Tail of the Storm Read online

  Joining our chem sacks was a host of other bags and containers which we had to carry. We each had a main bag, usually a government issue B-4 bag weighing fifty to eighty pounds packed with personal gear. Our helmet bag contained not a helmet but a communications headset, checklists, gloves, a flashlight, and various other trappings of long-range fliers. Some of them weighed ten or twenty pounds.

  Then there were the individual flight kits, fat briefcases into which was stuffed the literature of military flight: The "Dash-l," which was everything you ever wanted to know about the C-141 and more, much more; the "Dash-l/Dash-1," which contained the C-141 performance charts and test data; Air Force Regulation 55-141, which described down to a gnat's hair the science of flying C-141s the Air Force way; Air Force Regulation 60–16, the science of flying anything the Air Force way; Air Force Manual 51–37, the instrument flying handbook; Air Force Manual 51–12, the weather manual.

  Along with the flight kit each crewman had a personal bag, which I called a survival kit. It could be placed beside his seat for easy reach. Everyone's kit was different, built to suit individual tastes, but the kits were necessary for the maintenance of our sanity. Mine was a blue fabric bag with an abundance of zippered compartments containing some essential trappings: binoculars; a camera; a Sony Walkman with microspeakers that would fit neatly inside my headset; extra batteries; a collection of tapes with the music of Phil Collins, Tinita Tikeram, the Moody Blues, Alabama, and songs of the Civil War; three booksthe Bible and Major British Poets, both mainstays, and a techno-thriller of some sort; a plastic bottle of distilled water to stave off dehydration in the plane's super-dry atmosphere; and an assortment of munchables.

  Then there were the communal bags. Each crew carried a "trip kit," another fat briefcase containing various regulations and reams of forms and paperwork: per diem vouchers; noncontract fuel purchase, forms 1801 and 175 for filing flight plans; aircraft commander's reports on facilities and crew members; forms, forms, and more formsand requisition forms for forms.

  And then there was that most essential of burdensome items, the crew cooler, cumbersome though it was. It was not an official item; it was the personal property of some member of the crew and would be stocked with ice and various foods and liquids. The cooler's owner would normally be responsible for keeping it stocked, for which he would assess fees, but it usually stayed in his room on crew rests.

  The "black bag" was one that got special care, for it held our duty orders, mission itinerary, and flight-planning documents such as the C-141 fuel-planning manual, plus various plotting charts and devices. We also carried in it secret material that was issued. The bag bulged with mission paperwork when we flew. It was not an issued itemwe bought ours in a base exchange storebut it served its organizational purpose well and caught on among the crews. I appointed Bones to carry it and guard it with his life.

  Finally there was the gun box. It was a large ammunition container in which we stowed our pistols and bullets when we were not flying. The loadmaster toted the box and saw that it was registered and stored with the security police at our rest stops.

  We were to move this mountain of material about 500 times in the coming year: rooms to bus, bus to plane, plane to bus, bus to rooms. The cycle repeated itself again and again. In the burning desert heat we heaved and lugged. In the gray English drizzle we lifted and shuttled. In the New Jersey snow we tossed and caught. In the wee hours of a Spanish morning we formed conveyer lines and moved the bags from bus to ramp, then from ramp to plane. All hands pitched in, officers and airmen alike. There was no special status or privileges here. Everyone's bags belonged to all of us.

  Occasionally, through the years of Guard flying, new lieutenants not yet wise to crew life and swelled with the pomp of shiny new wings and bars would carry only their own belongings or worse yet would expect the enlisted crew to carry their gear for them. Such expectations were quickly banished. One dapper young officer began to wonder after a few days why his B-4 bag seemed so heavy. His crewmates elbowed each other and snickered as they watched him heave, grunt, and grimace for several daysuntil at last he opened a zippered side compartment and dug down, discovering a 10,000 pound-test-strength tie-down chain coiled beneath his dirty underwear. Message received.

  Any bag would eventually be ignored if it proved excessively heavy. Jeff had brought along what became known as the Bag from Hell. It was back-cracking heavy, and after a while most of us wouldn't pick it up. Jeff got the message and downloaded it at the first opportunity.

  Traveling light had become a priority and an art for us, but it was to become even more so in the coming months. And after the bags were loaded, there was always the "laying on of the hands" ceremonywe had practiced this for years. You were foolhardy if you didn't at least see, or better yet touch, your belongings to make sure they had come on board. In the not-too-distant future, Pink Floyd, getting his jet ready to fly, would be in too much of a hurry to observe the laying-on ceremony. His 141 would thunder away for a ten-day mission with his B-4 bag containing all of his personal gear sitting on a New Jersey ramp. And there it would sit like a lonely sentinela symbol of Pink's impending misery, pointed to and guffawed at by heartless mechanics.

  Bags quickly became a great drag on our morale, for whenever we moved them we were reminded that we were perpetual itinerants, and every time we heaved, not a one of us would cease to wonder how long this wandering would go on. Even after hours of crew rest, the bag drag depleted our energy and sucked our spirit. Five hundred times we did it, give or take a few: 100,000 pounds' worth of bag drags.

  It was big coverage for the press. We and a Reserve C-141 outfit in Maryland were the first to be activated. Reporters stuck microphones and cameras in our faces and asked ridiculous questions. "How long do you think you will be gone?" "Did you ever think this could happen?" "What does your wife think about your going?" The governor said some words, and a few generals from headquarters shook our hands. We kissed our wives, performed bag drag number one, and roared away, seventy or eighty of us, all on one planethe other planes were gone already. We were headed for Charleston Air Force Base, South Carolina, where we would be split into crews and would be given different orders. The two pilots at the controls had been a stockbroker and an accountant until today. We trusted them completely as they sucked up the gear, accelerated out over the Pearl River, and rolled into the eastern skies. We plugged our ears, leaned back in the red webbed bench seats, and dozed off, confident that this thing would blow over and we'd be home by Thanksgiving.

  The Desert Storm airlift was such a monumental operation that someone decided to ask a computer to explain the immense magnitude of it in terms a carbon-based unit could comprehend. It told us that we airlifted the equivalent of the entire population of Oklahoma City (450,000 carbon-based units) plus all of its vehicles and all its household goodsevery pot, pan, pillow, television, refrigerator, everythingone-third of the way around the world in less than 180 days. The Berlin airliftvaliant though it waspaled in comparison.

  The air route to the desert resembled a great wishbone. The upper stem of the wishbone took Slim Lindbergh's old course from North America up across Newfoundland, near the southern tip of Greenland, and ran south of Iceland and across Great Britain into the German staging bases. From Germany it snaked down through France, carefully avoiding overflight of neutral Switzerland, and moved on to the boot of Italy.

  The lower stem of the bone took a more southerly route across the Atlantic. It went just north of Bermuda and the Azores and across Portugal into the staging bases of central Spain. From there it crossed Barcelona and Sardinia, joining the upper stem in southern Italy.

  From the boot, where the two stems joined, the route ran east by southeast just below Greece and took a right turn over the island of Crete. It "coasted in" to the African mainland at a place called El Daba on the Egyptian coast, just west of Alexandria. The Egyptians insisted that all of the immense volume of air traffic converging on the Persian Gul
f enter and depart across El Daba. We didn't know why It was to become a tremendous problem as the Persian Gulf heated up. Later, flights from Germany were routed across the Eastern Bloc countries to relieve the Mediterranean routes, but still all traffic bunched up at the great choke point of El Daba.

  Tail of the Storm

  The Air Routes to the Gulf 1990–1991

  The route ran southeast from there to the pyramids at Luxor, twisted eastward over the Red Sea, and fanned out to various points in what the Air Force called the area of responsibility, or AOR. The AOR stretched from east Africa to India. But I wondered what the term "AOR" really meant. Who was responsible? For what? To whom?

  All along the route there was a constant flow of air traffic. Air Force C-5s and C-141s were joined by civil DC-8s, DC-10s, L-1011s, and Boeing 747s from a variety of airline and air freight companies. The civilian planes were a part of the Civil Reserve Air Fleet. And Uncle Sam had called them, like us, into wartime duty. The flow of hundreds of these great jets continued day in, day out for months. All along the route we were constantly flying in the contrails of the guy ahead, always being assaulted by the white snakes. Some celestial giant looking down at us would have seen an interminable line of ants meeting and passing one another in pursuit of some desperate cause. It was a line that military strategists called the "logistical tail." This was becoming the mother of all such tails.

  I believed in the "Free Kuwait" cause and, like most all of those with whom I had been mobilized, was willing to do what was necessary to bring the aggression to an end. But it was obvious that although the goal in this game might be freedom, oil was the football. That didn't bother me. Oil seemed to be a factor at every turn in my life.

  I had been an exploration geologist a few years back. Finding oil then had been the challenge and the objective. But the oil industry crumbled, and I dusted off my wings and turned to a career in the airlines. There I again found oil to be a commodity crucial to the health of an industry that consumed billions of gallons of refined products a day. And now it was the undisputed star player in the events breaking in the Middle East, which had swiftly sucked me in.

  I had gotten to Viet Nam late. I was sent to Korat Air Base in northern Thailand to cover the retreat. I could have gone sooner, but I needed to finish college first. I wanted to avoid the draft because I wanted to fly, and to do that I needed a commission, for which a college degree was required.

  Since I couldn't major in jets at the University of Alabama, I had to pick something else to study. Aerospace engineering should have been a natural, but I never cared for equations and slide rules. Business would have been easier, but I wasn't interested in abstract studies, and I had a great fear of being bored in school. Boredom would have been an enemy. It could cause failure, which would deny me my ultimate goal. Somotivated by the great field trips I'd heard aboutI decided to try geology. I took to it like a hawk to a thermal. I loved it and excelled at it. I enjoyed it so much that occasionally disturbing thoughts began to creep in: maybe I'd like to do this for a living. Still, the dominant passion thrived. The big scare didn't come until my senior year.

  It was noon on Thursday, the biggest day of the week in ROTC. The building had almost emptied. The Corps was forming on the quad in the shadow of Denny Chimes for the big military parade. But I had no interest. I was standing alone, staring out the window in the cadet lounge, when Dennis Utley started to pass by on his way out, stopped, and looked in on me. He knew something was wrong.

  We had been friends since junior highhad learned to fly together as Civil Air Patrol cadets. But Dennis's pursuit of flight had stopped with the private pilot's license. He was headed for medical school on an Air Force scholarship. And he was well aware of where I wanted to go. We were entering our senior year of college and were on the final stretch toward becoming second lieutenants in the Air Force. The results of our precommissioning physical examinations had just been distributed.

  He walked to the window and stood beside me silently for a moment, then asked what was bothering me.

  "No pilot training, Den. They disqualified me." I took a hand out of my pocket and motioned. "Eyes."

  I swallowed hard and resumed the stare out the window. Dennis knew what it meant to me. He knew how I sweated the advanced ROTC physical we took in our sophomore year. I had passed that one, but now my worst fears had materialized.

  He just stood there with me a minute, not saying anything, just being there. That was the only proper consolation. Then he gave me a quick shoulder squeeze and said he had to go. But he stopped at the door, turned, and offered a suggestion.

  "Maybe there's still hope," he encouraged. "Why don't you go down to Admin and talk to Sergeant Johnson?"

  I nodded and stood there by the window, feeling that I was at that very second at a turning point in my life. I had come to a crossroads, and the path I had been certain that destiny wanted me to take was barred. The other directions led to existences that seemed dim and unfulfilling. But I was surprised at how I felt. I wasn't as devastated as I thought I should be. I loved earth science; I had made many friends in it and had already anticipated a bit of a letdown when I left it behind for a flying career. That would not be a bad alternative. But then despair set in again when I realized that I still owed Uncle Sam four years even if I couldn't fly And geological engineering was not among the career tracks available to air force officers. I didn't feel like making the pass-in-review parade that afternoon. I just slipped away

  But maybe there was something to Dennis's suggestion. It would be a miracle if I could somehow cut through the military red tape and get back on flying status. More pilots were needed to feed the Viet Nam meat grinder, and not everyone was raising a hand all at once to volunteer. There might be an opportunity

  I visited with Sergeant Mike Johnson, who was very sympathetic but broke the news that there were no waivers for substandard eyesight, no matter how close I was to the exalted 20/20. I thanked him and started to leave, but I'm certain he somehow read how deep the disappointment was in me. He stopped me.

  "Wait," he ordered, while reaching for a voluminous regulation manual. I sat curiously for several minutes while he flipped pages, read, and flipped more. Then he held his finger at some appropriate place on a page and with the other hand flipped through a correspondence file of some sort. I was growing more discouraged by the minute. It seemed as if his mind had forgotten me and wandered away into some administrative duty that he had suddenly remembered. But then he finally spoke while scribbling on a memo pad.

  "I've never tried this before, so I can't promise you anything. Why don't you take this to an ophthalmologist and have him examine you?

  You'll have to pay for it, but it's worth a try. Have him write a letter to the detachment commander, and bring it back here to me. If he finds your eyes OK, I'll talk with a friend of mine at Maxwell. But no promises, understand?"

  Scribbled on the paper was the gibberish of diopters, accommodation powers, and other such eye quality standards that the Air Force required of its fliers. I assured him that I understood, thanked him, and turned to leave, but then I thought about how this man was going beyond his job. Here was an administrative sergeanta clerkwho wanted to make a difference, wanted to create a pilot for his Air Force. I returned to his desk.

  "Sergeant Johnson. If you pull this off, I'll saw my wings in two and send you half."

  He laughed, proclaimed it a deal, and returned to his paperwork.

  A few days later I returned with the letter. The civilian doctor, who had also read the deep desire to fly in my eyes, decided to find them perfect, and Sergeant Johnson set to work, calling upon the favor that a buddy at higher headquarters owed him.

  In a month, I was back on flying status. It was the most wonderful feeling that had ever possessed me. And from that point onward, I felt a great respect for those senior noncommissioned officers who are truly the rivets that hold the Force together. Because one man who worked at a desk in a mundane bas
ement cared, another man's life dream was launched skyward. And so it began.

  Two.

  The Talon's Spell

  The long awaited day camethe one Sergeant Johnson had made possible. I dropped Grandma off at her sisters in Tchula, Mississippi, on my way out into the world. She rambled on about gardening and recipes and such during the three-hour drive over to Tchula, but I don't remember much of what she said. I was too excited about the orders in my briefcase. I was to report to the Seventy-first Flying Training Wing, Vance Air Force Base, Oklahoma, for course number 442-DV, class 73–06, undergraduate pilot training (UPT). It was the last time I ever had meaningful conversation with my grandmother. "I hope you find a nice girl there," she whispered as she gave me a parting hug.

  I blew it off. Much was at stake. I intended to commit 100 percent to the task ahead, and I doubted there would be much time for chasing females.

  The long drive west itself symbolized the great changes coming for me. Gradually, the forest died away, and as I passed Tulsa, half the world became skya vast dome of burning blue from one horizon to another. "What a place to fly," I thought as I unloaded my modest belongings and carried them up to the room. Again and again I tripped, as I constantly looked up at the screaming T-37 jets pitching out in tight turns over the base, and each time I returned to the parking lot I paused to watch the T-38s take off, way out in the distance. Their thunder portended a much different kind of flying from that of the little screamers flying overhead.

  I thought I must have died. This had to be Heaven. The sound of the jets, the smell of the burnt fuel rolling in from the flight line on the prairie winds, flight-suited student pilots driving around in sporty carsI was beside myself with excitement. It was exactly the way I had envisioned it, the way I had dreamed.