Tail of the Storm

by Alan Cockrell

  The underpowered A-7 is no speed demon compared with other fighters, but flying at 500 knots down in the "weeds" shocked my adrenalin glands. My arteries pumped like the jet's hydraulic systems. Something akin to an electrified blaze of light flowed through me, buzzing and bubbling like the immense, pressurized stream of fuel to the insatiable engine. I was intensely alive.

  But as I smoked up the valley, I began to realize that I hadn't thought this out enough. Where was the target? The inertial measurement system, or IMS, indicated that it was straight ahead, but the black box could be a mile or more in error and routinely was. Could it be slightly left or right? And how far? Where should I start the pop-up? It depended on the type of ordnance and delivery. The details were fuzzy. I didn't want to foul this up and get lost with the brass looking on. I should have stuck to the plan.

  A slave to my ego, I was committed. When the IMS distance clicked down to about two miles, which was much too late, I pulled the A-7 hard up, watched the altimeter needle race with a blur past 4,000 feet, then rolled inverted and pulled the nose down. I couldn't believe it. There in the windscreen, beyond the dancing green symbols in the head-up display, was the inverted image of the F-84. I immediately flexed the stick and slapped the earth back underneath. Within a few wild heartbeats the metallic blur evolved into an onrushing, expanding frame of wings and tail, complete with faded numbers and rows of rivets. I was viewing the final second of my earthly existence through a powerful, zooming telephoto lens. "Target fixation" would be the conclusion typed on the investigating committee's report. And as usual, they would be wrong. This was more like target stupidity.

  I don't know if it was through instinctive habit or an inflated ego, but even as I began a desperate attempt to emerge alive, I pressed the strike. Holding down the bomb release button, I jerked the stick back into my gut, grunting under the tremendous "G" pressure pressing me down into the seat. The G-suit swelled furiously around my thighs and belly, staving off the blackout. It was so intense that my vision narrowed as though looking through a hideous tunnel. My heart pounded, and I felt flush with fear, stupidity, and embarrassment.

  In a few seconds, with the nose pointed safely up, I managed a glance over my shoulder and saw where the twenty-five-pound practice bomb had impacted. The white smoke was flowing in a wicked curl up into the wake turbulence created by my near collision with the parked F-84. If the bomb had been a standard 500-pound Mark 82, I would have been blown out of the sky by its fragmentation pattern. It was a perfect hita "shack." But the boss, fiddling with his radar high above, noticed neither the direct hit nor the near crash.

  When we stepped into the crew van back at the base, Colonel Nelson asked how the attack went, and I croaked a response. But Duane just looked at me, expressionless, then slowly shook his head. He'd seen it. He knew he was looking at a sweating, quivering, imbecilic tester of fate's ragged boundaries. I remember that brush with fate as clearly as if it were yesterday. Somehow I escaped the desert's snare. But those guys back there didn't.

  We bore on through the North Atlantic night, pondering the cargo, unsuccessfully trying to restrain our imaginations from their twisted propensity to probe the contents of the boxes. But the dead fighter pilots aren't really what bothers me. I know they probably have weeping, heart-shattered relatives waiting-teary-eyed children maybe. They died in the cockpit; their deaths are sufferable. And of the third box I know nothing other than that it is someone from the armed forces in Europe, a traffic victim perhaps. It's the fourth box that really haunts me. It is short and smallas if it contains the body of a child.

  They gave me a new crew and a new mission after a couple of days at home, and now we're headed west again after another mission downrange. The weather across the Northern Hemisphere is becoming wintery now. That's good news if you're flying eastbound with the winter jet stream and bad if you're going west against it. And it's just plain bad-all-around news if you're planning on landing anywhere in Europe or the U.S. eastern seaboard.

  I'm relaxing in the seat, listening to my tape player. We've discovered that the little micro speakers will fit neatly under our military headsets, and if we turn the aircraft radio volume up a little higher than the music, we can still hear any radio traffic that might be intended for us. Of course we wouldn't do this during a critical phase of flight such as takeoff or landing, but still, it has become a tremendous source of relaxation during the long cruises. Some headquarters desk jockey has discovered that the crews were listening to music with their cassette players while flying, and he issued an order to cease and desist. The bureaucrats are trying to get into our cockpits with their paltry regulations and fly for us. We know which rules are prudent for safety and which we can snub. Some were made to be broken, and this is one. We blow it off.

  Greg Carpenter, my new copilot, is known to us as the Baby Pilot. BP is such a young-looking lad that we constantly jerk his chain about his boyish appearance. He often finds pacifiers attached to his helmet bag or a bottle in his flight lunch, but he always reacts with a gigantic grin and joins the laughter. He is as unpretentious and unassuming as a person could be. You'd have to be a colossal jerk to get the Baby Pilot sore at you.

  BP hears a familiar voice working Cairo Control and alerts me. I take off the speakers and listen closely to the transmissions. It's Tommy Sledge. Elated, I transmit on Cairo's frequency and ask him to come up on Channel 10.

  "Tango Sierra, if that's you, come up and talk to me on Button 10."

  We're not supposed to use Channel 10 for personal conversation, only for official stuff like weather checks or communication relays and such. Countless factions of unfriendlies all along the Mediterranean and down into the AOR could monitor the frequency, and doubtless they do. But Sledge is my buddy, and I want to palaver. One thing we will do, however, is avoid using real names, knowing that they would probably be recorded somewhere in a dark, smelly room by a guy with a cigarette, a stubbled growth of whiskers, and an AK-47.

  Tommy recognizes my voice. "Is that you Tidy Boy?" This is a crude reference, practiced by Sledge and certain other of my associates, to "Tide," as in Crimson Tide.

  "Yeah. Hey, Hammer, did you hear about the Ole Miss graduate who married the Greek gal?"

  Across a couple hundred miles of airspace he suffers me to continue.

  "Well, they wanted to give their son a name which reflected each of their respective cultures, so they called him Zorba the."

  "MAC Bravo 2557, contact Jeddah on 133.9." It's Cairo, interrupting the punchline on the VHF radio. I repeat it after Sledge responds to Cairo's instructions.

  But he knows the joke, and I know that I have gotten out of my league. Sledge is not one to be challenged to a collegiate joke sluglest. He fires a stinging retaliation against my alma mater, as the bewildered man with the cigarette shakes his head and records the strange American secret codes.

  We dwell for a while on Sledge's favorite topic, Southeastern Conference football, and then catch up on bits of news around the squadron. Unlike the active squadrons, where friendships are kindled and quickly left dangling as people come and go, a Reserve or Guard squadron is a family. Many of us have known one another for years. News about where our comrades are and how they are faring is important, and we seek it at every encounter.

  "Have you seen hide or hair of George lately?"

  "No, but I saw Blair Jernigan yesterday. He claims a Fondten sighting last week at Rhein Mein."

  I miss George, I want to see him, to sip his Kahlua coffee with him, to talk of the late great oil business.

  Then comes unhappy news. "Did you hear that Steve Watkins got released?"

  A vision of Steve's grinning face flashes in me. I will not see him again.

  "No. Why? His kids?"

  "Yeah."

  To be released from service after the president had called us into active duty was a very difficult transaction. It could only be done for reasons of health or extreme family problems, and the decision was made at a lof
ty level in the command chain. And once released, there was no returning. Steve was gone. I grieve for his loss, but I understand. It has been about seven years since that tragic night when the weight of the universe slammed down on Steve's shoulders.

  He had been with us for a couple of years, had separated from the active service as a B-52 pilot, and had settled down in his hometown of Crystal Springs. There he became active in the family furniture business and indulged weekly in the gratifying pleasure of flying the C-130s of the Magnolia Militia. He was a quiet fellow in those days, very soft-spoken, with an ever-smiling, cherubic face. But even after the inevitable "new guy" periodusually a yearpassed, Steve still acted a bit like an unsettled stranger. We didn't know much about him. We would ask him about the furniture business. He would reply that it was good, but with a subtle measure of discontent in his face. Beyond that I never intruded.

  Steve was out flying when it happened. It was a three-ship, formation airdrop mission at night. The supervisor of flying had received the call and transmitted a radio message directing Steve's plane to land. There had been a natural gas explosion in the furniture store. Steve's wife, mother, and sister had been killed in the blast, which leveled the building. Steve was led away from the operations room in a daze, oblivious, his life changed forever.

  The town of Crystal Springs was shattered, and the Guard unit was beset with sorrow for the man we knew so little of. For weeks we kept track of Steve through Stan Papizan, another of our pilots who lived in Crystal Springs. Our questions peppered Stan whenever he appeared. And always: "He's coming along well. He has a strong faith in God which is pulling him through." And I kept wondering what I would say to Steve when at last he came back to continue his flying, supposing he did come back. Would I try too crudely to express sympathy, which might prompt an emotional response? I couldn't just pretend nothing happened. I've always been inept in such matters, and I didn't relish the thought of seeing him again.

  I don't remember when I saw him after that; the memory is fuzzy But I know that our paths rarely crossed for several months until one day when Steve seemed to have been reborn. He was indeed a new Steve. He was sporting a new look. He had tanned a lot, changed his hairstyle, and lost weight. He grinned, laughed, talked, and participated aggressively in the flying and training activities of the unit. He told me that he had decided to put the loss behind him as well as he could and get on with his life. And the new Steve was an extrovert, a favorite personality of our squadron, and a highly respected flier. He led the charge in the difficult conversion from C-130s to C-141s, becoming among the first C-141 aircraft commanders in our unit and the first to become air refueling qualified.

  Then word came that he had remarried. His new wife was the TV correspondent who had done a special report on his tragic loss and his subsequent recovery. It was a Christian program that documented Stevens faith as his sustaining factor. He spoke often of her and how his children had taken so well to their new mother.

  And as he grew in favor with his comrades, Steve continued to flourish. He landed a trophy job with Delta Airlines, flying 727s out of New Orleans. Steve's life had changed so markedly that it was a marvel both to him and to those of us who knew him. It was pure pleasure and an inspiration just to be around him.

  But now, Sledge had brought word that he was gone, that he had been released. It was a time when many were looking for an excuse to get released, but we knew Steve was not among that crowd. If anyone wanted to do his share in this giant operation, it was Steve Watkins. He would not have asked for discharge unless a higher priority called.

  It was the children. Airline flying they could accept, but the daily portrayal of war and foreboding on the television had cast them into a grim fear of being orphaned.

  Yeah, I knew Steve wanted to fly with us, to see this thing through, to make a long career of the Guard, to remain in the Guard family But his love for his kids was greater. With regrets, he opted out. And we lost a brother.

  Visions of Steve's sobbing children still linger in my mind as we land at McGuire AFB, New Jersey. But they are abruptly displaced by more stunning news. Shocked, I hang up the phone at the command post window and turn to break the news to the crew. Their gleeful postflight banter stops as soon as they read the seriousness in my face and voice as I talk with our home base command post.

  The wife of one of our flight engineers has committed suicide. No details were passed to me. I didn't know her personally, but I had known the flight engineer many years. He is not on my crew, but I had flown with him often in more placid times. The ride to the billeting office is a somber one; all thoughts are turned homeward.

  I've given very little thought until now about how this whole situation is affecting my Ellie. She's running the household, the budget, the kids. That's all nothing new to her, but this not knowing when I'm coming backthe unknowns of the war that lies ahead and my role in ithas got to be taking its toll.

  When she married me, she married flying. And she knew it. Over all our years together I don't remember a single complaint, though complaints have often been warranted. She never begrudged a penny of the tons of money I've thrown into airplanes, sometimes money that we needed elsewhere. That simple faiththat trust of herskeeps me coming back; it anchors me. But she deserves better.

  One of eleven children, she came from a family of hardworking Kansas Mennonite farmers, all devout, dedicated conscientious objectors. Yet she married a fighter pilot. The family never expressed ill feelings toward me about my job, but some things we just didn't discuss.

  After we had married and moved away, I stopped in one weekend on a cross-country proficiency flight. My father-in-law, Harold Esau, and two brothers-in-law came out to the base to pick me up. Yes, the brothers said that they wanted to see the jet, but Harold strolled out to the flight line reluctantly, motivated only by his insatiable curiosity about all things mechanical. While the brothers asked a few questions and marveled at the big camouflage-painted fighter, Harold walked around it slowly, saying not a word, with hands clasped behind his back: a clear body signal of a holding back, a symbolic keeping of his distance. I tensed when he stepped in front of the gun. I'll never forget his expression of sorrow as he paused and stared down the sinister rifled barrel of the 20-millimeter rotary cannon.

  Ellie wasn't a natural flier, but she misled me on our second date. I dumped her into the back seat of an Aeronica Champ out at Woodring Airport and put her through a few wingovers and whifferdills. "Oh, that was fun," she lied charmingly as we taxied the Champ back in. In the years ahead, flying would be not much more than a quick way from A to B for her, and she would never feel comfortable with it. But most important, she accepted it as my way of life. I could ask nothing more of her.

  Surprisingly, she began taking lessons a few years ago. Her excuse was that she wanted to know how to land our plane if I slumped over incapacitated, though I believe she really needed to prove to herself that she could meet the challenge. For one of the biggest events of her life, her first solo, I wasn't there. I was thousands of miles away, flying C-130s around South America, and so I didn't experience it with her.

  She soloed only three times. On the third flight the canopy popped open with a loud bang just as she became airborne. Thinking it was an explosion, she declared an emergency with the control tower and landed the Grumman amid a host of speeding, wailing, red-flashing fire trucks. She was terribly embarrassed by the episode despite my reassurance that she had done exactly as she should have done. Instead of panicking, she remembered the prime directive: fly the plane, then work the problem. But that was the end. She never again had the desire to fly alone. I didn't press her. If she accepted my love for flying, then I needed to accept her indifference to it.

  I've always tried to be reasonable and discreet about the time spent at the airport. The Grumman always needs to be tinkered with or washed. A short flight is always in order to keep the seals and gaskets lubricated. And it's imperative that I put in occasional hangar
talk with the airport crowd. It keeps me in touch with my roots. But one Saturday afternoon, as I was planning to slip away to the airport, Ellie asked a simple question. I was struck by it.

  "Are you going to the flying field?" she asked.

  It wasn't a pointed or suggestive question; there was no resentment over my proposed pilgrimage to the field. It was a simple request for information. The follow-up was a request that I bring home some milk.

  I stopped and pondered the wondrous sound of it. She didn't say airport, nor airfield, nor aerodromeflying field, she said. They were such beautiful words; words that sent my heart soaring; words that told me she understood; she cared; she knew. I loved her tremendously for it.

  She never took well to the military lifestyle. The job and the planes were bearable but that abominable officers' wives club, the OWC, was beyond the call of spousal duty. She wanted to be herself. She had little interest in being on the cutting edge of fashion and social life. Keeping the club fashionably decorated and furnished and scheduling highbrow social functions were of no concern to her. And she cared not in the least that fighter pilots had the impudence to wear their flight suits in the dining room and get rowdy in the casual bar on Friday nights. The OWC Gestapo, as the pilots called them, was out to banish such low-bred acts of peasant behavior, and participation in its activities was expected of her. The OWC pecking order was a disgusting reflection of the husbands' chain of command. Ellie didn't fit in. And like her family, she was a pacifist at heart.

  Because of her Mennonite family's solid antiwar convictions, I was a little concerned about her reaction to the Persian Gulf situation. A few months after it all started I was home for a few days, burnt out. I had reached the magic 330 hours in ninety days and had been sent home to recoup. While I was there, we watched the antiwar protests and demonstrations on TV. Then we saw a kid burning the American flag somewhere in California. She became enraged at the sight. I had never seen her so mad over a news event. How could anyone do such a thing, she demanded, while brave men and women risked their lives for that flag? I loved her more, as she voiced her anger and rage, than I had ever before. She truly was the air under my wings.