The Shooters

by W. E. B Griffin

  That was to say, he took it upon himself to write some of the stories that would be published in The Army Flier, the base newspaper, or sent out as press releases. Only the important stories, of course, not the run-of-the-mill pieces.

  He was on such a yarn today, one that he intended to run on page one of The Army Flier, and one he was reasonably sure would be printed in newspapers across the land. In his judgment, it had just the right mixture of human interest, military history, and a little good old-fashioned emotion. And, of course, it could not help but burnish the image of Army Aviation and indeed the Army itself.

  A sergeant walked up to him.

  “Sir?”

  Edmonds turned to look at him and nodded.

  “Colonel, that Mohawk you’ve been looking for just turned on final.”

  “And it will park on the tarmac here?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s a Blue Flight aircraft, Colonel. They always park here.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Blue Flight was the name assigned to a special function of the Aviation School’s flight training program. If, for example, it was determined for some reason that a nonflying field-grade officer—sometimes a major, most often a lieutenant colonel—needed to learn how to fly, he was sent to Rucker and assigned to Blue Flight.

  He—or she, as the case might be—was then subjected to what amounted to a cram course in flying.

  This was not to suggest that the course of instruction was less thorough in any way than the regular flight training programs of the Aviation School. If anything, Blue Flight instruction—the best instructors were assigned temporarily to Blue Flight as needed—might just be a little better than that offered by the school.

  As Colonel Edmonds thought of it, there were several factors driving the philosophy of Blue Flight instruction. High among them was the realization that it was in the Army’s interest to send a senior officer student back as a fully qualified pilot to whatever assignment had necessitated that he or she become a pilot as quickly as possible.

  Further, if the Army felt an officer in midcareer needed to be a pilot, it made little sense to send them to Rucker only to have them fail the course of instruction. With this in mind, Blue Flight students were tutored, rather than simply taught. It was in the Army’s interest that they earn their wings.

  While most Blue Flight students were majors or lieutenant colonels, there were exceptions at both ends of the rank hierarchy. Most of these officers were colonels, but there was—far less commonly—the occasional captain or even lieutenant.

  In the case of the junior officers, they were most often aides-de-camp to general officers who were already qualified rotary-wing aviators. They were assigned to Blue Flight for transition into fixed-wing aircraft. It made sense to have an aide-de-camp who could fly his general in both a helicopter and in the C-12 Huron, a twin turboprop, used to fly senior officers around.

  “Huron” was the Army’s name for the Beechcraft Super King Air. It annoyed Colonel Edmonds that Army Aviators almost invariably called the aircraft the King Air rather than the Huron, but he couldn’t do much about it except ensure that the term “King Air” never appeared in news stories emanating from his office.

  Such a junior officer—this one a lieutenant, a general officer’s aide-de-camp sent to Blue Flight for transition training into the C-12 Huron—was to be the subject of the story Colonel Edmonds planned to write today.

  Colonel Edmonds was more than a little annoyed that he had had to dig up the story himself. He should have been told, not have had to hear a rumor and then run down the rumor.

  He had happened to mention this to the post commander, when he suggested to the general that if he were to release a photograph of the general standing together with the lieutenant before a building named for the lieutenant’s father, it would more than likely be printed widely and reflect well upon Army Aviation and the Army itself.

  Two months before, Colonel Edmonds had thought he was onto another story, one just as good, perhaps, as the one he was onto today. That one, however, hadn’t worked out.

  What had happened was that Colonel Edmonds had seen a familiar name on the bronze dedicatory plaque of the building. He had inquired of Brigadier General Harold F. Wilson, deputy commander of the Army Aviation Center and Fort Rucker, if there was any connection between himself and Second Lieutenant H. F. Wilson, whose name was on the dedicatory plaque.

  It had been too much to hope for, and asking General Wilson had been a mistake.

  “Colonel, I have been asked that question many times before,” the general had said. “I will tell you what I have told everyone else who’s asked it: Don’t ask it again, and whenever you hear that rumor someplace else, repeat this conversation of ours.”

  Obviously, General Wilson, himself a highly decorated Army Aviator, was anxious not to bask in the reflected glory of another hero who happened to have a similar name.

  With that encounter with General Wilson in mind—and knowing the odds were that General Wilson would not be enthusiastic about what he had in mind—Colonel Edmonds had taken his idea directly to Major General Charles M. Augustus, Jr., the commanding general of the Army Aviation Center and Fort Rucker.

  General Augustus, not very enthusiastically, agreed that it was a good idea, and told Edmonds to set it up. But he didn’t respond to Edmonds’s complaint that he had not been advised, as he should have been, that the lieutenant was a member of Blue Flight.

  Edmonds further suspected that the Blue Flight people were either unaware of what the lieutenant was doing or didn’t care.

  When he called Blue Flight to ask that the lieutenant be directed to report to him at his office, in Class A uniform at 1300, they said that might be a little difficult, as the lieutenant was involved in a cross-country training flight in the Mohawk under simulated instrument conditions, and that he might be back at Cairns a little before noon, and then again he might not. No telling.

  Like the C-12 Huron, the Grumman Mohawk also was a twin-turboprop aircraft, but not a light transport designed to move senior officers in comfort from one place to another. It was, instead, designed as an electronic surveillance aircraft, normally assigned to military intelligence units. The only people it carried were its two pilots.

  The military intelligence connection gave it a certain élan with Army Aviators, as did the fact that it was the fastest airplane in the inventory. The pilots assigned to fly it were most often the more experienced ones.

  So, Edmonds concluded, there was something extraordinary in a lieutenant being trained by Blue Flight to fly the Mohawk.

  The only thing Colonel Edmonds could think of to explain the situation was that they might be using the Mohawk as an instrument flight training aircraft. Yet when he really thought some more about that, it didn’t make sense.

  He looked up at the sky and saw a triple-tailed Mohawk approaching, and he followed it through touchdown until he lost sight of it. And then suddenly there it was, taxiing up to the tarmac in front of Base Ops.

  He remembered only then that it was said of the Mohawk that it could land on a dime. This was accomplished by reversing the propellers’ pitch at the instant of touchdown—or a split second before.

  Ground handlers laid ladders against the Mohawk’s bulbous cockpit. The two men in the aircraft unbuckled their harnesses and climbed down and then started walking toward Base Operations.

  One of them was an older man, and the other—logically, the lieutenant whom Edmonds was looking for—was much younger.

  As they came closer, Colonel Edmonds had doubts that this was the officer he was looking for. He was a tall, fair-skinned, blue-eyed young man who didn’t look as if his name was Carlos Guillermo Castillo. One would expect someone with a name like that to have a darker skin and more than likely dark eyes.

  Edmonds now saw the older man was Chief Warrant Officer-4 Pete Kowalski, who was not only a master Army Aviator but vice president of the Instrument E
xaminer Board. Edmonds was surprised that Kowalski was teaching a lowly lieutenant.

  Both saluted Colonel Edmonds as they got close to where he stood by the Base Ops door.

  “Lieutenant Castillo?” Colonel Edmonds asked.

  Castillo stopped and said, “Yes, sir.”

  Maybe this isn’t the right Castillo. It’s not that unusual a name.

  “Carlos Guillermo Castillo?” Edmonds challenged.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Lieutenant, I’m Colonel Edmonds, the information officer. Between now and 1300, we have to get you into a Class A uniform and out to the Castillo Classroom Building on the post.”

  “Sir?”

  “Where you will be photographed with the commanding general standing by the building named after your father,” Edmonds explained.

  “Sir, with respect, what’s this all about?”

  “I’m reasonably confident that the photograph will shortly appear in several hundred newspapers across the country.”

  “Colonel, I’m Special Forces,” Castillo said. “We try to keep our pictures out of the newspapers.”

  Edmonds thought, What does he mean, he’s “Special Forces”?

  He’s a pilot; he’s Aviation.

  He may be assigned to support Special Forces, but he’s Aviation.

  “Be that as it may, Lieutenant,” Edmonds said, “you will be photographed with the commanding general at the Castillo Building at 1300.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Do you have a car here?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, in that case, I will follow you to your BOQ. But in case we become separated, which BOQ is it?”

  “Sir, I’m in the Daleville Inn.”

  The Daleville Inn was a motel in a village crammed with gasoline stations, fast-food emporiums, hock shops, trailer parks, and used-car lots. It lay between Cairns Army Airfield and Fort Rucker.

  “You’re not in a BOQ? Why not?”

  “Sir, I thought I would have a quieter place to study if I were in the Daleville Inn than I would in a BOQ. When I went through chopper school here, the BOQs were a little noisy.”

  “But isn’t that a little expensive?”

  “Yes, sir, it is.”

  Edmonds shook his head in amazement, then said, “Well, let’s get going.”

  “Mr. Kowalski, what do I do?” Lieutenant Castillo asked. “I’m between two masters.”

  “Lieutenant,” CWO Kowalski said, smiling, “you being a West Pointer, I’m surprised nobody told you that you always obey the last order you got from a senior officer. You go get your picture taken with the general.”

  “Thank you,” Castillo said.

  “Call me when you’ve had your picture taken, and we’ll go flying again,” Kowalski said. “I’ll take care of the paperwork here.”

  “And did I pass the check ride?”

  “Well, I’m reasonably sure that after another couple of hours—if you don’t do something really stupid—I will feel confident in certifying you as competent to fly the Mohawk on instruments.”

  Colonel Edmonds was a pilot. He knew what the translation of that was.

  Castillo had passed—without question—his check ride. Otherwise Instructor Pilot Kowalski would not have said what he did. What the two of them were going to do later was take the Mohawk for a ride. Play with it. Maybe fly down to Panama City, Florida, and fly over the beach “practicing visual observation.” Or maybe do some aerobatics.

  “Would you like to come in, sir, while I shower and change?” Lieutenant Castillo asked when they had reached the Daleville Inn.

  “Thank you,” Edmonds said.

  He’s a West Pointer. He will have an immaculate Class A uniform hanging in his closet. And he will probably shave again when he showers. But there is no sense taking a chance.

  Lieutenant Castillo did not have a motel room. He had a three-room suite: a living room with a bar, a bedroom, and a smaller second bedroom that had been turned into an office by shoving the bed in there against a wall and moving in a desk.

  I don’t know what this is costing him, but whatever it is, it’s a hell of a lot more than his per diem allowance.

  If he somehow managed to get permission to live off post and is getting per diem.

  And why don’t I believe him when he said he moved in here to have a quiet place to study? Probably because there are half a dozen assorted half-empty liquor bottles on the bar. And a beer case on the floor behind it.

  He’s spending all this money to have a place to entertain members of the opposite sex. They’ve been cracking down on that sort of thing in the BOQs.

  Well, why not? He’s young and the hormones are raging.

  When Castillo went into the bedroom to shower and change, Colonel Edmonds looked around the living room. On a shelf under the coffee table he saw a newspaper and pulled it out.

  It was a German newspaper.

  What the hell is that doing here?

  Maybe he’s studying German. I read somewhere that Special Forces officers are supposed to have, or acquire, a second language.

  That would explain the German newspaper, but it doesn’t explain what he said about his branch being Special Forces, not Aviation. What in the hell was that all about?

  When Lieutenant Castillo appeared ten minutes later, freshly shaven and in a Class A uniform, Colonel Edmonds was glad that he had accompanied him to his room.

  While technically there was nothing wrong with the uniform—it was crisply pressed and well fitting—it left a good deal to be desired.

  The only insignia on it were the lieutenant’s silver bars on the epaulets, the U.S. and Aviation insignias on the lapels, and the aviator’s wings on the breast. There were no ribbons indicating awards for valor or campaigns. And there was no unit insignia sewn to the shoulder.

  “Two questions, Lieutenant,” Colonel Edmonds said. “First, didn’t you tell me you were Special Forces and not Aviation? I ask because you are wearing Aviation branch insignia.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Yes, sir, I’m Special Forces.”

  “But wearing Aviation insignia?”

  “Sir, with all respect, if I’m wearing Aviation insignia, no one will connect me with Special Forces.”

  Colonel Edmonds considered that, then said, “Question Two: Where is the rest of your insignia? I was informed you are assigned to the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg. Aren’t you supposed to be wearing the Third Army shoulder insignia?”

  “Sir, at Bragg I wear the Special Forces shoulder insignia, and the Special Warfare Center insignia on my blaze.”

  “On your what?”

  “The embroidered patch worn on the green beret, sir. We’re under DCSOPS, not Third Army, sir.”

  “Lieutenant, I don’t know what you’re up to here, but I don’t have time to play games. Do you have a tunic to which is affixed all the insignia and decorations to which you are entitled?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Then go put it on.”

  “Sir, permission to speak?”

  “Granted,” Colonel Edmonds snapped.

  “Sir, as I tried to tell the colonel before, we’re supposed to maintain a low profile. That is what I’m trying to do, sir.”

  “Go put on your tunic and every last item of uniform to which you are entitled, Lieutenant.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  In five minutes, Lieutenant Castillo returned.

  He now was wearing both aviator’s and parachutist’s wings, and a Combat Infantryman’s badge was pinned above both. He had three rows of ribbons on his breast, among which Colonel Edmonds recognized the Distinguished Flying Cross, the Bronze Star medal with V device, signifying it had been awarded for valor in combat, and the Purple Heart medal with one oak-leaf cluster. The silver aiguillette of an aide-de-camp hung from his epaulet, and on his lapels were the one-starred shields reflecting that he was an aide-de-camp to a brigadier general. He had a green
beret on his head, and his trousers were bloused around highly polished parachutist’s jump boots.

  Colonel Edmonds had a sudden, unpleasant thought, which he quickly suppressed:

  Jesus Christ, is he entitled to all that stuff?

  Of course he is. He’s a West Pointer. He wouldn’t wear anything to which he was not entitled.

  “Much better, Lieutenant,” Colonel Edmonds said. “And now we’d better get going. We don’t want to keep the general waiting, do we?”

  The story appeared on the front page of The Army Flier two days later, which was a Friday. It included a photograph of Lieutenant Castillo and the Fort Rucker commander standing as if reading what was cast into a bronze plaque mounted on the wall beside the main door to the WOJG Jorge A. Castillo Classroom Building of the Army Aviation School.

  * * *

  LIVING TRADITION

  By LTC F. Mason Edmonds

  Information Officer

  Fort Rucker, Al., and the Army Aviation Center

  Major General Charles M. Augustus, Jr. (right), Commanding General of Fort Rucker and the Army Aviation Center and 1LT Carlos G. Castillo examine the dedication plaque of the WOJG Jorge A. Castillo Classroom Building at the Army Aviation School.

  WOJG Castillo, 1LT Castillo’s father, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest award for gallantry, in the Vietnam War. He was killed when his HU-1D helicopter was struck by enemy fire and exploded on 5 April 1971 during Operation Lam Sol 719. He was on his fifty-second rescue mission of downed fellow Army Aviators in a thirty-six-hour period when he was killed, and was flying despite his having suffered both painful burns and shrapnel wounds. The HU-1D in which he died was the fourth helicopter he flew during this period, the others having been rendered un-airworthy by enemy fire.

  His sadly prophetic last words were to his co-pilot, 2LT H. F. Wilson, as he ordered him out of the helicopter in which twenty minutes later he made the supreme sacrifice: “Get out, Lieutenant. There’s no point in both of us getting killed.”

  Those heroic words are cast into the plaque MG Augustus, Jr., and 1LT Castillo are examining.