Page 69

There was no argument among the AFHQ brass that Pantelleria in Axis hands would cause serious problems with the invasion of Sicily and, conversely, that Pantelleria in Allied hands would be a great asset for staging fighter aircraft to provide close air support during OPERATION HUSKY. Thus, Eisenhower laid on OPERATION CORKSCREW, with its secondary purpose being to gauge the amount of high explosive needed to pound the enemy into submission. Knowing how much HE it took there would help them prepare enough HE for Sicily. The first attack by air had occurred on May 18.

The heavy round-the-clock bombing of Pantelleria begins “next Wednesday,” Canidy thought, recalling John Craig van der Ploeg’s announcement. Major General Jimmy Doolittle’s Northwest African Strategic Air Forces would begin sending more than a thousand bombers each day.

Over the intercom, Canidy said, “Maybe we should have waited a week. Then they really will be too busy to worry about us.”

“Yeah,” Darmstadter said with a chuckle, “but damage is done. All we can do is hope they can’t find us up here.”

Canidy scanned the night sky but saw only the sea of stars above and, below, the stars reflecting on the sea itself.

A few minutes later, Darmstadter’s voice was back.

“We’re about an hour out from Marsala. I’ll get back down on the deck when we’re twenty miles out. Then, crossing the coast, I’ll pop up to seven hundred AGL for putting you in the DZ. After you guys jump, I’ll continue eastward, making three or four turns to throw off anyone who might figure out we were over your LZ. And on the way out, I’ll pass over Palermo while Kauffman scatters those psy-op leaflets. Then we head home. Sound good?”

He glanced at Canidy and saw that he was giving him a thumbs-up.

We should be fine, Canidy thought. Their ack-ack couldn’t hit shit over Tunisa, and judging by the aerial recon photos of Sicily, the Krauts haven’t even put in any antiaircraft defenses yet.

And all the Me-109s and FW-190s were at the Messina airfield. None at Palermo.

Of course, there’s always the possibility that that all could have changed an hour ago. . . .

Darmstadter finished: “With any luck, no one will ever know we were here. And if they do see us coming in low, they’ll think I’m an idiot who had trouble finding Palermo just to drop a bunch of flyers.”

The OSS Morale Operations Branch produced psychological warfare—everything from radio broadcasts to leaflets designed to cast doubt—and despair and worse—that the Axis did not have a snowball’s chance in hell of winning the war.

Back at Dellys, Canidy had seen Kauffman loading boxes of the “psy-op” matériel on the aircraft. It had come from a print shop in Algiers that Stanley Fine had taken over.

“You gotta see what they’re coming up with,” Kauffman had said to him, cracking open a few boxes and pulling out samples. “It’s great stuff.”

The first eight-by-ten sheet Kauffman handed him showed a sketch of a wooden cross with a German helmet on top and the single word: You?

The next one had a sketch of a leering Nazi SS storm trooper with his boots on the throats of a young man and woman holding Sicilian flags. In Italian were the words: How Much Longer?

Another simply read: Why Die for Hitler?

“And here’s the best,” Kauffman said, handing Canidy a stack of very thin paper squares that he realized was meant to be toilet paper. Each sheet was imprinted in German with: “Let’s stop this shit, Comrades! We do not fight for Germany—but only for Hitler and Himmler. The Nazi Leaders lied to us, and now they are saving their own skin. They send us to die in the mud, saying hold out until our last bullet. But we need our last bullets to free Germany from this SS shit! Enough! Peace!”

Canidy asked Darmstadter, “Did you get a look at those leaflets?”

“Yeah, they’re pretty good—” He suddenly pointed out the windscreen, above them at ten o’clock. “Shit!”

Canidy quickly leaned over and looked past Darmstadter.

He saw that they were closing in on an airplane.

Exhaust glow! Multi-engine.

That’s one big sonofabitch . . . a transport?

And we almost ran right up its ass—

No! We’re about to!

“It’s fucking descending on us!” Darmstadter announced, and automatically began an evasive maneuver, pulling back on the throttles as he banked the aircraft to the right.

Canidy watched as the enormous aircraft filled the windscreen, hung there a moment, then very slowly started to grow smaller.

Damn that was close!