"Incoming fighters!" Snaro's spotter yelled out.
"Thanks, Bill," Snaro replied.
Snaro hopped into his gunnery chair. He felt weightier than the last time he'd been here. He realized what it was. Medals were hanging heavy on his chest. With a sigh, he grabbed the two triggers and began to fire.
A Mexican fighter was coming towards him. As he shifted his aim wildly, the crosshairs of his gun began to fly all around his field of view. With a satisfying recoil the gun was thumping away at the remnants of the enemy air force.
What had once been awe-inspiring to behold was now pathetic, Snaro reflected. At Juala there had been hundreds of planes. The invading Mexican force had only been given minimal air cover, because it was spread out over so great an amount of invading troops.
Suddenly Snaro's eyes began to cloud over with rage.
"You Mexican bastards," he screamed.
He was beginning to have flashbacks of his time in the Juala P.O.W. camp. The terrible treatment, the scorching heat, the lack of food and sleep. He and Colonel Frost having to drag buckets of gravel through the desert for no real reason. Their rescue by the American army had hardly been a pleasure for that matter.
The troops had been retreating. They had been part of the small force of Americans trying to invade Mexico with little or no success. Some of them had been at Tijuana, including their commander, Brigadier General Paul King.
"You're heroes," King had said when he learned that they had been at Juala, "You'll be treated like them once we get back to America. We'd all thought no one had survived Juala. The people will be so overjoyed."
There had been a reason why King said they'd be treated well only once they were back in America. Most of the invasionary forces had been forced to retreat because their supply lines had been cut off. They had no food and no water.
Frost and Snaro, not to mention most of the army, were half dead by the time the reached America. Snaro had developed a deep and unwavering hatred of all Mexicans by that time. They had continued to harrow the retreating Americans every chance they got. Snaro had been grazed by a bullet during one of these periodic attacks.
Snaro had been given medal heaped upon medal (without a promotion) as did Frost at a public ceremony upon their "triumphant" return to America proper. Now he took out all his hatred on the Mexican planes which had the utter arrogant audacity to invade his home country. They fell and fell like swatted flies before Snaro's wrath.
A string of bullets grazed the window from which Snaro was firing, shattering the glass in several places. More bullets whizzed by, but no more came so close to the mark.
"Who was that?" he yelled.
Swiveling wildly, he brought the crosshairs to bear on a ferocious looking fighter painted like a tiger with gaping mouth and all. It was clearly meant to intimidate, but Snaro was too overcome by rage.
"You think you can hurt me with your gun?"
Snaro fired off a whole magazine at the fighter. Holes began to appear in the metal and finally the fuel tank was hit and the plane exploded in midair. Snaro turned his attentions back to the swirling chaos around him.
"Who else?" he yelled, "Who else?"
He continued to bring down enemy plane after enemy plane. He felt his own plane rise suddenly several yards higher as the bomber delivered it's payload and lightened. They began to turn around to return to base.
No comments:
Post a Comment