Soldier Stories: True Tales of Courage, Honor, and Sacrifice from the Frontlines

by Joe L. Wheeler (Editor)

Overview

True stories of people who endured the shock and trauma of war—and whose spirits triumphed.

• A priest in the infamous Bataan Death March who kept others alive with his faithful recitation of the Lord’s Prayer
• The journey to faith by a skeptical B-17 copilot lost at sea
• A young American widow caught in the “Dresden Inferno” who survived the firestorm with her three children
• The lesson of post-war forgiveness learned by a British soldier tortured by the Japanese
• A rowdy Arizona cowboy who achieved World War I flying ace status in a matter of weeks
• and many more

Soldier Stories’ true, soul-stirring accounts of those who have risen to the challenge of unimaginable circumstances will inspire you—no matter what obstacles you may face.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781418554613
Publisher:	HarperCollins Christian Publishing
Publication date:	03/21/2023
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	242
File size:	721 KB

Read an Excerpt

SOLDIER STORIES

TRUE TALES OF COURAGE, HONOR, AND SACRIFICE FROM THE FRONTLINES

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By JOE WHEELER

W Publishing Group

Copyright © 2007 Joe Wheeler
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8499-1217-7

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Chapter One

THE FLYING MADMAN

* * *

Joseph V. Mizrahi

In all the annals of wartime flight, there is no comparable story to that of Frank Luke Jr., a young lieutenant from Phoenix, Arizona, who approached the flimsy aircraft at the front like a cowboy taking on a mean-spirited bucking bronco. None of those early daredevils of the air-not even the Red Baron-excelled him in courage. As for disregarding orders, Luke was in a class by himself.

* * *

The Madman was back!

High above the German balloon, buffeted by screaming wind and shrapnel bursts, an American pilot rammed his Spad through a terror-chilled sky, intent on the growing black shape beneath him.

Lit by explosions, the enemy target squatting in the night sky resembled a sweating fat man, badly addicted to over-eating and frozen with fear.

His airspeed indicator struggling in the red, the American pumped a rattling tracer-burst into the fleshy carcass, splitting the flabby belly. Hot gas belched out of the balloon, expanding upward in a rush of chemical stench, then exploding in violent eruptions. Easing back on the stick, the pilot watched the balloon crinkle and sag in its own funeral pyre; then, banking, he roared low over the trees toward the barest slice of light in the west.

Second Lieutenant Frank Luke, Jr. had destroyed his sixth balloon in four days that night of September 15, 1918.

Perhaps it was true that only madmen and lunatics volunteered for such missions. Certainly the sausage-shaped bags discouraged heroics. Considered important and expensive tools by the enemy, he protected them as such. Each one had its ring of antiaircraft and machine-gun batteries, all accurately ranged on the aerial approaches; in addition, a squadron of fighters stood constant alert, patrolling the area.

Possibly his German background produced Luke's craving for the bulbous giants. Whatever it was, his appetite for balloon sausage seemed insatiable. They appeared on his operational menu every night and his peculiar tastes threatened to eliminate Germany's supply in the St. Mihiel Salient.

* * *

Frank Luke came to the front in early August, 1918, a belligerent, cocky youth who still considered war a game. Based on his previous flying experience, perhaps it was. Flying new ships up to the line squadrons, and nursing the remains of wrecks back to Orly depot, was not Luke's idea of combat. True, some of the latter were so badly shot up that keeping them in the air was a decided challenge, but the possibility they might fall apart while aloft did not provide enough of the thrill he thrived on.

If the youngster from Phoenix, Arizona, had examined more closely the battered kites he flew, his mania for action might not have been so pronounced. All had flapping, shredded canvas and were pocked with bullet holes. Some retained more personal and grisly souvenirs of their encounter with the enemy. But the occasional instrument panel smeared with dried blood and bits of hair, the pilot's seat splintered by 40mm Archie (flak), and the smell of a cockpit once charred by flaming gasoline, didn't dissuade the young cowboy from requesting and getting a combat assignment.

Pilots were scarce in the First Pursuit Group just then. German circuses were formidable enemies; to prove it, men like Quentin Roosevelt and Raoul Lufbery lay buried beneath amputated propeller blades shaped into crosses the day Luke came up to take their place. He was assigned to the 27th Squadron and sent to a collection of miserable shacks bordering a bumpy pasture that served as the squadron's field.

* * *

Next day at formation, the new arrivals received their official welcome from the commander, Major Harold E. Hartney-a tough bantam, curt and waspish. "People get killed up here regularly. If you survive the first few weeks and your own personal god continues to strap himself in with you, you'll probably accomplish things. That's all, gentlemen! Good luck, you'll need it!"

Surveying the new crop of faces, Hartney's eyes narrowed on a solidly built, sharp-featured, blond youngster. As the major stared, Frank Luke grinned at him. It was a cocksure smile that told him one fledgling hadn't been impressed by the CO's grim welcome....

When Hartney led their first patrol over the lines, the young skeptic was in the formation. Luke wasn't a bad kid, the major thought, but he talked too much for a newcomer; and there were men in the squadron-aces-who were getting a little tired of the Arizona gunslinger and his fast-draw mouth.

Sitting in the mess nights, and sometimes through the long, rainy days when they were grounded, was trying enough; Luke made it worse, Hartney mused, baiting the short tempers of jittery men with what he was going to do when he met the Hun. Particularly when his confreres had already made that singular acquaintance and the braggart hadn't.

Leaving it at that, the major leveled off near Chateau-Thierry. Below him, something resembling a wobbly bicycle track reeled northward through what had once been a forest. From that altitude, the battle line seemed as commonplace as a country road.

Signaling the veterans, who boxed the youngsters, to stay up top, Major Hartney took his novices down for a closer look. Descending in gliding turns, the patrol first picked up the sound of intermittent gunfire. Next the earth's diseased, pock-marked face showed up. As they focused their unbelieving eyes, explosions erupted new sores on the festering surface. From two thousand feet, the front was an infected scab on the body of France.

Leading the flight back up to altitude, Hartney caught sight of a Spad spiraling away toward the Champagne sector. His suspicions as to the joyrider's identity were confirmed when Luke returned a half-hour later than the others. Hartney received him coldly.

"And where have you been?" he asked sarcastically.

"Sorry, Major," came the innocent reply. "I had some engine trouble. Fuel pump I think."

"Oh!" Hartney nodded his head solicitously. "All right, Luke," he snapped, "next time you stick with the formation. Dismissed."

Of course it was entirely possible that Hartney had been mistaken in his diagnosis of Luke's sudden engine trouble, but he doubted it. The second time it happened, he boiled. Eying the silent young officer before him, Hartney unlimbered. "Who do you think you are, you glory-happy little runt? When I give an order to stay in formation, I also mean you. This outfit hasn't got time or room for joystick juveniles."

The major continued to rage. When he paused to catch his breath, Luke, smiling confidently, applied the quietus.

"I got a Hun!"

"What? Where?" the major stammered.

"Near Soissons."

"Behind the German lines? How do you know you got him? Did you see him go down?"

"No," Luke said calmly, "but I sprayed him good, twice; and he was on his back, spinning down just above the trees, when I peaked for home."

Later, after reading the young aviator's report, Hartney was convinced Luke had gotten the German. Others in the squadron were not so sure. They weren't buying behind-the-line confirmations from loudmouths. More than once their jibes of "Hey, cowboy, how many red-skinned Fokkers bit the dust today?"-especially when Luke hadn't flown-burned him so much he knocked over a few tables in the mess and sent someone to the doctor.

Brooding, his pride hurt, Luke crept into a shell, avoiding the others. Although he could not speak the language, he spent most of his time with the Storks, a neighboring French escadrille, and kept to himself at home base. To this day, although officially confirmed, some discount his first victory. There are no doubters concerning the others.

The unruly cub might have become a lone wolf had he not met someone equally embittered. Lieutenant Joe Wehner's luck turned sour the day he acknowledged himself as the young man Uncle Sam was pointing to. Wehner is a German name, but there were a host of them in the AEF: Luke and Rickenbacker, among others. Unfortunately for Joe, his name had intrigued some highly unintelligent intelligence officer, whose powers of deduction were nil.

By some twisted logic, the sleuth concluded that Wehner was a spy. All of Joe's movements were suspicious. Therefore he was followed, his baggage searched, his mail read, and when nothing was found, they arrested him. He was under arrest when his unit left Texas. Joining it in New York, he was again apprehended. Finally permitted to sail, he was detained, questioned, and searched upon his arrival in France, then released with the warning that his movements would be closely watched.

Sitting in the mess, Wehner doubted the man across from him and lay awake nights questioning the snores from the next cot. He was jumpy and suspicious. The endless badgering had made a recluse of him. Aloof, shut up in his world of misgiving and persecution, it was natural that he should seek out the squadron's other outcast. Both had grown grim and taciturn: one through the jeering disbelief of his comrades; the other through fear and suspicion. Together in the air, they were to take out their frustrations on the enemy.

When the American drive in the St. Mihiel Salient opened, Major Hartney moved up to group and the 27th squadron got a new CO, Captain Alfred Grant. Grant was a rule-book soldier, a good one. He followed regulations and expected the same obedience from his subordinates. Therefore, it was inevitable that he and Luke should clash.

On September 11, 1918, the 27th moved into the Verdun sector near Rembercourt. Luke had been out joyriding that day and had missed Grant's briefing for coming operations in the sector. As usual, during a routine patrol, he had quit formation and made his own tour of the countryside, ending up by visiting the Storks and returning to field late at night.

Grant was waiting for him. In the cramped Nissen hut that served as his office, he told Luke what to expect if his escapades continued:

"I don't know what Hartney let you get away with, Luke, but I'm not giving you the time of day. Any more of this solo action and you can kiss those gold bars good-by. If that's clear, get the blazes out of here!"

Luke's temper flared for a moment; then, saluting quickly, he turned and walked stiffly toward the mess. In the reconverted hangar, crowded with smoke and old furniture, something resembling Dardanella was being tortured on the ancient piano and an enthusiastic but raucous quartet of pilots seemed to howl approval by their accompaniment. Joe Wehner wasn't around, so Luke ordered cognac and sat by himself, brooding.

Grant with his piddling regulations-he'd like to get the smug leader in the air. He'd fly circles around the rule book. Where did that idiot think he went when he left those time-wasting formations? You'd never see Grant's plane twenty miles behind the German lines. Luke earned his flight pay, and the only reason he visited the Storks so much was to gas up, so he could stay in the air longer. Besides, he enjoyed their company; the French weren't like the captain's rule-book robots.

What's more, he was better than anyone in this lousy squadron-aces, the whole darn bunch, including Rickenbacker. All he needed was a chance to prove it.

While Luke nursed his cognac and soothed his ego, the conversation at a nearby table drifted into his thoughts. Captain Jerry Vasconcelles refilled his glass and repeated the statement that had drawn Luke from his troubles. "I don't care what you say, Triplane, Albatross, new D VII, they're still aircraft; they've got limitations, and you know what to expect attacking them. But a balloon. Have you ever seen the stuff that hits those bags?" Vasconcelles bent his fingers as he counted, "Archie, machine guns, flaming onions; then there's a fighter circus to contend with, and you never face a bum one. No, balloons are too dangerous! You can get them, but they usually get you. A couple of tracers, hot gas and woosh-you go up with it. They're the toughest all right. The man who gets one has my respect."

The listeners solemnly agreed, and as it usually did, the talk turned to women. As Luke walked toward his quarters, Vasconcelles's words echoed in his head. "They're the toughest. The man who gets one has my respect." Luke nodded and the war's most amazing string of victories began.

"Temperature, oil pressure, magneto all okay." As Luke checked his instruments, his mechanic climbed along the wing and thrust his head into the cockpit, out of the wind. "Where to today?"

"We're having sausage for dinner. I'm getting us a balloon!"

Luke revved the engine and his mechanic dropped from the fuselage amid the smoke shaken from the twin exhausts, the wind plastering his coveralls to him. He pulled the chocks, and maneuvering with abrupt, swinging turns, Luke taxied the ship to the edge of the field and pointed her into the wind. The engine blipped in doubtful idle, then roared, its propwash pressing the grass flat. The Spad vibrated numbly; then quivering and shaking, it began to roll forward, bumping along the field, steadily increasing speed until it was airborne, plumes of black smoke dissipating gently behind it.

The afternoon dwindled away over the dark wooded clumps of the Argonne, with Luke sighting an occasional speck in the distance. But nothing materialized. He had paralleled the lines for fifty miles and was turning back in disgust when he saw it. Moored to a skeleton village, a soft, gray shape bobbed on its cables, riding at anchor in the light breeze. A series of climbing turns transformed the bag into a plump oval.

Luke pushed the stick to the firewall, stood the Spad on its nose and dove at full throttle. Wind screamed through the bracing wire. The ship buckled and the balloon spiraled up like a punted football. Bursting shrapnel littered the sky, dirty black fog smudging the patchwork of expanding ground. Percussion thumped the air. Beneath the swollen hulk a frantic observer tried to jump from the wicker basket and fouled in the rigging.

Luke sucked the joy stick into his belly, hung on his prop and raked the onrushing bulge. A loop and a half-roll aligned the sagging balloon so he could make another pass. His second burst slashed the wounded side before his temperamental guns jammed. While the Heinie winch crews struggled to lower the collapsing monster, Luke climbed in a chandelle and rapped the gun stoppage free with a mallet. Then he roared down on his back, his tracers pokering the ruptured bag as it fell to the ground. There was a white-hot, upward slam, a fiery gas cloud; the balloon incinerated and vanished in tumbling sparks.

Before returning to his field, Luke armed himself with two confirmations from a nearby American balloon squadron that had witnessed the action. The Spad's engine having been hit, he rode a side-car in. His squadron, learning of his spectacular victory by phone, jammed headquarters when he reported. Amid the backslapping, hair-mussing, hand-shaking congratulations, Luke forgot his personal grudges and dropped his defiant attitude. He'd scored a tremendous victory and his companions were proud of him.

The Spad came home the following day, after some emergency repairs enabled it to make the field. Luke's mechanics, who had crowed over their machine's victory, were dumbstruck at its appearance. More canvas was gone than remained. The top left wing consisted of air, wire and three stringers. The empennage was a sieve and a huge gash had been ripped through the pilot's seat, less than six inches from Luke's body.

Shaking his head, Luke's ground chief inspected the damage with serious misgivings. "Lieutenant, I've seen a lot of birds come in, but when they're like this, the pilot who flies 'em doesn't climb out of the cockpit."

Grinning, Luke poked his fingers through the splintered seat. "You take care of the aircraft, chief. I'll take care of me. If I were going to get killed, this would have been it."

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from SOLDIER STORIES by JOE WHEELER Copyright © 2007 by Joe Wheeler. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

The Fascination of War / Joseph Leininger Wheeler....................1
The Flying Madman / Joseph V. Mizrahi....................15
The Yanks Go Through / William Slavens McNutt....................39
Carrier Pigeons are Real Heroes / Author Unknown....................57
How the British Sank the Scharnhorst / C. S. Forester....................65
Give Us This Day / Sergeant Sidney Stewart (with Joe Wheeler)....................85
Doolittle's Raid on Tokyo / Martin Caidin....................111
Voyage to Faith / Thomas Fleming....................125
The Lost Fortress / Ernie Pyle....................133
The Dresden Inferno / Anne Wahle (with Roul Tunley)....................141
Beyond the River Kwai / Lieutenant Eric Lomax....................159
A New Skipper for Charlie Company / Ken Jones....................167
Mercy Flight / Lieutenant Alan D. Fredericks (with Michael Gladych)....................177
Mike's Flag / Commander John McCain (with Mark Salter)....................191
Taking Chance / Lt. Colonel Michael Strobl....................195
Pat Tillman: a Short Life / Commander John McCain (with Mark Salter)....................211
Acknowledgments....................221