_This Is It!_
For many days after that, out on the battle front, life for the American
forces was an almost monotonous succession of victories. Taken by
surprise, the small force of Japs defending their foothold in Burma were
pushed back, back, back by the colonel's onrushing army. They reached
the Chinese border and rolled right on. Great forces of Chinese
fighters, hungry, ragged, ill armed but eager, joined in the battle.
Great convoys of trucks laden with food, clothing, rifles, Tommy-guns
and ammunition for these fighters rolled in a never-ending stream over
the colonel's road.
The colonel set up temporary headquarters in an abandoned ranch house, a
bomb-shattered store, the home of a rich Chinese merchant, and at last
in a small but beautiful temple.
Always the team of Gale and Mac were on hand to watch the skies for
enemy bombers. Since the days were bright they did their work only at
night. Twice Gale spotted oncoming marauders, twice Mac, and
night-fighting U. S. planes blasted them from the skies.
Jan stuck to her jeep. She was always at the colonel's service. At times
she drove the colonel about, at others she did some rough riding with
tough buck privates, and enjoyed it. "Golly!" she would exclaim as she
came in covered with sweat, dust and grease, "this is the life! It
really is!"
Yes, for Gale and Jan life took on a definite pattern. Then, as often
happens in war, that pattern was suddenly torn into small bits.
It started when one day the colonel called Gale to his headquarters to
say:
"You've been on night work for some time now. You need a change."
"Oh, no! I--"
"I'm sure you'll like the change I am offering you." A strange smile
played about his lips. "I have a friend who has just arrived at the
airfield. I think perhaps he has some sort of proposition to make you.
You have my permission to accept. His name--" A smile spread over his
face, "is Jimmie."
"Jimmie?" She sprang to her feet. "Is he--"
"He's back in the saddle. Your old pal Jan is waiting outside. I suggest
that you go for a ride with her."
Ten seconds later as Gale tumbled into Jan's jeep she exclaimed. "The
airfield, James! And make it snappy!"
A half hour later Gale and Jimmie were drinking hot black coffee in a
cubbyhole just off of the airfield where they could talk in absolute
secrecy.
"Well, Gale," Jimmie's smile was strange. "You asked for it. Now you'll
have to take it or leave it. I've got it all arranged. Don't ask me how,
just tell me yes or no."
"You mean--" she stared at him in silence for a space of seconds.
"I think you get me." His face sobered. "If your answer is yes--and I'm
no one to blame you if it's no, for at best it's a rather dangerous
mission--all you have to do is to dress up in these," he placed a hand
on a large rubber-wrapped bundle, "and meet me here at dawn." He removed
his hand from the bundle. Her hand took its place.
"Good girl!" His hand closed over hers. "Then we fly at dawn!"
"Yes, Jimmie!" Her voice was husky. "And Jimmie, if our ship gets it, if
we're headed for earth's last checkout, the last roundup, you know, what
shall we say? 'Here goes nothing'?"
"No, Gale." His face sobered. "That's the way I used to think of it.
It's a grand gesture, but you can't hold it. I tried it once when I
thought my time had come. You can't stick it. No one can at the last
second, for you see it's not really nothing that's going from the earth.
It's YOU, and you suddenly decide that you don't want to go--that you
really want terribly to stay."
"I think I know what you mean," she said slowly. "All right, Jimmie."
She stood up. "I'll join you at dawn."
Ten minutes after that dawn Gale found herself on board the most
gorgeous four-motored bomber she had ever seen. Jimmie was at the stick
and she frantically at work studying the ship's radar set, teaching
herself in one short hour all she needed to know.
From time to time Jimmie glanced back, and if she was not looking,
grinned wisely. Once he turned to his co-pilot and winked. That was all.
And so for a full three quarters of an hour they flew on.
At last with her head in a whirl, Gale took time out for a glance at the
scenery that lay beyond and beneath them. Then lips parted, she stared.
"Jimmie!" she exclaimed, racing to his side. "This is not the way to
Tokio! Those are the mountains up ahead!"
"Who says this is the way to Tokio?" he demanded.
"Are--aren't we going to bomb Tokio?" She felt a terrible vacancy where
her heart should have been.
"Sure! Why sure we are!" he exclaimed, "when we get around to it. But
this is a pickup crew and you are one of them. Just now we're headed for
the Secret Forest and at least five days of good, tough practice." He
laughed merrily.
"Jimmie, you're a bad boy!" she exclaimed. "Just for that I have a mind
to take a jump and walk back to my colonel!"
"You wouldn't do that for worlds," he said. "Just take it easy. We'll
make it to Tokio yet."
Gale did take it easy, all she could. So did the rest of the crew for
everyone of them had known the restful peace of the Secret Forest and
not a man of them but knew the gamble with life that lay before him.
There was work aplenty. First flying as a crew, co-ordinating their
every movement, and then as a member of a large formation they prepared
themselves for the final ordeal.
One morning Gale arrived on the field to find the land crews loading
bombs.
"Is this it?" she said to Jimmie.
"This is it," was his reply. That was all. In half an hour they were off
on the great adventure.
* * * * * * * *
If life had been strange and fascinating for Gale, it had been scarcely
less so for her friends, Isabelle, Jan and Than Shwe. The same morning
Gale left the colonel called them into his office.
"You've been working hard," he said. "Gale has just left on a--well, you
might say a change of scene. I want you to take a leave. What's more, I
want you to see what we're fighting for here in China."
"That's what I'd like," said Isabelle.
"You shall have the opportunity," said the colonel. "The home of your
friend, the little Chinese nurse, Mai-da, is only a short way from here.
She has just arrived at the front and would like to take you there for a
few days. How about it?"
"Swell!" "I'd love it!" "Golly! That will be keen!" were the responses
he received.
And so it happened that in Jan's jeep they all rattled away to learn in
a few short lessons what life could be like in China.
Mai-da's was one of the truly old families of China. The high wall that
surrounded it was more than three hundred years old. Inside were no
great mansions but many small houses. Though in peace time seventy
people lived here everyone had a little place all his own.
To Jan their strange customs, eating rice with chop-sticks, gathering at
night to hear the aged grandfather read from the Chinese classics, and
their curious religious customs were amusing. But to Isabelle, who was
interested in the life lived by all the people of the world, this seemed
a charming interlude in the midst of a great and terrible war.
They were not, however, to be free from the war for long. On the fifth
day of their stay, with the remark that her jeep was getting rheumatism
in its joints, Jan drove back for an hour's visit at camp. She had not
been gone long when just at twilight from the west came the roar of
heavy planes. No one paid any attention at first, believing them to be
American planes.
All of a sudden Isabelle, who had given much time to the study of
airplane spotting, sprang up with a cry:
"Those are enemy bombers, and they are headed this way!" Something
seemed to tell her that this home that had stood so long was to be the
target of those bombers.
"They'll bomb his place," she exclaimed, scarcely knowing why she said
it. "We should all escape into the hills."
"Why? Why? Why?" came from every side. But having more than once
witnessed the terror of the Jap's fury, they all raced away into the
hills. There, sitting on the sloping side of a deep gully, they waited
the coming of terror from the sky.
There can be no doubt but that Isabelle's advice saved their lives, for
flying straight as swallows, three heavy bombers sped across the sky to
at last go sweeping in a wide circle and drop their loads of hate on the
defenseless homes.
Women wept, children screamed, and old men gnashed their teeth as they
saw the small homes leap into the air, then burst into flames.
Just when the home was burning fiercest and the sound of bombers was
fading into the night that had fallen, Jan came rattling up the hill.
Seeing the plight they were all in, she said never a word, but gathering
two small children who had learned to love her into her arms, sat down
in silence.
"It's that woman," said the aged grandfather. "She was seen only
yesterday at the home where her friend the war lord lived. It is she who
set these bombers upon us." He spoke in Chinese, but Mai-da translated
his speech for Isabelle and Jan.
"What woman does he mean?" Isabelle asked.
"She is the one you call the Woman in Purple," was Mai-da's reply.
"Oh!" Isabelle cried in dismay.
"I hoped she was dead!" Jan exclaimed. "She's too bad to live!"
The old grandfather was speaking again.
"There is a small dark man with her. Wherever this pair goes destruction
follows. She has caused the destruction of a thousand homes and the
death of many people."
"Isabelle!" Jan sprang up. "Know what? Gale's radar set is gone! It was
stolen from headquarters! That woman took it! We--we've got to get it
back! Don't forget, Three Secrets of Radar. She must not keep that set."
"Where is this war lord's house?" she demanded of Mai-da.
Mai-da pointed to a house half a mile away where a small square of light
shone.
"Come on!" Isabelle exclaimed, lifting Jan to her feet, then seizing a
rifle brought to the scene by the grandfather. "We'll get that radar
set. Now!"
Scarcely knowing what she was doing, Isabelle marched away beside her
stout and resolute companion.