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They started walking toward the Nissen hut—an inverted “U” of corrugated steel from War One with wooden walls at each end and a single wooden screened door—that was being used as a combination guard shack and base ops building.
The wooden door swung open, and a tall, skinny twenty-two-year-old American with a round friendly face came out.
“Welcome back, Dick!” First Lieutenant Henry Darmstadter, USAAF, called out as the spring on the door slammed it shut behind him. “Stan said you were on the way.”
Canidy went to Darmstadter and wrapped his arms around him.
“Damn good to see you, Hank!” Canidy said.
“Yeah,” Darmstadter said, trying to wiggle free of the
grip, “but not quite that much.”
John Craig chuckled.
Canidy then put his hands on either side of Darmstadter’s head and kissed him wetly in the middle of his forehead.
“Jesus Christ, Dick!” Darmstadter said, wiping at his forehead with his sleeve. But he was grinning.
Canidy looked at John Craig and said, “This man saved my ass in Hungary, and I will never forget it.”
“Really?”
Van der Ploeg then looked at Darmstadter.
“How they hanging, John Craig?” Darmstadter said, dodging the question. “You need another ride over to the Sandbox?”
John Craig van der Ploeg caught Dick Canidy’s questioning look.
As John Craig shook Darmstadter’s hand, he said to Canidy: “Remember? I told you I’ve been out here almost every day.”
Canidy nodded. “Right. Going through throat-cutting school.”
“I hear he’s been doing a helluva job,” Hank offered, and motioned at the Gooney Bird. “You made three jumps last week, right?”
“Four,” John Craig said, “including the night jump. That gives me twenty total. But tell me about saving Dick.”
Darmstadter sighed. “Look, the truth of it is I did nothing that Dick wouldn’t have done for me.”
“But the fact of it is you did it,” Canidy said, then looked at John Craig. “Very simply, I was trapped in Hungary, without a single hope in hell of not being captured and either shot on sight or strung up in a cold damp dungeon to slowly die. Then Hank here came flying in on his great white steed—”
“It was a Gooney Bird just like this one,” Hank interrupted, shaking his head and gesturing toward the olive drab C-47.
John Craig’s head turned to Darmstadter . . .
“—his great olive drab steed that was filled up to here”—Canidy went on, holding his hand flat, palm down, index finger touching his forehead—“with enough extra fuel to blow us all to kingdom come—”
John Craig turned to Canidy . . .
“It was just an auxiliary fuel cell,” Darmstadter said.
. . . then back to Darmstadter . . .
“—and Hank landed this fuel-packed flying bomb on a piece of real estate that was this big”—he put his index finger and thumb a hair-width apart—“and surrounded by ancient thick forest—”
. . . back to Canidy . . .
“Dick had actually taken down some trees with Primacord.”
