Not that Bobby or the other cadets met Mel. The woman who greeted them was a fifty-year-old waitress named Daisy. She took their orders and seemed disappointed that most of them wanted only ice water. It was too darned hot. Bobby couldn’t even think of eating in the stifling heat. Hank didn’t have that problem. He ordered a stack of pancakes, a side of bacon, and three eggs over easy.
Daisy hesitated before informing the cadets that everyone had to order “all you can eat,” or none of them could. It was restaurant policy, she explained apologetically. After all, how could she be sure Hank wouldn’t just feed the rest of them from his order?
Hank convinced the other cadets to eat with him. They weren’t likely to find a better deal, and it had to be tastier than the slop served at the base’s mess hall, he told them. It wasn’t a very convincing argument, but once Jack Wright said he would do it, Bobby and his fellow cadets agreed to pitch in. They all liked Jack Wright. Jack was always smiling. It wasn’t a goofy smile, and it wasn’t even a smile just on his lips. Jack had smiling eyes and a mischievous grin.
Bobby, Hank, Jack, and the other boys were more than ready for a taste of freedom and adventure. Besides, they weren’t boys anymore. All except Bobby were in their early to midtwenties. They had to be college graduates to be flight cadets, which meant they were among the oldest new recruits in the army. Only Bobby was still in his teens, having graduated early from Columbia. He’d missed his graduation ceremony by signing up early, but he had already completed his college credits, and that was good enough for the US Army Air Force.
They cadets didn’t care who called them “boys” anymore. In any other walk of life, in peacetime, calling a grown man “boy” was a sign of disrespect, but not in the military. Referring to soldiers as “the boys” or “our boys in uniform” was an expression of proud endearment. Even their thirty-five-year-old flight instructor was one.
Jack smiled as he ate his pancakes and gave Hank a good-natured ribbing about the Alibi. The bar’s patrons had been 80 percent men, Jack complained. How was he expected to charm a girl in a place like that? The others agreed with Jack and began to plan an alternative outing for their next pass. Their imaginations soared as they explored wildly impractical ideas like hosting a clambake, or expensive ones like renting a yacht. Soon they’d all forgotten about the heat. As they brainstormed about the future, they ordered more and more platters of food.
When Bobby pointed out how much they were eating, the other cadets took it as a challenge. “We gotta get our money’s worth,” declared Hank as he waved down Daisy for another order of steak and eggs.
Jack grinned with mischief in his eyes. “Let’s see if we can put this place out of business.”
They’d each had three full meals when Mel finally came out of the kitchen. He was a big man, well over six feet tall, and not an ounce under three hundred pounds. He wasn’t alone. Two Dominican dishwashers stood at his side, and it was hard to say which of the three was the largest.
“Boys,” Mel announced in a threatening growl, “you just had all you can eat.”
Hank was spoiling for a fight, but he was smiling, too. Trying not to laugh, Bobby and Jack pretended to drag him out by the shoulders.
It was almost morning, anyway, and their base passes had expired hours ago. Their plan was to sneak back into their barracks, but the base sentries didn’t let them off the hook. As a result, they spent all day Sunday digging latrines. Still, it seemed cooler digging latrines than it had been in the Alibi.
Hank kept trying to convince them to go back to the Alibi the very next chance they got. But he died three days later. His plane was overtaken by an unexpected squall during a training exercise. The storm had blown in from the Atlantic, its dark clouds completely enveloping the two-seater, wrapping the plane in a blanket of static electricity that cut off all radio communication. By the time the squall passed, Hank, his flight instructor, and his plane were all gone. They had vanished into thin air.
It wasn’t until two days later that search crews found the wreckage hundreds of miles away, in an Everglades swamp. Bobby hoped Hank and his instructor had been killed on impact, because alligators had devoured their bodies.
Hank’s death shocked Bobby into reality. He had volunteered for a dangerous if not deadly duty, sure, but he’d always assumed that his own intelligence and competence would keep him alive. Hank’s fate demonstrated how random and sudden death could be.
Bobby knew Hank wouldn’t be the last. During the course of the war, thousands of cadets would be killed in training. A few weeks of training simply couldn’t prepare would-be pilots for the actual dangers of flight. And even the best, most naturally gifted, pilot could be brought down by bad luck and faulty equipment.
That happened to Parker. By then they were all flying solo and had grown confident in their piloting skills. Parker’s plane developed a leak in its hydraulic system. When his flight returned to base, Parker circled overhead, waiting patiently for his turn to land, never suspecting that every moment was costing him more hydraulic fluid. By the time his turn came, his flaps and wheels locked in place. Parker didn’t even have a chance to eject—the ground was coming up way too fast. Without flaps to act as brakes and without wheels to cushion its fall, the plane disintegrated out from under him.
Bobby himself had a scare when he came out of a cloud and flew head-on into a flock of migrating geese. Three of the big birds slammed into his plane, cracking the windshield of the cockpit and smearing it with blood. One of the two engines went out, its propeller tangled with guts and feathers. Bobby’s plane was crippled, and he had to land completely blind.
He would’ve ended up like Parker if Jack hadn’t saved him. Jack flew right beside Bobby, holding perfect formation, instructing him over the radio in a comforting, reassuring voice. He told Bobby exactly where to go, how far to turn the yoke, how much to pull the throttle, and how best to compensate for the dead engine. Bobby managed a rough but safe landing.
Jack was most likely the reason Bobby’s training group didn’t have even more casualties. Jack was a natural pilot. He flew as though he’d been born with wings, and he seemed to know more about flight than even their instructors. No one knew where or how Jack had learned so much, and the cadet remained tight-lipped about his past. When prodded, Jack simply shrugged his shoulders and said, “Just lucky, I guess.”
Bobby finally wrote about all of this to Karen, despite never hearing from her. He told her about his new friends, the instant camaraderie they shared, and the sudden sense of loss caused by Hank’s and Parker’s deaths. He expressed his love for her, wrote heartfelt admissions about how much he missed her, and apologized for the months when he had given in to despair and stopped writing. He’d thought she’d stopped loving him, he explained, but now he knew better. He knew no mail was getting in or out of Leningrad, and he knew that even these letters might never arrive in her hands. But he had faith that she still loved him and that somehow, some way, they would find each other again.
Bobby wrote to Karen every single night, but he never received a single letter in return.
CHAPTER 12
THE CELLIST
The day after Karen returned to Leningrad, the sole survivor of the First Potato Army, she visited the Moscovsky Rail Terminal.
East of Leningrad, a critical ice road stretched across vast Lake Ladoga. This was the so-called Road of Life, the only access to the besieged city that was not controlled by the Germans. The Germans tried to dive-bomb and strafe the supply trucks running the road, but the trucks kept coming, kept going. Once safely across the lake, the trucks were unloaded at the town of Osinovets on the lake’s shore, and their cargo was hauled by train to the terminal in Leningrad.