“First, let me welcome you home, both to the States and the Navy.”
“Thank you very much, Sir.”
Who the hell is he? I know the name from someplace. What does he want with me?
“Commander, I need an aide-de-camp, preferably someone like yourself, Annapolis, who has been in harm’s way, and one who is not at the moment on flight status. What he’ll be doing, rather than passing hors d’oeuvres, is helping me distribute our assets where they will do the most good. Unless you have objections to the assignment, BUPERS7 says I can have you. Interested?”
“Yes, Sir.”
“Now, I don’t want you rushing down here to Washing- ton, Son. You take your leave. From what I hear, you damned well have earned it. The reason I called now is so that we can get the paperwork moving.”
“I’m on a fourteen-day leave, Sir.”
“Well, you take the full fourteen days, and however much longer you feel you need. I don’t want you returning to duty before you feel up to it.”
“Fourteen days will be enough, Sir.”
“Welcome aboard, Commander,” Admiral Hawley said, and hung up.
Ed Bitter was pleased at this development. It would be some time before he could get back on flight status, if ever. Thus, he had been a little afraid that when he reported for duty, he would find himself officer in charge of enlisted recreation, or in some other “essential” occupation that could be handled by a grounded aviator.
This was different. Not only would he be on the staff of a BUAIR flag officer, but that flag officer wanted him because he was Annapolis, and had been in harm’s way, not just because he was an available body. Duty as an aide-de-camp was considered an essential part to the advancement of an officer’s career, and he was now getting that chance. He was no longer the shallow junior officer who had gone to China. He was an ace, nearly a double ace, and he was quite sure that Admiral Hawley would not object to his wearing his AVG wings. Admiral Hawley obviously knew what they represented.
By the end of the week, however, the euphoria had palled, and his mother and the procession of friends she marched to hover over her son the wounded hero now made him more than a little uncomfortable. By the weekend, he knew he had to get away.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” he said when she told him she’d planned a cocktail party in his honor on Sunday, “I should have said something sooner. But I won’t be here over the weekend.”
“But the invitations have already gone out—”
“I’m going to Memphis tomorrow,” he said firmly. “For a couple of days. Navy business. I called the airfield. They have planes running to the Memphis NAS, and I can catch a ride on one.”
“Whatever do you want to go to Memphis for?” his mother asked.
The reason he wanted to go to Memphis was to see if the little girl who had been so passionate in bed at the Chambers’ vacation home in Alabama would give him the same kind of welcome she had given him before he went away, but he could hardly say that to his mother.
“Navy business,” he said again. “The Navy has a large air station at Memphis. I thought you knew.”
“No,” she said unhappily. “And I don’t see why the Navy’s making you go all the way to Memphis,” his mother said. “With your knee in the shape it is.”
Having me as a naval hero, he thought, a little unkindly, works both ways.
“Mother,” Bitter said. “I’m a naval officer. The country is at war.”
She swallowed that whole.
“Yes, of course,” she said. “Your duty comes first. I was only thinking of your well-being.”
At Glenview Naval Air Station, he was given space aboard a Navy R4-D bound for the Memphis NAS.
At Memphis, when he asked in base operations where he could find a cab, the aerodrome officer took a quick look at the cane and the AVG wings