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[FOUR]

When It. Colonel Peter Douglass' Jr returned to his quarters from the postmission debriefing, the Underwood typewriter and the service record were waiting for him on the old and battered desk in his room.

It was SOP, Standard Operating Procedure. There was a system. There had to be a system. The SOP It. Colonel Douglass had set up was that in the case of pilots within a section, their section leaders wrote the letters, subject to review by squadron commanders. In the case of section leaders, squadron commanders wrote the letters, subject to review by the group exec. In the case of squadron commanders, or squadron executive officers, the group commander wrote the letters himself.

Douglass kicked off his sheepskin flying boots, sending them sailing across the small room in the curved-ceilinged Quonset hut. He took off his battered, leather-brimmed hat and skimmed it three feet toward a hook on the wall. It touched the hook, but bounced off and fell to the floor. He made no move to pick it up.

He reached into the pocket of the sheepskin flying jacket and came out with two miniature bottles of Old Overholt rye whiskey. Eighth Air Force SOP provided for the "postmission issue of no more than two bottles, 1.6 ounces, bourbon or rye whiskey 86 proof or 100 proof to flight crew personnel, when, in the opinion of the attending flight surgeon, such issue is medically indicated."

The Eighth Air Force SOP went on to stipulate that "in no case is the issue of more than two bottles permitted" and that "wherever possible, the issue of medicinal whiskey will be made only after flight crews have undergone postmission debriefing."

And finally, the Eighth Air Force SOP stated that "medicinal whiskey so issued will be ingested in the presence of the prescribing flight surgeon."

Translated, that meant that unless you watched those crazy pilots, or, in the case of bombers, navigators, bombardiers, flight engineers, and aerial gunners, they were liable to hoard their "bottles, 1.6 ounces" of medicinal whiskey until they had enough to tie a load on, or worse, share it wi

th people not entitled to medicinal whiskey.

It. Colonel Douglass walked to the battered desk, pulled the drawer open, and carefully laid his miniature bottles in it. There were already a dozen other bottles there. It was the 344the Fighter Group commander's unofficial SOP to pass out his ration of medicinal booze to his pilots when he thought such issue

was indicated for morale purposes. Sometimes he passed it out to the enlisted men, too, in contravention of the spirit and letter of the Eighth Air Force SOE It bothered the hell out of the ground crews when their plane and pilot didn't come home. And some took it worse than others.

Saving the miniatures to pass out as he saw fit did not represent any sacrifice, booze-wise, on the part of It. Colonel Douglass. He had his own out-of supply-channels source of booze, and when he had a couple of medicinal postmission nips, he took them from a bottle of Scotch.

He shrugged out of the sheepskin, high-altitude flying jacket and threw it toward his bed. It, too, fell short of the target and slid to the floor. He left it there, then pushed the suspenders holding up the sheepskin trousers off his shoulders.

He stood on one leg to pull the trousers off, then on the other leg to get them completely off. Then he threw them toward his bed. This time he made it.

He then picked up a telephone.

"Meteorology," he said when the operator came on the line. And then, a moment later, "What have we got, Dick?"

His weather officer predicted perfect--that is absolutely un flyable-weather in England and over the European landmass for not less than forty eight hours, and probably for as much as seventy-two or ninety-six hours.

"There's a stationary front, Colonel, a massive chunk of arctic air, which, meeting with an equally massive chunk of warm air from the Mediterranean--" "What your colonel had in mind, Captain," It. Colonel Douglass interrupted him, "is whether or not it would be safe for him to get drunk for a day or two."

"In my professional meteorological opinion, Sir," the weather officer said, "you have that option."

"Thank you," Douglass said.

"Colonel, I'm sorry about Major Till," the weather officer said.

"Yeah," It. Colonel Douglass said after a moment.

"Thank you."

Then he hung up.

He went to a large, sagging-to-one-side wardrobe and worked the combination of the long-shafted bicycle padlock that, looped through two eye-rings, locked it. He opened the left door and looked inside, and then, frowning, the right door.

One lousy, half-empty imperial quart of Scotch! What the hell had happened to the rest of it?

He didn't like his own answer. I have drunk the rest of it, that's what has happened to it. A couple of little nips here, and a couple more there, and the four imperial quarts of straight malt Scotch have evaporated.

Well, what the hell, there was more where that came from. There was a sturdily locked room at Whithey House stacked to its high ceiling with booze.

Canidy ran the OSS Station at Whithey House on the philosophy that unless his people "were now given by a grateful nation the best available in the way of booze and food, there was a good chance that his people would not be around to get it later.

He would just have to run over to Whithey House and replenish the larder, that was all there was to it. Canidy had declared him to be an Honorary Spock, with all the rights and privileges thereunto pertaining, such as access to the booze larder.