FEMALE FIGHTER PILOT - INGRID DOWS - AN ALTERNATE STORY by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

‘’Right! Wel , let me go check out on my pilots and planes. You may go have a coffee with the general and his aides in the meantime. That will give you time to imagine all kinds of new ways to abuse my body tonight, my lovely hunk.’

She exchanged another kiss with Ken, then left him to walk towards her planes and pilots. Ken sighed while admiring her bum as she walked away: living away from such beauty had been hard indeed.

08:42 (Manila Time)

Monday, December 8, 1941 ‘C’

Command bomber of the 11th Air Fleet

7,500 meters above Lingayen Gulf

West coast of Luzon, Philippines

Major General Minagumo Shoji, Commander of the 11th Air Fleet of the Japanese Imperial Army, based in Formosa, had not flown a combat mission since his last mission over China as a colonel, three years ago. At his actual rank level, he was not supposed to fly combat missions anymore. However, the low state of the morale of his aviators, hit hard by the heavy casualties suffered in seven weeks of ferocious combat over the Philippines, requested that he showed the example in order to boost the motivation of his pilots. If he could believe the reports from the other army air fleets involved with the Philippines campaign and those of the navy air units in Formosa, his fleet had not been the only one to suffer heavily. The campaign to reduce the Philippines in view of an eventual invasion was proving more costly every day, with the Americans showing incredible tenacity and toughness. The Imperial High Command in Tokyo was starting to ask pointed questions about the reasons for the lack of success of the air campaign against the Philippines, questions which Minagumo could not answer truthfully without losing face. He had been particularly mortified when his intelligence officer had told him that the top American air ace in the Philippines was a woman. A WOMAN!! Some of his officers had laughed at that notion then, but their laughs were now quite forced. That was when Minagumo had decided to lead the next raid against the important American

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airbase of Clark Field. He had managed by scrapping the bottom of his drawers to assemble 61 Mitsubishi Ki-21 twin-engine medium bombers, escorted by 43 of the new Nakajima Ki-43 HAYABUSA fighters, which had started to replace the inadequate Ki-27.

Minagumo had however his doubts about the new Ki-43, which had the same weak armament of two 7.7 mm machineguns as the Ki-27 and still no armor, even though it was much faster and about as agile. Minagumo raised his head to look up at his escort fighters, flying high above his bombers, as they were less than 130 kilometers away from their objective. Up to now, his armada had not been attacked yet, thankfully, and he then concentrated his attention back towards the Filipino coast, visible through the dispersed clouds. What he could not know was that one of the American surveillance radars had detected his planes half an hour ago, while a coastal observer had him in sight right now and was passing his observations to Manila by telephone.

The first sign of trouble was when Minagumo got a radio message from the commander of his escort, saying that four American fighters were diving on his fighters from the back. Looking up, Minagumo saw two of the Ki-43 turn into flying torches, with the rest dispersing and turning around to try to pursue four speedy dots apparently intent on getting in the back of his bombers. Suddenly more nervous, Minagumo watched carefully the sky around him, trying to spot any other enemy planes. Unfortunately, the Sun was still low on the horizon and was blinding him when he looked to his front and left, while a thick cloud formation blocked part of the sky ahead of him. He suddenly saw something move in front of him, emerging from the clouds. Focusing his old eyes, he felt his heart accelerate when he finally made out ten small gray dots, deployed in a long extended line and coming directly at him. Activating his microphone, he shouted an urgent warning on the radio.

‘’AMERICAN FIGHTERS DEAD AHEAD ON A COLLISION COURSE. TIGHTEN

THE FORMATION AT ONCE!’

He barely had time to complete his message before the canopy of his cockpit exploded under the impacts of dozens of .50 caliber bullets, killing Minagumo, his copilot and his radio operator. Out of control and with one engine on fire, the bomber entered a terminal spinning dive as the gray P-40F which had shot at it flashed by, already firing another salvo at the bomber following behind the command plane. Six other bombers of the first wave either exploded or turned into flying torches, while three bombers of the second wave experienced the same fate. The attacking P-40s continued on at full

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speed, then performed wide turns to come back in the rear of the bombers. The escort fighters, at least those not chasing the four first P-40s which had attacked them, tried to dive on the P-40s but, their controls hardened by their high-speed dive, were unable to correctly aim their fire against the American fighters. The Japanese pilots all missed their targets and further had great difficulty turning around to follow the Americans, being close to their maximum allowed diving speed. The flimsy structures of the Ki-43, lightened to provide maximum agility at low and medium speeds and with no armor or even self-sealing fuel tanks, then came to haunt their pilots. Outrunning the Ki-43

fighters by a hundred kilometers per hour and the Ki-21 bombers by 160 kilometers per hour, the P-40s raced after the bombers while staying a bit below them, where the defensive armament of the Ki-21s was the weakest. With each bomber now having only a single 7.7 mm machinegun able to shoot at the American planes, the Japanese gunners fired their guns frantically but without apparent results. The P-40s then raised their noses and climbed at shallow angles as they were about to pass under the bombers, peppering their vulnerable bellies at a rate of close to eighty .50 caliber bullets per second per P-40. Eight more SALLYs fell in flames or exploded in that pass. The ten P-40Fs, pursued by the slower Ki-43 HAYABUSAs, doubled the remaining bombers and went on for four kilometers before turning around for another frontal pass in extended line. The pursuing Ki-43s, which would later get the allied nickname of

‘OSCAR’, were the first to absorb the bul ets from that second frontal pass. Their flimsy structures and thin aluminum skins ripped open like paper under the heavy bullets, while their two medium machineguns didn’t do much impression on the sturdy, well armored American fighters. Three of the Ki-43 disintegrated or exploded under the fire of the P-40Fs, the rest having to turn around yet again as the American fighters sped by, ignoring them and going at the bombers. The first four P-40s which had initially attacked the Japanese escort fighters then came in turn on the rear and under the bombers to shoot at their bellies, while the ten other P-40s performed frontal firing passes. That process was repeated three times, with fourteen additional SALLYs falling down in flames. The surviving bomber pilots then panicked and dropped their bombs over the Filipino jungle before turning around to return to Formosa. With the escorting Ki-43s still not having shot down a single American P-40, a further three bombers fell before the P-40s, out of ammunition, turned away, still going at top speed. To add insult to injury, the Japanese escort fighters then realized as they returned with the bombers to their bases in Formosa that they had burned too much fuel while trying to catch the speedy P-40s. Over half of

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the Ki-43s ran out of fuel before they could land, crashing all over Formosa, while a few more had to literally glide in to land at their bases.

The intelligence officer of the 11th Air Fleet, who was anxiously waiting for the return of the bombers, looked on with growing horror and sorrow as only 23 of the 61 Ki-21s which had left for the raid on Clark Field returned to land, some evidently seriously damaged. He then ran to the first bomber to stop on the parking apron and nearly jumped on the pilot when the latter climbed down from his plane.

‘’Where is General Minagumo? Where are all the others?’’

‘’Dead! Al dead!’ replied the pilot in a shaking voice, obviously suffering from a nervous shock. ‘’Gray ghosts ambushed us and played with us and our escort fighters.

The HAYABUSAs couldn’t do a thing to stop them.’

‘’Gray ghosts? What type of American fighters attacked you?’’

‘’Curtiss P-40s completely painted gray. They flew so fast while shooting at us that our fighters could not catch them. One of the Americans was their female ace: I saw the words ‘LADY HAWK’ painted in pink on the nose of one of the P-40s.’

The intelligence officer was silent for a moment, severely shaken by those news. Of the 117 bombers which the 11th Air Fleet counted originally in its roster at the start of the war against the Americans, only 23 were now left, despite the periodic arrival of new planes and crews. Their air fleet would now have no choice but to withdraw from combat in order to be fully reequipped and reorganized. The intelligence officer later learned that the surviving squadron commander of the escort fighters for that raid committed ritual suicide to atone for the failure of his unit, with many of his fighter pilots following his example.

09:19 (London Time)

Friday, December 19, 1941 ‘C’

Prime Minister’s official residence

10 Downing Street, London

England

Winston Churchill felt as much depressed as he was in a bad mood. Despite the fact that the Germans had finally been thrown out of Norway, that victory had cost Great Britain dearly in both lives and materiel. Many, including himself, then had to reevaluate

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their optimistic views about the state of the war in Europe and about the military capabilities left to the Germans. As for the war in Asia and the Pacific, the situation there was nothing less than disastrous for the British Empire. Hong Kong had fallen over a month ago, while Singapore had surrendered to the Japanese just yesterday, with over 80,000 British, Australian, Indian and Malaysian soldiers killed or taken prisoner.

Even more than the loss of all those soldiers, the taking of Singapore, which had been flaunted as a supposedly impregnable fortress, marked an enormous loss of prestige for the empire. The only good news out of Asia was the fact that the Japanese had yet to launch their feared invasion of Burma. Churchil however couldn’t thank that to any British feat of arms, but rather to the heroic and unexpectedly pugnacious resistance of the American forces in the Philippines, which sucked in the Japanese reserves in planes and ships like a vacuum cleaner.

Shaking himself out of his dark thoughts, Churchill concentrated again his attention on the situation report given to him and his war cabinet by his military secretary, Lieutenant General Hasting Ismay. Ismay was now describing the situation of the American forces in the Philippines and that of the Japanese forces surrounding them. Something that Ismay said then attracted his curiosity.

‘’Did you say that the Japanese air operations against the Philippines just slowed down, General? Why would that be?’’

‘’Mister Prime Minister, our intelligence experts believe that the Japanese are in the process of regrouping and reequipping their air groups in Formosa and Okinawa, which have sustained severe losses in the last two months. According to our estimates, the Japanese have lost up to now more than 500 planes of all types over the Philippines.’

‘’Ouch! The Americans must have many fighters left there to cause such losses.’

‘’Uh, not real y, Mister Prime Minister. The last report sent by General MacArthur to Washington five days ago stated that he had a grand total of 27 operational P-40

fighters left in the Philippines.’

‘’That’s all?’’ Exclaimed Churchil , incredulous. His ministers, admirals and generals sitting around the conference table were as surprised as him, with the chief of the R.A.F., Air Chief Marshall Charles Portal, objecting at once.

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‘’But that’s impossible! The Americans must be grossly overestimating the Japanese losses.’

Ismay, apparently certain of his numbers, answered him calmly but firmly.

‘’First, Air Chief Marshall, a good part of the Japanese losses in planes is due to the Americans air defense guns, which are using shells equipped with proximity fuses.

While expensive to produce, those fuses have proven to be extremely efficient. Second, the few American fighter pilots left in the Philippines seem to have found the right tactics against the Japanese. Their top ace in the Philippines, or anywhere else as a matter of fact on the Allies side, now has a claimed total of 58 air victories, nearly all on P-40.’

‘’More than our own best air ace? And what does that pilot do to get so much out of his P-40? The P-40 is not exactly what I would call a superior fighter aircraft. Our own models of P-40 have performed rather poorly against the Germans.’

Ismay then smiled slightly, intriguing Portal.

‘’It is curious that you should mention the Germans now, Lord Portal. That pilot was until five months ago a German female auxiliary of the Luftwaffe held by us in the Tower of London. She was then pardoned by us and married an American officer before following him to the Philippines. That Ingrid Weiss, now named Ingrid Dows, is in fact the adopted daughter of Nancy Laplante, who secretly educated her before she died. It seems that Captain Ingrid Dows has put Laplante’s lessons to good use.’

Churchil couldn’t help burst out in laughter then.

‘’The adopted daughter of Nancy Laplante, the American Ace of aces? That’s a real good one!’

The Prime Minister then became serious again.

‘’Let’s get back to the main subject, General Ismay. Can the Americans stil stop an amphibious invasion by the Japanese in the Philippines.’

‘’That is doubtful, Mister Prime Minister. Most of the American ground troops in the Philippines are Filipino conscripts who are poorly trained and equipped. Against those, the Japanese have four divisions of hardened veterans. With the fall of Singapore, the Japanese will now have even more troops available to attack the Philippines. I am sorry to say that, however heroic the American resistance has been to date, that resistance is approaching the breaking point. On top of that, with the Japanese naval blockade of the Philippines, any evacuation by sea of those American forces will be nearly impossible, while the actual air bridge with Australia has a strictly limited tonnage capacity. Like our troops in Hong Kong and Singapore, the Americans

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in the Philippines are basically condemned in the long run to either die or become prisoner of the Japanese.’

Churchill lowered his head, saddened by these words.

‘’More brave men who will be lost. When will we see an end to this damn war?’’

14:05 (Tokyo Time)

Saturday, December 20, 1941 ‘C’

Underground conference room, Imperial palace

Tokyo, Japan

‘’His Majesty, the Emperor!’

On the announcement of the military aide of Emperor Hirohito, all the ministers and officers present and standing around the conference table bowed deeply as Hirohito entered the room and took place on an elevated dais facing one extremity of the table.

Once the Emperor, wearing a ceremonial kimono, was kneeling on his cushion, the aide gave the permission to be seated. The Keeper of the Imperial Seal, Lord Kido, who spoke for the Emperor, then opened the meeting.

‘’Honorable ministers and officers of the Empire, we are here to respond to grave concerns that His Majesty has developed about the state of the war in general and about our campaign to take the Philippines in particular. We have now been at war with the Americans and their European allies for exactly two months now. Yet, after all that time, not a single army soldier has set foot yet on the Philippines, while the invasion of Burma has been postponed indefinitely. His Majesty is also deeply disturbed by the heavy casualties suffered around and over the Philippines, casualties which have upset many other operational war plans. His Majesty thus seeks your counsels about what to do concerning this sad state of affair.’

Many generals and admirals lowered their eyes, taking this declaration as the harsh rebuke it was. General Tojo, as both Prime Minister and War Minister, was the first to reply to Lord Kido, careful not to address the Emperor directly.

‘’We indeed have failed in our duties by not being able to invade yet the Philippines, but the American resistance there has been way more tenacious than expected. In particular, and in stark contrast to the other enemy forces around the Pacific and Asia, the American forces in the Philippines reacted very swiftly to our attacks and apparently used to the full the information brought from the future by the late

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Canadian time traveler, Nancy Laplante. Our attacks around the Philippines thus didn’t benefit from the factor of surprise, resulting in heavy losses to our forces. Those unexpected losses have in turn forced us to reroute the forces slated for the Burma invasion and direct them towards the Philippines.’

‘’How heavy precisely have been those losses around the Philippines, Prime Minister?’’

Tojo then made a short sign of the head to the Chief of Staff of the Navy, Admiral Nagano, who then started to read from a paper in his hands.

‘’Since the start of hostilities around the Philippines, the Navy has lost up to now in that theatre of operations one fleet carrier, two light carriers, one battleship, seven heavy cruisers, three light cruisers, eleven destroyers and 21 transport or tanker ships.

Many more ships were also damaged to various degrees and needed extensive repairs.

A total of 243 Navy planes, either carrier-borne or land-based, were also lost.’

The next to speak was the Chief of Staff of the Army, General Sugiyama, who read in turn from his own list.

‘’Army losses to date around the Philippines amount to 176 aircraft of all types, plus one infantry regiment, which was lost when its transport ships were sunk.’

There was a moment of silence as the Emperor, in appearance still impassive, digested those numbers with difficulty. Lord Kido then asked another question from the list prepared by Hirohito.

‘’In view of this, His Majesty wishes to know when the first Japanese soldier wil be setting foot in the Philippines.’

General Sugiyama hesitated before answering, noting that the question had been ‘when’

and not ‘if’.

‘’Unfortunately, it is difficult to say when we will be able to land our first troops in the Philippines, as we have not yet won control of the air over that territory. The American fighter forces in the Philippines, which seemed until recently to be close to collapse, have apparently received substantial reinforcements from Australia in the last three weeks.’

The Emperor then surprised everyone by asking himself a question on an acerbic tone.

‘’Can’t the army set troops ashore in the Philippines, even if we do not possess complete air superiority?’’

Tojo took on himself to answer the Emperor, bowing deeply as he did.

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‘’Your Majesty, our valiant soldiers are ready to face any odds and to die in your honor. Having prior control of the air would however limit greatly our losses on landing.’

‘’Yet, our sailors and our aviators are presently dying around and over the Philippines, while our soldiers are waiting for more favorable conditions, Prime Minister.’

Tojo, like all the army officers present and many of the admirals, paled on hearing what amounted to an accusation of cowardice coming from the Emperor, one of the gravest insults possible. To utter such words, the Emperor must indeed have reached the end of his patience. However, if one looked at the facts, his statement was basically true, something that only made the rebuke even more stinging. There was only one answer left for Tojo to give to that. He bowed deeply again to the Emperor and made a pronouncement, basically writing off the alternate war plans he had in mind before coming to the conference.

‘’Our soldiers will be setting foot in the Philippines before a month has passed, Your Majesty.’

Hirohito didn’t say a word, instead nodding his head once before getting up. Al present immediately bowed low until he was gone. The assembled generals, admirals and ministers then looked at each other, stunned and unsure what to do next. Tojo looked around him and gave the officers a curt order.

‘’Gentlemen, I expect to see in a week your updated plans for a landing in force in the Philippines within four weeks.’

02:36 (Manila Time)

Sunday, January 04, 1942 ‘C’

Batangas Airfield

Island of Luzon, Philippines

For some reason, Ingrid couldn’t get to sleep tonight, something bothering her in the back of her mind, as if someone was watching her. There was of course no one present in her small cubicle in one corner of the hut lodging her pilots. Raising the mosquito net surrounding her camp cot, she got up and quietly put on her combat uniform and her boots before going to the office of the duty signaler, who was trying to fight against his fatigue by reading a book while sipping on a cup of coffee. The Filipino sergeant, taken by surprise on seeing her, was about to get up at attention when Ingrid made a sign for him to stay in his chair, talking in a low voice to him.

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‘’I am just going to take some fresh air outside, Sergeant. Please continue reading your book.’

‘’Uh, yes, Captain!’’

Going out on the hut’s porch, Ingrid looked up at the Moon, which was a full one tonight.

The outside air was actually far from being fresh, since the Filipino climate could be described as between hot and humid to even hotter and more humid. However, a wind coming from the nearby sea helped make the temperature bearable. Looking towards the sea, which was visible from her airfield, Ingrid suddenly felt her blood freeze: her piercing eyesight, helped by the light from the full Moon, showed her what seemed to be an entire fleet of warships deployed in the Batangas Bay. Not a single shot from either guns or firearms indicated that a battle was either happening or was imminent. Running inside the hut, she grabbed a pair of binoculars from her squadron’s office, then ran back on the porch and examined in more detail the warships filling the bay. She quickly swore to herself after a few seconds of observation: those were not American warships.

Worse, she could now see what looked furiously like landing barges heading from those ships towards the shore. How could they have arrived here without being spotted and signaled? The Filipino 41st Division was supposed to guard the town of Batangas and its port area. Running back inside yet again, she grabbed telephone and called the command post of that division. To her growing fury, nobody answered her despite her letting the telephone ring a dozen time. Brutally hanging down the receiver, she took a deep breath to calm down, then grabbed the receiver of the direct telephone line between her airfield and General Brereton’s headquarters, in Nielson Field. This time, a man answered her after two rings.

‘’FEAF HQ, Lieutenant Marmont!’

‘’Lieutenant, this is Captain Dows, from the 17th Provisional Pursuit Squadron, in Batangas. Tell General Brereton at once that a large enemy fleet is visible in the Batangas Bay, with landing barges about to touch the shoreline. I can see them from my airfield but nobody in the town of Batangas seems to have reacted to this yet, while nobody at the 41st Division’s command post is answering the phone. I suspect that the local Filipino forces are either asleep at the switch, drunk or both. Please pass my warning to USAFFE HQ as well. I... Wait one!’

Now seeing a bright glare high in the sky outside after hearing a number of cannon shots, Ingrid ran back on the porch, to find that a number of para flares were now

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suspended over the town of Batangas, illuminating the town in their harsh glare. Then, the front line of warships erupted in heavy gun flashes.

‘’SHIT!’

Running back inside, Ingrid barely had the time to pick the telephone again before a string of powerful detonations reverberated through the night.

‘’FEAF HQ, the enemy fleet has just opened fire on the town of Batangas. Get me General Brereton on the line at once!’

‘’Uh, give me a minute, Captain: I wil transfer you.’

While waiting for the officer in Nielson Field to transfer her, Ingrid shouted out as loudly as she could towards the dormitory where here pilots and ground personnel were sleeping.

‘’EVERYBODY UP! A JAPANESE FLEET IS IN BATANGAS BAY AND IS NOW

BOMBARDING THE TOWN OF BATANGAS. I SAY AGAIN: EVERYBODY UP! THE

ENEMY IS HERE!’

Jesus Villamor, who was sleeping next to the squadron’s office, soon ran into the office, still groggy from sleep, as loud explosions rocked the nearby town of Batangas. Ingrid, who was still waiting for General Brereton to come on the line, spoke at once to Jesus.

‘’An enemy fleet is deployed in the Batangas Bay, with landing barges about to reach the shoreline. I tried to alert the 41st Division’s command post but nobody answered the telephone there. I am now waiting to get General Brereton on the line. I am afraid that we may well have to urgently evacuate our airfield before enemy cruisers start bombarding us. Can you make our men haul ass while I speak with Brereton?’’

‘’I’l take care of that. Jesus, what a screwup!’

As Jesus Villamor ran into the dormitory, shouting out loud to finish waiting everybody there, Ingrid finally heard the voice of General Brereton on the line.

‘’Brereton here! What is going on, Captain?’

‘’Sir, a Japanese fleet is now in the Batangas Bay and has just started bombarding the town of Batangas, while landing barges should now be reaching our shores. The 41st Division did not answer my telephone calls when I tried to alert their command post. I am afraid that our surveillance and warning system just failed, spectacularly. With enemy troops about to land only a few miles from my airfield and with the town under cruiser gunfire, I am afraid that my squadron and the 6th Pursuit

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Squadron will have no choice but to evacuate our airfield at once, before naval gunfire squashes us. I thus request your permission to evacuate Batangas Airfield, sir.’

Brereton, understandably shocked by this, took a few seconds before replying with a question.

‘’What is the strength of the enemy fleet now in the Batangas Bay?’’

‘’It was hard to evaluate in the dead of night but I would estimate it at three to four heavy cruisers, half a dozen light cruisers and a good dozen destroyers, plus over twenty support ships, sir. There is little that my P-40s could do against them without the support of dive bombers, especially at night.’

‘’Alright! Load what you can on trucks and evacuate towards Nielson Field while flying your P-40s by air. I... one moment!’

Ingrid then heard Brereton having an animated conversation in the background for a few seconds before the general came back on line, sounding even more shaken now.

‘’We just got reports that the Japanese came in at night and are now making surprise landings around San Fernando, in the Lingayen Gulf. It seems that our troops there have also been taken totally by surprise.’’

‘’Well, it seems that the Japanese final y learned from their past mistakes, General. If they manage to take a solid foothold in both San Fernando and in Batangas tonight, then I am afraid that we wil be truly fucked.’’

‘’I am afraid that you are right about that, Captain. For the moment, the most important is for you to save your planes, your pilots and your ground servicing crews.

Make it quick before the enemy decides to start flattening your airfield with heavy caliber shel s.’

‘’We wil proceed as fast as possible, General.’

‘’Then, good luck to you and your men, Captain.’ said Brereton before hanging up. Putting down her own receiver, Ingrid then ran into the dormitory, where she grabbed Jesus Vil amor’s right arm to get his attention.

‘’The Japanese are also landing in San Fernando, in the Lingayen Gulf. General Brereton has authorized us to evacuate towards Nielson Field. We will need as many trucks and drivers as we can get in order to at least save some of our stocks of spare parts, fuel and ammunition. As for our planes, General Brereton told me to fly them to Nielson Field.’’

‘’Fuck! What happened to our early warning system? Was everybody asleep tonight?’’

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‘’More like exhausted after more than two months of combat, Jesus. It also appears that the Japanese have finally learned some lessons during those months: instead of telegraphing their moves by launching repeated preliminary air bombardments, they chose to come in quietly and at night, to then land troops without naval gunfire or air bombardment preparations and under the cover of darkness, when our planes can do little.’’

‘’You may be right but this stil leaves us royally screwed, Ingrid. I wil let Captain Gun organize and lead the land evacuation towards Nielson Field, while I will prioritize what must be taken away first. I want you to lead our planes and pilots and fly to Nielson Field, where you will get ready to strike back at the enemy.’

‘’Wil do, Jesus! Good luck to you and don’t stay here too much longer: I can smell burnt powder already.’

Less than twenty minutes later, with a convoy of trucks being frantically organized for the loading of spare parts, fuel and ammunition, Ingrid took off with the twelve operational P-40s of her squadron, to then head North towards Nielson Field and Manila. Unfortunately, she had to abandon one P-40 in Batangas, its engine being under repair. She would gladly have taken the occasion to attack and strafe the Japanese landing barges she could see in the bay, off the town of Batangas, but realized that most of her pilots were not experienced enough in night flying and night air attacks to do so without risking to lose many of her precious fighters. She thus had to swallow her pride and fly away from Batangas without engaging the enemy.

Despite the fact that Ingrid’s squadron and that of Jesus Vil amor managed to evacuate Batangas successfully and to reestablish themselves in Nielson Field, those surprise Japanese night landings proved to be deadly blows against the American defenses of the Philippines, while the mostly poorly trained and equipped Filipino troops forming the majority of the ground defense units proved unable to significantly oppose the Japanese veterans swarming out of their beachheads in Batangas and San Fernando. The fight for the Philippines then turned into a ground battle of attrition that the Americans and the Filipinos couldn’t win in the long run. After only two more days, mostly spent on escort missions for A-24 dive bombers, in which many American planes were shot down by enemy ground fire, Ingrid and Jesus ended up commanding the remaining fourteen fighters in the Philippines, with that number diminishing gradually as

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the days went by. Flying up to seven missions a day, Ingrid and her small band of pilots soon were near utter exhaustion. Three days after the Japanese landings, on January 7, the B-17 heavy bombers still remaining in the Philippines had to fly to Australia, while the air resupply bridge, which had done so much to support the American resistance, was discontinued. Aboard one of the last C-87s to fly off from Clark Field was Admiral Thomas Hart and the members of his staff, who was transferring his flag to Darwin, in Australia. With all his ships and submarines at sea and with the naval base in Cavite mostly in ruins, Admiral Hart had no reasons left to stay in the Philippines. However, before leaving, he transferred his Marine Corps units, including the one to which Ken Dows belonged, under the command of General MacArthur. As for Douglas MacArthur, he then did one of his typical publicity stunts by publicly promoting Ingrid to the rank of major, supposedly to reward her high standard of leadership in combat. While about everybody agreed that Ingrid deserved her new promotion, it was seen in reality by MacArthur’s critics as an attempt by him to gloss over the precarity of his command’s situation in the Philippines and to raise the morale of his troops.

17:37 (Manila Time)

Thursday, January 8, 1942 ‘C’

The Dows’ house, U.S. Navy married quarters district Manila

Having come to Manila at General Douglas MacArthur’s request, who had then pinned the rank insignias of a major on her combat shirt, plus a new Distinguished Flying Cross medal, Ingrid had decided to go visit her house in the district of Manila where the houses reserved for American officers and their families were. Once stopped in front of her house, Ingrid told the Filipino driver of her jeep to wait for her, then stepped out of her vehicle and walked at a quick pace to her front door and knocked briefly on it before opening it while shouting in Tagalog.

‘’JULIA, JUANITA, IT’S ME, INGRID!’

Young Juanita, who had been in the lounge with her husband and two little children, was the first to come to her at a near run, warmly hugging and kissing her on the cheeks.

‘’Ingrid, it is so nice to see that you are stil wel .’

‘’And it is a pleasure to see you again, Juanita. Could you get all of you in the lounge? I have important things to say to you all.’

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‘’Right away, Ingrid. JULIA, COME TO THE LOUNGE WITH YOUR FAMILY: INGRID NEEDS TO SPEAK TO US.’

It didn’t take long for Julia, who also hugged and kissed Ingrid, and her family to join the other Filipinos in the lounge. Positioning herself in a corner of the lounge and facing the nine Filipino men, women and children, Ingrid then spoke to them in a friendly but sober voice.

‘’My dear friends, I came to pick up a few personal souvenirs of high value to me, like the pictures of Nancy Laplante and of me with my two adoptive parents. I also came to warn you about things to come and to give you a few counsels and directives. First off, know that, despite what you may have heard on the official radio stations, the outcome of this war for Manila is grim indeed. From the information about this war given to me by Nancy Laplante, who was quoting historical information from the Year 2012, the Japanese will occupy Manila in the coming weeks, then will take the whole of the Philippines in the next few months. I can tell you from my own perspective that, while I am resolved to continue fighting for the Philippines until the bitter end, I already believe that we can’t win, unless the United States sends us strong reinforcements, something that I don’t believe will happen. Thus, this house and the rest of Manila wil soon enough be occupied by the Japanese and I can assure you that they will not be tender in their occupation. This house and other residences previously occupied by American officers will be especially targeted by the Japanese, who will either burn them down or, at the minimum, loot them. Anybody they will find in them will be either chased away, arrested or killed. You are thus not safe here anymore, my friends. Mateo, Felipe, do you have relatives who live away from Manila, ideally in a small rural village or isolated plantation, relatives who would accept to receive you and shelter you?’’

Mateo, the forty-year-old husband of Ingrid’s cook and an ex-police officer, answered her first.

‘’One of my brothers has a small farm some sixty miles east of here, near the coast. I am sure that he would accept to shelter my family.’

‘’Can you call him by phone and warn him that you may come to his farm?’

‘’I can: he does have a telephone and the region he lives in has not been bombarded by the Japanese, due to the fact that there are no valuable targets there.’

‘’Excellent! Your pickup truck is stil working properly?’’

‘’It is old and battered but it stil can roll, Ingrid.’

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‘’Good!’’ said Ingrid before looking at Felipe, the husband of Juanita, her young maid. ‘’And you, Felipe, do you have relatives or friends living away from Manila and who would be wil ing to shelter your family?’’

‘’My grandparents certainly would take us in their farm, Ingrid. They in fact live close to where Mateo’s brother has his farm. However, I have no car or truck to carry my family.’

Ingrid, having anticipated this a long time ago, nodded her head and started walking towards her bedroom.

‘’I could arrange something about that, Felipe. Just give me a second to retrieve something out of my bedroom.’

Going to her bedroom, Ingrid searched through a drawer of her night stand and took out two official Filipino government forms before returning to the lounge, where she showed the forms to Felipe.

‘’These are two copies of a government form meant to officialize the sale or transfer of a motor vehicle. I will now fill this in your name as the new owner of my used Dodge convertible and will then sign it, along with you. With it, you will be able to evacuate your family to safety. Officially, you bought my car for 110 dollars. In reality, you owe me only a hug.’’

Felipe and Juanita, overjoyed, came at once to her and exchanged emotional hugs and kisses with Ingrid.

‘’Ingrid, you are the best person I ever met.’ said a weeping Juanita, making Ingrid smile to her.

‘’Juanita, you and all of the rest of you here are good people who deserve my help. Now, once me and Felipe will have filled and signed these forms, I will have something else for your two families.’’

Taking a couple of minutes to fill and sign the forms with Felipe, Ingrid then gave him one of the copies before taking out of a shirt pocket a thick envelope and opening it.

She then distributed the 400 American dollars in cash it contained in four equal parts between Felipe, Juanita, Mateo and Julia.

‘’Please accept this money as emergency funds while you wil be away from Manila, my friends. I won’t need that money while fighting out of the jungles of the Philippines. You, on the other hand, will need to support your families during the hard

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times to come. Use some of that money to buy extra provisions of food before leaving Manila. Also, split between your two families the emergency reserves of canned food, rice, flour and bottled water we kept in our bomb shelter in our backyard.’

‘’And when should we leave Manila in your opinion, Ingrid?’ asked Mateo, not believing his luck. Ingrid then threw him a sober look.

‘’Today! The sooner you wil be out of Manila and on the way to your relatives’

places, the better. Start packing your things now and load them in your cars, along with the supplies from my bomb shelter. I will then escort you in my jeep up to the eastern limits of Manila, in order to prevent any Filipino or American checkpoint from stopping you or taking away your money and supplies. While you pack, I will myself gather the few things I want to bring with me and will also call the military police station to inform them that I am closing my married quarters residence.’

Julia looked at Ingrid with tears in her eyes.

‘’Ingrid, you are a true angel! May God protect you while you will fight the Japanese.’

Some forty minutes later, Ingrid and the Filipinos left the house in a three-vehicle convoy after she had locked up her residence, then rolled eastward out of Manila. On their way, Ingrid had her convoy stop briefly at a gas station, then at a small groceries store, in order to let the Filipinos fill up their car tanks and fill a few spare gas cans, plus buy some extra provisions. When buying those provisions, Ingrid further helped the families of her cook and maid by using most of her remaining cash money to pay for them, in order to allow to keep as much cash as possible with them. Her presence actually proved useful when her convoy was stopped at the limits of Manila at a checkpoint manned by American military policemen and soldiers who appeared to Ingrid to be treating rather heavy-handedly the passing Filipino civilians. Before she passed through the checkpoint with Mateo and Felipe’s cars, Ingrid threw a severe look at the American MP sergeant in charge of the checkpoint.

‘’Sergeant, the Filipinos are our allies and part of our duties as American soldiers is to protect them, not to treat them like second-class people. Stop bullying them and use courtesy and consideration with the people who will pass here. Understood, Sergeant?’’

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‘’Uh, yes ma’am!’ could only say the MP sergeant while coming to attention and saluting her. Ingrid returned his salute, then signaled to Mateo and Felipe to roll forward to where she stood. She the share last hugs and kisses with the two Filipino families.

‘’Our roads split here, my friends. May you survive this war and stay healthy. Go and drive to safety! I will myself have to return to Nielson Field now. Good luck and have a safe trip, my friends.’’

‘’We love you, Ingrid!’’ said Julia as Mateo’s car started rolling away, closely followed by Ingrid’s old car, now driven by Felipe. Ingrid waved at them for a last time, tears in her eyes, then sat back in her jeep and looked at her driver.

‘’Time to go back to Nielson Field, Carlos.’

‘’Yes, Major!’

Her driver waited until he had turned around and had rolled some distance from the checkpoint before giving her a grateful look.

‘’Thank you for showing such generosity and regard towards us Filipinos, ma’am: too many Americans tend to treat us as second-class people.’’

‘’I know, Carlos. Racism is stil a disease which is ingrained in too many Americans. Unfortunately, it wil stil take many decades for that to change.’

With the Japanese advancing towards Manila from both the North and the South and with many Filipino troops, poorly trained, poorly equipped and too often poorly led, often retreating without firing a shot, Douglas MacArthur soon had no choice but to transfer his headquarters to the fortress island of Corregidor, at the entrance of Manila Bay, and to declare Manila as an open city, in order to save it from Japanese bombardments. Ingrid, forced with her squadron to abandon Nielson Field on January 12, withdrew on orders from Colonel George, who had replaced General Brereton, who was now in Australia, to a rudimentary airstrip in the Bataan Peninsula, with a convoy of trucks carrying her mechanics, spare parts, tools and reserves of fuel and ammunition.

Thankfully for the Americans and Filipinos who retreated to Bataan under Japanese pressure, the peninsula had been fortified and prepared for a long occupation as soon as September of 1941, before the start of the war in the Pacific, with large stocks of supplies and ammunition stored inside tunnels dug with explosives in the hills of Bataan.

The seven operational P-40Fs remaining to Ingrid thus found ample provisions of fuel, ammunition and food in the tunnels dug next to the small auxiliary airstrip on which she landed with her fighter aircraft near the small naval station of Mariveles. With all the

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fighters of the Filipino Sixth Pursuit Squadron having been lost by now, with Jesus Vil amor being its only surviving pilot, Ingrid’s 17th Provisional Pursuit Squadron was now, with a handful of surviving A-24 dive bombers of the 24th Bombardment Group, all that was left of the American air forces in the Philippines. Thankfully, the 90 mm and 75

mm anti-aircraft guns and the heavy machine guns which had defended Cavite, Clark Field and Nielson Field, had been moved in time to take positions around Bataan and Mariveles, to defend the peninsula from both air and sea attacks. One surviving Army artillery regiment also was able to retreat to Bataan and was now providing some precious fire support to the American and Filipino soldiers defending the peninsula. Part of those soldiers defending Bataan was Ken Dows and his unit of marines, who now benefited directly from the air support provided by his wife and her pilots.

17:56 (Manila Time)

Thursday, January 22, 1942 ‘C’

Mariveles Airstrip, Bataan Peninsula

Island of Luzon, Philippines

Ingrid, tired and dripping with sweat, got out of her cockpit and stepped on the right-side wing of her P-40F before jumping down on the ground. A small army of mechanics then came forward to perform maintenance on her plane and to refill her fuel tanks and ammunition boxes as she walked at a tired step towards the sandbag bunker which served as the command post for her squadron. With only five P-40s still operational, his aircraft mechanics were now in excess compared to the number of planes to be maintained and repaired but, rather than transform them into full-time infantrymen, like what many other squadrons had done on orders from General Wainwright, the second-in-command of General MacArthur, Ingrid was using them to accelerate the maintenance work done on his precious fighter aircraft, which allowed her in return to multiply the number of missions flown per day and thus augment the impact her squadron made on the battle well above the level which would normally be made by six planes. However, even more than the stress and fatigue from the numerous combat missions and from the intermittent enemy air bombardments, the forced diet she and her men were enduring in order to make their reserves of food last for as long as possible was starting to sap her strength.

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Pulling aside the double set of black curtains and mosquito nets covering the entrance of the bunker, Ingrid gave a tired smile to Jesus Villamor and Paul Gunn, both sitting at one of the two small tables in the bunker and reviewing maintenance reports and lists of spare parts.

‘’Hi, guys! The Japanese now have five tanks and two OSCAR fighters less on the front of our First Army Corps. I can also say that our P-40s are still king of the air at low altitude and high speeds. The Japanese forgot about that and I had to remind them about that fact.’

‘’And your plane, Ingrid?’ asked Paul Gunn, who was responsible for the maintenance and repair of their precious planes.

‘’No damage or bul et holes visible. As for the Japanese planes, they are getting quite rare these days. We must have gutted their aviation regiments during the last couple of months.’’

‘’I won’t complain about that last point.’ declared Jesus before passing a piece of paper to Ingrid. ‘’Here is the list of pilots who will take the relay tomorrow for our next missions, Ingrid. You will thus be entitled to a day of rest, you lucky girl.’

Ingrid made a sarcastic smile as he read the list. Now having an average of two pilots per available plane, she could now afford to conduct rotations, like in the case of her mechanics.

‘’I believe that I wil instead continue to train our men in jungle warfare and in shooting practice during the day: they stil need that training.’

Paul Gunn didn’t laugh at the notion that a woman could train men in infantry fighting: what he knew about her past incarnations, as well as the expertise Ingrid had shown on the terrain, made him take her very seriously about that subject. However, many others around the American forces and the command echelon in Bataan had laughed at that, refusing to believe that Ingrid could fight on the ground with her men. Only the desperate tactical and strategic situation they were all in had made them ignore something that would never have been tolerated in the United States. Taking off a piece of tissue covering a mess tin, he presented the tin and a spoon to Ingrid.

‘’Your supper is served, O My Queen.’

Ingrid, who was positively starving, took only a second to look at the content of the tin before starting to eat while staying on her feet. Jesus also gave her a cup of water, which she used to wash down the rice with tuna of her supper.

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‘’Tomorrow, I wil try to find a few plantain trees or other wild fruits and roots, in order to supplement our diet, while leading a jungle patrol.’ said Ingrid as she was finishing to eat her meager meal. ‘’How are our stocks of spare parts doing, Paul?’’

‘’We stil have enough parts to maintain our remaining planes for another month, if we don’t suffer some major battle damage in the meantime. However, we have only two spare engines left.’

‘’We wil do what we can with what we have.’’ Replied Ingrid in a resigned tone, before going to grab a bottle of quinine in order to swallow her daily dose of anti-malaria pills, then washing them down with water. Malaria was a very serious medical problem in the Philippines and too many soldiers still refused to take their quinine pills because of the bitter taste and secondary effects of that medication. As a consequence, many American soldiers were now suffering from periodic bouts of malaria, something that had a major impact on the efficiency of General MacArthur’s forces. In contrast, Ingrid had forced from the start her men in taking their quinine pills, preaching by example. As for the Japanese, Ingrid knew from the information from the future provided by Nancy Laplante that they were suffering as badly than the Americans from malaria and from other tropical diseases.

‘’Well, I am going to go wash before the mosquitos come out in force tonight.

See you tomorrow, guys!’

‘’See you tomorrow, Ingrid!’ replied in unison Vil amor and Gunn before she walked out of the bunker. Jesus watched her go with a dreamy expression, then spoke to Paul while keeping his voice low.

‘’What a girl! Too bad that she is already married.’

‘’She is indeed a very beautiful girl.’ added Paul, smiling. ‘’However, even more than her beauty, she is an incredible fighter pilot and a very competent squadron commander. I wonder what the American public would say if it could see her performance here: there are still so many idiotic comments running about her in the States.’

‘’The public would refuse to believe it and would scream ‘propaganda’.’ replied Jesus. ‘’President Quezon took one of his best decisions ever by accepting her as a fighter pilot in our Air Corps. It was also a very good deal: 71 Japanese aircraft shot down by her in less than three months. I wonder when the United States will finally accept women as fighter pilots in its Army Air Corps.’’

‘’Probably never!’ replied Paul in a bitter tone.

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05:28 (Manila Time)

Friday, January 23, 1942 ‘C’

Mariveles Airfield, Bataan

‘’Major! Major! Please wake up: you have an urgent call from Mariveles.’’

Ingrid, who had been sleeping on her camp cot surrounded by a mosquito net and set in her small tent, opened her eyes and saw the faithful Sergeant Aquino, her squadron clerk, bent over her.

‘’Uh, what is it, Sergeant?’’

‘’Urgent call from Commander Bridget, at the Mariveles Naval Station, Major. He needs reinforcements to repulse a Japanese force that landed in our sector.’

Waking up in a hurry, Ingrid jumped out of bed and grabbed her combat uniform’s pants and boots, then started dressing up. She didn’t take the time to lace up her boots or to put on her combat shirt over her bra, instead grabbing her shirt and pistol belt before running out of her tent and rush towards her command bunker. It was still night and nobody would notice her present state of dress before she got to the bunker. Grabbing the receiver of the field telephone linking her bunker with the nearby naval station, she spoke while starting to put on her shirt.

‘’Major Dows speaking!’

‘’Dows, this is Commander Bridget. We have a big problem at the Logonskawayan Point: a few hundred Japanese landed there during the night and then advanced stealthily up to the heights of Mount Pucot. They are now a mere mile from the naval station and I need all the men you could send me to help repel them. More Japanese landed at the Quinauan Point but other units are taking care of them. What can you send me without compromising your air operations?’

Ingrid thought about that for a second before answering him.

‘’I can lead out a hundred men. Where exactly do you want me to go?’

There was a noticeable pause before Bridget, a naval aviator, answered her in a hesitant tone.

‘’Uh, you don’t need to lead your men in combat in person, major. You could...’

Ingrid interrupted him, irritation in her voice, having easily guessed the real reason for his hesitation.

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‘’I command these men and I will lead them into combat, Commander. Where do you want me?’

Bridget hesitated for a second time then before responding.

‘’Go to the base of Mont Pucot, on the coastal road one mile west of the naval station, where you will join Lieutenant Pew’s platoon. Lieutenant Hogan’s platoon will advance on Mount Pucot from the South. When could you be in position?’’

‘’We wil be there in half an hour, Commander. We have our own trucks.’

‘’Perfect! Once there, you will place yourself under Lieutenant Pew’s orders.’

That was when Ingrid had enough of that misogynistic clown and raised her voice.

‘’Commander, I clearly outrank Lieutenant Pew and command a force three times his force’s size. I know that I am a woman but, if we follow the same stupid notion you are going by, I wouldn’t even be a fighter pilot. Final y, you are talking to a Medal of Honor recipient, so could you forget your prejudices and have confidence in me for a change?’

Bridget, who was very conscious of Ingrid’s combat exploits as well as his own rather lackluster career, finally gave up.

‘’Very wel , Major. Coordinate your actions with Lieutenant Pew but lead your men to the best the tactical situation wil permit.’

‘’Thank you, Commander. I wil be in position in thirty minutes.’

Putting down the receiver, Ingrid then looked at Sergeant Aquino.

‘’Sergeant, wake up Lieutenant Mahoney and the men of Group Alpha and tell them that we are going on an urgent ground combat mission. They must be ready to leave in less than fifteen minutes.’

‘’Right away, Major!’

As Aquino ran out of the bunker to wake up the men of Group Alpha, which was composed of the half of the squadron not actively working on air operations for this day, Ingrid returned to her tent to finish dressing and equipping herself. She transferred her pistol and its holster to the canvas belt supporting her rifle ammunition clips, her bayonet and her water bottle, then put on a small backpack containing two days of rations, some extra ammunition and two extra water bottles. She also took a compass, a rudimentary map of the area of the Bataan Peninsula and a flashlight with red filter lense before grabbing her Springfield 1903 rifle and going to the assembly point of the airfield. Her men, a mix of aircraft mechanics, repair technicians, clerks and pilots, came one by one,

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to be inspected at once by Ingrid, who concentrated on the amount of ammunition, water and food they carried and on inspecting their weapons, which was a mix of rifles, pistols, revolvers and a few rare sub machine guns. She had already taken some time during the last days to teach them the basics of jungle fighting and of shooting, which was more than could be said about the collection of Navy sailors passing of as infantrymen these days. The squadron’s chief cook then distributed on orders from Ingrid some extra tins of fish or meat to each man, while Ingrid made sure that all the water bottles were full and that everyone had a few quinine pills with them. Finally, she had everyone unroll their shirt sleeves and buttoned up their collars and made them smear some mud on their faces and hands as an improvised camouflage paint. Once satisfied that her men were ready, she had her 94 men climb aboard five of the trucks of her squadron and, climbing in the cab of the lead truck, signaled her convoy to roll.

She soon arrived after a short trip along the coastal road at the foot of Mount Pucot, in reality a 200-meter-high hill covered with a dense vegetation. About twenty Navy men, a mix of simple sailors, technicians and clerk, were waiting there under the command of a young Navy lieutenant whose nervousness was immediately apparent to Ingrid. First making her men jump down from their trucks and telling them to get under cover in the jungle, she went to Lieutenant Pew, who came to attention and saluted her.

‘’Major, I must say that I am happy to see your men here.’

‘’And I would appreciate if you stopped saluting me in plain view of possible enemy snipers, Lieutenant.’ replied Ingrid on a firm but neutral tone. ‘’What do we know about these Japanese who landed during the night?’’

‘’That they chased away the men manning our observation post atop Mount Pucot, ma’am. Landing barges were also seen in the process of sailing away from the Longoskawayan Point.’’

‘’So, we have an indeterminate number of Japanese soldiers atop this hill. It will be still dark for a bit more than half an hour. Let’s use the darkness to at least climb part of the way up this hill. Once we will see the enemy, we will deploy in a skirmish line along the slope and wil continue our climb.’

‘’And if the Japanese fire on us?’

‘’We wil return fire and will then go forward by tactical leaps, using fire and movement. With this dense jungle, our shooting will have to be done at short ranges only. The speed of our reactions wil be primordial. Are your men ready?’’

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‘’Er, yes, Major!’

‘’Then, we wil form four parallel single files, with a minimum of ten paces between files and five paces between men. There will be no talking and no smoking: the incandescent tips of lit cigarettes can be seen from very far at night. Let’s move!’’

Intimidated by the quiet authority and assurance shown by Ingrid, Pews then passed her orders to her band of sailors and clerks, lining them up in single file before starting to advance up the slope, with the platoon led by Ingrid on its right flank. Two other platoon-sized lines of aviators and mechanics followed on Ingrid’s right flank as the small force entered the dense jungle and started climbing the hill. Using her compass, Ingrid kept her force on the correct heading to the top while walking at a moderate pace, knowing how hard it was to advance at night in a jungle without getting disoriented or lost. She still had to remind a number of times, using a low voice, to her platoon leaders to stay within sight of her own file and to respect their distances.

They were still halfway up the slopes when the Sun rose. Seeing that the density of the vegetation continued to give her a good cover, Ingrid decided to continue advancing in platoon-size files, rather than deploying her men in a long extended line which would be very difficult to control in such a jungle. Walking cautiously while holding her rifle, which had its bayonet fixed on it, pointed and at the ready, Ingrid visually searched the jungle, trying to spot any Japanese soldier who could be hiding in it. She and her men were less than a hundred meters from the top of the hill when she saw some movement ahead. Signaling to her men to imitate her, she stopped and crouched low, using a thick tree as cover. Looking to her right, then to her left, she was irritated to see that Lieutenant Pew either had not seen her sign or had ignored it and was continuing his advance. She thus growled an order in a low voice.

‘’Halt and take cover!’

The NCO following Pew heard her and patted on Pew’s shoulder to attract his attention.

The young lieutenant stopped immediately and looked at Ingrid.

‘’What do we do now, Major?’’

‘’You keep quiet and do as I do. I believe that I saw some movement ahead of us. Deploy your platoon into section files.’’

To Ingrid’s exasperation and anger, Pew passed orders at a near shout, becoming clearly audible to anyone around.

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‘’PARKER, IRVING, DEPLOY YOUR SECTIONS ON EACH SIDE OF MY

SECTION. WE WILL...’

Two rifle shots interrupted him, making him throwing himself behind the cover of a young tree. Ingrid, having located by sound the approximate origin of those rifle shots, signaled to her men to follow her, then started marching quickly in a half crouch, her rifle pointed, while using to the maximum the cover of the surrounding trees. A third rifle shot directed at Pew, who was still hiding behind a tree, then helped Ingrid to better define the position of the enemy soldiers. She thus corrected her heading and slowed down her pace while rising her rifle to her right shoulder, ready to fire. Her past lives’ experiences as a hunter and as a warrior, many of them spent in jungle environment, helped her in spotting first the two Japanese soldiers who had fired on Pew. Both were very close to her, within thirty meters ahead and slightly to her left, and were hiding behind the trunk of a dead tree. Stopping and putting one knee on the ground, Ingrid aimed at the head of the nearest Japanese and fired her rifle. Not waiting to see if the Japanese fell down or not, she immediately worked up her rifle bolt to load a fresh cartridge in the bore of her weapon. Her second shot resonated as the surviving Japanese was looking with shock as his dead comrade, the back of his head having exploded under the impact of Ingrid’s bullet. That Japanese then got her second bullet right inside his mouth, which had opened from the fear and surprise of finally seeing Ingrid, dying before he could point his rifle at her. Ingrid, knowing that there was now no sense in staying quiet, shouted out loud to her men.

‘’DEPLOY IN SKIRMISH LINE AND RUN TO THE TREELINE, THEN TAKE

FIRING POSITIONS!’

Having confidence that her men would react quickly and properly to her orders, she took the time to chamber a fresh round in her rifle, then started running up the slope, her rifle pointed. Once at the treeline, she knelt behind a large tree and looked left and right to see where her men were now. Her three platoons of aviators and mechanics were now deployed along the treeline and using the cover of trees to start firing at the Japanese holding the ridgeline of this part of Mount Pucot. However, the sailors of Lieutenant Pew were still a good fifty meters behind the line of airmen, advancing only with what could charitably be called excessive caution. Having had enough by now of the navy men’s tactical incompetence, Ingrid decided to continue on with only her airmen and shouted more orders down their extended line.

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‘’FIRST PLATOON, PREPARE TO CHARGE THE RIDGELINE WITH ME.

SECOND AND THIRD PLATOONS, YOU WILL PROVIDE COVERING FIRE FROM

THE TREELINE. FIRST PLATOON, CHAARGE!’

Ingrid then got up and ran full tilt towards the top of the hill while zigzagging, in order to ruin the aim of any Japanese who would try to shoot her. A machine gun then opened fire from the top of the hill. However, the covering fire from the rifles of two of Ingrid’s platoon was enough to at least affect the accuracy of the machine gunner, who had to keep his head low while shooting. One bullet zipped by her head as she was about to get to the crest of the hill but she then fired back at once, downing one of the three Japanese soldiers manning the machine gun position. Rifle fire from the men of the First Platoon then killed another machine gun servant. The lone surviving Japanese, who had been trying to push the dead gunner off his machine gun, belatedly grabbed his own rifle and stood up, aiming at her, only to be shot dead by Ingrid. She then ran towards the machinegun position while shouting out loud to her men.

‘’THE MACHINE GUN IS OUT! LET’S ROLL THE ENEMY’S FLANK, MEN!

CHAARGE!’’

The 22 men of First Platoon following her at a run, Ingrid sprinted towards the dozen or so Japanese soldiers still deployed in shallow foxholes along the ridgeline, at the same time as she worked the bolt of her rifle again while holding its butt against her right shoulder. The Japanese, forced to keep their heads mostly down due to the covering fire provided by two of her platoons, saw her come too late, with only three of them turning their rifles towards Ingrid. They were however promptly gunned down by the men charging with her, with one of the Japanese killed by Ingrid’s next bul et. Not having the time to reload her rifle, Ingrid charged the nearest Japanese soldier still alive while screaming with utter ferocity, her bayonet pointed.

‘’SPARTAA! ’’

The Japanese she was charging was actually a young officer holding a katana saber in one hand and an 8 mm pistol in the other hand. His 94 Shiki Kenju pistol then confirmed its mediocre reputation of abysmal design and very low production quality by jamming when the Japanese officer tried to shoot Ingrid down. He barely had time to throw away his useless pistol and grab his katana with both hands before Ingrid’s bayonet pierced his heart, going through his torso and sticking out of his back. Projected backward by the force of the impact, the Japanese officer fell on his back, dead. Ingrid, stepping with one boot on his chest, then quickly pulled out her bayonet, then continued her charge

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forward. Already taking steady casualties from the rifle fire coming from the treeline below them, the few surviving Japanese then panicked and tried to run away. Ingrid then stopped dead in her track and worked her rifle bolt while shouting more orders.

‘’FIRST PLATOON, SHOOT THEM DOWN! SECOND AND THIRD PLATOON, CEASE FIRE AND JOIN US ON THE RIDGELINE!’

With the fleeing Japanese mercilessly gunned down in seconds, her remaining 72 men quickly joined her on the top of the hill, with Ingrid then directing them.

‘’FIRST PLATOON, FACE WEST AND COVER THE HILLTOP APPROACH TO

THIS POSITION. SECOND PLATOON, FACE EAST AND COVER THAT SIDE OF

THE HILL. THE REST, SEARCH THOSE DEAD JAPANESE AND GRAB ANY MAP OR

DOCUMENTS ON THEM, PLUS THEIR WEAPONS, AMMUNITION, WATER

BOTTLES, RATIONS AND FIELD SHOVELS. BRING THE LOT TO ME AND PILE

THEM UP SEPARATELY BY TYPE.’

Inspecting the Japanese she had shot, she found one of them to be still alive and immediately stabbed him in the heart with her bayonet before searching him, attracting a horrified look from Lieutenant Pew, whose men were only now getting on the hilltop.

‘’You are not taking prisoners, Major?’’

‘’No! This Japanese was too seriously wounded and he would anyway have preferred death over capture.’

Ignoring Pew, Ingrid took the folding entrenching tool carried by the dead Japanese and gave it to one of her mechanics, an old NCO in whom she had full confidence.

‘’Master Sergeant Marti, take the other shovels you will find on those dead Japanese and start immediately digging foxholes along this hilltop to establish a defensive line facing Southeast. More Japanese could try to retake this position.’’

‘’Understood, ma’am.’’

‘’Lieutenant Mahoney, check for casualties on our side.’

‘’Right away, Major.’

Ingrid then looked with a critical eye at Lieutenant Pew and his sailors. The navy men had tried to make their white uniforms less visible by soaking them in some kind of chemical but had only managed to turn them a dirty yellow which was visible from afar.

They were thus now simply moving targets for any shooter with a minimum of training.

Calling Pew to her, she then gave her some quick instructions.

‘’Lieutenant, you and your platoon wil stay here and hold this position against any enemy counter-attack. I already gave orders to start digging foxholes facing

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southeast. Your men will continue that digging and will occupy those foxholes once completed. Make sure that your men don’t walk in the open and that they don’t smoke at night or speak loudly, in order not to reveal your positions. Do you have a radio with you?’’

‘’I have, Major.’

‘’Then call Commander Bridget and tell him that we are on top of Mount Pucot and that we took out an enemy platoon position. Tell him as well that I will now split my men into two groups, in order to sweep the length of the hilltop, while you will hold this position. Send that message now.’’

Ingrid’s next move was to go search the body of the Japanese officer she had killed. She was quickly rewarded by finding a map of the area with markings on it, plus a field notebook with writing in Japanese. Her satisfaction grew when she noticed the bulky radio backpack lying close by in the foxhole that officer had been occupying.

Checking out the radio, Ingrid found that it was still functional and was actually switched on. Quickly taking off her small backpack, she attached it to the Japanese radio backpack, then put it on and put its headset harness around her head. Now able to listen on to any Japanese radio traffic which could be transmitted in the local area, she started studying the marked map and notebook taken from the dead officer, while her men started forming piles nearby with Japanese weapons, ammunitions, rations, water bottles, entrenching tools and field gear. A mere minute after putting on the Japanese radio backpack, she heard a voice speaking Japanese in the earphone of her headset.

‘’Green Dragon, this is Nakashima One. I have lost contact with one of my sub-units, which may have been taken out by the enemy. When do you expect to be at my location, over?’’

The response, also in Japanese, was much weaker in strength, showing to Ingrid that it came from some distance away. However, what was said then grabbed her full attention.

‘’From Green Dragon, we heard a heavy exchange of fire from the general area of your sub-unit. I have thus accelerated my pace and should be at your position in less than one hour. In the meantime, hold your position at all cost, over.’

‘’Nakashima One, understood, out!’

Her mind working at full speed, Ingrid associated what she had just heard with what she read on the map and notebook she had captured. Taking a decision, she then called her

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four platoon commanders to her for an impromptu orders group, speaking to them as soon as they were assembled around her.

‘’Gentlemen, I just heard a Japanese radio transmission from a force on its way to Mount Pucot. It announced to the unit holding Mount Pucot that it would be here within one hour. We will thus have to act fast to prevent the enemy from reinforcing its hold on Mount Pucot, something that could seriously threaten our naval station in Mariveles. Lieutenant Pew, you and your men will stay here and hold this position while my other men will go take the rest of the ridgeline. There will be no retreat from this present position.’

Pew, who was being stared at hard by Ingrid, meekly nodded his head then in response.

‘’Understood, Major.’

Ingrid then looked at her three other platoon leaders.

‘’Master Sergeant Marti, you will take your group and have them carry our wounded and dead down to the trail where we came off our trucks, so that they could be quickly brought to our first aid station. Lieutenant Mahoney and Lieutenant Strauss, your platoons will follow me towards the main enemy position overlooking our naval station and will take it. I however want the three armorers in Lieutenant Strauss’ platoon to stay here and man the Japanese machinegun we just captured. All of our men who were armed only with handguns up to now will each grab a captured Arisaka Type 38 rifle and as much 6.5 mm ammunition as they can carry in order to rearm themselves. Before we split, we will redistribute among us the captured Japanese grenades, equipment, rations and water. God knows how limited our own stocks were. Get to it, men!’’

Next, Ingrid used the backpack radio carried by her own signaler to call her airfield in order to have trucks come forward to pick up her three wounded and two dead men.

With that done, she went to inspect the machine gun she had captured, a Nambu Type 11 ‘light’ machine gun in 6.5 mm caliber.

‘’So, how are you doing with this thing, guys?’’

Her head armorer, Staff Sergeant Rafael Manolo, gave her a critical look.

‘’Please excuse my language, ma’am, but this machine gun is a piece of junk! I never saw such a poorly designed weapon in my life. First, it is fed from a sort of feeding hopper in which you have to put five-round clips of 6.5 mm ammunition for rifles.

Second, the bullets must be lubricated by this oil bottle on one side of the feeder before they enter the chamber, something that invites jamming via the free entrance of dirt and sand through the hopper. Thirdly, it weighs twice as much as it should be for its caliber

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and size. I wonder how the Japanese have managed to win so many battles with such shitty weapons.’’

What Ingrid or Manolo couldn’t know was that the Nambu Type 11 light machine gun would be named after World War 2 as ‘the worst ever machine gun in History’.

‘’I agree with you, Sergeant, but can you make it work?’’

‘’Yes ma’am!’

‘’That’s all that I need for the moment. You will be free to throw it away after this battle.’’

‘’Thank you, ma’am!’ said the armorer with a big smile, making Ingrid chuckle.

A few minutes later, after their cook, Corporal Garamon, had issued to each man their share of captured Japanese rations and after she had spoken a few words of encouragement to her three wounded men, Ingrid gave the signal to move out, leaving behind Lieutenant Pew and his sailors, plus Sergeant Manolo’s machine gun team.

Knowing that the other Japanese position was no more than 500 meters to the Southeast, Ingrid walked as silently as she could while not being too slow. However, with 58 men with little experience of jungle fighting following her, it was like a mouse advancing quietly while followed by a dozen elephants. That soon frustrated her to no little degree but she knew that she couldn’t blame her men for this: they were not trained infantrymen after all and most of them had never seen a jungle from up close until a couple of months ago. She thus resigned herself to be only reasonably quiet but cut the speed of her pace and signaled her men to walk while bent forward, in order to offer the smallest targets possible to the Japanese. After a half-hour of advance through a dense vegetation, Ingrid started to see the sea and the Mariveles naval station between the trees to her left. Understanding that she now had to be close from the Japanese position, she signaled to her men to stop and lay low before continuing alone, disappearing from them through the trees. After going forward by some sixty meters, Ingrid started to hear Japanese voices speaking in a low volume. Slinging her rifle across her back, she got down on all four and pulled out her Glock 17L 9 mm pistol and, switching on its holographic aiming sight, continued her advance at a near crawl. After a bit over five minutes of advancing on all four, Ingrid had to stop behind a tree: she could now see between the branches and leaves two Japanese soldiers sitting behind a dead tree some twenty meters ahead of her, conversing in low voices while looking from time to time in her direction. Thankfully, they didn’t see her, as the mud covering her face

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and hands made her hard to see in the semi-darkness created by the jungle canopy overhead. Looking past those two Japanese, she then saw another twenty or so Japanese soldiers who had their backs to her while looking at the naval station, some 1,500 meters away, along the shoreline of Manila Bay. Now knowing where the enemy was, Ingrid slowly and cautiously retreated back towards her men, first at a near-crawl, then at a crouch.

Lieutenant Strauss, kneeling behind a tree, greeted Ingrid with evident relief.

‘’God, am I happy to see you back in one piece, Major.’

‘’Thanks, Lieutenant, but keep your voice low: the Japanese position is less than a hundred yards away. Some twenty men with a machine gun are observing our naval station, while two soldiers are guarding their flank, fifteen paces to the northwest from the main group. Follow me all in single file and, please, try not to make any noise. The first man who will speak during our approach march will get my boot up his ass. Pass the word...quietly!’

Strauss, amused by her crude language, turned around to speak in a near whisper to the man behind him.

‘’Total silence from now on: the enemy is less than a hundred yards from here.

Pass the word!’

Once all of her men were ready, Ingrid guided them towards the right for about fifty meters, then turned left to start following the ridgeline at a bit lower level than its crest. She herself walked slowly, in order to give a chance to her men to walk without making too much noise. By the standards of a hunter, her group was proving to be still too noisy but she had to recognize that they were trying to do their honest best.

Counting her steps, Ingrid stopped once she estimated to be in the back of the enemy and faced her men, who were understandably nervous and tense, their hands gripping their weapons. She then went down the line of men and took position once down in the middle of it, a couple of paces to their left. Signaling to them to follow her and to have their weapons at the ready, she then started to go up the gentle slope, walking at a half crouch. She covered some thirty meters before going down her knees and hands, with her men then imitating her, while slowing down further her advance. She soon arrived within sight of the Japanese main position, to find out that she had gone past them by a few meters, which was still not bad considering that she had navigated blind through a

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fairly thick jungle. Crawling to a large dead tree trunk lying parallel to the axis of the Japanese position, she took a firing position behind it and, holstering her pistol, grabbed her rifle and pointed it at the Japanese but didn’t fire yet, wanting to give time to her men to also take firing positions behind the dead tree. However, a mechanic, in his haste to get to the cover of the dead tree, made a branch crack, which in turn made the Japanese react and nervously look at their back. Ingrid didn’t waste time by swearing at that and shouldered her rifle while shouting an order.

‘’FIRE AT WILL!’

Fired upon from a distance of less than twenty meters by three times their own number, the Japanese didn’t stand a chance, managing only to fire a couple of hasty, inaccurate shots before being shot down to the last. The two Japanese posted to their flank didn’t survive much longer, as they rushed without thinking right into a hail of bullets. As Ingrid rushed forward with her men to check if all the Japanese were dead, the Japanese radio she was carrying suddenly came alive.

‘’Section Howa, this is Green Dragon. What is happening, over?’’

Ingrid swore to herself on hearing that the transmission quality was excellent, which could only mean one thing: that this Japanese group calling itself ‘Green Dragon’ was close by. Pointing the Japanese machine gun lying in the captured position to Lieutenant Strauss, Ingrid urgently shouted new orders.

‘’THE JAPANESE ARE CLOSE TO HERE, TO OUR WEST. PUT THIS

MACHINE GUN IN POSITION BEHIND THAT DEAD TREE WE JUST USED, TO

COVER THE WESTERN SLOPE. LET’S DEPLOY IN A DEFENSIVE SEMI-CIRCLE, QUICKLY!’

As her men hurried to take fighting positions and to move the machine gun, Ingrid picked up the two boxes containing the ammunition clips for the Nambu Type 11 and brought them to its intended new location. Instead of using her rifle for this coming fight, she took place behind the Nambu Type 11 and shouldered its butt after verifying that its feed hopper was filled with 5-round clips. She then looked at the Filipino corporal crouched directly to her left.

‘’Corporal Niñoi, you see how this feed hopper is full of ammo clips? I want you to keep feeding more clips in it in the same way those are, using the clips from those two boxes. Be careful not to put them in the wrong orientation. Understood?’

‘’Got it, ma’am.’

Ingrid then looked left and right while speaking in a low voice.

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‘’Nobody moves or fires before I fire this machine gun. Aim well each of your shots: the enemy could prove to be quite numerous. Also, be prepared to throw grenades if the enemy charges us.’

Some movements among the trees at her front, about ninety meters away, along with the noise of branches being cut or broken, soon attracted her attention. Now as tense as a piano wire, Ingrid slowly pointed her machine gun at the nearest silhouettes.

Knowing that the Japanese favored close combat and bayonet charges, she decided to fire when she saw a group of three Japanese soldiers, one of which seemed to be an officer accompanied by a man carrying a bulky radio backpack. Aiming carefully at the officer and his radioman, who followed right behind him, she fired a five-round burst which downed both Japanese and triggered a volley of rifle fire from the American and Filipino soldiers. Despite having lost a good dozen men to the first American salvo, the remaining Japanese replied quickly, with their volume of fire showing to Ingrid that they heavily numbered Ingrid’s men. Firing short, aimed bursts at a rapid rate, Ingrid did her best to shoot down the Japanese who were the closest, thus the most dangerous for her men, as bullets continuously zipped by her ears. The corporal who was feeding her machine gun was killed by a bullet to the head as he was refil ing her weapon’s feed hopper for a third time, then fell dead over Ingrid, impeding her firing. The Japanese, who had been moving forward by short tactical jumps from tree to tree, then chose that moment to launch into a savage charge while screaming at the top of their lungs.

‘’BANZAI! ’’

Ingrid pushed away the body of her assistant loader and managed to fire three more bursts before she had to grab her rifle and get up to face two Japanese soldiers running directly towards her. She killed the first Japanese with one shot fired from the hip before she had to use the bayonet hooked to the muzzle of her rifle to deflect away the bayonet of the second Japanese, who was aiming at her belly. Now reliving the same kind of fight in which Megaron, her Spartan past incarnation, had died in 481 B.C.E. at the Battle of Thermopylae, she used her bayonet-tipped rifle as if it was a spear. Stabbing the Japanese facing her in the stomach and viciously twisting her blade in his belly, she then kicked him with her left boot, projecting him down on his back, before facing another Japanese and charging him while screaming ferociously.

‘’SPARTAA! ’’

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The Japanese, surprised to be facing a woman, froze for a moment on hearing her scream, a moment that was fatal for him, with Ingrid’s bayonet tip piercing his throat and penetrating to his vertebras. Taking the time to quickly look around her, Ingrid saw with alarm that her men were being swamped by the numerically superior Japanese, who also were much better trained into close combat. She thus didn’t have the luxury to take the time to continue fighting with her bayonet if she wanted to save her men. Letting drop her rifle on the ground, Ingrid quickly got her pistol out of its holster and switched on its laser dot sight, then started firing as fast as she could aim it with her laser dot sight. Her modern pistol, with its extended, 20-round magazine, then proved to be the ideal weapon for such a close combat fight, the Japanese having started their assault with empty rifles, relying solely on their bayonets. Those Japanese now had to choose between charging her with bayonets pointed or taking the time to reload their rifles while close to American or Filipino soldiers. Ingrid shot down first the Japanese soldiers closest to her, then switched to the Japanese who were the most threatening to her men. The death of a Japanese officer, shot dead by Ingrid as he was charging her with his katana saber held high, then apparently broke the morale of the surviving Japanese, who turned away and started to flee at a run. Ingrid then shouted orders at her men while continuing to fire her pistol.

‘’CONTINUE FIRING! KILL AS MANY OF THEM AS YOU CAN BEFORE THEY

COULD WITHDRAW AND REORGANIZE FOR A SECOND ATTACK.’

One of her fighter pilots then jumped behind the captured Japanese machine gun and added its fire to that of Ingrid, completing the Japanese’ rout. Many of Ingrid’s men who had lost hope and had been close to run away then gathered their courage on seeing her example and also resumed firing at the retreating Japanese. Less than a third of the original Japanese force, which had easily counted over 200 men, survived to run into the jungle and disappear in it.

Her heart beating hard and nearly hyperventilating, Ingrid took the time to put a fresh magazine in her pistol, then holstered it and went to pick up her rifle. Next, she anxiously looked around her to count how many of her men were still on their feet. Her heart sank when she saw that only two-thirds of her men were still in fighting shape, with the others either lying still or moaning with pain while on the ground. Both saddened and enraged by her losses, she didn’t wasted time and gave out a series of orders.

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‘’Lieutenant Strauss, take six men and hold a defensive line with that Japanese machine gun, in case those Japanese would reorganize and come back for a second attack. The others will give first aid to our wounded. I will take care of the Japanese lying around here.’’

Going to the Japanese officer who had charged her with his saber, she grabbed the katana, along with its scabbard, after verifying that he was dead. Ingrid then methodically checked the Japanese lying around her position, some of whom were moaning and moving. She finished off with her katana those Japanese still living, watched by her aviators and mechanics, shaken to see such ferocity in a woman. She also went to the officer and radioman she had killed at the start of that fight, searching them and grabbing a map, a saber and a radio backpack, to then return inside her position. Her next move was to go see her wounded men and her dead. A total of fourteen of her men were now dead, with another ten wounded to various degrees. One of the wounded Filipino, an aircraft mechanic, was actually in a critical state and was in great pain, with a deep stab wound to his belly. With tears coming out of her eyes, Ingrid knelt next to the Filipino mechanic and gently caressed his face.

‘’Don’t lose hope, Manuel: we wil get you to the naval station, where you will be treated.’

The man, realizing that he was dying, slowly shook his head.

‘’I am done, ma’am. Take care of the others instead. Please tell my wife and my children that I was thinking about...’

A spasm of pain then interrupted him, with his eyes rolling up and becoming still after a few seconds. Ingrid started sobbing while stil holding the mechanic’s head in her hands. Forcing herself to regain control after a few seconds, Ingrid then got back on her feet and went to check her nine other wounded, to make sure that the maximum was done to help them.

With her other men administering first aid to the wounded as best they could with what little they had, Ingrid called her signaler to her side and grabbed the handset of the radio pack he was carrying, then called the naval station in Mariveles to send a short situation report and to ask for both reinforcements and medical assistance. She became positively enraged when Commander Bridget only gave her vague promises about doing his best to find and send some help.

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‘’Listen, Commander, and listen well! I have on top of Mount Pucot fifteen of my men dead, plus nine more who are wounded. If those wounded don’t get medical care quickly, they will die and your empty promises will do nothing to help them. I saved your bacon today and did the job you asked me to do, with my men paying the price for it. It is now your turn to get off your ass and to do something more than giving me a bunch of

‘maybe’.’

‘’Watch what you say, Major: you are dangerously close to insubordination.’

Warned Bridget, his voice threatening. ‘’Continue like this and I will have you relieved of command.’

‘’In that case, you are welcome to come on top of Mount Pucot to relieve me, Commander, but don’t come without reinforcements or medics, out!’

Ingrid then changed the frequency on her radio, switching to that of her squadron and calling her command post, where Jesus Villamor answered her.

‘’Send your message, Lady Hawk.’

‘’Fantasma, I need you to send to me as quickly as you can two trucks with nine stretchers and twenty men to carry wounded. If you could get the services of a few medics or nurses and one doctor, it would be most appreciated. We have nine wounded men to evacuate. We unfortunately suffered as well fifteen men killed while repelling an attack by well over 200 Japanese soldiers who tried to take my position on top of Mount Pucot, over.’

There was a delay of a few seconds as Jesus Villamor got over the shock of hearing those bad news.

‘’Fantasma, understood. I will send the trucks and stretcher bearers at once.

They will then bring your wounded directly to the medical station in Mariveles.’

Giving back the radio handset to her signaler, Ingrid walked quickly to her captured machine gun, which was served by Lieutenant Strauss.

‘’Lieutenant, I wil take your place at the machine gun. Take the men you wil need to carry our wounded down to the coastal road, where two of our trucks will come to pick them up and carry them to the Mariveles medical station. Once our wounded will be rolling, come back here with your men: another Japanese attack is stil possible.’’

‘’I’m on it, Major.’ promised Strauss while getting up on his feet to let Ingrid take place behind the machine gun. Fifteen minutes later, Strauss and eighteen bearers left the position, carrying their nine wounded on improvised stretchers made up of ponchos

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fixed to bamboo poles. Now left with only 35 able-bodied men to hold her position, Ingrid checked that her machine gun was loaded and prepared mentally for the worst.

22:16 (Manila Time)

Wednesday, January 28, 1942 ‘C’

Mariveles Airfield, Bataan Peninsula

Ingrid, dirty, tired and famished, was greeted by a joyful hug from Jesus Villamor when she entered the command bunker of her squadron, her improvised infantry unit having finally been relieved a few hours earlier by a regular infantry battalion after six days of hard jungle fighting.

‘’God, was I ever scared for you, Ingrid!’

Only then did he noticed the Japanese saber she was carrying slung across her back.

‘’You got yourself a war trophy?’’

‘’A war trophy which cost me a total of 24 dead and fifteen wounded in six days of combat, Jesus.’ replied Ingrid in a bitter tone before sitting at one of the two tables in the bunker. Taking out her field notepad, she ripped one of its pages off and gave it to Jesus.

‘’Here is the list of our losses we suffered during the fighting for the Longoskawyan Point. Our wounded are presently being treated at the field hospital in Cabcaben. How are we doing, aircraft-wise?’

‘’We lost one P-40 when it had to do a belly landing after being damaged during a ground attack mission. Thankfully, Lieutenant McCallum got out of it without wounds but we now have only four aircraft still operational. Paul Gunn has already started to strip that crash-landed P-40 from all its parts which can stil be used.’

‘’Good old Paul! He could do about anything with a piece of mechanic. Anything else?’

‘’Uh, just one sealed envelope to your name, which arrived two days ago from the sector command post. Here it is.’

Ingrid became suspicious as she took the envelope, worrying that it could contain some bad news. That idiot of Bridget had after all threatened to relieve her of command but had never showed up in person in the frontlines. Opening the envelope and reading quickly the single page letter in it, she suddenly broke down in violent sobs, attracting at once an alarmed Jesus next to her.

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‘’Ingrid, what is it?’’

‘’Ken... Ken is dead!’ only managed to say Ingrid before letting go the letter and cover her face with her hands, unable to speak further. Badly shaken, Jesus picked up the letter and read it: it announced the death of Major Kenneth Dows, killed on the 25th during the fighting to retake the Quinauan Point.

‘’My God!’ could only say the Filipino pilot.

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CHAPTER 8 – BY ORDER OF THE PRESIDENT

08:16 (Washington Time)

Thursday, February 26, 1942 ‘C’

The Oval Office, The White House

Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt

felt in a sour mood this morning, mostly

thanks to the collection of bad news

concerning the war. The reading of the

front pages of the biggest circulation national newspapers did nothing to light up his day.

‘’Our troops in the Philippines under siege and starving?!’’ he read on the front page of the Washington Post. After reading quickly part of the article attached to the top title, he grabbed the copy of the New York Times which was part of the routine pile of daily newspapers his secretary put on his desk every morning. The front-page title of that newspaper didn’t help his mood either.

‘’Our soldiers in the Philippines abandoned?!’’

As he skimmed the first pages of the New York Times, he froze on seeing a fairly large picture, accompanied by a number of smaller pictures and by a half-page of text.

‘’A woman is fighting in the frontlines in Bataan?’’ Roosevelt read. The larger picture showed Ingrid Dows, posing in front of her P-40 fighter aircraft during better days, while the smaller pictures showed her in a jungle setting, armed with a rifle and a pistol, looking dirty and tired while leading an eclectic-looking file of armed men, both Americans and Filipinos, along a jungle trail. A separate picture and article under that article showed General MacArthur decorating Ingrid Dows while she and her men stood at attention in some jungle clearing.

‘’General MacArthur giving the Silver Star to young Major Ingrid Dows, for having led a bayonet charge against the Japanese during the fighting around Bataan...’

Roosevelt, shocked and surprised by that sentence, read carefully that whole article, then examined one of the pictures attached to that article, which showed an emaciated Ingrid Dows wearing a dirty and partly ripped combat fatigue uniform. Her expression

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was a mix of exhaustion and sadness, but also of resolve. Having read enough, he used his intercom to call his military assistant, Admiral Leahy, telling him to come to the Oval Office. The old Navy officer showed up within a minute, his own office being next door to the Oval Office.

‘’You wanted to see me, Mister President?’’

‘’Yes, Admiral. Take a look at the morning copy of the Washington Post and, particularly, of the New York Times, and tell me what you think of their front-page articles. There is also a disturbing article on page three of the New York Times copy.’

Leahy briefly glanced at both newspapers before nodding his head and looking at Roosevelt.

‘’I have already read both of those newspapers earlier this morning, Mister President. My opinion is that those articles could severely hurt the morale of the American public.’’

‘’Do these articles depict a true picture of the situation in the Philippines, Admiral?’’

‘’They unfortunately reflect the reality of our situation in the Philippines, Mister President. While our troops there are inflicting severe losses to the Japanese forces which invaded the Philippines, they are raked with diseases, are at half-rations and are about to run out of ammunition, despite having previously accumulated large stocks of supplies and ammunition inside caves in the Bataan Peninsula. The level and ferocity of the fighting there has exceeded anything we could have imagined and our men are burning through their ammunition fast. On the other hand, the Japanese Army is suffering as badly from diseases, primarily malaria, and is equally tired and starving, while it is suffering very heavy losses in that jungle fighting.’

‘’What about that article about young Ingrid Dows fighting in the jungle and leading bayonet charges against the Japanese? Is what that article said true?’’

‘’I don’t know if what the New York Times is saying about Major Dows is true or not, Mister President. I would have to inquire about that with the Army Headquarters.

However, pictures rarely lie and the pictures taken of young Ingrid Dows, armed and dirty in the jungles of the Philippines, probably reflect the truth about her situation.

However, the American public won’t like one bit the idea that a young woman is fighting in the frontlines of the Filipino jungle, especially in view of how our legislative project to allow women into the Army is still blocked in Congress by the delaying tactics of many representatives from states in the South.’

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‘’Their arguments are pure bullshit and hypocrisy!’ exclaimed Roosevelt with unusual brutality. ‘’How could they stil say that women are totally unfit for combat, especially in view of this New York Times article.’

‘’Again, Mister President, I cannot swear to the veracity of what that article said. I wil however contact General Marshall on this subject right after this.’

‘’Admiral, have you thought about the reaction of the American public if that brave young woman would end up being killed in ground combat or, worse, end up being captured alive by the Japanese?’’

That question made Leahy pause and look down at the picture of Ingrid on the front page of the Washington Post, looking young, beautiful and radiant in front of her P-40.

‘’That would be nothing less than a disaster in term of our public relations, Mister President, as much if not more than the capture or death of General MacArthur.’

‘’Can we stil evacuate them from the Philippines, Admiral?’’

Leahy took some time to respond to that. When he did, his expression was most sober.

‘’Possibly, Mister President, but I doubt that either of them would accept to leave the Philippines, thus abandoning the men who are under their respective commands.

Despite what the forked thongs are saying about MacArthur, calling him ‘Dugout Doug’, he is a brave, combat-proven officer. His present job is to command the more than 90,000 American and Filipino soldiers still fighting in the Philippines, not to play the infantryman in the frontlines. Yes, he is vainglorious and tends to rub people the wrong way, but he is no coward and he cares about his men. He will probably refuse to abandon his men in the Philippines. As for Major Ingrid Dows, she is a young woman with incredible courage and character and is a recipient of the Medal of Honor.

Everybody agrees that she is devoted to her men and I just can’t see her accepting to leave her men behind, especially after just losing her own husband during the recent fighting, Mister President.’

‘’How could they refuse an order straight from Washington?’’ exclaimed Roosevelt. ‘’They are in the Army and must obey orders, no?’’

‘’Not Major Dows, Mister President.’ replied Leahy. ‘’Don’t forget that she is stil simply a Filipino Army officer on exchange with our Army Air Corps and that Congress is stil refusing to give her the right to join the ranks of the U.S. Army, Mister President.’

‘’What a crock!’ muttered Roosevelt before tapping with one index the article on Ingrid in the New York Times. ‘’Why not show this article to those imbeciles in

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Congress, to show them how their arguments against women in the Army are empty and hypocritical?’’

‘’That could actual y work, Mister President. As for attempting to evacuate General MacArthur and Major Dows from the Philippines, I will discuss with General Marshal and General Arnold about how this could be done. I will keep you appraised about what we wil come with, Mister President.’

‘’I wil be waiting impatiently your report on this, Admiral.’

12:20 (Manila Time)

Sunday, March 01, 1942 ‘C’

Malinta tunnel complex, fortress of Corregidor Manila Bay, Philippines

Douglas MacArthur was having lunch with his wife, his young son, with Filipino President Quezon and his wife and with Colonel Charles Willoughby, his intelligence officer, while ignoring the noise from the heavy caliber Japanese shells which exploded at intervals at the surface of the mountain covering the Malinta underground command complex. He was also doing his best to keep the conversation on anodyne subjects and thus avoid talking about bad news in front of his wife and son. His chief of staff, Major General Richard Sutherland, then walked into MacArthur’s private dining room, a message in his hands, and went quickly to his table, where he presented it to MacArthur while saluting him.

‘’Top Secret message for you from Washington, General.’

Acting with deliberate slowness, MacArthur took that message and read it. However, he couldn’t hide resentment and anger appear on his face as he read its content, which had been signed by General Marshall, the commander of the U.S. Army. His wife, like President Quezon, noticed his change of attitude.

‘’What is it, Doug?’’

MacArthur wiped his mouth with his napkin before answering his wife and a neutral tone.

‘’General Marshall is ordering me to be ready to be evacuated from the Philippines by air with a limited number of other people, in order to avoid possible capture by the Japanese.’

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‘’But... your soldiers and my soldiers: that would mean abandoning them, General.’ pointed out Manuel Quezon, who evidently didn’t like that possibility.

MacArthur nodded his head at those words.

‘’Exactly, President Quezon, and it is why I have the intention to tell Washington that I am refusing to obey such an order. I am responsible for my soldiers and I have the firm intention to stay with them. If there is any evacuation, it will be only for our own families and for our wounded soldiers.’

He then reread the message, concentrating on a particular paragraph.

‘’General Marshall also wants that I order young Major Ingrid Dows to leave the Philippines, citing the worries of President Roosevelt concerning the possibility that she could be captured by the Japanese. What a bunch of hypocrites! On one side, those politicians in Washington are saying that women are inapt for military service. On the other hand, they now worry about the fate of a woman who has already won the Medal of Honor and two DSCs but who is still being refused entry into the U.S. Army. Do they really think that Major Dows, who recently lost her husband at the hands of the Japanese, will accept to be evacuate, thus abandoning her men? I can already predict what this girl will say about that...and I would approve her response. General Sutherland, you have visited recently our frontlines around Bataan. What is the general opinion of our troops about this girl?’’

Sutherland, who was an ethnic German, like Ingrid, took the time to measure his words before answering MacArthur. He originally had been dead set against the idea of using a woman as a fighter pilot. However, Ingrid’s repeated exploits in the air had made him gradually reconsider his opinion about that subject.

‘’General, I don’t believe that I am exaggerating by saying that young Major Dows has become a legend among our troops, especially after the way she has led her men in vicious infantry battles in the jungle during last month. Her men would be willing to die for her, while she has the reputation of never abandoning a single one of her men.’

‘’I believe so as well. Well, I believe that this will save me from wasting my time by asking her to leave.’’ declared Douglas MacArthur on a final tone while getting up from the table. ‘’If you wil now excuse me, President Quezon, Madam Quezon, I will go send a firm response to this junk message from Washington.’

As he had expected, the refusal he sent to Washington had the effect of a bomb at the War Department and at the White House. When he received the message with

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the reaction of Washington to his refusal, two days later, it was to be confronted with a direct order from the President himself, ordering him to obey under pain of ending in front of a court martial. Bitter but also understanding that he had no choice left to obey, he gathered his principal staff members in his office, in order to start planning that evacuation operation.

09:47 (Manilla Time)

Thursday, March 5, 1942 ‘C’

Bagac Sector, lines of the American 91st Infantry Division Bataan Peninsula, Philippines

Ingrid had trouble believing her eyes when she arrived with her men at the improvised field command post of the 91st Infantry Division, situated near the western coastal road of the Bataan Peninsula. None other than General Douglas MacArthur in person was standing near the entrance to the hut sheltering the command post. Even more, he was accompanied by President Manuel Quezon, two senior military aides, four American military policemen armed with Thompson submachine guns, two U.S. Army cameramen and a small band of civilian reporters and photographers. Walking to MacArthur, she stopped at attention in front of him and saluted him: if there was a Japanese sniper around, that Japanese wouldn’t need to be a genius to figure out by himself that MacArthur was a so-called ‘big cheese’.

‘’Major Ingrid Dows, 17th Provisional Pursuit Squadron, reporting, sir!’

MacArthur returned her salute, then looked her up and down and also looked at her men, with their disparate, dirty and ripped uniforms.

‘’Where is your unit based right now, Major Dows?’’

‘’Our tents are less than a hundred yards from here, General. Since losing our last aircraft, we have been forming part of the local defense force for the division’s headquarters.’

‘’And how many men do you stil have in your squadron, Major?’’ asked MacArthur while examining with sadness Ingrid’s emaciated body and her uniform, which was a near rag. Ingrid answered back in a tired voice.

‘’I have left with me five pilots, not counting myself, plus three other officers and 114 NCOs and soldiers, General. We lost our two last fighter aircraft in an enemy artil ery bombardment five days ago.’

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‘’Could you please have your men line up, Major? I and President Quezon would like to inspect them. Then, I wil speak to your unit.’

‘’Certainly, General! Just give me a minute.’

MacArthur patiently waited while Ingrid lined up properly her men in three ranks, with two steps between each rank, then came forward with President Quezon to inspect the ranks of the American and Filipino solders, Ingrid close behind him and with the cameramen and civilian reporters taking pictures during the inspection. Both him and Quezon proceeded slowly, taking the time to talk briefly with each man and to shake hands with them. Once that was done, MacArthur and Quezon returned in front of the hut, with the former then speaking up in a loud voice while filmed.

‘’Lady and gentlemen of the 17th Provisional Pursuit Squadron, let me tell you first that, whatever happens in the future, the name of your unit will be covered with glory.

You accomplished the impossible many times already and saved the lives of thousands of our soldiers, sailors and civilians, thanks to your bravery and skills in air combat. Your unit has accumulated by far the largest number of enemy aircraft destroyed compared to any other pursuit squadron in the U.S. Army in this war. You also distinguished yourselves in ground combat on many occasions, even though you had not been formally trained for ground combat, while being lead by a truly exceptional young commander. To waste such expertise would be nothing less than criminal.’

Ingrid tensed up on hearing those last words, not liking at all what they implied.

MacArthur then continued his speech.

‘’A limited personnel evacuation from the Philippines has been ordered by Washington and then planned by my staff in Corregidor. That evacuation will touch all our aircrews, the technical and administrative officers of our aviation units, our Army and Navy nurses, our crypto specialists and some other specialists and senior staff officers, plus as many of our wounded as it will be possible to evacuate. The evacuation will be by air, with transport aircraft starting to arrive tonight in Mariveles. Those of you who belong to the personnel categories I named will have until four this afternoon to pack up their things, before being driven by trucks to the Mariveles Airfield.’’

‘’But, General,’ objected at once Ingrid, ‘’what will happen to my ground crews, to my mechanics and my technicians?’’

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‘’I am sorry, Major, but they will have to stay in Bataan and continue to fight with our other soldiers.’ answered MacArthur, who was truly sorry about that. He saw Ingrid’s face harden before she came to attention and spoke in a strong, clear voice.

‘’In that case, General, I must refuse to obey your order to evacuate. I will stay here with my men...all my men!’

The other American pilots and officers of the squadron then imitated Ingrid one by one, refusing to be evacuated without their Filipino ground crew personnel. MacArthur mentally wished then that a few generals and politicians he knew in Washington be here to see this, to understand what was true military comradeship. He then took out of a pocket the last message received from President Roosevelt.

‘’Major Dows, believe me when I say to you that I also wanted to stay here in the Philippines, in order to fight to the bitter end with our soldiers, sailors and airmen.

However, the President didn’t leave me any choice for me and you to obey his formal order to be evacuated.’

‘’The President in person ordered that I be evacuated? Why me in particular?

Because I am a girl? That’s bullshit!’

That last remark of hers attracted a few cringes in the crowd of reporters, but not from MacArthur, who replied in a calm voice to Ingrid.

‘’You realize that refusing a direct order from the President of the United States could get you in front of a court martial, Major?’’

‘’Which court martial would that be, General? One from the same army which is still refusing to accept women and which won’t accept me as an American fighter pilot?

And this for refusing to abandon my own men in the middle of combat? It would be those generals in Washington who should be court-martialed for gross incompetence and moral hypocrisy, sir.’

Those words struck hard Douglas MacArthur, who shared the same opinion as her on that subject. As for the reporters present, they frantically scribbled down Ingrid’s abrasive reply.

‘’The charges would actual y be about refusing a direct order from the President, Major. If you still refuse to go, then the MPs accompanying me will put you under arrest and you wil then leave the Philippines in handcuffs.’

What followed shocked everybody around MacArthur, except the latter and President Quezon, who had anticipated such a reaction. Ingrid’s right hand got closer to her holstered pistol and undid its retaining strap, while her men firmed up their grips on their

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own weapons. The MP captain in charge of the military policemen present gave a questioning look to MacArthur, who made a gesture for him and his MPs to relax, then spoke to Ingrid in a friendly tone.

‘’Major, your sense of loyalty to your men and your devotion to the defense of the Philippines are truly admirable. Since you are technically an officer of the Filipino Army Air Corps, I wil now let President Quezon speak.’

The old Filipino President then stepped forward and spoke as loud as he could while looking Ingrid in the eyes from six paces away.

‘’Major Dows, you showed admirable devotion and love to my country by asking to become one of our fighter pilots and this at a desperate time for the Philippines in this war. Since then, you never made me regret my decision to accept you as a fighter pilot, on the contrary. You are admired and loved by all of us in the Philippines and my wish is to see you continue fighting the Japanese where you can be the most effective: in the air. I also wish the same for Major Jesus Vil amor but, unfortunately, Washington’s evacuation list didn’t include any Filipino officer or specialist, only me and my wife.

However, I spoke with General MacArthur about this, who then proposed that, since Major Vil amor wouldn’t be evacuated by air tonight, he should then be allowed to lead the Filipino personnel of your squadron out by boat from the Bataan Peninsula tonight, to be stealthily brought to the opposite shore of the Manila Bay, north of Manila, where they would disembark and then make their way to the hills and jungles northeast of Manila.

They would then conduct from there a prolonged guerilla campaign against the Japanese and harass them while continuing to fight for the Philippines. Before your men will go out by boat, they will be given by General MacArthur extra supplies of food and ammunition in order to continue that fight. I am now imploring you, men of the Sixth and Seventeenth Pursuit Squadron, as President of the Philippines, to accept that opportunity, so that your squadron commander could leave the Philippines with her conscience at peace about your fate here.’

As Ingrid hesitated and as her Filipino squadron members looked at each other in indecision, MacArthur threw a severe look at the civilian reporters present around him.

‘’That last information about Major Dows’ Filipino personnel forming a gueril a unit is not to be mentioned to anyone else, gentlemen. Those of you who will publish details about this will be prosecuted for treason and for divulging classified information.

Do you understand me, gentlemen?’’

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The reporters present could only nod and agree to that. Jesus Villamor, standing behind and to the right of Ingrid then spoke to her.

‘’That is acceptable to me, Ingrid. Go and continue fighting in the air for us.’’

The other Filipinos in the squadron then spoke up in turn, all urging Ingrid to go.

Emotionally overwhelmed by this, Ingrid started sobbing and fell on her knees, where she cried her grief. Her men reacted by surrounding her in order to comfort her, with the army cameramen and civilian photographers recording that emotional moment.

Themselves deeply touched by this scene, both MacArthur and President Quezon also went forward to comfort Ingrid, but waited until all of her men had time to speak with her.

Jesus Villamor and President Quezon finally helped a still distraught Ingrid to get up, then hugged her tight, with Quezon speaking softly into her ear.

‘’You wil always be a national heroine for us Filipinos, Ingrid. Make us proud and go to the United States, so that you can continue the fight for us.’

‘’I...I wil go then, but I promise you all that I wil return for you.’

When Ingrid showed up with her American officers at the airstrip in Mariveles, it was to find a mixed group of about sixty men and women waiting with their meager belongings under the shadow of trees growing close to the dirt runway. Ingrid, with her backpack, kitbag, rifle and captured Japanese sword, looked in comparison to be one of the best equipped present. Her eyes were however still red from crying when she had said her last goodbyes to Jesus Villamor and her Filipino ground crewmen, who were themselves preparing to leave Bataan by boat to go across the Manila Bay and disappear in the jungle and hills northeast of Manila. At least, General MacArthur had filled his promises to them and had them rearmed and reequipped to the best standards still possible, so that they would start their long-term mission on the best footing possible.

Ingrid joined up on arrival with a group of 23 American Army and Navy nurses, two of whom she knew well thanks to her previous evacuation trip from Clark Field to Darwin. Juanita Redmond and Helen Cassiani looked her up and down with sadness, noting her dirty, ripped combat uniform, her disheveled hair and her emaciated face.

‘’My God, Ingrid, you look terrible.’’ said softly Helen Cassiani.

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‘’that’s because I feel terrible, Helen. I am being forced to abandon my men and to leave them behind. I would have much preferred to stay and continue fighting with them.’

‘’I understand you, Ingrid.’ said Juanita, the small Latina beauty, while lowering her head. ‘’They forced us to abandon our patients when they were needing us the most. Do you have an idea on how they will evacuate us and by what route?’

‘’General MacArthur told me that a plane will come tonight and fly us out, probably to take us to Australia. The problem with that is that the strip here is way too short for a C-87, the only cargo plane with enough range to get from here to Australia.’’

An Army Air Corps major then came out of the airfield’s command bunker and asked them all to assemble around him, so that he could speak to them.

‘’Ladies and gentlemen, I am Major Julian Kingsley, tasked by General MacArthur to arrange your evacuation to Australia. At around eight o’clock tonight, two transport aircraft will land here under the cover of the night and will unload first a priority load of supplies for our troops here, including medical supplies, before loading you aboard. General MacArthur and his suite will also go in those aircraft after coming here from Corregidor by patrol boat. Our two cargo planes will be refilled with fuel, then will fly you to Brisbane. Once in Brisbane, you will all go through a full medical evaluation and will be treated as needed. Once that is done, you will each be given new instructions concerning your next posting, on top of getting special permissions signed by General MacArthur, which will allow you to recuperate from your months of tough fighting. Military air transportation will be provided to that effect to bring you to the United States, so that you can see your families there. Do you have any questions at this time?’

One of the senior nurses then raised a hand high.

‘’Uh, are there restrictions on baggage weight, Major? I have a big bag full of letters from my patients to their families in the States.’’

The major then made a reassuring smile to the nurse.

‘’Do not worry about that point, Captain: the two C-142 which will land here, on top of being able to use very short dirt strips and to have a very long range, also possess a huge cargo capacity. Your bag of mail wil easily fit aboard.’

Ingrid was next to raise her hand to ask a question.

‘’Major Kingsley, I never heard before about the C-142. Is that a new model?’’

Kingsley nodded once at her question.

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‘’The Fairchild C-142 GLOBEMASTER just entered service and incorporates the latest technology in terms of cargo aircraft. The Japanese probably never encountered one before. Well, if there are no more questions, I will invite you to wait with your kits under the cover of the trees behind the bunker: let’s avoid as much as possible to attract the attention of the Japanese on this airfield before your departure.’’

After a frugal supper composed of one tin of meat or fish per person and a few hours of waiting, the sound of powerful piston engines approaching made all heads pivot towards the night sky.

‘’Here they are!’ said with a smile Paul gunn. Despite her visual acuity and excellent night vision, Ingrid could not spot the planes, so dark was the night.

‘’I hope that Major Kingsley has prepared some lights in order to mark the strip.

To land in such darkness won’t be easy.’

As if Kingsley had heard her, six jeeps parked at wide intervals and off the strip lit their headlights, while one jeep parked before the start of the strip also switched on its headlights, clearly illuminating the dirt strip. The eyes of Paul Gunn, an experienced transport pilot, opened wide, like those of Ingrid, when the first C-142 touched the ground close to its start while flying at an astonishingly low speed.

‘’My God! Look at that big beast, Ingrid!’

‘’Big is the word.’ replied Ingrid while following with her eyes the huge four-engine aircraft now rolling and slowing down the dirt strip. The plane had a big but relatively short central fuselage with a rectangular section, a pair of long, straight wings attached atop the fuselage and supporting four big radial piston engines, plus a double tail attached by long pylons to the inner pair of engines. Eight large pairs of wide wheels were attached to the sides of the fuselage, making it lie low over the ground, thus rendering the loading and unloading of cargo and passengers easier while giving to the plane an exceptionally low ground pressure. Large, deep trailing edge flaps were deployed for landing, in order to augment the lift provided by the wings. Instead of slowing down to idle, the four engines of the C-142 instead roared back to full power, pushing a dust storm ahead of them as they rapidly slowed down.

‘’Reversible pitch propellers!’ shouted out Ingrid. ‘’Nancy must have helped in the conception of this plane. And look at that extensive flaps system, Paul.’’

‘’I wil have to pay myself a few hours of piloting in that big baby.’ said Gunn in a dreamy tone while watching the C-142 pivot around after coming off the runway and

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having rolled to the parking area. The jeeps stationed along the strip closed off their headlights as soon as the second C-142 had landed a mere minute after the first one, returning the small airfield to obscurity. Only the flashlights of a few men then stayed on to guide the pilots of the C-142 to the parking spots assigned to them. Trucks loaded with fuel drums then approached the two big aircraft as soon as they shut down their engines, while more trucks, which were empty, rolled to position themselves behind the cargo planes. Major Kingsley walked quickly to the men and women waiting to board the two aircraft, going to General MacArthur and stopping in front of him while saluting him.

‘’General, we will be ready for you to board as soon as the loads of medical supplies will have been taken off. The fueling should take about thirty minutes.’’

‘’Excellent! I will now go say a few words to the other passengers before we wil board.’

Leaving his wife and son for a moment, MacArthur then went to face the men and women in uniform waiting a few paces away, looking at them with a sober expression.

‘’Ladies and gentlemen, today we are being forced to leave the Philippines and leave behind tens of thousands of brave men. Some in the United States will say that you fled while abandoning others and will blame you for that. In reality you are only ensuring that your hard-earned experience can be used to help us continue the fight and eventually return to the Philippines to liberate it. I will come back to the Philippines! You will also come back to the Philippines! With luck, our comrades will still be resisting the Japanese when we will return. Always think about them and dedicate your future efforts in this war to them. In the meantime, rest, recover your full health and teach what you have learned here to a new generation of soldiers, aviators and sailors who will help chase the Japanese out of the Philippines.’’

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CHAPTER 9 – REST AND RECUPERATION

13:50 (Midwest Time)

Sunday, March 15, 1942 ‘C’

Havre train station, Montana

U.S.A.

Ingrid shivered when she stepped out of the train which had brought her from San Francisco via Portland. It was close to the freezing point but the strong wind further helped chill her after all her months spent living and fighting in the Philippines.

Thankfully, she had been given on arrival in San Francisco a warm, sheepskin-lined aviator’s leather jacket and boots, plus a winter cap and gloves. New kit had been provided as well to her after her arrival by air from Australia. She nearly immediately got stared at by everybody present around when she transferred her kit from the train to the station’s platform, thanks to the tan Army uniform with trousers she was wearing and to the Springfield 1903 rifle and Japanese Katana saber she had with her. Next, she went to get a luggage cart and loaded her backpack, kit bag, saber and new foot locker on it.

With her rifle slung from her right shoulder, she pushed her loaded cart inside the train station’s waiting room, where about twenty travelers were either waiting for their train or had just disembarked from the same train as her. A young sailor sitting on one of the

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benches hesitated when he saw her, eyeing the rank insignias of a major on the epaulettes of her leather jacket, then got up and saluted her.

‘’Good day, ma’am!’

‘’Good day, Sailor!’ replied Ingrid, returning his salute while going towards the public telephones fixed to a wall in one corner of the room. She couldn’t tell if it was her officer’s rank insignias or her rifle which attracted the most whispered comments and exclamations on her passage and, frankly, she didn’t care. She had been stared at as if she was a Martian since her arrival by plane from Australia, and had to explain countless times, sometimes forcefully, how a young woman could end up being in military uniform.

She had also been looked at crossly for having the temerity as a woman to wear trousers and had even been refused service once in a restaurant because of that. As for what she had already witnessed since her arrival in the U.S.A. about racism, simply thinking about it made her blood boil.

Fishing out a small notebook from one pocket, she opened it and read a telephone number which she composed on one of the public telephones after dropping a dime in the telephone’s slot. A woman’s voice answered her after two rings.

‘’Hello?’

‘’Good afternoon! Am I at the Crawford’s Nest Ranch?’

‘’Yes, you are, miss.’

‘’Oh, goodie! This is Ingrid Dows. I just arrived at the Havre train station and should arrive soon at your ranch by taxi. I hope that you did receive the telegram I sent from San Francisco two days ago?’

‘’Yes, we received it, Ingrid.’ said the woman, her tone now enthusiastic. ‘’We wil be most happy to have you at our home during your leave period. By the way, I’m Joan Crawford, the wife of John, your uncle. We are really anxious to greet you, Ingrid.’

‘’And I am anxious to meet you all. I will see you in a short while, Joan.’’

Happy to have been able to contact the family farm of her late adoptive father, Mike Crawford, Ingrid pushed her luggage cart out of the train station, emerging on the front porch and going to the taxi waiting station. She looked around her with curiosity at the small town of Havre, Montana, situated 72 kilometers to the South of the Canadian border. It was an important relay along the railway which linked Seattle and Portland, on the American West Coast, to St-Paul, in Minnesota. It had no more than maybe eight thousand inhabitants and most buildings visible were at most two-story-high. While the

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air was cold and crisp, the sky was a nice blue and had barely any clouds in it. Going to the first of two taxis waiting in front of the train station, Ingrid bent down and knocked on the side window to attract the attention of the driver, who was reading a newspaper.

‘’Excuse me, sir. Could you open your trunk, please?’

‘’Sure, miss!’ answered promptly the taxi driver, who then stepped out and went to the rear of his car, opening wide the huge trunk of his vehicle. He started loading her things in it but hesitated when he saw her rifle and saber.

‘’Uh, you are in the Army, miss? I thought that women could not enlist, except as nurses.’’

‘’They stil can’t, mister. I am actual y an officer in the Philippines’ Army Air Corps.’

The taxi driver then realized who she was and opened his eyes wide.

‘’Are you the famous Lady Hawk, our Ace of aces in the Pacific?’’

‘’…Or anywhere else.’’ replied Ingrid, smiling. ‘’Could you drive me to the Crawford’s Nest Ranch, on Road 234?’

‘’With pleasure, miss. I know that ranch well. Get in!’’

The driver closed his trunk, then went to sit back behind the wheel and started his engine as Ingrid sat on the rear bench seat. Driving away from the train station, the taxi driver looked in his mirror and started speaking in a jovial tone.

‘’So, this is your first time in Havre, miss?’’

‘’It is. Montana seems to be a beautiful place.’

‘’That’s a fact, miss. You are planning on staying for a while in Havre?’

‘’I have three weeks of leave, then I wil have to report to Washington. I however fully intend to use those three weeks to get back in shape and sleep out all my accumulated fatigue.’’

The driver looked at her with solicitude through his rearview mirror.

‘’It must have been really hard times for you in the Philippines, miss.’

‘’It was hard for everybody, mister. We also lost a lot of good men there.’

‘’I am sorry to hear that, miss. So, where is your air victory count at now, miss?’’

‘’I have 72 confirmed air kills, mister.’’ answered Ingrid, who didn’t want to talk about that subject more than needed.

‘’You definitely earned your leave time, miss. They are not going to send you behind a desk, or on a war bonds tour after this, I hope?’’

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‘’Hopefully not!’ said Ingrid. ‘’Besides, I am stil technically a Filipina officer and they can’t force me to take a position with the Army here unless I accept it. If they try to bury me in Washington, then I will go back by my own to the Philippines.’

‘’I sincerely hope that these paper-pushers in Washington will see your real worth, miss.’

‘’Thank you, mister! I certainly hope so as well.’

About fifteen minutes later, the taxi drove off the main road and took a private gravel road which led to the buildings of a large ranch, stopping finally in front of the main building, a large two-story wooden house with a steep roof and dormer windows in the attic. The driver stepped out to help Ingrid take out her things from the trunk and carried her foot locker for her up to the main entrance door, where Ingrid paid him, leaving him a sizeable tip.

‘’Thank you very much for your help, sir. Keep the change.’’

‘’Thank you, miss. Have a good vacation.’’

The driver then left as a tall woman close to forty opened the front door and invited Ingrid in with a big smile, three young teenagers behind her.

‘’Welcome to the Crawford’s Nest Ranch, Ingrid. I am Joan Crawford and this is three of my five children: Sylvia, Helen and Steve. Please come in.’

Young Steve volunteered at once to carry Ingrid’s rifle, making the latter smile in amusement.

‘’Boys wil be boys!’

‘’You got that right, Ingrid.’ replied Joan with a smirk. ‘’It is not loaded, I hope?’’

‘’God no! My ammunition is locked up in my foot locker. Besides, I wil take off the bolt and store it separately, along with my handguns.’

‘’You have handguns with you?’’ asked Joan, her tone more cautious now. Ingrid nodded, herself becoming serious, as she carried her backpack and foot locker inside.

‘’I have four of them, which I inherited from Nancy Laplante, but they will be kept disassembled during my stay in your ranch. Is your husband home?’

‘’No! He went out on horseback with my oldest son, Patrick.’

Those words awakened some old souvenirs in Ingrid’s mind, making her look dreamy for a moment.

‘’Horse riding… I would love to do some of that in the days to come. It would be a fine way for me to change my mind from the war.’

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‘’You know how to ride, Ingrid?’

Ingrid didn’t say that she had been riding horses in at least a quarter of her past 71

incarnations, instead smiling to Joan.

‘’I do, Misses Crawford.’’

‘’Then, you will find plenty of horses here for that. And call me simply Joan, instead of ‘Misses Crawford’. Uh, I am not familiar with army rank insignias. What is your rank, precisely?’’

‘’Major! I was promoted by General MacArthur a few weeks ago, in the Philippines.’

‘’A major? Goodness! You are quite high ranking for a girl your age. Uh, wait a second! Didn’t Mike say in a letter that you were fifteen last year?’’

‘’He must have made a mistake, Joan.’’ replied Ingrid as calmly as she could, hiding her sudden tension. If her true age became known, then her career as a fighter pilot would be abruptly put on hold, maybe permanently. ‘’I was seventeen when he adopted me. I turned eighteen on September of last year. Mind you, it will be a while still before I could legally drink alcohol.’

‘’As if the law ever stopped teenagers who wanted to drink.’ replied Joan, forgetting her passing doubts about her age. ‘’Wel , let’s go up to the room I reserved for you upstairs. You will also be able to wash up if you want as well before the men are back. My oldest daughter, Marilyn, should be back as well by supper time: she went to visit a neighbor.’

The group went to the upper floor, where Joan introduced Ingrid into a fair-sized bedroom with a very comfortable-looking bed.

‘’Here you are, Ingrid. We will now let you unpack at your convenience. There is a bathroom with a tub at the end of the hal way, to the right. Take all your time.’’

‘’Thanks, Joan.’’

Joan then left the room with her children, closing the door behind her. Now alone, Ingrid looked around her and went to the window, which gave a splendid view of the Bear Paw Mountains to the South, which were presently covered with snow. She sighed with relief, already feeling her accumulated stress from the war starting to evaporate.

16:52 (Midwest Time)

Crawford’s Nest Ranch

Havre, Montana

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John Crawford, tired and cold, announced himself in a loud voice as he entered by the back door of his farmhouse.

‘’WE ARE BACK AND FAMISHED, JOAN!’

Joan, who had been preparing supper in the kitchen with Helen and Sylvia, answered at once in an ironic tone.

‘’You guys are always famished when you come back from work. By the way, Ingrid Dows arrived three hours ago and is anxious to meet you.’

‘’Goodie!’’ exclaimed Patrick, a tall, strong and handsome boy of sixteen. ‘’Is she as beautiful as on the pictures sent last year by Uncle Mike?’

As Joan gave him an amused smile, Ingrid appeared in the door to the lounge, smiling to Patrick.

‘’Judge by yourself, Patrick.’

Patrick opened his mouth in admiration as he detailed Ingrid, who was wearing a fresh going out tropical uniform which had been tailored to fit her slender body. His father had to discreetly elbow him in the ribs then, whispering to him as well.

‘’Show some restraint, Son: you are nearly drooling.’

John then stepped up to Ingrid, offering his hand for a shake.

‘’Hello, Ingrid. I am John Crawford, Mike’s brother, and this is my eldest son, Patrick.’

‘’Pleased to meet you, John. You too, Patrick.’

John didn’t miss the way Ingrid’s eyes sparkled as she detailed quickly his son Patrick while shaking hands with him. As for Patrick, it was too obvious that he had immediately become enthralled by the beautiful teenager. Joan then spoke, smiling at the scene.

‘’Why don’t you guys go up and wash before supper?’’

‘’A good idea, Joan.’’ replied John, before looking back at Ingrid. ‘’We won’t be long, Ingrid.’

He then noticed the rank insignias on her shirt collar and hesitated.

‘’You are a major?’’

‘’That’s right, John. I was a squadron commander in the Philippines and General MacArthur promoted me as we were fighting the Japanese invasion. I will be happy to talk more about that later.’

‘’I sure am looking up to that, Ingrid. See you in a moment.’

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When John came back down, he found Ingrid in the lounge with seventeen-year-old Marilyn, his eldest child. Marilyn appeared excited as Ingrid was plugging in a small portable radio. One look at that radio told him at once that it had not been produced in this decade, or even in this century. Marilyn then turned her head towards him, grinning in excitement to him.

‘’Ingrid has a collection of music on discs from the year 2012 with her, Dad. I can’t wait to hear some of it.’

‘’I certainly wouldn’t mind listening to it after supper. Is it quite different from today’s music, Ingrid?’’

The teenager laughed as she thought about the comparison.

‘’It is truly from another world, John. Some of the styles of music in 2012 don’t even exist yet, while most styles from today have gone totally out of fashion. There are good and bad songs, like today, but Nancy had a fine taste in music and she edited out the stuff she found too crude or vulgar from her music selection. Should I put on some soft, soothing music during supper time or should I wait?’’

‘’Let’s wait, so that we then could all enjoy it to the most.’

That answer obviously disappointed Marilyn, but she didn’t protest, instead going slowly through a small case containing dozens of small plastic laser disk holders, looking at the pictures or list of titles on them. Ingrid, her portable radio now set up, tuned it to the first station she found with a speed and easiness that amazed John.

‘’This technology is truly marvelous: normally, it takes me a good half minute to tune well to that station, yet you did it in seconds.’

‘’It has an automatic scan and tune mode. Electronics and computers were two of the technical fields which had advanced the most quickly in the decades following this war.’

Those last words brought a somber air on John’s face.

‘’Talking of the war, did Nancy Laplante tell you how long it wil be and how it wil end, Ingrid?’

‘’She did speak to me extensively about the war, but you must understand that the war she knew is not the war we are now living.’

‘’Uh, I don’t understand.’

It was Ingrid’s turn to look most serious.

‘’John, this World we live in, including ourselves, is only a parallel copy of the World Nancy came from. When she involuntarily traveled to the past and ended up near

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London in September of 1940, her arrival and subsequent actions basically split time, creating a new history parallel to the original historical line. From then on, her actions and those of others reacting to her progressively modified the history of this timeline compared to that of the original one. As an example, in the history known by Nancy, there was no such thing as a young female fighter pilot ace fighting in the Philippines.

The only thing that Nancy was pretty sure about this version of the war is that we will eventually win it. How long it will be or how exactly it will go is still to be determined.’’

‘’Us, mere copies of other selves? That’s quite hard to swallow, Ingrid.’’

‘’It certainly is, John. Nancy didn’t tell that to many people, precisely because it is so unsettling. Like she told me once, the best we can do is to live our lives as if we are the only timeline in existence. Being copies doesn’t make us less human…or less real.’

‘’I’l buy that, Ingrid.’’

‘’SUPPER IS READY!’ shouted at that moment Joan from the kitchen, making John sigh.

‘’Ah, at last! I could eat a horse. Let’s go sit down at the dining table.’

There was soon two adults and six teenagers, including Ingrid, sitting at or serving around the long dining table. John pointed four empty chairs around one end.

‘’We normally have four ranch hands to help with herding cattle and collect hay, but two of them have gone home to their families for Winter, while two others have decided to enlist in the army. With Patrick and Marilyn still in high school until Summer, it makes for quite busy days for me at the ranch for a few months.’’

‘’Oh, but I would be delighted to help out, Uncle John.’’ volunteered at once Ingrid with enthusiasm. ‘’It would be a perfect way for me to change my mind from the war and to get back in top physical shape.’

‘’But you do look in shape, Ingrid.’’ objected Joan Crawford, making Ingrid smile and shake her head.

‘’Not by the standards of Nancy Laplante, Joan. Yes, I am lean and mean, but I need to build up further on my cardio-vascular capacity and on my muscle mass. It may not look like it, but flying combat missions as a fighter pilot demands lots of stamina and quite a lot of raw muscular power. Inhaling oxygen also burns up energy very fast.’

‘’Oh, I see!’ said Joan, who then started filling plates with chicken, potatoes and green peas. She then distributed the plates around the table, serving Ingrid first. Once

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everybody was served, she sat down and let John do a short prayer for the meal before they started to eat. Ingrid closed her eyes in delight as she ate her chicken leg.

‘’This beats Spam any day.’

‘’What’s Spam?’’ asked eleven-year-old Sylvia, making Ingrid laugh.

‘’A place where Spam is not known? I must be in paradise. Spam is a sort of tinned meat of low quality which is too often on military menus, especially in the field. Its composition is often a mystery, even to the military cooks who prepare it.’

‘’Yuck! I already hate it.’

Ingrid, like John and Joan, laughed at that.

‘’A very sensible reaction, Sylvia. So, Marilyn, what are you planning to study once in college?’

‘’Photography and journalism. I love photography and have already my own camera and a small photo lab I installed in the attic. And you, Ingrid, what will you do after the war?’’

Ingrid’s smile faded somewhat then and she answered in a subdued voice.

‘’I am not sure yet, Marilyn. It wil depend if the United States accepts me or not as a fighter pilot. Right now, I am still considered a Filipina officer, with no career status with the United States Army other than as a so-cal ed foreign exchange officer.’

‘’But,’ objected Joan, ‘’you said that you were going to go to Washington after your leave period is completed. You don’t know what they wil do with you then?’

‘’That is correct, Joan. They may just turn and send me on a war bonds tour, in which case I wil refuse at once: I didn’t become a fighter pilot just to be part of a traveling circus. With my husband Ken killed in combat in the Philippines, I am now strictly on my own.’’

John then gently patted one of her hands.

‘’Ingrid, you will always be welcome here at the Crawford’s Nest Ranch.’’

Ingrid couldn’t help shed a tear then, deeply touched.

‘’Thank you, Uncle John. It means a lot to me.’

From then on, the talk at the table stayed on mundane subjects or on the business of the ranch, in deference to Ingrid’s emotions. Once the empty plates were gathered and put in the kitchen’s sink, the family gathered with Ingrid in the big lounge of the ranch house to listen to her radio. Ingrid chose a CD out of her collection and put it in the CD reader unit, then smiled to the Crawford family.

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‘’I wil put on first some soft music, so that I won’t upset stomachs after supper with some of the more phosphorous songs in my collection. This disk is a mix recorded by Nancy of some of the most beautiful diva soft songs of her time, like Sarah Brightman and Enya. I hope that you will enjoy.’

With the first song starting to play, Ingrid went to sit beside Patrick in a sofa and looked at the Bear Paw Mountains through one of the windows of the lounge as the Sun was about to set. With the soft music playing, she felt her months of accumulated stress and painful memories starting to fade at last.

10:10 (Midwest Time)

Monday, March 16, 1942 ‘C’

First Street, Havre, Montana

Having parked his Ford pickup truck in front of the largest clothing store to be found in Havre, John gallantly opened its door for Ingrid, who then entered the store and looked left and right at the racks of clothes on sale. She had come dressed in her tan Filipino going out uniform for two reasons: first, it was standing policy in the United States that military personnel on leave go around in uniform during this time of war; second was the fact that Ingrid’s civilian wardrobe was presently nearly non-existent, she having been forced to abandon her civilian wardrobe when the Japanese had invaded the Philippines, with her only civilian attire left being one of the gray fleece track suits she had worn while being held in the Tower of London. She had thus stated the wish to be able to buy new clothes, with John Crawford then offering to drive her into town today. Thankfully, while flying out of the Philippines with her and General MacArthur, President Quezon had given her an envelope full of American cash money, representing her next three months of military pay from the Filipino Army Air Corps. The fact that, in contrast, the U.S. Army had not been ready to offer her some financial help and stil wasn’t had not impressed her one bit.

Fol owed by John Crawford, Ingrid started going around the racks of women’s clothes on sale, checking at the same time their prices: she simply had no idea about the cost of living in the United States. While clearly more expensive than in the Philippines, she found the prices here in Havre to be fairly reasonable and within her budget. She was looking at pairs of jeans for women, which would be practical for horse riding around

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the Crawford’s ranch, when a fat woman who was looking at dresses a few paces away looked crossly at her military trousers.

‘’Don’t they issue skirts to go with female uniforms, miss?’’

Having already heard too many stupid, ignorant remarks since her arrival in the United States about what ‘proper’ women should wear, Ingrid gave the matron a less than friendly look.

‘’First, you may call me ‘Major’ instead of ‘miss’, madam. Second, this is a regulation uniform and I wil wear it proudly whenever I wil want to.’’

Seeing that John Crawford, a big, beefy man, was now eyeing her in a very unfriendly way, the matron then decided to go check other racks of clothes on the opposite side of the store. Ingrid, shaking her head, looked at John as she went on with her clothes selection.

‘’Is this thinking about women being badly considered if they wear pants common in the United States, Uncle John?’

‘’Unfortunately yes, Ingrid. The general American attitude about social aspects of life is still quite conservative pretty much all over the country. However, with the people around Montana often riding horses, for a girl to wear jeans trousers is considered quite normal, so go ahead and buy a couple of them for yourself. You may also want to buy a couple of female jeans jackets to go with them, plus a pair or two of cowboy boots and a hat.’

‘’All good suggestions, Uncle John: I will heed them.’

After nearly an hour spent looking around the store and selecting pieces which attracted her and proved to fit her, Ingrid went to the cashier to pay for the small pile of clothes she had selected. The old man at the cashier, who was probably the store owner, opened his eyes wide on seeing the ribbon of the Medal of Honor atop other combat ribbons on the left chest area of her military shirt.

‘’The Medal of Honor? With the DSC, Silver Star and Purple Heart in addition?

How could you have earned such prestigious medals, miss, er, Major?’’

From the fact that the old man had been able to correctly identify both her medals and her rank insignias, Ingrid guessed that he had to be a military veteran, so answered him most politely.

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‘’By shooting down a total of 72 Japanese planes over the Philippines and then fighting the Japanese in the jungle for close to two months, mister. I am known as ‘Lady Hawk’ in the Philippines.’

Instead of scoffing at that, like too many Americans had done recently, the man in his fifties responded to that by smiling widely and shaking her hand vigorously.

‘’The famous Lady Hawk here, in Montana? Are you from this state?’

‘’Er, no! However, the family of my late adoptive father, who died in a plane crash, is from Havre. This is my uncle, John Crawford.’

‘’Yes, I saw you in my store a few times in the past, Mister Crawford.’ said the store owner while also shaking John’s hand, then looking back at Ingrid.

‘’Uh, may I ask what your proper name is, Major?’’

‘’My name is Ingrid Dows and my husband was a Marine Corps officer. I suppose that you are a veteran from the Great War of 1914?’’

‘’Correct, Major. I was wounded to a leg then and has had a slight limp ever since. While trench warfare was bad enough, I suppose that jungle warfare could be even worse, what with all those tropical diseases and bugs found there.’’

‘’Jungle fighting is indeed like Hell, mister. Thankfully, I now have three weeks of leave to recuperate from it. So, how much do I owe you for all this?’’

The store owner quickly added up the price tags attached to the items selected by her, finally announcing the total to her.

‘’It would normally add up to 51 dollars and forty cents, Major, but I routinely give a ten percent discount to military personnel visiting my store, so it will be 46 dollars and 26 cents for you.’

‘’Oh, thank you so much, mister! You are a gem!’ said Ingrid happily before counting that sum in cash and giving it to the store owner. Thanking him one last time after the owner had put her new clothes in a pair of large paper shopping bags, Ingrid then left the store with John and looked left and right at the other stores along First Street before asking a question to John.

‘’Uh, do they have a gun store in Havre, Uncle John?’’

‘’If we have a gun store in Havre?’ said John, smiling. ‘’Of course we do! We are in Midwest, ranch country, after all. While you won’t see people going around town with guns at their belts, about everyone around here owns at least one gun. Fol ow me!’’

As she followed John down the sidewalk, with John helping Ingrid by carrying one of the bags of clothes, she asked him another question.

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‘’Do you think that I wil be able to find some .50 caliber Action Express ammunition at that store, Uncle John?’

John Crawford frowned on hearing that, mystified.

‘’Fifty Action Express? You own an elephant hunting rifle, Ingrid?’’

That made Ingrid giggle in amusement before explaining herself.

‘’What I own is one of the four handguns I still have from Nancy Laplante: a gold-plated Desert Eagle in .50 caliber Action Express. In 2012 it was the most powerful handgun in existence in the World, save for some cut-off variants of bolt-action rifles passing off as handguns. I actually fired a few rounds out of it in the Philippines, along with my late husband Ken, but the amount of ammunition I have left for it is quite limited.’

‘’Uh, I doubt that you will find that kind of caliber around here, Ingrid. At worst, a gun shop owner could always specially produce some for you if you provided him a couple of rounds as examples, but that could cost you a pretty penny. Mind you, I wouldn’t mind trying a couple of rounds out of your big gun. What else do you have as handguns?’’

‘’I used as my main combat pistol in the Philippines a Glock 17L 9 mm pistol, with which I killed over thirty Japanese soldiers. I also have a compact Glock 19 9 mm pistol for conceal carry, plus a Ruger Mark II .22 caliber long rifle pistol, which I use for practice shooting. I had as well a Colt Python revolver in .357 Magnum but I gave it to the husband of my Filipino cook before leaving the Philippines, so that he could defend his family from the Japanese.’

‘’Decidedly, you wil have to show me your arsenal once back at the farm. I do know a place near the farm where we could safely do some shooting practice. Would you like to practice your pistol and rifle shooting during your leave period?’’

‘’Oh yes! I would love to do that, Uncle John.’

‘’Please, just call me ‘John’, Ingrid. Aah, here we are: the ‘Havre Firearms’

store.’

Entering together the gun store, John then went to the sales clerk standing near the cashier and passed to him the two bags full of clothes, so that they would not be suspected of having put in them some items while looking around the gun store. The sales clerk readily put the bags behind his counter, as this was a regular arrangement with his customers, with Ingrid then asking the man a question.

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‘’Do you have some 9 mm Parabellum ammunition for pistols, Mister? I would also need some .22 caliber Long Rifle ammunition.’

‘’We do have quantities of both of those calibers, miss. How much of each caliber would you need?’’

‘’I believe that 300 rounds of 9 mm Parabellum and 400 round of .22 Long Rifle should do nicely, sir. If I need more for my shooting practice, I can always come back and buy more of them.’

‘’That you effectively can do, miss.’ said approvingly the sales clerk before opening a drawer containing dozens of boxes of cartridges and taking out boxes of 9

mm and .22 LR ammunition, then putting them on his counter near the cashier. Ingrid was about to pay for those cartridges when she remembered something.

‘’Damn! I was about to forget: I wil also need some ammunition for my Springfield 1903 rifle. Could I get a hundred rounds of .30 caliber, please?’’

‘’Certainly, miss!’ replied the sales clerk with a smile before fetching five twenty-round boxes of .30 ammunition and putting them down on the counter, next to the other boxes of bullets. Paying for the ammunition, Ingrid then let John carry the heavy cardboard box in which the clerk put her boxes of bullet.

After going out of the gun store, John led Ingrid back to his pickup truck and put her purchases behind the bench seat of the cab, then got in with her. As they were driving through the town and heading back to the ranch, Ingrid spoke up softly.

‘’John, I have been thinking about my Desert Eagle pistol. As a gun which personified Nancy, it has an enormous sentimental value for me. However, it is also a weapon which could tempt many people in stealing it, as it is gold-plated and is a truly unique piece. I still don’t know what will happen with me or even if the American government will let me continue to pilot fighter aircraft. However, if they do let me, I also could be sent to various places where I would worry about my pistol being stolen. Would you accept to safeguard my Desert Eagle by keeping it for me at your ranch after my leave period will be finished?’’

‘’Of course I would, Ingrid.’’

‘’Then, I wil show it to you once at the ranch: it is a truly superb weapon.’’

Half an hour later, they arrived at the family ranch, where John parked his pickup truck in the garage attached to his farmhouse and then helped Ingrid carry her things

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inside and up to her room. There, she unlocked the padlock securing her foot locker and took out her four handguns, spreading them on top of her bed so that John could examine them. John’s eyes grew wide on seeing the Desert Eagle .50AE pistol.

‘’Wow! What a beast! It is also beautiful. I can understand your fears about someone stealing it at some military base or camp: gun collectors would pay a fortune to get this pistol.’

‘’Well, my problem with it is not only about it possibly attracting thieves: it is also the fact that, in this war, it is simply not a practical weapon for me to carry. First, it is very heavy and bulky and would be of little use to me on a battlefield, as my two 9 mm pistols have proved a lot more useful to me. Second, I have only a limited amount of ammunition for it, with prospects to get more rather scant. While I positively love it, I definitely prefer to leave it here, in your ranch, during this war. Once the war is over, then I wil come to take it back.’

‘’And what do you intend to do after the war, Ingrid?’’

Ingrid hesitated for a moment before answering John.

‘’That wil depend on if the U.S. Army will accept me as a fighter pilot or not, John. If they don’t, then I may just stay here and work for you as a ranch hand, if you would accept me as your employee.’’