He gave her a withering look.
He had been up since half past three and had flown over two thousand miles to get here. It was 1620 before he had been able to go into the dirt field at the Aircraft Radio Corporation at Boonton. He was met there by a salesman with the keys to a loaner car. He had then had to drive through New Jersey to the Lincoln Tunnel, arriving there just in time for the regular traffic jam. It was bad going into Manhattan, worse in Manhattan, and absolutely maddening on Long Island.
It took him five minutes longer to drive from Boonton to Glen Cove than it had taken him to fly from Alabama to the Lexington Signal Depot earlier in the day. But he was finally here for this god damned party of Porter Craig's and Cynthia's family; and if he wanted a drink before facing them, it seemed to him a perfectly reasonable thing to ask for.
Cynthia backed down.
"Give me a little soda, please, with a slice of lime," she said to the barman.
A balding man of about Lowell's age, wearing a three-piece, gray pinstripe suit, appeared in the doorway to the bar. Porter Craig motioned him to come in.
"Craig," he said, "this is Stevens Depaul, who handles our public relations."
"How do you do, Mr. Lowell?" Stevens said, offering his hand.
"You could say that Stevens is cupid's helper," Porter Craig said, playfully. "It was he who found out that your Cynthia was our Cynthia, and sent the flowers."
Lowell flashed a quick smile.
"How do you do?" he said.
"Mr. Craig thought you should see this before we release it, Mr. Lowell," Stevens Depaul said, handing him a sheet of paper. "The Thomases and the Peltons have already approved of it."
Lowell took it from him and read it:
CRAIG, POWELL, KENYON AND DAWES, INC.
17 Wall Street, New York City, New York
Stevens Depaul
Vice President, Public Affairs Tel: 742 1177, 742 1178
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TO THE NEW YORK TIMES:
The WALL STREET JOURNAL:
New York City, May 2 Mrs. John Schuyler Pelton of New York and Palm Springs, Cal." and Mr. Clemens
Thomas of New York have announced the engagement of Mrs. Pelton's niece, and Mr. Thomas's sister, Miss. Cynthia Thomas, of New York and Palm Beach, to Mr. Craig W. Lowell, of Glen Cove.
Miss. Thomas is the daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Edward T.
Thomas. Mr. Thomas was Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer of Thomas & Mac Neil Inc., the investment bankers, a position now held by his son Mr. Clemens Thomas. Mr. Lowell is the son of Mrs. Andre Pretier of Glen Cove and Palm Beach, and the late Mr. Porter Lowell, who was Executive Vice President of Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes, Inc." the investment bankers.
A graduate of Miss. Porter's School and Smith, Miss. Thomas is a reporter for Time magazine. Mr. Lowell, who attended St. Mark's School and Harvard, is a graduate of the Wharton School of Business of the University of Pennsylvania. He is presently on military leave from Craig, Powell, Kenyon and Dawes, of which he is Vice Chairman of the Board.
The upcoming nuptials were announced at a garden party today at Broadlawns, Mr. Lowell's estate in Glen Cove. A June wedding is planned. (Note to Editor: Guest list attached.) another of his student pilots would kill the both of them. But he had never lost control of his emotions in a cockpit.
Until Fort Benning he had believed that he had learned how to conquer fear-to reason his way through it.
As a thirty-year-old, out-of-shape aviator what he had feared before going to Benning was that he would not be able to keep up with the kids, the seventeen and eighteen and nineteen-year old enlisted men, and the twenty-one and twenty-two-year-old lieutenants fresh from basic training or OCS. They would be in first-class physical shape, and he would be unable to keep up with them in the rigid physical conditioning program. He had feared he would not be able to run five miles or do 100 pushups or whatever other physical torture was expected of him. And thus he would fall out, thereby humiliating and disgracing himself as a regular army officer, a Norwich graduate, and a black man.
That flabby nigger aviator just can't hack it. What did you expect?
But what actually almost stopped him at Benning was the forty-foot tower. He had run with the kids, and he'd kept up with them, his heart beating painfully, his throat on fire, his muscles throbbing and his chest heaving. He had done 127 pushups and paid for it with a night of agony. He had done 56 pull-ups, a creditable accomplishment for anyone who weighed 220 pounds.
But now he was on the god damned forty-foot tower. The tower was a training device, and it was built of telephone poles, with a platform forty feet off the ground. Trainees climbed a ladder to the platform, where they were strapped in a parachute harness. The harness was connected to a steel cable. The trainees then exited the platform as they would exit an aircraft when they made an actual parachute jump.
There were instructors who watched the trainees exit the platform, other instructors who watched them slide down the cable, and still other instructors who watched them strike the ground. The instructors would criticize in a more or less friendly way the trainees. It must be said that the usual courtesy which enlisted men paid to officers was placed in limbo during training. If an officer looked like a fucking pregnant duck (which was often the case), the instructor corporals would not be hesitant to tell him so in a voice loud enough so that other trainees could also profit from the expert advice.
Now, halfway up the ladder to the platform, Parker was stricken with terror. He had an almost irresistible urge to wrap both arms around the ladder and stay there. He was suddenly soaked with a clammy sweat.
He felt dizzy. Never as an aviator had he experienced vertigo like this never terror like this. K Get your ass moving! Whatsamatter?
Afraid of heights?
Precisely.
There was a word for it, although he could not now for the life of him come up with it. Acrophobia? No, that wasn't it.
Whatever it was called, he had it, and he had it bad. It took him more determination than he had ever summoned before to climb that last fifteen or twenty feet to the forty-foot platform.
When he was strapped into the harness and ordered to stand at the edge of the platform, he knew it was going to take even more strength of will to jump off. Other men had done it, he told himself a hundred thousand? two hundred thousand?
The vast majority of those men had not been blessed with his own innate advantages or so at least logic told him. He was smarter than most, with an unusually large and muscular body recently whipped into superb shape by a rigid regimen of exercise.
The reason the others had not been terrified, he concluded, was that they were too dumb to be scared. They had no idea what they were doing.
He jumped.
Afterward the instructor did not tell him he looked like a pregnant duck. He described him as having all the grace of a cow on ice... and ordered him back up the ladder to the forty-foot platfprm.
It took him four jumps before his performance was judged satisfactory.
of He could not eat supper that night until he'd had half a bottle scotch in the privacy of his BOQ. He was grateful that his railroad tracks gave him a private room. He didn't know what he would have done if there had been another officer with him to witness the signs of his cowardice. After he drank the scotch, he went to the officers' club and had a steak. And threw it up in the men's room.
He had his first real jump from an airplane the next morning-without a breakfast he knew he would throw up, and probably very publicly. He was third in the stick and went out the door with his eyes closed, so terrified that he was numb. He was only vaguely aware of the opening shock when the canopy filled with air, and was genuinely surprised when another, far more violent, shock told him that he was again on the ground.
"You can't daydream coming down, Captain," a sergeant instructor told him, not unkindly. "That was really a bad landing you made."
He wasn't at all sure that he would
be able to force himself to get back into the airplane, but he made his second jump that afternoon.
Aware that he had to eat, he had two PX hamburgers for supper, then went to the BOQ and drank the rest of the scotch. Then he called Toni.
She could tell by his voice that he was drunk, which made her hurt and angry.
The next day, he made his third and fourth jumps, and that night the fifth, qualifying jump. His prayers that doing it at night would somehow be easier went unanswered. Actually, it was worse at night. He didn't think it was possible that it could be worse, but it was.
There was a party later that night. In the morning, there would be a parade. After the parade, the commandant of the Parachute School would pin the silver wings on their chests. Thereafter they would be entitled to refer to themselves as parachutists. It was an occasion to tie one on.
He had one drink, went to the BOQ, and called Toni. When he told her he wasn't sure he was going to get through it, he realized she thought he was trying to gain a little undeserved sympathy. Which was not unreasonable of her, he thought. After all, he was a perfect physical specimen and an aviator, and there were a lot of really stupid people around wearing jump rings. Becoming a parachutist was no big deal.
He did not discuss the Parachute School when he went home over that weekend. There were other things to discuss, friends to see, arrangements to make for the transfer to Bragg.
His orders required that he report for duty at the U.S. Army Special Warfare School not later than 0900. He thought that was a reasonable hour, and he thought it was a pleasant indication of what the school would be like when a qualified Green Beret officer saw that he and the five other officers reporting in were comfortably settled into a BOQ.
The orders of the day were to appear in fatigues after lunch. There was an officers' section in a GI mess hall, separated from the enlisted men's part by a plywood partition. Lunch was nothing to rave about, but it was cheap.
When they assembled after lunch, there were thirty-five enlisted men along with the six officers. He was the ranking officer, and he was politely asked to take over the formation, call roll, and load everybody onto a GI bus which sat nearby.
No member of the faculty got on the bus, and when one of the other officers asked the driver where they were headed, all the driver knew was that he was supposed to follow the jeep. In the jeep was a Green Beret master sergeant.
They were driven to Pope Field, and then onto an unusually large aircraft parking area. Parker noticed that the air force transports were parked rather further apart than he would have expected. He imagined this was because the aircraft were used to transport personnel of the 82nd Airborne Division, and that extra space was required for trucks and supplies.
Then the bus stopped behind a Lockheed C I 30 "Hercules." The large rear door of the air force transport was open, and a bored-looking air force master sergeant, the crew chief (or load master looked out at them.
The Green Beret master sergeant came onto the bus. "Will you unload your people, please, Captain?" he asked. Parker wondered why they were being shown a C 130. Everybody was a qualified parachutist; everyone knew what a C 130 looked like.
When he got out of the bus and saw the parachutes and equipment, he knew what was going on, although he didn't want to believe it.
The Green Beret master sergeant made a "form on me" signal, and when everybody had gathered around him, he said: "Gentlemen, you will find field gear, weapons, and parachutes labeled with your name beside the aircraft. Please put your parachutes on and form yourselves in two ranks."
The equipment was complete. There was a full set of web equipment, knapsack, shelter half, blanket, harness, and everything else from helmets to.45 pistols in holsters. There was an M14 rifle and magazines for it (loaded with blanks) in pouches on the web belt. There was even water in the canteen, Parker saw with surprise.
Putting the equipment on took some time. All the straps had to be adjusted, as did the harness on the parachute. Parker, having no idea how to carry an M14 on a parachute jump, had to be shown.
In ten minutes, they were ready.
"Gentlemen," the Green Beret master sergeant said, "herewith the First Commandment of the Special Warfare School: "Be prepared for anything."
The Second Commandment is not "like unto the first." The Second Commandment is to forget anything you think you know about parachute jumping except that it is, like the bicycle, a means for getting from one place to another. Now, please board the aircraft."
"Jesus!" somebody said.
"Mary and Joseph," somebody added, and there was nervous laughter. Then everybody went up the ramp and got on the C 130, including the Green Beret master sergeant, who walked casually up the ramp with his main chute over one shoulder, and carrying his spare chute and all the other equipment in his hands.
The aircraft engines started immediately, even before the last man was aboard; and as they started to taxi, the rear door closed. It had been bright on the parking stand, but with the door closed, it was dark in the cavernous interior of the airplane. Parker felt fear build up in him again. He forced himself to think of other things. He remembered, for instance, that the C 130 could carry sixty-four parachutists or ninety-two troops. Which meant it was only two-thirds full. Then the pilot in him made him evaluate the C 130's pilot's takeoff skill. His takeoff roll was short, and he banked to the north immediately, leveling off and changing to cruising power at no more than 3,500 feet... not bad.
The Green Beret master sergeant had an electric bull horn, to which a line was attached that let him carry it when he jumped. He put it to his mouth.
"We won't be up here long," he said. "So make sure you're ready to go."
Five minutes later, he gave the order: "Stand up!"
Everybody stood up.
"We're going to go out the back door," he said. "It's easier that way."
The rear cabin door opened down and became an extension of the floor.
The noise level increased. Parker prayed that he would not throw up and shame himself on his first day.
The Green Beret master sergeant held up his right hand, the index finger crooked. It was unmistakable: "Hook up!"
Everybody hooked the static line hook to a stainless steel wire.
The Green Beret master sergeant balled his fists and held them in front of his chest, then made a shaking movement as if he was trying to shake something loose. The miming was clear: "Check your equipment."
Each member of the incoming class turned to the man nearest him and checked his equipment.
The Green Beret master sergeant motioned for Parker and one other man to walk to the rear of the cabin, signaling with his hand where he wanted them to stop. Parker refused to look beyond the ledge the door had become. If he looked, he knew he would never be able to force himself to take that step. He saw the others fall in line behind him, and then at the instructor's gesture close up.
Holding onto the fuselage wall, the instructor walked out on the open door, then motioned for Parker and the other man (a sergeant) to go to the edge.
Parker felt faint and nauseous.
And then the instructor made a violent pointing movement with his left hand, finger extended, as clear an order as the others had been: "Go!"
Parker couldn't move. He saw the other line of parachutists begin to move. The instructor appeared beside him and made the signal again-not unkindly as if Parker had somehow missed it. Parker was prepared for anger, contempt, scorn, even for an attempt to shove him over the edge and he was not going to go. The friendly reminder overcame that. He stepped over the edge, was aware of the blast of the slipstream, then that he was upside down; and then he felt the tug of the static line as it pulled the drogue chute. A moment later the parachute slipped from its container. It filled with air, and there came the opening jolt.
As he floated toward the earth, faster than the others (for he was heavier than they were), he noticed several other things. They were much higher than he had
thought. Seven, eight thousand feet, maybe higher. They must have been in a shallow climb all the way here, and he had been too terrified to notice. And then a body hurtled past him, arms and legs spread wide. Had someone's main and spare chutes failed to open? Was he going to crash? Was the parachutist's ultimate nightmare happening?... No. A drogue chute and then the main canopy came out of the falling man's back and filled. Parker just had time to realize that the falling man who he now recognized as the Green Beret master sergeant had made a "free fall" (opening his parachute himself, rather than having it opened automatically by a static line connected to the airplane), when he felt a strange warmth at his crotch. He had wet his pants.
They came to earth in an enormous field. He had time before he landed to realize that the people running the jump had known what they were doing. Hitting a field even this huge from the altitude they had jumped from had required a skilled judgment of prevailing winds by the pilot. Parker had no idea how it had been done.
W E B Griffin - BoW 04 - The Colonels Page 38