as they say, and I had damn well better head for the barn, because they weren’t going to be happy with me and I didn’t even have any rocks to throw any more.

I still had all the speed of my dive, and I took a quick squint up into my mirror and saw that big old boxy giant roll over on one wingtip and go down like a trainload of anvils. I thought a couple of the 109s must have collided in their tight formation, but maybe they were just trying to keep up with the giant and follow it down. The others, as soon as they got turned around, were coming after me like a swarm of hornets, but I just cranked in some trim, wished real hard and kept going. I mean, they were mad! They chased me in relays all the way across the Channel, and if a flight of Brits hadn’t intercepted us I might have got in real trouble.

Now here comes the funny part.

For some reason the base commander was waiting for me when I landed, and he whisked me right into his office before I could take my helmet off.

He proceeded to chew me up one side and down the other for leaving the formation, lack of discipline, abusing government property, grandstanding, dereliction of duty and anything else he could think of. There was a little major in the room I hadn’t seen before, an anonymous-looking gink named Lineberger or something like that, with the greatest poker face I ever saw, and he just stood there and watched the show without saying a word.

I had been chewed out plenty by the old man before, and he was a master at it, but this time I could feel he wasn’t really getting into his work. He had the words but not the music, like they say, so I knew there was something else going on. I wasn’t buying any of it--I just kept cool and waited my chance.
So as soon as he stopped to take a breath I broke in, saying I had acted on my own initiative to attack an important target of opportunity, and had knocked down an ME 321 and maybe caused the destruction of some 109s.

The old man glanced at the little major, and suddenly he was all business.

“No, you didn’t,” he said. “You never shot down any aircraft today. In fact, you weren’t even flying in that area.”

“Yes, I’m sure I did, sir,” I started out, but the old man got hard-jawed, his eyes drilled through me, and I shut up while he said,

“You dropped back from formation because of a malfunctioning engine, lost touch with the rest of the flight in the clouds, flew slowly home by a direct route, and if you tell anyone any different by God you’ll be making big ones into little ones at Leavenworth until this war is a footnote in the history books. Now, what’s it going to be?”

I looked from one to the other of them, and the little major nodded just slightly, so I said, “Yes, sir.”

“Fine,” said the old man. “You’re suffering from battle fatigue, and the loss of your wingmate last month has affected your judgement. I’m sending you to London for a week or two of R&R. Naturally, you will say nothing to anyone of what didn’t happen today.”

I didn’t get down and kiss his boots, but I felt like it. By that time of the war, I would have sworn Adolf Hitler was my kid brother in exchange for a week in London.

An MP went to the barracks with me to help me pack, they stuck me on the first train to London, and the rest of that week--Well, I met a little blonde there that--well, never mind.

It was a funny thing though, wasn’t it?