The Dragons

Life was getting dull for the fighter boys in Assam. They had been stationed there since last summer to protect the air supply line to China.

Aside from easy strafing missions against locomotives and bridges in Burma, there was not much to do except play badminton, lounge on big airy porches in the old stilted tea planters' houses, and stare out across the endless sultry tea fields. The enlisted men took to teaching Assamese kids American. They all wished the Japs would attack. Their C.O., Colonel Homer Leroy Sanders, had said: "If the Japs come over, all they will need is a one-way ticket."

One day last week the bungalow where Homer Sanders has his headquarters was quiet except for the routine chatter of typewriters. Suddenly a sergeant rushed upstairs shouting: "Red alert!" Men clattered downstairs. Telephones jangled. The radio in the control room crackled.

Well camouflaged, lazy-looking spots became busy, alert shacks, anti-aircraft pits, airplanes. On the flanks of planes could be seen the pilots' emblem--a droopy-tailed dragon with the motto: "Our Assam Draggin'."

To each fighter strip by nickname went orders: "Gin Fizz take off. ... Bottoms Up take off. . . . What's Cooking take off. . . ."

In the air the Fighting Dragons met 18 Jap bombers, 25 fighters. They shot down nine positives, 20 probables. They themselves all came home safely, and for a few hours life did not seem quite so dull to the fighter boys in Assam.

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