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After a while we saw the upholstery was smoldering from a tracer bullet. I knew gas must be leaking everywhere. I could either stand up to start the engines and maybe get shot, or I could stay on the floor and maybe get us all burned alive. When I got up to go to the pilot’s compartment to throw some switches so we could get out of there, there was another burst of fire and I felt a blow in the right side. The bullet entered just below my ribs and it spun me around and threw me about six feet. I fell down backward. When Mrs. Shearer heard me grunt that I’d been hit, she raised her head to look at me. Just then a bullet hit her right arm, exactly where her head had been. She clawed a big chunk of metal out with her fingernails but there were two more pieces she couldn’t reach. I was dazed for a moment but she gave me a towel and then, somehow, lying on her back, she lifted the seat up so I could reach under and connect the batteries. Then I went forward to the cockpit to throw the switches.
