September Song

by Andrew M. Greeley

  The carrier and almost all of its crew were in no danger from the enemy, which lacked the aircraft and the weapons to strike back. For the men who were not aircrew and had no responsibility for feeding and servicing the aircraft, this cruise, while not a pleasure trip by any stretch of the imagination, was hardly a war. If anything it was a more boring experience then waiting on land to attack the enemy or be attacked by them. There was sadness perhaps when a plane and its crew did not return or crashed on takeoff and landing. However, it seemed to me that after a while even these tragedies became part of the monotonous routine.

  Truly terrifying, however, was the way the planes took off. They didn’t roar down the flight deck and lift into the air with confident polish the way a 727 passenger jet would. Rather they were hurled into space by demonic steam catapults at the very front of the ship, a raw demonstration of brute power.

  They would never do that to me I averred to myself. Obviously if I insisted on remaining on the ship until it returned to Subic I would have long since been divorced by my wife and children. I elected not to think about it.

  They might divorce me anyway if they found out where I was.

  I encountered a tall, husky civilian employee from the Center of Naval Analyses who told me that he had not seen the light of day for five months. Rather, he spent his day in the fluorescent beige-and-blue bowels of the ship calculating and recalculating arcane numbers on the performance of a certain new missile that the Navy was about to turn loose on the enemy.

  “Does it work?” I asked him.

  “Hell, no! It not only doesn’t work, it would be an absolute menace to an aircrew that was carrying it. The Pentagon has a lot of money and a lot of prestige tied up in it.”

  “Like the torpedoes which didn’t work during the War? We know they work because they have to work?”

  “Something like that. I’ve talked the Admiral and the Captain out of trying it in combat. We’d just lose good men. I’ve sent in my report. I think some of the people who will read it might understand that there will be greater risks to their careers in using it than in scrubbing the whole project.”

  “Is anything we’re doing out here having an impact on the war?”

  “Very little. Bee stings to an elephant. However, the Navy feels that it has to be doing something to stay in the appropriations game.”

  “Even if it means the lives of the aircrews.”

  He nodded solemnly.

  “Don’t think the aircrews miss the point. Many of them just fly out from Delta One, drop their ordnance into the ocean, if they can. Hang around a little and return to the ship with a clear conscience. We know who some of them are. They’ll hand in their wings eventually. Can’t blame them.”

  “Does anyone out here believe in what we’re doing?”

  “They believe we’re doing our duty as our superiors have told us. Affecting what happens in country? Maybe the Admiral and the Captain believe in it, though they keep their opinions to themselves. Virtually everyone else thinks it’s crazy.”

  “Crazy but orders?”

  “That’s about it.”

  Like my young friend at the Embassy in Saigon said, the biggest fuck-up in the history of the United States.

  Bigger than Bull Run? Bigger than Chancellorsville? Bigger than the Little Bighorn? Bigger than Pearl Harbor?

  Quite an achievement.

  Then I come to a part of my story of which I am heartily ashamed. At least I think I am. My wife and kids, my parents and siblings are all entitled to a divorce because of what I did next. Indeed, I’m sure my poor, long-suffering, gorgeous wife could have our marriage annulled on grounds of insanity because of this final part of my adventure.

  So I have to say that I regret it. I really do. Some of the time.

  It was, however, one hell of an adventure. I never talk about my adventures in Germany with the First Constab, maybe because there was a fair amount of tragedy as well as folly in them. This story, however, while it reveals culpable, indeed criminal behavior, is also in retrospect high comedy. And comedy in which no one got hurt.

  Except Chucky Ducky, who may have pushed his luck with his family too far this one last time.

  Note that I am seeking forgiveness on grounds of insanity.

  The devil in the form of Tom McCarty, commander of VF 111, the fighter squadron of Air Wing 11, approached me my third day on the Kittyhawk with an appealing idea.

  “Chuck, why don’t you fly with me on today’s mission. The other carrier out here is joining us in a major raid on what purports to be a concentration of NVA about fifty miles above the border. We’ll be sending in about fifty planes. My job will be to sit offshore and direct them in and out. No one will shoot at us. There is absolutely no danger. Would you like to come along?”

  No danger as long as the plane, uh, aircraft functioned properly.

  That was a very important condition. It never occurred to me. I knew about the accidental losses of aircrew. But surely the plane I was on wouldn’t be an accidental loss. Right?

  It would involve being hurled into the air by the catapult monster. However, having done that once, I would not be frightened on my return flight to Subic. Right?

  So I thought why not?

  The good April, in an occasional show of impatience with me when I was growing up, would say, “Chuck, there are times when you don’t think through what you say or do.”

  Well.

  Anyway it seemed like a nice final chapter to my story. So I threw caution, to say nothing of common sense, to the winds, and said, “Sure, why not?”

  After the words were out of my mouth I thought of a thousand reasons why not. It was too late unless I wanted to seem a coward.

  Which we all know I am.

  So clutching the rosary in my pocket, I was strapped in again to the rear seat on the F-14. We taxied to the front of the ship and were fastened on the steam catapult. No big deal. Tom McCarty said it was the most exciting moment of carrier flying. I would be slammed against the back of the seat and held down by a force of I forget how many Gs. I closed my eyes and pretended to doze and the aircraft shivered and shuddered in preparation for launch.

  Then there was an abrupt explosion behind me, the engines on the jet roared to life, we were hurled forward by a demon not unlike the one that had slammed us down on the carrier deck.

  It may be that the heavy weight of gravity and acceleration did pin me in my seat as we went from zero knots an hour to two hundred and fifty knots. I assume that did happen. All I can remember was clutching my rosary desperately as I waited for the South China Sea to engulf us.

  Then the aircraft turned its nose toward the sky. I informed whatever power lurked behind my rosary that I was grateful for another miracle.

  “All right back there, Chuck?”

  “A piece of pie, er, I mean cake!”

  “Told you it was a great thrill, didn’t I?”

  “You did indeed!”

  I took my memory-laden Kodak out of the waterproof pouch in which I had placed it and tentatively began to snap some shots. You can’t get very much from such a small camera in an F-14.

  Across the horizon there appeared a ribbon of green which quickly grew larger as we sped toward it. Vietnam. Indeed North Vietnam

  Only a half hour away from the deck of the carrier. Too close, too close.

  We were, I gathered from the chatter on the radio, Delta Leader One.

  Tom directed the various groups of planes to hit the target. They reported back that they had delivered their ordnance and encountered no antiaircraft fire.

  “Another dry target,” Tom McCarty said evenly. “Well, everyone’s going home alive.”

  Almost everyone.

  Suddenly our engines stopped. Not one of them, but both of them. I told myself it was my imagination. They started again and then shut down. Definitively I thought. They’d had enough of this foolishness.

  “This is Delta Leader One, Delta Leader One. Mayday, repeat mayd
ay. Engines flamed out. We’re going in.”

  Why did he seem so damned cool?

  “We copy, Delta Leader One. We’re informing Big Delta. Good luck.”

  “Don’t worry, Chuck,” he told me. “They’ll have us picked up in a half hour. The seawater down there is warm.”

  “I need a swim,” I replied, fooling no one.

  He gave me instructions about “ditching.” I paid no attention. All I knew was that I had to get out of the plane in a hurry.

  The water came up with alarming speed. In another moment it would hit us. Lucky that water was soft.

  Right?

  Wrong!

  It hit us like ten feet of solid concrete and began to tear the plane apart. I didn’t have to jump out of the F-14. It tossed me into the South China Sea like I was bad luck and it wanted to be rid of me. I tumbled into the water and swallowed half of the South China Sea. Here is where I drown, I thought as I tried to remember what I was to do next. Fortunately Tom McCarty was next to me and he pushed something which made my life jacket inflate. A tiny raft appeared next to us. We clambered into it.

  The water had indeed been warm, a lot warmer than Lake Michigan.

  “Piece of pie,” Commander McCarty said. “A lot better here than in country.”

  “Oh yes,” I agreed.

  “Delta Leader One,” he spoke into some kind of mike. “Do you copy me?”

  “We copy you, Delta Leader One. That aircraft went down in hurry.”

  “Old one. I want a new one.”

  “We’ve got you marked. The cavalry will be out shortly.”

  The aircraft above us turned tail and raced back toward Big Delta.

  We were alone in the middle of a very big ocean. It was no longer just the South China Sea. It was the Pacific.

  “No real problem,” Commander McCarty assured me. “The dye you see around us will mark our spot. The F-14s will be back in a half hour or so. They’ll home in on our radio signal. No extra charge for the special thrill.”

  I was too paralyzed by fear to respond. We were alone in an empty ocean, somewhere off the coast of North Vietnam. On the opposite horizon a thin black cloud hovered.

  “The weather people told us that the typhoon would hold off for another twenty-four, thirty-six hours.”

  First I had heard of a typhoon. Long-forgotten images from Joseph Conrad’s novella surged into my consciousness. I would never see the Chicago skyline again, never walk over to Petersen’s with my wife, never hear my children sing. My short life would end in a crowning act of folly. Thank heaven that Rosemarie had inherited a fortune from her parents. The family would survive. She would doubtless remarry and probably to a better choice. It would be tough but April and Peg and Dr. Ward would see her through.

  Despair?

  Something much worse to which I can’t give a name.

  It occurred to me that I ought to pray. Why bother? What good would it do? God had made up his mind that I was expendable. I couldn’t really blame him. I was a wise guy, a smart-ass, a shitkicker, a professional voyeur. I’d done enough harm in the world.

  Our raft rode up and down on the light chop, just enough to bring back my motion sickness. The water into which I had tumbled evaporated quickly, coating me with foul-smelling salt. I started to vomit. Routinely, every five minutes, I emptied everything in my stomach into the Pacific.

  What a terrible name for an ocean that spawned typhoons!

  “What’s the name of that typhoon over there?” I asked Tom, who had been as quiet as I was.

  “Rosie.”

  “Hugh?”

  “Typhoon Rosie.”

  God did have a sense of humor.

  The sun was blistering my pale Irish complexion. My doctor would not approve of this much time under the tropical sun.

  However, I would never see him again so it didn’t matter much, now did it?

  “I can’t imagine what’s keeping them. There must have been an accident on the ship. They know where we are even if we are not generating a radio signal … Don’t worry, Chuck. The United States Navy hasn’t forgotten us.”

  No, perhaps not. But if God had forgotten us, then who could blame the United States Navy?

  The sun was slipping toward the distant smudge on the horizon, which was North Vietnam. The day was running out on us.

  “They won’t give up on us, Chuck, even if they don’t find us today. The Navy never lets its aircrews down.”

  I didn’t believe that.

  “Won’t they be afraid of the typhoon?” I asked.

  “There’s at least twenty-four hours before that rolls in. They’ll find us before that.”

  If our radio beacon was still working.

  “Maybe we should start praying, Tom?”

  “It can’t hurt.” He grinned.

  So I fished my rosary out of my trousers, now board stiff, and we began to pray.

  “You have a wife at home?” he asked me after our first round of fifteen decades.

  “Yeah, named Rosie, except that I always call her Rosemarie. She is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. We have five kids.”

  “A lot of responsibility … I’m married. Two children, both under five. Good kids, great wife.”

  I hoped that all of both our families were storming heaven.

  “She approved of your being out here?”

  “Not really. No woman in her right mind—and my wife is very bright—would want her husband in an aircrew. I’m in fifteen years next week and due to go home at the same time. I’m sure I’ll make Captain back home. Then I’ll retire. I’ve paid my dues. What about you? Does your Rosemarie approve of this adventure?”

  “She didn’t object very loudly when I told her I was coming out here. She figures that my vocation is photography just like my brother Ed’s is to be a priest. I don’t think she’d be delighted by this leg of the trip.”

  “Don’t worry about us, Chuck. We’ll make it home.”

  I began a second ride through the mysteries of the rosary. I had to stop several times to vomit.

  What would death be like? I wasn’t thinking so much of my actual physical death. I would drown, an end which is a lot quicker than cancer. I was worried about afterward. There was some transcendental power behind the Universe. I didn’t doubt that.

  However, did the transcendent give a damn about any of his creatures? Most especially, in this instance, me.

  “You said your wife is beautiful?” he asked.

  “Yeah, I know. You’re wondering how a radiantly beautiful woman would marry a foolish little guy like me. I never did understand that … To be in a room with my Rosemarie is to want to undress her, whether you’re a man or a woman.”

  “I know the feeling,” he said, his first hint of discouragement.

  If the skipper of our little island of humanity was losing his nerve, then his vomiting unable seaman could hardly be counted on.

  “I can’t figure out what’s wrong,” he said. “They should be out here now.”

  “How much time before sunset?”

  “An hour maybe”

  The sky burst into a brilliant sunset—red, gold, and purple.

  “Hello!” Tom spoke sharply. “It looks like we have company.”

  He pointed toward the horizon where the sun was thinking about whether it ought to try again tomorrow. A couple of boats coming our way—from the North Vietnam shore.

  “Ours?”

  “Unfortunately not. Vietnamese fishermen, NORTH Vietnamese. Their government pays them for every American aviator that they can pick up. Maybe someone onshore heard our beacon.”

  “Do we fight them?”

  “With what?”

  Prisoner of war. Civilian at that. Better the typhoon.

  We watched with fatal fascination as the boats bumped over the water in our direction. Vince had spent a couple of years in a North Korean prison.

  “Lots of dreams about it still, Chuck,” he had confided in me. “Dying from a bay
onet wound in your gut would have been better.”

  That was when he had just returned home along with my friend Leo Devlin (who found his sweetheart married to someone else). Leo, who had lost a couple of fingers to his torturers, had not been missing in action. Rather he was reported as killed in action. Big surprise when he appeared in the neighborhood. Both of them were terribly haunted men. They grew out of North Korean prison more or less. Peg made sure that Vince recovered, though my lovely wife had to intervene once and tell him how dumb he was acting. Leo had gone off to Harvard to get his doctorate in political science. He was teaching somewhere on the East Coast. He had even married, though he’d never get over Jane, the first, and I thought only, love of his life.

  Vince and Leo had survived, if maybe just barely. They were young and strong. I wasn’t. Curtains for Chucky Ducky, a civilian prisoner at that.

  I dried the Kodak, Rosemarie’s gift when I went to Germany, fastened the telephoto lens, and pointed it at the boats. Poor Rosemarie. How much I loved her at that moment. I mean the moment she gave me the camera.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Tom asked in surprise.

  “Getting pictures of our captors.”

  He shook his head. Clearly the sun and the water and the dehydration had affected my brain.

  “The Seventh Cavalry might show up in the nick of time. These could be great shots.”

  “No Seventh Cavalry this time,” he said with a resigned sigh. “We’re both missing in action.”

  The boats closed rapidly. They were maybe only fifty yards out when I began to shoot my last roll of film. Now the faces on both craft were clear. They didn’t seem very friendly. Several of them where clutching iron bars and wooden clubs.