On the next page was MacIver’s name: “2nd Lt. Colin W. MacIver broke the ice for himself today with a kill of an FW-190 over the Danube. ‘I caught him in the rudder at thirty degrees. He couldn’t turn and there was nothing but clear air ahead. I poured it in until he broke up and fell. The pilot must have been dead in the seat.’” Leland thought he had a vague recollection of having heard about it. He read on; he did not want his memory playing tricks on him.

There were no other mentions of MacIver until the 29th, two days after Leland’s name had been in the “Going Home” list: “Colin MacIver got his second kill and a first probable this morning at the Czech border. At 0900, after an uneventful search for targets, MacIver and his wingman spotted a crippled Lightning dodging for home on the deck, with a 190 in pursuit. ‘He wasn’t watching his tail. I caught him in the wing and he dipped and hit a tree.’ MacIver’s wingman, 2nd Lt. P. J. Matthews, of Vineland, New Jersey, added, ‘Colin had closed on Jerry so fast that he was on the other side when Jerry blew up. Colin’s backwash was making a wake in the trees like a speedboat. When he came up again I ducked under to look for branches in his scoop, but how he got away clean I’ll never know.’ The probable came a few minutes later. MacIver says, ‘The Lightning was making about two hundred. Before I came up I closed in on him and gave him a waggle. He was all right and understood that we would watch his tail. We lined ourselves up in the sun while he played around, trying to catch the light. P. J. spotted three ME-109’s closing on him from the north, so we went after them. They broke and turned to engage us and I caught one underneath while he was going for P. J. and he began to smoke. He started down but we lost sight of him and the other two ran. We continued to follow the 38 to his base. Apparently he couldn’t get his gear down and he slid off the runway into an ambulance, flipped, and exploded.’”