I think, "He's the lucky one. He's unconscious." Every muscle in my body is hammering at me. I just want to let go of that goddamn bomber guy and drop in my tracks-either to sleep or to die. I don't know why I keep hold of him and struggle to climb. It's the challenge, I guess, and a stubborn pride knowing that most guys would've let go of Pat before now, and before he stopped breathing. I keep going on anger, cursing the mountain that's trying to break my hump. The mountain isn't exactly trembling, but getting mad at it at least keeps my blood warmer. It's too dark to do anything but inch up, mostly crawling and hauling. I have no idea how far I am from the top, which is just as well, because if I did know I would probably quit right then and there. I decide not to stop and rest; I can't trust myself not to fall asleep and let go of Pat.
The strange thing is, I think I did go to sleep. One moment it is night, and the next, I panic, thinking I'm bleeding on the snow. But I check again and see that it is the rosy glow of sunrise firing the world. I haven't let go of Pat. It happens that fast: dark one minute, light the next. What happened in between, I'll never know, or care. Because we make it to the top. I can let go of him and stand up. We're on top of a glazed snowcap at sunrise.
I walk to the far edge and look down at a long sloping draw. Off in the distance, through the mist, I see the thin line of a road that must be in Spain. I'm standing near a rocky ledge and a cluster of dwarf pines. I break off a bough, then go back and fetch Pat. I haul him to the edge, check once more to make sure he's still breathing, then shove him over the side and watch him slide down the draw until he's barely a small dot in the snow. Then I hunch down, holding the bough between my bent knees, just as I did when I roller-skated down the steep hill behind my house, using a broomstick as a brake. I'd sit against that stick, and it kept me from breaking my neck. And that's what I do now. I hunch down as low as I can get, put my weight against that bough, and push off down the draw.
When I stop, I'm only about thirty feet from Pat. I crunch through the glazed snowfield, check him out, then give him another shove. He spins down another twenty feet. The draw slopes all the way to the road, so I keep shoving him down until the last fifty yards, when I haul him to the side of the road. By now, he is so gray that I figure he is dead. But there s nothing more that I can do for him. So, I leave him where the first passing motorist would see him. Then I take off, walking south. (I found out later that he was picked up by the Guardia Civil only an hour or so after I left him and was taken to a hospital where they amputated most of the stump. Within six weeks Pat went home.)
I walk south for another twenty miles until near dusk I reach a small village and turn myself in to the local police. I don't expect a hero's welcome, but I don't expect to be locked into a small, filthy jail cell either. I want a hot bath, a hot meal, and a warm bed to sleep in for forty-eight hours; and as tired as I am, I'm just not going to spend this night locked in jail. They don't bother to search me, and I'm carrying my survival kit. It contains a small saw for just this kind of situation. The window bars are made of brass, and that good American steel blade zaps through the brass like butter. I find a small pensione a few blocks from the police station. The police know where I am, but ignore me. I eat two portions of steaming chicken and beans, soak for an hour in a hot tub, sleeping with my head propped on the enamel rim. Then I stagger to the bed and dive into it, asleep before I hit the mattress.
I was still sleeping two days later when the American consul knocked on my door. It was early afternoon on March 30, 1944.
THE ULTIMATE HIGH
Chuck Yeager is my closest friend. Our bonds are firm and deep and were forged while flying together in combat. Flying Mustangs in World War II was the top of the mountain for Chuck, and for me as well. If you're a military pilot, that's why you're there-to fight and to fly.
He was a stand-out pilot and character from the day I met him in Tonopah. He flew like a demon and was always taking calculated risks that are the essence of his personality. We all liked to buzz, but Chuck buzzed a few feet lower than the rest of us. I saw him top off Pa Clifford's tree, a helluva flying feat, because green as he was in the cockpit, he knew exactly what he was doing. Any other young pilot would have probably augered in right then and there. He was aggressive and competitive, but awfully skillful, too. In combat, he didn't charge blindly into a gaggle of Germans, but with the advantage of having sharp eyes that could see forever, he set up his attack to take them by surprise, when the odds were in his favor. And when Yeager attacked, he was ferocious. But he was also a superb team player, he saw everything taking place around him, and in his calm and confident manner, helped a lot of guys out of tough moments. There wasn't a pilot in the squadron, including a few who didn't like him, who didn't want Yeager close by in a dangerous mission.
He once introduced me to Jack Ridley, his engineer on the X-1 research rocket plane, as the only fighter jock who ever whipped him in a dogfight; well, if that ever happened, I'd enjoy remembering when. Yeager was the best. Period. No one matched his skill or courage or, I might add, his capacity to raise hell and have fun. His combat record is incredible: he was the first USAAF pilot I'm aware of to become an ace in a single mission-five victories. He was the first in our squadron to shoot down a German jet. And these and other feats were possible only because he was the first in our group to somehow make it back as an evadee.
It was at that point, when he returned from Spain and I came back from leave to volunteer for a second tour, that we roomed together and became close friends. Chuck certainly has his faults, but strangely, they often became strengths. I doubt whether any other evadee could have avoided being sent home. But Chuck is the most stubborn bastard in the world, who doesn't dabble in gray areas. He sees in black and white. He simply said, "I'm not going home.'
Our friendship, in part, began as a natural gravitation between the two best pilots in the squadron, especially the two who were the most aggressive in combat and who had the keenest pairs of eyes. During our training days, I watched Chuck shoot a rabbit from about fifty yards with my pistol. You have to see the enemy to get them, or to want to get them. We'd see them coming from fifty miles away-the dimmest specks-minutes before anyone else. I'm proud to have been the leading ace in the squadron, but the truth is that once you begin running up a string of victories, the final total is largely a matter of luck, of being in the right place at the right time. Chuck never missed when he fired his guns. If the enemy was gettable, he got them.
When I think of what we lived through, and how young, wild, and crazy we were (we really thought that someone twenty-five was an old man), it seems to me a miracle that any of us survived. I never got over some of the friends I lost; I named my son James Edward Anderson, after Jim Browning and my wingman, Eddie Simpson. I still have bad dreams about the horror I witnessed and some of the close calls that left my feet shaking on the rudder pedals. Yet, in honesty, I admit that I enjoyed it, and so did Chuck. Maybe "enjoy" is the wrong word, but there was a total need for us to be in that place and with those guys at that particular time. Neither of us were war-lovers, but we loved to dogfight. We didn't mind killing German pilots, but we didn't relish it, either. The thrill was in shooting down his airplane.
Combat was the high point of both our lives. Chuck made his mark on history breaking the sound barrier. But deep down I think his combat experiences and accomplishments in World War II meant more to him. If he had done nothing more in his life as a man and a military pilot, he could have been satisfied with that.