The tone of her letters did not let down again, and when he shot down the twelfth and thirteenth she sent him the clippings from the papers and detailed the reactions of the people she had come to know since he had been away. The letters were fuller, as if she understood better what had happened to them after his leave. She seemed to be working at holding them together for the time the war would last. He did not believe that it would end by Christmas, as so many were saying. He was too busy to give to her as she was giving to him and he said so, and later her answer came back: that it had not entered her mind.

In July the squadron was moved to France and in August it was given the Mustangs. At the end of September he had ten days and he went up to Scotland with a camera. The country was much like the upstate area where they had spent their honeymoon. He enjoyed himself, and wrote telling her so. When he returned to France a bundle of her letters was waiting, the last teasing him gently but frightenedly about how he was going to spend his leave. Her next letters were in response to the ones he had sent from Scotland. He had conveyed the freshness and pleasure he had gotten from the countryside. She was glad that he had been able to rest.

During the German counterattack in December there was nothing that airplanes could do until the skies cleared. The Nazis were making their last effort, and the battle among the fighters was as fierce as Leland had ever seen it. In the next month he shot down five more planes and after one mission he found the lip of the Mustang’s air scoop shot away. He led half the squadron in an attack on a small airfield, and the later photographs showed that seventeen aircraft had been destroyed. He was promoted to Captain. Unofficially he learned that he was going to be sent home as an instructor, and for the rest of the tour he flew as wingman to Billy, who in the process became a double ace. They alternated after a while, and Leland brought his total to twenty-one. His orders came through, he went to England and caught a ride on a C-54 for Mitchell Field in New York. He had ten days before he was due at Lake Charles.

Chapter Thirteen

CHAPTER THIRTEEN