Chapter 26
A CALM…AND CALLING OF GOD
(MCAS
Cherry Point, Part 3. From early summer 1973 thru September 1973)
While in VMA 121 at Cherry Point, they send me to
the Norfolk and Virginia Beach, Virginia area 3 or 4 different times to attend schools
on Navy installations in the Norfolk area. They send me to Logistics School
(about 4 weeks long). I think it was held on Little Creek Amphibious Training
Base. I was taught how to supervise our squadron’s Marines in loading our
squadron’s equipment and such onto Navy ships to relocate overseas, and other
such military logistics operations.
Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base. Oceana Naval Air
Station. Norfolk Naval Base and Naval Air Station. I think these are the 3 main
Navy facilities in the Norfolk area. Likely there are smaller facilities also.
Norfolk, Virginia equates to U.S. Navy. At different times, I come from Cherry
Point to attend schools on each of those 3 main facilities (I think).
Each time I was sent to the Norfolk area (to sit in
a class room and be taught all day 5 days a week), it was like a vacation in paradise because it took me away
from all the villains and unfair treatment in my squadron at Cherry Point. I relished each of the 3 or 4 times I spent a few weeks in
class there. This was one factor of A CALM God brought me into.
The brief period of 5 months at Quantico and short
period of a year at Vance AFB suit my desire for a frequent change of scenery.
I’ve been “stuck” at Cherry Point too long to suit me very well. For that reason
also, I relish going to “school” in the Norfolk area.
Our squadron’s aggressive Commanding Officer
(Lieutenant Colonel F.) gets transferred elsewhere (here on Cherry Point Air
Station). His oppressive aggressiveness quickly transfers him up the ladder to
higher duty where he will have greater opportunity to oppress underlings. His
transfer out of my life causes an aggressive smile (wider than the
spacious skies I fly) to aggressively spread across my heart and stay
there. It’s an immense relief for that oppressor to
disappear out of my life.
Squadron Executive Officer (Major D., the
rule-breaking smoker in my A-6 cockpit) moves up as our CO. Our new Ops Officer
(who replaced the suicide man) moves up to XO. A new Operations officer comes
into our squadron. These 3 men listed above are the highest-ranking officers in
my squadron. All 3 are majors. All three are levelheaded and fair. None are very oppressive. It becomes a pleasure to
work under their command. Life at work greatly improves, much to my relief! A calm. How sweet it be.
Soon this new executive officer summons me to his
office. “Increasing problem drinking among Marines has resulted in a new
command coming down on us from above. Each squadron is to appoint an Alcoholic
Abuse Officer to counsel any men in our squadron who have a drinking problem. I
am assigning that position to you. We already have a corporal who says he needs
help with problem drinking. So hop to it!”
I soon call that young corporal into my office and
talk to him. I tell him that “Alcoholics Anonymous” has a group here on base
and advise him to start attending. He is more than willing. He doesn’t have a
car. So I take him in my car to the next meeting (actually located off base,
but most of the drunkards who attend are Marines). The air in that meeting room
is so filled with cigarette smoke that it looks like the clouded IRF skies I
fly through. These drunkards (trying to stay dry) find help in chain smoking.
Breathing that stinking air, I wonder if I’ll die of lung cancer trying to help
this drunkard corporal dry out.
(The events in the last 2 paragraphs occur along
about this time but have nothing to do with A
CALM my Lord
graciously brought me into. Also, I’ll share the tragic loss of another flying
buddy that occurs about now.)
I’m
in my office on a normal workday, when a pilot buddy manning the ready room
desk receives word that an A-6 aircraft has crashed. As he immediately alerts
our commanding officer, ops officer, aviation safety officer and such key
personnel in the squadron, the “buzz” of the bad news rapidly spreads thru out
the squadron.
Most
officers (aviators) present quickly gravitate to the ready room as the duty
officer gets on our squadron’s radio, calling on each of our birds that are
presently airborne to report in. Tense minutes pass as each pilot in the air
reports in by radio and we breathe somewhat a sigh of relief. The A-6 that
crashed did not belong to our squadron. That was the 1st important
fact we need to ascertain, tho it is still a most tragic event for us. As we
eagerly listen to each news update reaching our ready room, it soon appears
that neither of the 2 crewmembers ejected before the crash and that both souls
perished. That saddened us of course, two fellow A-6 aviators killed.
There
are 2 other A-6 squadrons at Cherry Point, VMT 202 (where I recently trained in
piloting the A-6) and one other tactical squadron. I personally know several
pilots and navigators now in both of those squadrons. ‘I wonder if I know the 2
guys aboard that plane.’ Lt. Larry L. (a navigator here in my squadron) had
become a buddy to me back in 202 where I first met him. Soon I leave the ready
room to keep working, my ears peeled for new updates. Walking along the
catwalk, I meet Larry.
“We’ve
now heard the names of the 2 guys and they are no one you and I know.” (Larry
and I had trained together since VMT 202, so he pretty well knows whom I have
trained with from that point on. But he does not know who my Auburn ROTC
buddies were.) Then Larry told me the last names of the 2 fatalities. My heart
heavily dropped!
‘Ah,
the pilot is an old buddy of mine from Auburn Navy ROTC,’ I sadly utter.
Midshipman Mike ④. (Like
me, Mike is now a 1st Lt. A-6 pilot.) That afternoon, Mike
was doing bombing practice; dropping 26 pound inert practice bombs on BT-12
(Bombing Target Number 12), a small flat square barge-like target nearby in the
waters of Pamlico Sound.
I
frequently do that same practice. I fly out to BT-12 with 12 or 18 or so of
those small blue bombs hanging beneath the plane’s wings and drop 1 bomb each
time, practicing 30 or 45 or 60 degree angle dive bombing. After each drop, I
bank left while pulling the plane into a climb (back up to altitude) and glance
back to spot where my bomb hit. The smoke charge in the inert bomb’s nose is
set off upon impact, sending up white smoke to show me how good my aim had
been. I repeatedly fly an oval “race track” pattern (climbing and diving while
turning) dropping all my bombs 1 by 1.
Doing
such dive-bombing, that Intruder dips plenty close to the ocean at the dive’s lowest
point. Then as I pull up, bank left and crane my head sharply left trying to
spot that little puff of white smoke, I must be ever so careful to watch my
bank angle because sky and ocean look so alike, making it difficult
to discern where the horizon is and thus what my bank angle is. As I crane my
head left looking for the white smoke, there is a tendency to keep
pulling the control stick to the left, increasing bank angle. It is a
time of danger when the pilot must stay ever so alert. And if the
navigator sitting beside the pilot values his life, he will frequently glance
the pilot’s instrument panel to monitor bank angle and rate of climb (or
descent) and call out to the pilot over the intercom if the pilot is “messing
up”.
Tragically,
on this fatal day, these 2 aviators were not as alert as they should
have been. So, likely the bank angle increased to more than 90 degrees, causing
the plane to descend back to the ocean. Both flyers were instantly killed upon
impact. I attend their memorial service 3 or so days later in the base chapel
and then their funerals (again in the chapel) several days later after both
bodies had been recovered by divers.
Salvage
crews (with divers) in boats or small ships pull the severely damaged airplane
up from the shallow ocean floor (along with every torn off piece of it they can
find), haul it to my squadron’s hanger and lay it all out on my
hanger’s deck for the accident investigation team to inspect. They don’t put it
in Mike’s squadron hangar out of respect for his buddies there. This is a most
sad event for me this summer of 1973! One by one, the Grim Reaper is
taking several of my military buddies. My Lord is most gracious to stay the
Grim Reaper’s hand from me in this danger-filled world of attack jet pilot!
I
call Fred M. down at Camp Lejeune to tell him of Mike’s death. Fred and Mike
are the same age and were in the same Navy ROTC class at Auburn for all 4
years. I am a year older than them, but slid down into their class upon missing
3 quarters at Auburn.
(I will now
return to talking about A CALM.)
Upon entering VMA 121 and being assigned barracks
officer and supply officer (with those many problems I told you of) I naively
assumed that I would be stuck with that mess for the duration (of my time in
121). But now, our new XO again summons me to his office on a different day.
“Our S-2 officer is being transferred out of our squadron. I’m making you his
replacement, moving you out of S-4 into S-2. Captain ‘Intel’ will give you all
the briefing you need to take over from him. So you 2 get going with it!” S-2
is Intelligence.
“Wait just a minute, farm boy. You mean to tell us
that they made you Intelligence Officer, with your 3 brain cells??”
‘It is a fact.’
“Makes one wonder if they had any brain cells at all!”
‘Hush, please.’
Much military information is secret. They use the
term “classified” for it being secret. There are 3 degrees of classified
information (from bottom to top: “Confidential”, “Secret”, and “Top Secret”.
Soon after entering Navy ROTC at Auburn, I was granted clearance to receive
“Confidential” information. Along the way, the FBI thoroughly investigated my
background and I received “Secret” and later on “Top Secret” clearance. A
military pilot who drops nuclear bombs must learn much Top Secret
information.
“Tell us some of it, old man!”
‘So S O R R Y! No can do!’
It has steadily sunk into the heads of my superior
officers in VMA 121 that I am a loner. Each day, the S-2 Officer sits alone
secluded in a “secured” small office. They correctly deemed that to be the perfect
place for me to be. My reader friend, to me, it was like entering paradise to
enter into that job! I was in
my element, solitude!
“No doubt all 3 brain cells were at full throttle
to handle this Intelligence job!”
‘Actually, all 3 were in afterburner!’
In this little private office (all my own), I have
no enlisted Marine clerk, no other soul in my presence. Solitary bliss and peace of mind! It suits me perfectly! A calm. I am in charge of a large safe full of “classified”
manuals (from Confidential to Top Secret) that squadron personnel need to use
from time to time.
When a Marine (mostly aircraft maintenance
personnel) needs a classified manual, he comes to my office and tells me which
manual he needs. I check his card in my card file to see if he has clearance
for that manual, and then sign it out to him. He is responsible to keep it out
of sight and return it to me as soon as he is finished with it. I’m required to
see that all manuals get returned by the end of the workday. I must make sure
the safe is properly locked and that I lock all the special locks on my office
door when I leave at the end of each workday. It’s a great job! A Calm, thank God.
I relish playing around high up in
the skies a few times each week. I stand duty officer regularly and such. I
hang around in the ready room chatting with fellow aviators when I desire. But
I spend most of my time in the solitude of this peaceful
private haven of S-2 while a younger, new barracks and supply officer
tears his hair out over the problems that had vexed me for 7 or 8 months. One
day when I drop into his office (my former office), he’s on the phone with
another squadron’s supply officer, begging to have a little “credit” transferred
to us to get desperately needed toilet paper (or corncobs). Pity that newcomer
younger 1st lieutenant!
At work, I receive printed updates and changes to be
inserted into manuals. I receive new manuals to record on our list and to be
put into the safe. I receive orders to return old manuals (to Group) as they
become outdated. Group then returns them to Wing to be destroyed. But I have plenty of free time sitting in this secluded office. I
study my Sunday School lesson and such. I’m most relieved and thankful to enter
this CALM!
And in the squadron overall, the drug problems and barracks problems calm down
noticeably.
Upon making me the S-2 officer, my CO sends me to
the next Intelligence school session in the Norfolk area. It lasts 4 or 5
weeks. I think it was held at Naval Air Station Oceania. There are about seven
O-1 and O-2 Navy and Marine officers in this class. That is Marine 2nd
and 1st lieutenants and Navy ensigns and lieutenant junior grades. I
am the longest in grade (most senior) among the 4 or so O-2’s. So I’m made
class leader. It’s fascinating to learn many deep government secrets
during that month or so. The last week, we practice planning a large-scale
secret assault on an enemy nation. As class leader, I supervise the drawing up
of that complicated war plan as we study actual recognizance photos our spy
eyes in the sky took of “enemy” nations’ military facilities. Interesting Fun!
Each of the 3 or more times I spend a few weeks in
the Norfolk area, I usually drive back to my house each Saturday morning,
attend church at Pleasant Acres on Sunday and then drive back to Norfolk late
Sunday night.
A highlight of being in the Norfolk area is
attending Pastor Dale Burden’s Fairmont Park FWB church on Wednesday nights.
He’s a wonderful man of God and his strong preaching and wisdom-filled Bible
teaching greatly benefit me. Occasionally Pastor Burden comes to preach revival
services in one of the FWB churches in the New Bern area. I enjoy attending
those services when I can, to hear him preach.
I attend every revival service and preaching
convention in the New Bern area that I possibly can (soaking it all in). Along
about now, The Holy Spirit starts stirring up my heart to preach. And He laid
it on Pleasant Acres’ Pastor Outland’s heart to call on me to preach on a
Wednesday night. With much trembling and fear, I did. God blessed! My heart
overflowed with joy. Before long, Pastor asked me to preach again on a Sunday
night. Praise God, that He was molding me into a preacher!
It must have been in June when a letter comes in the
mail from Daddy, saying he is getting married. After their wedding, he and his
new bride (Ina Lee) drive here and visit me on their honeymoon, staying 2
nights in this area. I am surprised to see that Daddy is driving an almost new
car. I assume the car belonged to Ina when they got married (becoming a fringe
benefit to Daddy in that marriage).
‘Is this Ina’s car?’
“It’s ours.”
They had bought it after they got married. Daddy now
has a steady paycheck and makes steady car payments. I am plenty surprised that
in 1973 Daddy is driving a new car and no longer drives the 1940 Nash. That old
car set (as a monument?) in his front yard till we children finally had it
hauled away a few years after his death in 2003.
On Wednesday, I take Daddy and Ina to my squadron’s
hanger to show them my office and the airplanes in the hanger. Daddy climbs up
to look into the pilot’s seat area I occupy in the cockpit. He is plenty amazed
at that complicated setup. It sure looks different from the 2-horse wagon he
taught me to drive when I was 6 years old or so. Truly it is a different
generation now, one bent on destruction instead of on farming with horses.
I take the day off and drive the honeymooners down
to the beach. I told you I saw the ocean for the first time in the late summer
of 1965. Daddy never saw it till just a few years after that (soon after he
turned 50 years old), when he went with Mr. Howard from Vernon to some state
government “farm” conference at Mobile on the coast. “I saw more water at one
time than I had seen in all my life!” Daddy wrote that to me in a letter after
returning to Vernon from Mobile.
Today, as I drive up a gentle sloping sandy beach
trail, “presto” that lovely ocean with all its vastness and gentle rolling
small waves quite suddenly appears before our eyes as we top that slope. An
audible sigh escapes from Dad as it catches his breath. We walk around in ankle
deep warm water and soft sand. Then we find a good seafood lunch. That night
they attend church with me at Pleasant Acres and I proudly tell my church
friends they are “honeymooners”. They drive away the next morning.
Daddy and Ina visiting me BY THE SEASIDE was a precious family
event we would always treasure. For several years up to now, Daddy had faithfully
taken care of Lucille’s mother and then Lucille upon each of them becoming
invalids. One could easily deem that to be a hardship. But Dad did that well
and faithfully, in dire poverty, vexed with gigantic medical bills piling up. But
he never complained. I heartily thank God for this blessed place into which He has
brought my dear Daddy; giving him a wife in good health, a steady paycheck that
provides for a new car that now enables him to drive such a long ways to visit
me, and much more blessedness!
Now for the dramatic danger story of the greatest
heroic and most gallant deed I performed as a brave Marine officer!
“Wow! Is this of danger while flying high in the
skies?”
‘Well, not exactly. This is of danger while
erratically orbiting low level.’
“I didn’t know your Intruder orbited!”
‘I didn’t say anything about my Intruder! It’s about
a mischievous kitty cat whose curiosity accidently launched him into a deadly
helter-skelter orbit in a confined space close to earth (a clear case where
curiosity almost killed the cat)!
“No doubt it’s far
more exciting than your pilot stories!”
‘Absolutely
no doubt!’
As I turn left off U.S. 70 to go to my house, just
past the RR tracks an old little wooden shack of a country store sets on the
right. Just past it, I turn right down my sandy lane that is just behind that
store. I occasionally walk out there and drink a Dr. Pepper in a glass bottle,
especially in hot weather when I am working my tomatoes or mowing the lawn. (In
a temperance effort, I keep no soft drinks at home.) A friendly, plump
neighborhood lady runs the store and I chat with her as I enjoy my occasional
Dr. Pepper in temperance.
On a hot afternoon this summer, she speaks right up
as I walk in. “I want you to meet ‘Sharon’. She and her husband just moved
their trailer in right down there (pointing).” These 2 ladies are the only
people presently in the store. “Sharon’s” hubby is an enlisted Marine. I greet
“Sharon” kindly and easily see that she is very worried or fearful about
something. As that plump lady talker keeps chirping away, “Sharon” bursts out
crying.
“My kitten walked into the fan!!” she sobs terribly.
She sobs out more details. A square frame floor fan set in her living room
stirring the hot air inside her tin house. A wire guard covered the fan’s
front, but there was no guard on the back. From
the backside of the fan, the little curious kitty just walked right into the
fan’s blades. At the sound and sight of the whirling fan striking Kitty and
launching him into a most erratic orbit inside the box frame and the sight of
kitty fur literally flying and at the horrible screams coming from
Kitty, “Sharon” just totally panicked and fled out the
door. She came straight over to the store and sat down as she often does to
visit with this friendly lady. “Sharon” had fled over shortly before I arrived
and hadn’t yet gotten up the nerve to tell this lady about Kitty’s disastrous
orbiting in space. The plump motherly figure now sympathizes ever so sincerely
with “Sharon”.
‘If you don’t mind me going into your house, I’ll go
check on your kitten for you.’ Because I am the only brave Marine in the little
country store, I feel duty bound to volunteer for that gory mission.
“Please
do!”
Seldom have I ever heard such a desperate plea. I
bravely walk over to the trailer’s half open door and enter the bloody
battlefield of Kitty versus Fan, not knowing what terrible carnage might await me.
But I feel duty-bound to be a brave Marine. Kitty might be severed in half. I
suspect Fan would not be wounded much, so I’m not concerned about him.
Surveying the battlefield, sure enough I easily see Fan whirling and purring in
prime shape.
Looking about more keenly, I spot casualty Kitty
lying upright on the floor blinking his eyes and moving his head strangely like he was trying to shake off its wild internal orbiting. Kitty isn’t purring at all. A few
scraps of Kitty fur and splatters of blood had been flung around as Kitty
orbited around in low space for the first time (void of a space suit to protect
him in space). Bare red spots on his quivering body testify to the source of
the fur scraps and blood splatters (and of him deserving a Purple Heart). He
soon stands up, somewhat unsure of his walking ability as he starts walking
slowly, wobbling.
I march back to the store and make my reconnaissance
report to “Sharon”. She is somewhat relieved and reports that she thinks she is
brave enough to return home. So she steels herself to go and enter into her
shoebox shape tin house that has just become our nation’s newest battlefield.
But I don’t think government will make her tin shoebox into a state park for
high school students’ trips where those kids will steal Kitty fur souvenirs,
like kids in my high school stole souvenirs when they went on a trip to Civil
War battlefields in Shiloh, Tennessee. I buy my Dr. Pepper and elect to take it
home to drink instead of staying near the traumatic battle zone any longer. So
ends the story of my gallant heroic deed.
“And you say that was the greatest one you performed as a Marine officer??”
‘Yep. Simply by default; it being the onlyst one.’
“Did our nation award you the Medal of Honor for it?
Heh, Heh.”
‘No! But I think they should have, don’t you?’
“Ha, Ha. That’s ridiculous!”
‘What?!’
“Uh, well, maybe, I mean uh, Of Course!
And it’s never too late! Our whole nation will now rise up with one voice,
calling on the President to award you the Medal of Honor!”
‘Thanks! That’s right kindly of you. But please
shake a leg and get on with it, before I become posthumous.’
On 1 August 1973, I reach 4 years as a commissioned
officer, which brings a welcomed pay raise.
I correspond regularly with Mrs. Mars in Birmingham
as Mr. Mars’ condition steadily deteriorates. In late summer, the day comes
when she calls me to say he died. I take leave and fly commercially thru
Atlanta to Birmingham. While working for Mr. Mars, I had gotten to be friends
with the Mars’ next-door neighbors (Nick). I call Nick from the Birmingham
Airport and he is home this afternoon. I ask if he would come to the airport
for me. He readily comes and drives me back to the Mars’ house. I know the time
of the funeral this afternoon, and that I had just missed it, even rushing as
much as I could. I didn’t want to ask a family member to come for me at the
airport during this important time for the Mars family.
When Nick brought me to his house, I could see that
the Mars family had returned home from the funeral. So I thank Nick and walk
over to the Mars house with my small bag. I stay 2 or 3 nights (visiting and
doing chores) before flying back to New Bern Airport. Flying to Birmingham 3
days ago, I bought a spoiled sandwich at the Atlanta Airport that gave me food
poisoning, making my stay with the Mars family plenty miserable. I marvel how
our Creator ordained for that poisoning to make me crave copious amounts of
water (to absorb the poison, I assume). So I drank oceans of water and didn’t
go to a human doctor.
“And you are still alive in 2016 to tell us
about that?”
‘Apparently so.’
The several major events I write of in this
chapter are most rich and
precious memories of Summer 1973. (Kitty’s story is actually not major.) It was a
most blessed summer! Most everything
at work, at church, and in my social life is turning golden and pleasant (in the natural realm)
and ever so blessed and rich (in the spiritual realm). It is a joy to have become enmeshed into
this rural neighborhood (with Kitty fur flying and all such). After leaving my
boyhood home, this is my only time while living stateside to
become well integrated into a “genuine” neighborhood.
With great joy and
anticipation,
I look forward to spending the remaining year and 5 months of my military
active duty time as VMA 121 pilot and S-2 Officer while living in my pleasant little
white wood frame house in the country by the railroad tracks. How I thank God
for ordaining this for me!
“But back at the beginning of this chapter you said
that you had been ‘stuck’ at Cherry Point too long for it to suit you very
well. Is this a senile contradiction?”
‘Nope, it’s simply one of the many amazing
paradoxes along our short earthly journey to our eternal abode.’
“Answer Boy, you’ve got all the bases covered, don’t
you?”
‘I’m fully trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ, the
Saviour of the world, to take me home to Heaven when my brief earthly journey
ends. That is the ONE base a human
soul must make sure to cover. Have you covered that base?!’
“Folks, let’s all be careful not to disturb Richard
boy in his satisfied, contented and happy state of his military life (of only
one heroic Kitty deed). He naïvely thinks that Almighty God
is of one accord with his plan to continue living here. Little does he know
that God in Heaven is about to drastically upset his applecart!”