INGRID DOWS - AN ALTERNATE STORY PART 2 - THE JET AGE by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

Senate Committee Hearings Room

Capitol Building, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.

Having been summoned by subpoena for this hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Ingrid was waiting for her turn at being called forward to testify, as the chairman of the Committee, Republican Senator John Chandler Gurney, resumed the activities and discussions from yesterday for the very limited audience allowed in for this classified hearing. Since she had left the service, she wore a modern female business suit but had pinned to her jacket her military medals and also wore around her neck the long blue ribbon of the Congressional Medal of Honor with Cluster. The present hearing was dealing with the continued cuts to military budgets effected on order of President Truman and their deleterious effects on United States military preparedness and national security. Due to the sensitive nature of what was being discussed, there were no reporters or members of the public present but, in true Washington fashion, the gist of the discussions to be held were bound to surface in one form or another in the news during the days to come. After only one day of hearings, to which Ingrid had been able to listen to thanks to her still valid security clearance, the Truman Administration was already in hot water, with a number of witnesses, including General George Kenney, telling tales of how American military readiness had severely declined during the last three years. Senator Gurney then banged three times his chairman’s gavel and spoke up in his microphone.

‘’I now declare this session of the Senate Armed Services Committee opened. I wil now call forward to testify retired Major General Ingrid Dows.’

Ingrid got up from her chair on being called and walked to the witness table, where she sat facing the thirteen members of the committee, with them being able to clearly detail her medals. After looking at her for a couple of seconds, Gurney nodded his head once in salute to her.

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‘’First, I would like to thank you for appearing in front of this committee, General Dows. So that the other members of this committee clearly know who you are in terms of military experience and qualifications, I would ask you to resume quickly your military career, General, starting with your age.’’

‘’With pleasure, Mister Chairman. I was born on September 7 of 1923 in Berlin, Germany. I am thus going to be 21 years-old in three weeks. I enlisted in the German Luftwaffe in 1940 as a female auxiliary, not because I was some kind of Nazi fanatic but because my whole extended family had just been killed by a British bomb and I wanted to help defend my country from further British bombing raids. I then served with a Luftwaffe regional headquarters in France until I was captured in a British commando raid led by Nancy Laplante, the Canadian from the future. I was then interned with other German female auxiliaries in the Tower of London. While there, Nancy Laplante regularly visited us and I soon became good friend with her. Please understand that Nancy Laplante, being from the year 2012, did not hate Germans the way the British did, so she supported us by providing distractions, like organizing dances and showing films.

She also secretly provided me with a very special private education, making me profit from lessons from the future. Then, in early 1941, both I and Nancy suddenly started remembering our past incarnations, including the languages we spoke and the skills we learned in the past. To this day, I do not know how that was made possible and why. I do know that my first incarnation on Earth was some 7,000 years ago, as a nomadic woman named Amdira who lived in the Sumerian Basin. Since that first incarnation, I lived through another 71 incarnations, alternatively as a man or a woman and living as either a simple peasant, a hunter-gatherer, a warrior, a merchant, a noble and, once, as a Chinese emperor. When I told General Henry Arnold about this, he had me tested by a panel of distinguished archaeologists and historians, who certified to him afterwards that I could speak over forty languages, most of them now extinct, and could read and write a few of them, including Egyptian Hieroglyphs, Old Sumerian and Phoenician.

While General Arnold then believed my claims about this, this ability was kept confidential and was revealed only to select senior commanders and politicians. It is those souvenirs from past incarnations which made me highly mature and experienced as a person, thus explaining how I could rise to the rank of major general at my young age.’

There was an exchange of whispers and soft exclamations then, with Senator Gurney then asking her a question.

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‘’You said that some of your past incarnations were as hunters and warriors, General Dows. Could you list those, so that we could appreciate how they helped you come a senior military commander?’’

‘’With pleasure, Senator. While I lived many lives as a primitive hunter-gatherer, along with quite a few as a low-level warrior, my most notable feats of arms were as Megaron, a Spartan hoplite who fought and died alongside King Leonidas of Sparta at the Battle of the Thermopylae, in 481 Before Christ, and as Marcel, a Frankish heavy cavalryman who fought against the Moors and died in a battle against them in 764 of this era. I was also a knight Templar of the 12th Century who died during an assault on Constantinople. In terms of strategic command experience, I was once the Chinese Emperor Wou-Ti, who ruled during the time of the greatest expansion ever of the Chinese Empire and who died in the year 87 Before Christ.’

More whispers and comments were exchanged among the senators before Gurney spoke again.

‘’This is indeed quite impressive, General Dows. Now, could you continue your story about how you became an American fighter pilot?’’

‘’Right away, Senator. Just before getting killed in 1941, Nancy Laplante and her American husband, Mike Crawford, who was an Army major and who worked at the American embassy in London, secretly adopted me. Since I was still a minor, I thus gained at once American citizenship. After both Nancy and Mike died in 1941, I asked to be released and be allowed to go to the United States, which the British allowed me to do. In that process, I married another American officer working at the American embassy, a Marine Corps major named Kenneth Dows. I then followed him to his next posting, which happened to be in the Philippines, in Manila. There, I took private flying lessons in my free time and continued to improve my modern education, until the Japanese attacked in October of 1941. I did ask then to enroll as a fighter pilot but the U.S. Army refused me because I was a woman. I then asked the Filipino Air Corps to take me, which it did. That was when I first became a fighter pilot. Using the lessons taught to me by Nancy Laplante, as well as my natural abilities as a pilot, I quickly became the American Ace of aces in the war and started climbing quickly in the ranks. I earned twice in the process the Medal of Honor, along with a collection of bravery medals, plus the Purple Heart, after I was shot down and wounded while fighting alone against over a hundred Japanese aircraft. When I returned to Manila after medical treatment in Australia, I continued on as the commander of a fighter squadron, until we

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were forced to retreat with the rest of the American forces to the Bataan Peninsula.

Once our last fighter aircraft broke down, I then led my remaining pilots and ground crews in jungle fighting against the Japanese, and this until I was forced to leave for the United States on direct order from President Roosevelt, who was afraid of the impact on American morale if such a young woman as me ended being captured or killed by the Japanese. That was in early 1942 and, after recuperating for one month on vacation, General Arnold tasked me to form and command our first and still only female air combat unit, the 99th Composite Air Group, also known as the ’Fifinel as’. Once ready for combat, my air group was shipped to the Pacific, where we ended up in Papua-New Guinea, fighting the Japanese there. We gradually gained superiority over the Japanese in the air and at sea, sinking a number of major Japanese warships and systematically shooting down or destroying Japanese aircraft on the ground. In late 1943, I devised plans for bombings against the Japanese military high command in Tokyo, which I successfully led and executed. After that, when we learned that the Japanese Army had started slaughtering its prisoners, including interned civilians, I proposed and then led an operation for a flash air landing assault on Manila, in order to save our people being massacred there. That assault was successful and we were thus able to save tens of thousands of American and Filipino prisoners from certain death at the hands of the Japanese. A couple of months after that, my air unit, now the size of an air wing, was transferred to England, with me being a major general. When I saw the way our heavy bombers were being slaughtered by German jet fighters and surface-to-air missiles, I devised and executed a plan to decapitate the German Nazi leadership, the same way I had decapitated the Japanese High Command. That plan quickly resulted in the Germans signing an armistice with us, an armistice that is still holding today. When my unit was transferred back to the Pacific, where it was due to take residence in the Philippines, I asked to go study aeronautical engineering at the Boston Massachusetts Institute of Technology. I successfully completed my engineering degree in last June and was ready to return to active duty when I learned of the irresponsible cuts to our military forces directed by President Truman and his Secretary of Defense, Louis Johnson. Those cuts included cutting by two-thirds my old unit, the 99th Air Wing, despite it being the most illustrious air combat unit in the Pacific. I then resigned in protest and went to work as a test pilot and engineer with the Hughes Aircraft Company, where I am stil being employed. That’s my story in a nutshel , Senator.’

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‘’And an extraordinary story indeed, General. I will now ask you for your frank opinion about the cuts to our military services effected under President Truman.’

‘’Basically, Senator, those cuts were completely irresponsible and denote in my expert opinion a complete ignorance and neglect of our military preparedness.

President Truman apparently believes that having the atomic bomb in our arsenal means that our conventional forces, like warships and tactical aircraft, were now unnecessary and could thus be cut at will in order to pay for his social programs. As for Secretary Johnson, his sole feat of arms in World War One was to compile and write a historical report of the war. When President Roosevelt was still alive in 1944, I personally warned F.D.R. about such fallacies, as my late mother, Nancy Laplante, had instructed me about the dangers and misconceptions which came with atomic weapons.

Her main lesson to me was that atomic weapons are only good for one thing: to deter their own use. In Nancy’s history, up to the year 2012, nuclear arsenals had grown to thousands of warheads, enough to blow up many times life on this whole planet. Yet, conventional wars continued to happen frequently along the years, necessitating the upkeep of important conventional military forces. Now, according to the history known to Nancy, we are soon going to get embroiled in a war against Communist forces in Korea, a war that the United States in her timeline nearly lost due to an abject lack of conventional military preparedness and which ended after three years in a costly stalemate and an armistice. In my opinion, if such a war was triggered tomorrow, we would lose it because of insufficient numbers of warships and tactical plane and because of severely degraded Army training standards and stocks of conventional weapons. And please don’t believe the B.S. you wil get about ‘how powerful our military is’ from those in the Pentagon ready to protect at all cost their positions and chances for advancement.

If President Truman and his Secretary of Defense are allowed to continue as they do now, then the United States wil soon lose its first war in history, Senator.’

While there were exclamations then exchanged among the senators of the committee, the ranking minority member, Democratic Senator Millard Tydings of Maryland stared hard at Ingrid and nearly shouted his reply to her.

‘’How dare you demean your political superiors like this, young girl? Why should anyone here believe you?’’

Ingrid’s answered him at once in a hot tone while staring back at him.

‘’How? Because I have proved my military competence and loyalty during four years of combat, while the only thing President Truman seems to have gained during his

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service in World War One was an ill-conceived dislike of the Marine Corps, one of our most distinguished services, with him saying that he wants to see the Marines disbanded. Why should I be believed? President Roosevelt believed me and accepted my advice, with the result that we defeated both Japan and Germany a full year before our most optimistic expectations. President Truman and Secretary Johnson are in the process of emasculating our armed services just as we are about to face Communist forces in Asia and Europe and someone had to speak up to put an end to that disgrace.’

Tydings was about to shout back at her when Gurney struck his desk three times with his gavel to call for order.

‘’The Honorary Senator for Maryland will sit down and let other members of the committee speak.’

‘’But someone needs to put that girl back in its proper place and...’

‘’That girl, as you call her, is a hardened combat veteran with an impeccable fighting record and is in her proper place, Senator Tydings. She simply answered your questions in a frank and direct manner. The Honorable Senator for Maine, Leverett Saltonstall, now has the floor.’

Utterly frustrated, Tydings nonetheless had to sit back as Saltonstall, a Republican, asked a question to Ingrid.

‘’First, General, I want to thank you for your heroic service to the United States.

Now, in your informed opinion, what should President Truman do in order to help sustain our armed forces?’

‘’He should resign, pure and simple, for the sake of our national security.’

declared at once Ingrid. Admiral Nimitz and General Eisenhower, who were waiting their turn to testify, nearly applauded at her stinging reply as she continued speaking. ‘’What President Truman should do right away is to listen to the advice given to him by his senior service commanders and to stop cutting our military budgets the way he is doing now, without even taking account of the threats the United States is now facing around the World. He should still acquire a few nuclear weapons but only enough to insure against their use by our enemies.’

‘’Aren’t the British the only ones to have the atomic bomb apart from us, General?’’

‘’At this moment, yes, but more countries, starting with the Soviet Union and Communist China, will soon have their own atomic bombs within a few years from now.

And what do you do then if a Communist-supported guerrilla war starts up somewhere in

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Asia? Threaten to vaporize the region and risk a nuclear strike on the United States in response? Or do you simply send the Marines in with strong air and sea support?

Which one makes more sense to you, Senator Saltonstall? If we let President Truman emasculate our conventional forces the way he is doing now, then he will be left only with the first ‘solution’ to that hypothetical situation.’

‘’Uh, I see your point, General. I have no further questions. I yield the floor.’’

The rest of Ingrid’s testimony went quite smoothly from then on, with the senators from both parties by now giving credit to her advice, with the notable exception of Tydinds. When time came for Ingrid to leave her witness chair and give it to Dwight Eisenhower, the latter gave her a solid handshake and a big grin.

‘’Well spoken, Ingrid. You should be our Secretary of Defense rather than this Louis Johnson.’’

‘’Me, a politician?’’ replied Ingrid in a falsely indignant tone. ‘’I am not a good enough liar to become a politician.’

Eisenhower briefly chuckled at that before patting her shoulder.

‘’Keep on the way you are, Ingrid.’’

‘’Thank you, Ike!’’

Some ten days later, Ingrid was delighted to see in the national newspapers that recent public opinion polls done after her testimony to the Senate showed that public support for Truman in advance of the November presidential elections had tumbled by no less than sixteen percent, enough to seriously endanger his chances of winning reelection. That alarmed a number of prominent Democratic politicians in Washington but apparently was not enough to make Truman change his policies about cutting American military budgets, something well noted in other places in the World.

16:03 (Moscow Time)

Monday, August 30, 1948 ‘C’

Office of the Secretary General of the Soviet Communist Party The Kremlin, Moscow, U.S.S.R.

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Joseph Stalin was reading a report about the production of grain across the Soviet Union when his secretary advised him by intercom that the head of the MGB8 and his North American Affairs specialist wanted to speak with him. Giving his consent to let them in, Stalin eyed critically Sergei Kruglov, the current head of the MGB, as he walked in with another high-level security officer.

‘’So, what do you have for me this afternoon, Sergei Nikoforovich?’

‘’Possible bad news for us from the United States, Comrade Stalin. I briefed you some time ago about how President Truman’s policies of starving his armed forces of funds in order to pay for his social programs were helping us by weakening possible American responses to our own moves outside the Soviet Union. Well, it seems that he is now becoming quite unpopular and may well lose the coming presidential elections of November.’

Stalin scoffed at the last words from Kruglov.

‘’Presidential elections... Another example of the feebleness of the Capitalists’

political system. And what did Truman do to lose popularity?’’

The intelligence specialist accompanying Kruglov then spread on Stalin’s desk a recent copy of the New York Time, with an article mentioning the more recent polls done in the U.S.A. He then added on top of it a translation in Russian of that article.

‘’Their Congress, which is controlled by the opposition party, recently held hearings about the effects of Truman’s military budget cuts on American military preparedness and their capacity to oppose us. Many prominent retired American general officers testified at those hearings and were said to have delivered a few political bombs. While those hearings were held behind closed doors and were not open to the public, they were not closed to us...and our cleaning staff in the U.S. Congress.’

Stalin chuckled again at that allusion to the vast Soviet spying network in place in the United States and in Western Europe. The intelligence specialist then turned the pages of the newspaper, to then point at the picture of a young and beautiful woman wearing a civilian suit.

‘’The most damaging witness for Truman at those hearings was this girl, named Ingrid Dows, Comrade Secretary.’

His interest now fully awakened, Stalin smiled while looking at the picture of a very young woman with reddish-brown hair.

8 MGB: Soviet Ministry of State Security. A precursor to the KGB. Active from 1946 to 1953.

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‘’A very fine-looking girl indeed. Did she implicate Truman in some kind of sex scandal?’’

It was then the turn of Kruglov and of his specialist to chuckle.

‘’You normally would be right to think so, Comrade Secretary. However, this girl was a major general in the American Air Force, until she recently retired in protest against the cuts ordered by Truman.’’

Utterly surprised by that, Stalin snapped his head up in disbelief.

‘’But she appears to be around twenty at the most. How could she possibly be a major general at her age?’’

‘’The answer is quite complicated and also quite stunning, Comrade Secretary.

During her testimony, which our hidden recorder captured, she revealed a number of incredible things to the senators listening to her. My services then went back to our past archives compiled during the Great Patriotic War 9and those archives then helped paint a much more complete picture of that girl, a frankly damning picture for us. Basically, she started up in 1940 as a young German female Luftwaffe auxiliary who was captured that same year in a commando raid led by the Canadian time traveler, Nancy Laplante.

She and Laplante then quickly became good friends and Laplante secretly adopted this Ingrid. After both Laplante and her American husband were killed in 1941, this girl was released from British custody, married an American officer working in London and then followed him to his next posting: the Philippines. To resume quickly what happened after that, she took private flying lesson, then was accepted as a fighter pilot in the Filipino Air Corps, where she quickly became the top American air ace of all times, with an official count of 122 aircraft shot down to this day. She even fought the Japanese on the ground, in the jungles of the Philippines, once her squadron ran out of operational fighters.’’

Stalin briefly shot a look at the intelligence specialist, quite overwhelmed by this, as the man continued to speak.

‘’When she was evacuated to the United States, she was then tasked to form an all-female air combat unit, which she then led into combat in the Pacific, where she proved to be a master air tactician and strategist, on top of being their best fighter pilot.

She was the one who planned and executed the 1944 bombing raid on Tokyo in which the whole Japanese Army and Navy high commands were decapitated, with her 9 Great Patriotic War: Name used by the Soviets to describe World War Two.

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personally leading that raid. When her unit was transferred to England a bit afterwards, she repeated that exploit by bombing out the Nazi and German military high leadership, killing Hitler in the process and forcing the Germans into signing an armistice. She is also said to have personally advised President Roosevelt about us and about our post-war plans for Europe.’

By then, Stalin had lost any sense of humor and looked soberly at Kruglov.

‘’How could such a young woman accomplish this much? This sounds totally unbelievable.’’

‘’It would be, Comrade Secretary, if not for the last thing we found out about her.

During those congressional hearings, she revealed to the senators that she and Laplante simultaneously became able to remember their past lives. According to her testimony, her first life goes back all the way to 7,000 years ago and she lived a total of 71 past lives before being born as who she is now. Worst off for us, she received some secret education from Nancy Laplante about the lessons learned between now and the year 2012. She is thus not only a most extraordinary girl, Comrade Secretary: she is also a most dangerous girl for us.’

Stalin’s jaws tightened on hearing that and he stared hard at his minister of state security.

‘’And she is stil living? Take care of her, and quickly, Comrade Nikiforovich. I will now order our plans for Korea and Japan to be accelerated, before the Americans could start repairing the damage done to their military by Truman.’

‘’Understood, Comrade Secretary!’

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CHAPTER 15 – A TRAGIC LOSS

22:07 (California Time)

Saturday, September 25, 1948 ‘C’

The Grauman’s Chinese Theatre