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[ THREE ]
Schleissheim U.S. Army Airfield
Munich, American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1605 4 November 1945
“Lieutenant, what would I have to do to get you to give me half a dozen jerry cans of avgas to take with me?” Cronley asked.
“Why would you want to do that?”
“This airplane seems to run better if I put avgas in it.”
“In other words, it’s a CIC secret?”
“My lips are sealed. Two elephants and a rhinoceros could not drag that secret from me.”
“The avgas is no problem. The cans are.”
“I can get them back to you in a couple of days.”
“Why not? Let me have your ID, so I can write down to whom I am loaning six jerry cans and thus placing my military career in jeopardy.”
Jimmy reached into his Ike jacket for his credentials, which he always carried in the left inside pocket. The folder wasn’t there.
“What the hell?” he said.
A quick, somewhat frantic search found the credentials in the right inside pocket.
Thank God!
A CIC agent losing his credentials is a mortal sin.
Right up there, for example, with getting caught fucking a CIC colonel’s wife.
Mattingly would be almost as delighted with the former as he would be with the latter.
They must have fallen out when Rachel hung my uniform up.
He handed them over.
Ten minutes later, he told the Schleissheim tower that Army Seven-Oh-Seven was rolling.
[ FOUR ]
Kloster Grünau
Schollbrunn, Bavaria
American Zone of Occupation, Germany
1650 4 November 1945
Army Seven-Oh-Seven taxied very slowly to the tent hangar beside the chapel and stopped. The pilot got out.
“I was getting worried you weren’t going to be able to make it back,” First Sergeant Chauncey L. Dunwiddie greeted Captain James D. Cronley Jr. “It’s getting dark.”
“I noticed. I could barely see some of the cows I chased in the fields between Munich and here. And the runway was just about invisible as I landed.”
