by Dan Garmen
The relief this epiphany brought was enormous, coming in a rush, my senses clearer, the sounds sharper, reminding me of my first day back in 1976, when everything sounded a bit louder, almost metallic in their clarity. The salt air smelled fresher, more invigorating when it hit my lungs.
I now knew I had done the right thing by following this path, it was the right decision for everyone. The hole in my stomach was still present when I thought of Samantha, but I knew she lived in the other timeline, and I'd see her again. When I died here, hopefully many years in the future, I would return to my old timeline and life, and I would be with Molly and Samantha again, the Molly who had given up here dreams for me, but in the process acquired other dreams, which I'm confident she would consider better ones.
And Amanda.
Following this path benefited Amanda in ways that made whatever sacrifice I had to make worth it. Through all the soul searching I’ve done as a result of what happened to me, I’ve never wasted a moment, wondering if the sacrifice I made to be with Amanda was the right decision, it simply was.
In September of 1975, as a Junior at Ben Davis High School, since I didn't play football, and Basketball practice didn't start until early October, I worked after school and weekends for my father's construction company. The work usually meant doing clean-up on almost-finished houses, before the interior painters and flooring people came in to put the finishing touches on the structures, turning them into homes. On one particular Saturday morning, I found myself on the roof, helping install a metal chimney housing on a large split-level.
The man who usually did this job was AWOL, not an uncommon event for this particular worker, because Fridays were a drinking night for Delmer, a functioning alcoholic who couldn’t seem to get it together most Saturdays. So I had climbed up the ladder and worked on the roof that day.
The foreman, working to trim the metal faux chimney surround dropped his metal shears, which slid down the slope of the roof, the friction of the asphalt roofing shingles slowing and finally stopping them three feet from the edge. Carl nodded at the shears and I started down the roof's slope to retrieve them. I'd gotten four or five steps when a roofing square gave way, and I slipped, falling backwards on my butt, rapidly sliding toward the edge of the roof. My fall had been abrupt and hard, and my tennis shoe clad feet flailed in the air, not touching the roof until it was too late to stop my slide.
My left foot caught on the rain gutter, spinning me as I fell off the roof. The force of my falling pulled my foot out of the shoe, not slowing me at all. Although a jumble of panic at the time, the other crew members, working on the ground watched me fall from the 20 foot height head first, sure I would break my neck. Fortunately, the spinning instigated by my foot catching on the gutter brought me around to a position so my left leg to first make contact with the ground. The rest of my body, out of position to help cushion the fall, meant my left leg took the full measure of the impact.
No one on the scene reported hearing a “snap,” but by the time they got to me, it was clear my leg had been pretty badly broken. The ambulance came, took me away and Orthopedic surgeons operated later in the day, putting the leg back together with the help of four metal pins.
In the short term, I bounced back quickly, getting up and around in a matter of days, back to school in two weeks, on crutches until February, and walking with a cane for another month. By April of 1976, I could get around without the help of either crutches or a cane, but suffered a lot of pain.
Though not aware of it at the time, the period after my fall from the roof had been a crossroads. One path meant I'd need to work hard, through some considerable pain to get my condition back and heal well enough to continue on the path I had been traveling. The other road was a dark one that meant avoiding the physical activity necessary for my leg to heal and using narcotics to mask the pain. Needless to say, I chose the latter, a decision demonstrating my tragic flaw. Given the clear, informed choice, no one would ever have taken the dark path. Working hard when there was a prize to be won, was part of my programming, but for the first time in my life, breaking even would be difficult, and the ease with which everything had come to me in life so far turned out to be my undoing.
Even though it had been the wrong choice, that road took me to Molly, Samantha and eventually into the middle of an intersection in Cincinnati in 2007. The road intersecting the events of a spring morning in 2007 sent me back to 1976 and allowed me try it all over again.
I did things differently when I arrived in 1976 at first because it seemed like a fun thing to do. But once it became apparent I wouldn’t be returning to 2007 for a while, and the whole thing wasn’t some accident-induced hallucination, I decided this time I would do better. I understand this to you, my reader, isn’t new information, I know I’ve covered this before, but I haven’t been completely honest with you. The answer to why I followed the path my heart had wanted to follow the first time in 1976, but didn’t have the strength for, is far simpler, yet more complex than “I want to be a better person.”
I did things differently my second time in 1976 because, as I said at the beginning of this story, I loved Amanda Tully from the first moment I saw her, and through every day of my life.
I loved her even though she died two months after turning 18 years old.
Since I hadn't been around during the summer of 1976 to take Amanda away from him, she was a passenger in Steve Collins’ 1975 Camaro, when he lost control taking a sharp bend in the road way too fast for his skill level behind the wheel. The car left the road two miles from Amanda's parents' house, rolled over several times and slammed into a tree. Steve had somehow managed to buckle his seat belt when they left the party they had attended that night, and survived the crash that totaled his new car and killed one of the two loves of my life.
In the aftermath, I remember intending to follow Steve after Amanda's funeral, waiting for a chance to catch him alone and beat him to a pulp for his stupidity. His father was a close friend of the Marion County Sheriff, so I knew he'd never be punished by the legal system, and I wasn't about to let him off scot-free. Seeing him sitting in the wheelchair at the funeral though, frail, his right leg and one arm shattered, all of my anger melted away and he was just a pathetic loser who had done something he would never be able to forget about. I wasn't forgiving enough to be sorry about the stain on his soul he would carry forever, but in the couple seconds after seeing him there, I had no interest in hurting him further. What would be the point?
So, when I found myself again in 1976, I realized I had to do everything possible to change the next year of Amanda's life. I was essential to get her away from Steve Collins and give her a chance to live a life. In doing so, I realized even though I loved and missed Molly every day while in the alternate timeline, my feelings for Amanda amounted to more than a high school crush, and after a while, the thought of living a life without her was impossible to imagine.
And so, I found myself at this point in time on the fantail of one of America's greatest warships, speeding toward a confrontation in the desert with the Saddam Hussein and his military. I wore the flight suit and gold wings of a Naval Aviator, trained to ride $20 Million aircraft, launched from this warship, to the enemy and obliterate him with a quantity of high explosive ordinance equal to what an entire squadron of B17 bombers carried in the Second World War. This life was the end result of a million little choices I had intended to make in my original timeline, decisions I should have made, but didn't.
The fantail of the USS Ranger represented where the combination of a million small choices led me. The other fork in the road had led to me being a failed, mildly drug-addicted musician in San Diego, who despite his shortcomings, was somehow able to pull himself together and figure out a way to make a good living for himself and his family. The memories of both of those roads co-exist in my mind to this day, and though one has been full of success and happiness, and the other loaded with pain and failure, I wouldn't trade either of them f
or anything in the world. They were me. They are me.
Early Hours of January 17, 1991
Our world was this small, cramped space in the Intruder, call-sign “Rustler 314,” instruments and screens turned down as low as they would go, but still visible in the reflection from the canopy above us. Pat and I had been strapped in for the past 3 hours, engines off, in “Ready 5” mode for launch. Three hours, midnight until Oh-three hundred, according to my watch, as I again laid the velcro-secured light-discipline strap over the iridium-illuminated face.
As the tense night wore on, the only activity on the deck were the CAP (Combat Air Patrol) launches and recoveries. Though it sure didn’t seem like the night we’d been waiting for, the war had begun.
I glanced over at Pat. He had noticed the reserve tanker A-6 being hooked up to the aft catapult, too, not far from where we sat, meaning only mean one thing. Either a CAP Tomcat was on fumes, running out of gas (highly unlikely on such a calm night) or the time to “kick the tires and light the fires” had arrived. There would be three tankers up to take care of our fuel needs as squadrons launch and form. The fuel necessary to launch a large force of aircraft was huge. By the time the last ones get in the air, the first ones off the boat may already be low on gas. Reserve tankers top off their tanks and the mission continues. Depending on how much extra maneuvering and course correcting is involved in the mission, too, it's not unusual for an aircraft to need a little gas to safely recover, especially if enough aircraft are operating a line to land forms.The fact that the reserve tankers were launching made us think, “Go time” approached.
We though correct. Immediately after the tanker wallowed off the end of the ship (tankers launched so heavy, everyone always held their breath until they were in a solid ascent), our comm unit came to life and the final launch orders were issued, telling the crews of each aircraft what their place in the launch que would be.
Thus began Desert Storm.
Within 10 minutes, our heads were pressed back against the headrests, and we were feeling the G forces of our cat shot. Nighttime launches are even more disorienting, since you can't see anything flying by the canopy as your aircraft screams down the deck, all the motion is sensed by your middle ear, and it's telling you something is very wrong. Without the eyes able to confirm to your brain it's all cool, that the plane is right side up, the wings are level and the ascent is positive, your brain sits and screams in panic. At least for a few seconds. Then, your eyes recover enough to be able to transmit the data from the aircraft's instruments to your panicked brain and calm it down. All of that, by the way, takes place within the space of about 2 seconds.
Then you're flying and doing your job like you do every day.
Pat express-climbed our Intruder to the altitude prescribed in our mission plan and we accomplished the join-up in an acceptable amount of time. Our flight of three Intruders radioed we had arrived at altitude and were all green to go. We didn't have to wait long to get authorization to start the next phase of the mission, before we turned toward target and started the 40 minute flight to our objective.
We had trained for this mission, examined every potential problem, every SAM (Surface to Air Missile) site not where it should be, or more capable than we thought, and every possible Iraqi response to dozens of hostile aircraft flying toward their forces, intent on killing people and breaking things. We assumed we were incapable of being surprised.
That arrogance lasted until the first anti-aircraft round came hurtling at us.
Of all the surprises of a career in the Navy, the biggest I experienced was the flash of terror that exploded in my body when my brain first registered the sight of the tracers reaching up for us. My hyper speed, adrenaline-fueled brain did the math quickly and I realized each tracer round represented 8 to 10 rounds coming up, invisible to us. They appeared to shoot straight up in the air, then as we got close, arc toward, then past us. An optical illusion, of course, but I swear, every tracer in the night sky seemed to be intelligent, on a mission to hit the Intruder Pat and I flew in. Fortunately on that first night, none would find us.
The first targets of Operation Desert Storm for VA-145 were the docks, patrol boats and larger Iraqi naval vessels unfortunate enough to be in port when the war began. Pat and I had drawn a pretty straightforward mission — drop “Rockeyes,” cluster bombs, on the fuel depot of one of the dock complexes. Our intel briefing included a couple SAM sites we'd need to dodge, but not much more resistance. The anti-aircraft gunners wouldn't be expecting us, and since this night represented the opening salvoes of the war, it would be their first opportunity to shoot at attacking aircraft, and except for those veterans of the decade long Iran-Iraq War, they wouldn't have any experience shooting at live targets.
By the time we had reached the target, our stomachs had settled down, with our focus tight on the job at hand. My head was in the “boot,” the rubber-framed view screen I used to identify and select the ground structures we were to drop on. I marked the oval shaped fuel tanks our orders specified, and though the gyros in the computer connected to my screen kept the orientation stable, I felt Pat roll Rustler 314 inverted to get his bombing sight on the target, so we both now worked upside down, hanging from our tightly cinched harnesses.
“Pickle is hot,” I advised, telling Pat the switch on his control stick was now live and pushing the green button would launch the volleys of Rockeyes toward the target.
“Pickle hot,” he replied. My monitor showed our trajectory to be dead on, so I eased my head out of the boot and glanced up at Pat, his eyes fixed on his own targeting display, the lines telling him when to release the ordinance moving toward each other steadily. I put my head back into the boot to finish watching the show.
“Deploying,” he said, at the same time mashing down on the pickle, three times in rapid succession, telling the weapons system to release the load of cluster bombs toward the target. As soon as Pat confirmed all the Rockeyes had dropped with no malfunctions, he slammed the flight control stick to the left, half-rolling back to normal flight orientation, and fire walled the throttle, while ducking the Intruder's nose down to pick up a little more speed. We had dropped. Time to get the hell out of Dodge, since we wanted to be well clear of any secondary explosions.
Of which there were a few.
Well, actually, there were a lot of them.
The flashes of the fuel tanks exploding when the second wave of Rockeyes dropped through the breaches in the containers opened by the first wave of the cluster bombs, looked like a massive violent thunderstorm had appeared out of nowhere. We, of course didn't hear the explosions, they illuminated the night for miles. “Target hit with secondaries” would be our after-action report.
Pat and I flew back to Ranger is near silence, both exhausted and humbled by what we'd done. For all his bluster and fiery rhetoric about kicking Iraqi ass, I could tell like me, Pat was starting the process of reconciling in his mind the knowledge we had probably ended scores, if not hundreds of lives.
I felt the weight of responsibility as well, even though I had the luxury of a perspective that included the long view of the entire war. I'd watched the whole thing play out on television in my other timeline, so the same tension about Saddam’s ability to inflict hurt on us didn’t live in me. I knew the Iraqi leader to be, for the most part, a “paper tiger” who wouldn’t use chemical and/or nuclear weapons. In truth, my perspective included both Persian Gulf Wars, which, when I allowed myself to think about them, depressed me. As Pat and I flew this first of many missions before our war ended, I knew all we truly accomplished involved shedding blood and sweat to help some rich Kuwaitis get their stuff back. We wouldn’t finish Saddam off, just chase his forces back to Baghdad and then let him off with a warning. It would take another President George Bush who would finish the job.
My distraction, fostered by knowing what the outcome of current events was for the most part, buried in the myriad of day to day responsibilities of life on Ranger. When we
were not flying, we were briefing or doing paperwork. An aircraft carrier is a big ship full of sailers, airplanes and paperwork, not necessarily in that order. Everything we did onboard the ship, from doing my job in the right seat of an A6-E Intruder, to managing my little crew of enlisted personnel required amazing amounts of paperwork. Every officer had responsibility for a number of “swabbies,” writing their performance evaluations, meting out justice for usually minor but sometimes serious crimes against the honor of Navy rules and regulations and trying to help them deal with the chaos of life at home while they fought the war. A lot of it required talking, a bigger part involved listening, and the biggest part of all involved the preparation of an endless parade of reports.
As hard as going off to war is for officers, all of us college degreed and to a certain extent, mature, experienced and reliable professionals, for enlisted personnel, the job proved even tougher. They were, for the most part, immature kids from small towns who up until they left for basic training, hadn't spent much time more than 20 miles from when they grew up. Whatever their expectations, their experience in the Navy rarely matched them. Life onboard a naval vessel was cramped, noisy and smelly, and unlike us, they didn't get to get off of the boat every day and experience the wide open sky and sea we got to see from the cockpit of our aircraft. We tried our best to help those kids cope with the constant stream of communication from home, where those who remained stateside complained about problems the sailors were unable to do anything about, successes and troubles their children had they couldn't share in, and of course, the breakups. As hard as we tried though, our arsenal against all of these problems didn’t really amount to much. Though they always requested to be shipped home to take care of the problem, that almost never happened. So, the problems remained on the ship. Hell for us would have been being on the ship without the ability to fly from time to time, even if flight meant getting shot at in the process.