Folks,

It is almost 7 PM here in Carolina on a Tuesday night and still we are a toasty 34 C. 92 F. A lot of records have been broken for sure. Dux and C51 have broken a lot of records over the years. For one thing they have the world record for always being somewhere else when there is work to be done down in the gloomy HWH archives.

Turns out all that gnawing was not Olga trying to get in. Rather it was one of those beaver-sized rats trying to get out. Some thing or some one had taken a very large bite out of it. I grabbed up a story posted on the original HWH thread by our pal from the Netherlands Pijlie and did not waste much time getting out of there.


Footsteps in an Empty Church
By: Pijlie
Original HWH
Page 4
5/28/01

Afternoon sunlight sparkled off the bulletproof windscreen of my brand-new Hurricane as I ran towards it with the words: “Scramble! Scramble!” ringing in my ears. It was my first “real” combat mission, a genuine intercept instead of the boring patrols of the last few months. Adrenaline rushed through my bloodstream as we hurtled across the runway and up into the sky.

Not 15 minutes later we tangled with a meagerly escorted formation of Ju87s, the fabled Stukas! The escort, made up of Me110s, was caught low by the Spitfires of the vanguard and quickly dispersed. We tore into the bomber formations, scattering the frantic bombers to the four winds and breaking up the attack.

After the initial confusion I gathered my wits and spotted a low and lonely Stuka trying to escape to the south. No enemy fighters anywhere, I gave chase and closed quickly. Evading the glowing tracer-fingers groping for my aircraft, I put three long salvos into the fuselage, a fuel tank or something erupted and the machine quickly lost altitude, trailing fuel and greasy black smoke. I followed him closely, but no return fire came and I finally watched the machine crash in a field close to a large farm building and a stream.

Upon returning to base I was cheered by my comrades, congratulated by the Flight Commander with a job well done and my first “kill” was celebrated with a beer, another beer and then some. My pal Bertie yelled that we ought to get ourselves a trophy, as the great Von Richthofen used to do. So up we went in his car searching for the farmhouse. It was large and the field easily found. The Stuka was still there at the far side, its tail casting a long shadow across the field, loosely guarded by a Home Guard rifleman standing at the side of the road. He gave us permission to “inspect” the wreck, overcome with awe by meeting in the flesh the very fighter pilot who had shot down this enemy death-machine.

As we approached the wreck, lying on its belly nose-first in the stream, we saw it had burned badly. The entire length and right side of the fuselage was burned and scorched and the front cockpit hood was slid backwards. The rear machine gun pointed up at a crazy angle from the shattered cockpit. I stepped on the wing and curiously peeked inside. I was immediately sorry. The gunner was still there. I could barely jump off the wing and turn towards the stream in time before my beer rose up.

I left the field without a trophy. We returned to the road, where the Home Guard informed us that the pilot had survived the landing. He had been brought to the hospital in the town we just drove through on our way here. I found myself on the steps of that hospital some 30 minutes later. Bertie wouldn’t go in.

Strangely, neither nurses nor doctors questioned my right to see the man I had so very nearly killed a few hours before. So I was brought to a room, fronted by the obligatory Home Guard, where in a white and clean bed lay this bandaged object.

He must have been a large man, but somehow seemed shrunken and small now, his breath wheezing and weak. One arm was tucked under the blankets, one arm lying on top of them, wrapped in bandages, fist clenched tightly. I watched him for a minute or so, until I realized it only seemed thus because there were no fingers left to clench, no other arm to lie on the blankets. His face was completely covered with bandages and somehow this was even worse than the dead horror I had seen sitting in the gunner’s seat.

I must have sat there for an hour before a nurse led me out. I never noticed his breath stopping, even though I never took my eyes off his concealed face for a moment. I did not say a word while Bertie drove me back to the base. The words were sounding hollowly through my head, like footsteps in an empty church: a job well done.