Time Flying

by Dan Garmen

  Obviously, you don't want your pilot hungry when he's trying something like that. “Clark Bar,” I said, pulling open my flight bag and looking in. “Tiger's Milk Bar...and three Hershey’s” I concluded.

  “How bout a Hershey?” Pat responded, then upon receipt of one of the rectangular blocks of chocolate, adding “Thanks,” he responded, continuing his instrument scan, even though the day was clear, and the aircraft behaving itself.

  “Man, we lucked out, getting this ride,” I said, foregoing the monkey food for cut up pieces of an apple from a plastic bag. I hadn't mentioned the apples to Pat, because...well, it was healthy food, which just didn't rate in his world.

  “Heard that,” he said. This hop today would give us the last one we needed for cruise qualification, and we'd be able to give up our spots in the current, crazy, qualification cycle. The Swordsmen would be done that much faster, and things would settle down to a more normal pace, if 5,000 men and women cooped up in a ship, working around the clock counted as “normal”. Still, it amazed me how quickly you acclimated to life aboard ship.

  The flight proved uneventful, the weather being so cooperative and the shipboard air controllers so focused on safely moving as many aircraft around Ranger's patch of ocean as they could while in order to get the aircrews qualified.

  Our inflight refueling went off without a problem as well, and in fact went much quicker than expected, since the tanker we met up with had revised orders to only serve us up a couple hundreds pounds of fuel, rather than an almost full top-off. I figured the next crew to fly this aircraft must need a tanker approach and refuel for their logbooks, or maybe we were the bird’s last hop for the day. After we disconnected our two aircraft, I watched the other Intruder recede into the distance after we executed a break-right departure and began our descent toward Ranger.

  Before long, we slid our Intruder into the “downwind” leg of the approach, looking at Ranger on our port, or left, side as we flew parallel, but on the opposite course as the big ship.

  At this point, I was little more than a passenger, with the ship in sight, the weather perfect and the seas calm. In Naval Aviation, however, it’s never a good idea to think things were going to be too easy, since any number of things can go wrong in the last few minutes or even seconds of a flight, but I had to admit to myself, this one looked pretty simple.

  In civilian aviation, pilots are taught to fly patterns with sharp, square corners, the transition from “downwind” to “base” leg and the one to “final,” where you are lined up with the runway, intending to land, are both supposed to be square, but not so in the Navy. Transitions in Naval aircraft are supposed to be smoother, more rounded.

  So, when Pat was flying, the transitions were perfectly round, this approach to the ship no different. Among carrier pilots, a trap on a “severe clear” day was even more stressful than one under overcast, choppy conditions, because more was expected of you. No excuses to miss the number three wire, or have to dive to the deck because your approach was too hot. Good weather meant, “Hollywood Time.” Perfection was the only option.

  Pat performed. He “called the ball” when ordered to do so at a quarter mile. The “ball” being an orange light on the ship that indicated whether your glide path to the third arresting wire on the ship’s deck was above or below the one recommended for a perfect landing. On days like this one, where the ocean the ship is traveling through is calm, a good pilot will keep the ball pretty well centered, with a bit of a rhythmic up and down through the center. On a day with tall waves and a rolling deck, landing on the deck would be a much more complicated pattern the pilot had to manage. On this hop, I remember shaking my head in wonder as I stared at the ball on our short final approach. If I didn't know Pat Maney, I'd have radioed Ranger, informing the ship the ball appeared to be frozen, and suggesting they cycle the system. But the ball was working just fine. My best friend flew this Intruder, and though mostly said in jest, often with sarcasm, there was some truth to the statement that like almost everyone on deck, when Lt. Commander Patrick Maney, call-sign “Frodo” trapped, even the ball stood and watched.

  Some of the biggest landing errors are made on perfect days like today, when routine rules the day, when the airplane is working perfectly, the wind calm and the skies crystal clear. Conditions like these can fool the pilot into believing landing on a moving ship is no different from landing on the painted outline of a ship on a runway. Most carrier pilots will tell you the easiest trap is harder than the most difficult “terra firma” landing and it’s harder to land a plane on an aircraft carrier when the sun is shining and the weather calm, than to land on 5,000 feet of concrete when the visibility is zero and winds are shifting all around the compass at 50 miles an hour . At times like this, with perfect weather, pilots can get a little cocky, thinking they can't fail, but do. And when the worst happens, aircraft that cost tens of millions of dollars to replace, and irreplaceable aircrews are lost. War is full of tragedy and loss, but the worst is when the loss is pointless, a product of a moment's distraction or carelessness.

  In his personal life, I've seen Pat Maney do many stupid things. Pranks, alcohol-fueled fights, and stunts were simply a part of who he was. I realized early on, however, that the only time Pat did anything dangerous and foolish was when no one he cared about shared any of the danger. I once watched, heart in my mouth, as he rode down a bumpy hill on a four-wheeled ATV crouching in the seat like a trick rider in a rodeo, yet he's the first one in the car to tell everyone to buckle up whether the passengers include his little girls, or me. Pat never took chances with the well-being of those he loved.

  The trap on this beautiful day in December of 1990 was perfect. There existed no arresting wire in the world for Pat, save the third, and on this day like on so many others, rain or shine, calm or tempestuous, Lt. Commander Pat Maney caught it, and Grumman A6-E Intruder 314, of Attack Squadron VA-145, known as the “Swordsmen,” part of the Air Wing of the USS Ranger came to a sudden stop. The universe seemed to pause for three heartbeats, then the arresting wire holding our aircraft in place pulled us backwards a few feet as if to demonstrate to the Intruder that even though it could fly through the air beyond the horizon, it still belonged to Ranger.

  Then, the cable dropped to the deck, and retracted to await the next airplane. Pat, hands delicately operating the throttles, drove the airplane toward the temporary parking spot to await the next crew as I served as lookout for deck traffic, my “head on a swivel” to make sure we didn't end up trying to occupy the same patch of deck as another aircraft.

  Guided by the yellow shirts, we rolled to our spot, and to our mild surprise, got the “cut engine” signal. We were 314's last hop of the day after all, and why not, I thought. The hop had been a good one. Pat and I performed the shutdown checklist, and making sure we had gathered all our gear, kneeboards and papers, opened the canopy, unstrapped and climbed out of the Intruder, down the ladders the yellow shirts had placed against the airplane, to the deck.

  About an hour later, in the Squadron's ready room, the Landing Signal Officer, or “LSO” came by to give us the grade for Pat's landing. To call Commander Garret Tolleson “brutally honest” was like calling the sun “fairly bright.” If he found something to criticize, Tolleson would find it. On our last WESTPAC cruise on Ranger, I overheard him grading Commander Coleson on a pretty good trap under tough conditions.The stiff breeze had been shifting all day, requiring Ranger to change course at least three times so her aircraft could land into the wind. The seas were rough, too, with swells pitching the deck of the ship up and down each time by more than 10 feet. Coleson had caught the number three wire, and had done so without resorting to diving on the deck. Still, Tolleson had a list of at least five things the Squadron Commander could have done better, and told him so, as if our C.O. had been a brand-new pilot on his first deployment. They were friends, but that fact didn’t protect Coleson from a brutal critique.

  I expected a similar diatribe from Toll
eson this day, but found myself dumfounded when he came into the room, opened his metal clipboard, pulled a single sheet of paper from out, reviewed it, then signed and handed it to Pat.

  “Pass.”

  That stunned even Pat, who for the first time since I met him, found himself speechless. A few silent seconds passed as we looked at each other, amazed, and then the moment ended. Life on the ship returned to normal.

  Two pilots from the squadron came in the room, laughing at something I couldn't quite make out, mainly because my attention had been captured by the small television mounted high in the corner of the compartment, opposite the hatch. CNN, captured by one of Ranger's many satellite receivers, ran 24/7 these days, and oddly enough, served as our best source of information about the coming conflict. The anchor, a beautiful girl in her mid 20s with long, wavy chestnut hair read the news, a video loop playing showing Marines disembarking from a C5 transport, other soldiers milling around in freshly sprouted camps in the desert and then a quick shot of Ranger steaming out in the middle of the ocean, a single F14 Tomcat on approach. A small, ironic cheer went up in the room. The reaction small, because there were only seven or eight of us in the room, and ironic because we had seen the same video loop about a hundred times in the past couple days.

  “Hey, there's your girlfriend!” Pat teased, shoving my left shoulder as my eyes stayed locked on the broadcast. “My girlfriend” had earned her nickname the first week of the cruise, when one of the other B/Ns commented that I seemed “awfully interested in that particular news honey.” So, the anchor had been assigned the “handle” of “Wax's News Honey,” since they didn't remember her name.

  I remembered her name, though. The CNN reporter who had sat in the anchor's chair during the conflict that would be come to known as the “First Gulf War,” was a 24 year old from Chicago, by the name of Molly Wallace.

  Yea, my Molly, at least in another timeline, one in which she had given up the entry-level TV reporter's job in Atlanta at the fledgling start-up network to move to San Diego for an opportunity with a local TV station and a boyfriend who didn't really deserve her.

  Me.

  ELEVEN

  In Harm's Way

  The crew of Ranger had a busy life, settling into deployed life. We all had a lot to do as we prepared for what most of my shipmates hoped, and I knew, would be our entry into the fight.

  As we worked our way to the Persian Gulf, Ranger and her crew spent Christmas at sea, with a subdued Squadron party, which included a presentation for the Air Wing of a video production made up of photos and videos of family members wishing us all a Merry Christmas, and asking us to come home safely. When a clip appeared of Amanda and the boys waving, the three of them holding a sign that read, “VA-145 - We Love You Daddy!” flashed on the screen, raising a cheer in our section of the hanger, the squadron’s Executive Officer, Tim Darlington, who was sitting behind me leaned forward and a little too loudly for a whisper, said, “Well, that does narrow it down a bit.”

  “Respectfully, XO,” Pat answered in a voice, just a notch louder than Darlington's, “Fuck you.” The squadron cracked up, as did several people within earshot. Darlington's wife, Cara, had organized the production of the video, which we were all grateful for.

  Whether or not individuals had family in the video, and I think pretty much everyone did, not a single dry eye remained in the darkened hanger, so the lights took a long time to come back up. All in all, for a Christmas away from home, this one on Ranger was pretty good.

  The New Year celebration was an unabashed blast. We celebrated the arrival of 1991 in the Philippines, docking at Subic Bay, many of us allowed 24 hour shore leave. First order of business, at least for Pat and me being to call home from a pay phone at the base. Pat spent time talking with Candace and their girls, and I got to talk with Amanda and the boys, amazed at how much older Aaron sounded.

  “Please be careful, Rich,” Amanda said, after I had talked with Michael. “I’m worried sick. The stuff we're seeing on TV…”

  “Sweetheart,” I said, trying to sound as less concerned than I felt. “Read the notebooks. It's all happened before, and will happen again.” In San Diego I had told Amanda to read my “future histories” in the hope she would be convinced I wasn't crazy, and that everything would be okay, at least until 2007, when I had the accident.

  “No Ranger A6 BNs get killed, and only one gets shot down, and he's in VA-155,” I had written in the last notebook, confident my memory served me well. I wanted to tell her an Intruder would be shot down, the crew never found, but they would be from another ship. I dared not say anything over an unsecured, or secured for that matter, phone. I would not want to have to explain those words to Navy Intel, especially after the event happens.

  “Okay.” I could hear Amanda trying hard to not cry and upset the boys, who I knew were right next to her.

  “Read the notebooks, Amanda,” I repeated. “It'll all happen again, just like last time.”

  But of course, I had no way of being sure history would repeat itself. The notebooks contained nothing about me, so there was no way to be sure how my actions in the coming fight would change things. The notebooks Amanda found in my desk at home are histories of a time when I was trying to get off the drugs, trying hard not to think about the “Vike” I needed so much, gritting my teeth while flushing a couple stray Vicodin I'd found in a forgotten stash in the credit card slot of an old wallet, and having almost constant arguments with myself after going to the dentist for a root canal and carrying the resulting Oxycodone prescription around in my wallet for a week, comforted that it was there, but making sure I didn’t drive past a drug store, where I would be tempted to fill the prescription.

  Even though I didn't fall so far in my addiction that I ruined any lives, I did hurt some relationships I had with people on the periphery of my life. One shrink I'd gone to had tried to tell me because I hadn't gone to excessive, self-destructive lengths to get Vicodin, clinically, I wasn’t “addicted,” but rather “physically dependent.”

  What bullshit that all was. I needed the Vicodin not to get high, but to get “normal,” and function. Whether you call it “addiction” or “dependence,” the truth of the matter is, it hurts you, as well as those you love.

  I had thought about my Vike constantly, could have told you ten places I had pills stashed, and how many I had in the prescription bottle I carried with me at all times. I decided to get off the stuff when I met Molly. In the fall of 1989, my band played several weekend gigs at Croce's in the Gas lamp District in San Diego. We were pretty bad, part of the backlash against the glitz in music, fashion and the hairstyles of the 80s, playing dark, pessimistic songs about loss, and dreams unfulfilled. One weekend, Molly was on vacation with a couple girlfriends, spending the evening clubbing. The sight of the bearded idiots playing out of tune in front of the big sketched picture of Jim Croce must have been a strange one. But, we chatted during a break, and ended up spending the next couple days running around San Diego together. I knew something about Molly was different that first evening after the gig, when I realized I hadn't thought of popping a Vicodin until I started to sweat and feel nauseous, the beginnings of detox.

  That marked the beginning of my recovery. We got married a year later, Molly moving from Atlanta to join KUSI TV in San Diego.

  In this timeline, on a couple of occasions, I've been tempted. On my first WESTPAC, I slipped while descending on a ladder and cracked a bone in my wrist, not a terribly debilitating injury, even though it kept me off the flight schedule for a couple weeks, but a painful one. The ship's doctors kept trying to push Percocet, but I passed, preferring to use Ibuprofen or Acetaminophen, Advil and Tylenol. The irony of pain relief medication is, a great deal of the effectiveness in Vicodin or Percocet (Hydrocodone and Oxycodone, respectively) is from what's thrown in to boost the pain-relieving properties, most often Acetaminophen, known to the world as good-old Tylenol. The rest is good old-fashioned opium, long revered by mankind
as something best used to make life on earth tolerable.

  I've always been grateful to Molly for changing my life, and trading her dreams for my survival. I can't say for sure she knew what she was doing, but whatever her intentions, she saved me.

  It was a quiet night on the sea and in the sky as I leaned against the rail Ranger’s fantail, looking at the luminescent wake the ship made as she sped toward the war. The sounds of the ship floated out to me, the rhythm of the machinery, the occasional voice raised in laughter, and as I closed my eyes, I could hear music. Listening closer, I identified Joshua Kadison, singing “Jessie.” Someone missed home. As I looked at the faintly glowing water behind the ship, glow caused by the microscopic organisms stirred up and excited by roiling water Ranger's huge propellers churned up, I realized these lives I've lived haven't been driven entirely by selfishness.

  This trip through the timeline I spent with Amanda so far, carried with it a subtle background noise that felt a lot like guilt. My assumption has always been this time, I've taken the tougher road, done things I avoided the first time, worked harder and lived a life designed by an older, wiser me, all at Molly’s expense. The Milky Way cut a swath across the night sky, and shone, reflected in the calm ocean the ship moved through. Confronted with such enormous grandeur, I laughed out loud at myself, and the absurdity of that idea. Molly, crying into her pillow every night because she doesn't have Richard Girrard in her life? In 2007, Katie Couric sat at the top of the TV news business. From my unique perspective, I knew she had become the breakout star of the first Gulf War only because Molly had given up her job at CNN to move to be with me in San Diego. A lot could happen between now and 2007, I thought, but knew deep down in my gut Molly would be the first woman to anchor a network nightly news broadcast, not Katie Couric.