Word: 126th
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...office for years, Hevia is not a typical professional politician. His father, who served with Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Wood against Spain in 1898 and later became Cuba's Secretary of War and Interior, sent him to Annapolis. The Academy's first Cuban student, he graduated 126th among 467 in the class of 1920, and was more noted for his "silken line" with debutantes than for marlinespike seamanship...
...126th's communications office operates in the only usable portion of a sag-roofed shack set amidst girders of a bombed-out hangar. Most of the wing's 48 B-26 bombers are bunched like sitting ducks on a tiny concrete apron before the hangar. One or two, not finding room on the apron, squat dismally on the open field, so deep in mire that even their propeller tips are stuck fast. Theoretically, there is a large, revetted parking area available for the planes-but a French farmer has built a solid house and two barns right...
...supply route for U.S. and NATO forces in Europe. But there are no barracks, only tents. The wing's hospital is a jerry-built wooden structure whose ceiling drips water. The wing itself-the only U.S. tactical air outfit anywhere in France-is just as unready. The 126th is an Illinois Air National Guard outfit, originally an observation squadron which served in the Panama Canal Zone in World War II, later a fighter wing. It is commanded by a good airman: a veteran United Air Lines pilot named Frank Allen, 42, who led a B-17 group in North...
...foul-up at Merignac is an international affair. The wing itself, under the command of Brigadier General Allen, has hardly begun to whip itself into shape. The European Air Force command at Wiesbaden fell down on the job of getting Merignac ready for the 126th. And then there are the French...
...French around Bordeaux, after a first blush of enthusiasm over the prosperity they thought would arrive with the G.I.s, have now become sour and standoffish toward their guests. The men of the 126th return the uncomfortable apathy, keep to themselves on their weekend excursions to nearby cities and villages and look forward only to the summer when their federal hitches may end and they can go back home...