  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. |
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