Imagine

                                              Imagine

    Enclosed in a tight black space with only a low red glow to illuminate the instruments necessary to maintain life. My only friend in this ink black world was sitting in his own black space thirty feet away on my right and about thirty degrees down the leading edge of my wing, watching my every move. He maintained that position as if tethered by lines of steel.
 
    We started this night by dressing in the standard attire. A nomex flight suit held skin tight to the legs and abdomen by the g-suit. The upper part of the flight suit held skintight to the upper torso by the survival vest. The vest packed with whistle and flares; life sustaining snacks and mirror; shark chaser and dye marker; with radio and marker beacon. Attached around the waist was the water survival gear, a newer version of the Mae West. Last, but not least were the standard issue .38 Smith plus a bandoleer of twenty rounds of ammunition.

    Only six months ago I was home in sunny California. Only six months ago I slept with my beautiful wife. Only six months ago I was awakened each morning by the same 45 record frantically playing that old favorite, “pop goes the weasel”. Only six months ago my children were playing with their toys in the next room, humming, moving and laughing with the music.

    No great surprise. I was a Marine Corps Officer who flew a jet attack aircraft designated as the A4 Skyhawk. I was a member of Marine Attack Squadron121; Marine Aircraft Group 15 and we had been ordered to Vietnam. This was the summer of 1966.

    We said our tearful good-byes and flew toward Hawaii. It was a very long flight in our twenty, small, cramped, jet aircraft so we aerial refueled two times between California and Hawaii from a Marine C130 tanker.  We flew the Pacific in formation flights of four with nothing to do but watch each other, reflect on how much of the earth’s surface is covered by water and think about our next refueling engagement. The refueling went as planned and we found ourselves at the break for landing at the Marine Corps Air Station Kaneohe, Hawaii, on the windward side of the Island . The flight surgeon had given us pills to keep us alert should contemplation of the vastness of the Pacific fail to hold our interest. He also had given us pills to put us in a sleepy, relaxed state once we were on the ground, just in case anyone was still wired from trying to plug into that little tiny basket swinging lazily at the end of the refueling hose connected to the C130. 

    The pills remained, unopened, in the small plastic container attached to the zipper of my flight suit for the entire flight and in fact were never used. The next day we continued our Island hopping and intermittent aerial refueling to Wake Island, Midway and then Japan. We landed at Naval Air Station Atsugi, Japan.

    We set up our temporary home at Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni, Japan which was located on southern Honshu, the largest Island of the Islands that make up the land of the rising sun. We continued our training schedule of flight tactics, shooting and bombing on the ranges allocated for that purpose.

    We were scheduled to replace Marine Attack Squadron 224 at the south end of the aluminum runway at Chu Lai, Vietnam. In order to make this transition as seamless as possible, small groups of 4 or 5 of our pilots at a time would go into Chu Lai to fly with VMA 224. Through this effort we received exposure to the local flight rules, flew combat missions as wingmen and in general tried to get a grip on what was going on with this war in which we found ourselves enmeshed. Bad news for all of us came in the form of a surface to air missile that intercepted VMA 224’s executive officer with an explosion that left no physical evidence that he or his A4 had ever existed. With this new, up close and personal realization forever imprinted upon our frontal lobe, we ended our brief combat indoctrination with VMA 224 and headed back to Japan to make our final plans for our entire squadron’s move to the south end of the runway at Chu Lai.

         The runway at Chu Lai consisted of aluminum planking that could be transported and interlocked like a giant Lego game. It had been constructed over a prepared and flattened sandy beach sitting close to the South China Sea. The planking was slippery when wet, which it was most of the time. The rains washed away areas of sand which at times created a runway that rode like a roller coaster in some areas. There were nights when flying missions that the runway lights failed to operate leaving us with smudge pots as runway markers that were reminiscent of the old days of the flying tigers before World War II.

    There was morest, which is a land based arresting gear, that was in place at the south end of the runway giving each landing the hook and cable finality of an aircraft carrier landing without any of the romance. An additional problem with being land based was that we were on the receiving end of mortar and rocket attacks a number of times. When these occurred it was generally in the middle of the night sending us into our hut’s fox hole that we had dug just outside our door. Our hut was built from 4 X 8 plywood sheets that were suspended three feet above the sand on 4X4 posts. The 4 X 8 plywood walls were hinged at the top so they could be propped open allowing breeze driven air to flow through the hut and keep the heat from sitting in any one place to long.

    We had been here six months. Long enough so that we have had pilots, our friends, our brothers in arms, shot down. Long enough to inventory personal belongings for shipment back to surviving families. We had new pilots transfer into the squadron and even some of them had been transferred out.

    Imagine enclosed in a tight black space with your wingman thirty feet away in
his tight black space. Then the night is filled with the bright, red flares, glowing and drifting slowly under small parachutes deployed from a C47 named “Puff the magic dragon”.
Our earth bound brothers, the Marines on the ground were engaged in active and deadly combat with the enemy. They were being hammered by mortars fired by the bad guys from the other side of the mountain. The position of the combatants was that the bad guys could hit our brothers but the terrain prohibited the ground Marines from effectively hitting back.

         We were standing the alert pad that night. That means we had briefed the conduct of the flight, were dressed, fueled and ready. We were just waiting for the inevitable. The call came, taking us away from the hot coffee and relative comfort of our ready room to give air support and a more effective weapon against the bad guys. They had set up in heavily wooded mountains to ambush and engage our Marines. The light winds blowing from the west slowly moved the drifting flares, casting drifting surreal shadows across the moonless landscape.  This drama has continued for nearly an hour. Old flares burned out and went dark as new flares were dropped. The dead drifting flares posed an additional invisible hazard to our flight as they linger in the air without giving us a clue to their location.

      The airborne controller who had contact with our brothers on the ground tried to mark the position of the bad guys with burning rockets but the woods were dense and the high, lush canopy of trees did not allow us to see the small fire. The whole mountainside was now completely immersed in black as the flares drifted to illuminate the other side of the mountain causing the target side to seem even darker in this starless night. My wingman had napalm, not a common weapon for night attack. In fact we both were carrying unlikely weapons this coal black night. The usual weapon for night delivery was selected for high altitude delivery in order to prevent impacting with the ground when attacking darkness shrouded targets. I was carrying twelve 250-pound bombs that were configured as snake eyes, a configuration designed for low level delivery.

      Since the airborne controller was unable to visually mark our target, I received clearance and ordered my wingman to drop napalm in the middle of the west side of the black mountain so that the airborne controller could give us the direction to the enemy on the ground. The napalm created a fire that no one could miss. The airborne controller gave me distance and direction from the fire to the target and I went down for my bombing run and began my dance with the white lines of tracer fire coming from the ground as they rose to greet me. They were shooting at me and I was shooting at them, each with great enthusiasm and intensity. Eternity  at this time was counted in either seconds or years. I delivered my ordnance with unerring accuracy according my citation, I had hit my target and they missed theirs. The earth bound Marines were now free to continue on their way. My wingman joined on me and we headed home.

    Upon returning to the Squadron ready room we found it empty. Everyone had gone to bed leaving no one to tell of our daring deeds. We had each flown a prior mission that day. The squadron rule allowed only two missions daily. We toasted each other with a beer for surviving one more day in Vietnam before falling exhausted into our individual beds.

                                                Imagine that