Slipping Bonds

By Raymond Lee

It wasn’t so much that D’Arturo wasn’t bright. You could tell he had a native intelligence when without pause he’d answer the more esoteric questions designed not so much to test the student’s knowledge as they were meant to intimidate. These he knew: the capacity and operation of the sump, the precise mechanizations of the transfer pump between hydraulic systems two and three. But ask him first day questions like the PSI of the oxygen system and he’d stare at you blankly. Unlike most of the students he wouldn’t even venture a guess.
I’d never before been so frustrated by a student’s fumbling. Watching him bumble through the pre-flight cockpit safety inspection was the definition of pain. Whereas most of the students had mastered the checklist through muscle memory by the first week, two months on D’Arturo couldn’t complete more than a step at a time, and that only with the checklist serving as his absolute guide. Of course, he was a reclass- a prior enlistee who’d changed career fields- so older than the rest of his peers. In his young thirties he filled out his flight suit whereas the majority of aircrew candidates swum beneath yards of loose fabric.
Noting all this, our lessons weren’t entirely unpleasant. D’Arturo was very easy to talk to, it just seemed he didn’t retain information at the same rate as his peers. And perhaps he touched something within me, because while I should have over and again sent him back for remedial lessons I’d end up passing him every time. I think I even saw a little of myself in D’Arturo because I found myself during lessons gabbing about my own career like a dreamy eyed young airman still excited about the possibilities and romance of flying.
War, sex, travel-- there never was a better job for those who truly wanted to live. Of course D’Arturo couldn’t have known these things as a student, but you’d see glimpses of some similar agenda behind that dull smile of his, or in the way his eyes would lose focus when I’d tell him everything he could come to expect from the job or the airframe. I’d swear we were making eye contact during my lectures, but his gaze would travel out to the mid-distance right there in the confines of the dummy cockpit, and I’d invariably start to tell him stories. They’d begin as learning aids but quickly devolve into the shoptalk common amongst peers of the same industry.
On our third or fourth lesson together, D’Arturo had just finished another subpar demonstration of an APU start-up. I was trying to nudge him in the right direction about what he should focus on. I was saying, “The dash-9 for anything that actually has to do with loading, the dash-1 for the physical operation and description…” But his eyes were gone and that half smile was on his face. His hair had grown out of regulations and it was doubtful he’d shaved that morning. I hadn’t even finished my sentence. I half thought he was expecting me to complete it but he just stared out and away.
“D’Arturo, where do you go?”
Attention returned, he asked, “What?”
“Where do you go? I’m trying to teach you something here.”
He chuckled. “In Afghan I was sitting on the back of the shit truck smoking a cigarette. The flight line was real quiet that day and I was waiting for the maintenance boys to finish up their supper. They were s’posed to open up this C-17 so I could service the latrine but god knows what they were doing. At any rate a trio of whirlybirds come over the edge of the mountain. I watch them hover above the flight line a moment before touching down. Those choppers are graceful aren’t they, the way they seem to float there, the way they kiss the ground so gently? The formation comes to a stop and you can tell they got Karzai or someone because a bunch of contractors armed to the teeth exit out of the birds surrounding an entourage of suits. They all walk off the flight line leaving an Afghan soldier behind to guard each bird.
Across the flight line I can see them plain as day. They opened the cargo doors to let the breeze in and I can just make out that ugly language of theirs when I hear the puff of mortar rounds coming in from the mountains. Everybody calls me crazy, but I maintain you can see the mortars flying through the air. SSgt Fish said it’d be about the same as seeing a bullet in mid-flight, but I distinctly remember tracking this thing from the corner of my eye. One had already hit the pax terminal by the time I looked up, but I swear I saw the arc of that last one.”
He raised his right arm as if he was stretching, then crashed his palms together in a clap that echoed through the cockpit. “Bam! The second one hits the tarmac but it doesn’t detonate. No ma’am, like a rock just skipping over water this thing ricochets off the pavement and disappears down the apron.” He points up to his eye. “From this corner I see it go bouncing, from my other eye I see the boy in the lead chopper disappear.”
He fell silent and I couldn’t fathom what his point was. He looked up at me with eyes like a child’s. “A sniper couldn’t have made that shot. You see, it bounced down the apron, threaded itself in through one of the helicopter’s cargo doors and out the other taking the soldier with it and spreading that poor boy about a hundred yards down the runway. Didn’t touch the bird at all. Didn’t even explode…”
How do you respond to a story like that? The timing was what shocked me, not the death. After decades of wars whenever servicemembers got a little too drunk those kinds of tales would surface. But It was strange to hear it from a student. No less because he was sober, and I was just finishing the lesson. I was about to shift the subject back to the airframe when he asked me, “All those years flying you ever have a close call?”
I don’t know if he had PTSD. I wasn’t even really sure I believed in PTSD, but he wasn’t sweating or nervous or showing any of the signs they brief us to look out for. No, he sat there in the simulator seat calm as a preacher with that odd half smile.
“Well, yes I did.” And then I started to laugh. “Well I mean it wasn’t but it was.” “You believed you were going to die?”
“I was certain of it.”
“Well c’mon then.”
I didn’t really want to tell him about the flight. It was the scariest thing to ever happen to me, but for some reason I couldn’t resist. So I tell him.
                                                      ---
I grew up in Iowa utterly bored and joined up the Air Force in the late eighties. As aircrew, I knew I’d see the world so it wasn’t such a drag for my first assignment. I landed McGuire, AFB New Jersey. The range of the turbo-prop C-130 wasn’t so great we could get over the pond without refueling, so I was doomed to stateside organic missions, but this was back before the wars when we were still well funded. So annual, biannual tours of Europe, Asia, Africa weren’t at all uncommon. I was pretty happy and filled out my first term the way most airmen do. I drank a lot and partied in various major cities. I was making money- what I thought was real money- for the first time in my life and my responsibilities weren’t severe. Unfortunately, I might have done too well at my job because at the end of that first four years, despite putting in for Europe, for Asia, for Africa, I was assigned to the training squadron in Altus, Oklahoma.
You might imagine my disappointment. It was fine flying within American airspace before, at least we would touch down in various cities in the US and Canada, but a training base?! The only place Altus flights landed was Altus. So now I’d have to spend six or eight hours in the air teaching new loadmasters, just to land right back where we’d started.
What can you do? I took it in stride, I held my chin up, and when I arrived at Altus I was determined to be the best instructor in the squadron. Service before self. I got spun up on the job, the duties included, my responsibilities, and I began teaching. Now the thing about Altus is the courses are combined. So while on a training flight, both the pilots and the enlisted aircrew are brand new. This led to a lot of rock polishers, but there was always an experienced pilot to take over the stick if a situation became unmanageable. Another thing most people don’t realize is that flying isn’t an incredibly arduous task. After takeoff and before landing there really isn’t much to do to keep the plane in the air. If the engines are running, simply avoid steering the vessel into the ground. It’s really that simple. There’s only two things to be feared losing in flight: airspeed and ideas.
I’d been at Altus several years when the fateful day came up. I should probably take responsibility for the fact I’d gotten somewhat complacent. My tasks were limited to the same three types of missions, day in and day out. And though I’d kept my nose in the books, I didn’t really apply the information towards real world situations so much as I memorized large bodies of text with which to quiz the students. So I should take responsibility for my own faults before we ever left the ground that day.
The crew assembled at the eagle’s nest before dawn. I had two students and the lesson I was teaching that day was an airdrop scenario. During an airdrop we open the cargo door at the rear of the plane in mid-flight to release cargo over a drop zone. Attached parachutes deploy which pull the cargo out and away from the aircraft at the appropriate time. It was a very simple task I’d accomplished hundreds of times by that point in my career.
The instructor pilot was a Lieutenant Colonel. Jimmy normally didn’t instruct because of his duties within the squadron, but once a month he would go up with a crew to stay airworthy. He was a damn fine pilot with nearly thirty years’ experience under his belt. His sole student that day was a second lieutenant with approximately 30 flying hours, and those mostly from simulators. We were briefed on the mission, a simple three hour affair with a couple touch and goes, the airdrop and then landing. We were expected to be back on the ground well before noon.
The preflight inspection went well, my students were capable if not experienced, and they loaded the prop-job without incident. We taxied out and took off like normal. After several turns and various bearing exercises conducted by the pilot in training we finally reached the drop zone where it was the loadmaster student’s responsibility to coordinate the airdrop. They opened the doors, established comms with the pilot, were directed to release the load and did so.
Of the three dummy pallets we were to unload only two made it out the door. The third and most forward pallet got jammed in the runners and failed to release. One student informed the pilot while the next cut the cables to the chute. We closed up the door, recalculated the aircraft’s center of gravity, relayed the new load information to the pilot and continued with the mission. It wasn’t anything to get upset about. Misfortunate maybe, but nothing unusual, and nothing that hadn’t happened before.
Where it all went south was during descent. The student pilot called back that the right side main landing gear had failed to deploy. The pilot pulled up to accomplish a fly around. This wasn’t such a big deal. I asked the students what the protocol was in such a situation, and without consulting their checklists they replied in tandem, “Manual release.” I was actually pleased at the time because through an unplanned series of events the two students would have the opportunity to use their knowledge on two separate scenarios most would only ever read about. So I sent my two students into their checklists and told them to act accordingly.
I retook the main loadmaster station and plugged into the intercom system to monitor the pilot’s progress. In the cockpit Jimmy was growing exasperated by the young pilot’s stuttered and imprecise in-flight emergency message to the control tower. A case of nerves had come over the boy from this slight malfunction. Jimmy was telling the boy to calm down, there were safety nets in place and that it wouldn’t be an issue. The young pilot was stuttering a response when one of my students tapped me on the shoulder. I look up to see the manual release handle in his hand from which a two foot length of wire dangled. I would have made a joke about the young man’s strength except for the look in his eyes. The terror found there told me the line had broken without deploying the right side landing gear.
A nod confirmed my suspicion. “What do we do now?” I asked him.
“I don’t know ma’am.” He said and looked as if he might cry.
“We have checklists so we don’t have to know. Follow your checklist.” Behind him I could see the other student feverishly flipping pages through her book. After pointing out his partner a bit of blood came back to his face.
What is it they say about experience? It’s something you only get after you truly need it. With both of them looking through the publications for what to do next I tap back into the cockpit to brief the pilots on the situation. We had one pallet stuck and the right side main landing gear had failed to deploy and was still locked in the up position. I wasn’t yet worried and told the pilots we would soon use the pry bar to physically remove the floor panel at the suspected location of the cable shear. Jimmy copied the message and some minutes later one of the young airmen approached me holding out the correct page of the publication.
“We need to use the pry bar ma’am.” She said.
“Go ahead then.” I told her without emotion. Though I’d never done it myself I wasn’t about to steal the opportunity from her. I would of course supervise the situation and store it away in my mind for further use. The only real fear now would be the trouble we may or may not receive on the ground for committing damage to the airframe. However, under emergency conditions there’d be little reason to expect reprimand. My thoughts were still on the squadron commander and how I would brief him when my eye caught something to cause me fear. At the fuselage station where the bright red pry bar with its tool bag for dismembering the floor panels should have been was an empty space. The students were standing before it, confusion wrought across their faces. When they saw me their palms went up in tandem in a gesture of ‘What now?’
“What’d you do with it?” I asked. They weren’t on headset and couldn’t hear me over the roar of the engines. I crossed the compartment. “What’d you do with it!?” I screamed over the drone of the engines.
“Nothing ma’am.” They said in chorus.
“It’s part of your pre-flight inspection. Was it there when you did the pre-flight?”
Vacant nods and a shrug of shoulders greeted me. It was now time to worry. When it came out they had missed this detail during the pre-flight the students would be sent back a week for remedial courses. I, however, would be grounded. It’d be a blemish on my career and probably jeopardize my impending promotion. I imagined the scene in my mind’s eye: Standing before the Commander’s desk as he screamed and carried on the way they’ve been taught to expect. I would be at attention without speaking and allow myself to be yelled at and humiliated, to be threatened with immediate discharge and a short ride escorted by security forces to the base gate. I’ve heard of these things before. They wouldn’t fire you for all the threats, but you would be on the shit list. And in the military, even in the Air Force with its liberal mindset and personal touch, the shit list wasn’t something you ever easily came off of.
I almost laughed then, thinking about it. I’d wanted to be stationed anywhere else in the world since I’d arrived at Altus. If I was grounded and taken off teaching status I’d be of very little use to the squadron. In a strange way, it looked like I was going to get what I wanted most. It might cost me a promotion, but I was going to be leaving. Of course, it would take the humiliation of a meeting with the commander, and then I realized something else I’d taken for granted. Before any of that could come to pass we would first need to land.
For any job in the military you are trained for years to conduct very specific operations that will in all likelihood never happen. How many infantrymen have never fired a shot? How many Navy Seals have never conducted an extraction more complex than that of a fellow sailor from a bar fight? But over the years, that training becomes second nature. And if a worse case event should happen, you act almost on instinct.
Back on the headset I inter-commed the pilots to tell them there was no pry bar. I asked for the fuel amount and was told we had two hours. Airspeed we had, ideas we could generate. I directed Jimmy to contact the control tower and relay the feed over to someone with the aircraft manufacturer. There was a backdoor in here, somewhere. I was sure of it.
Next I dug into the diagrams, carefully measured the handle and cable and pinpointed the spot the cable end could be found. As with everything else on that flight, the snowball only got bigger. You see, the floor space we needed to dismantle was exactly where the last pallet had jammed. I undid the locks and directed the two students to give it all their might. The pallet didn’t budge. I got back on comms and requested nose up assistance. Gravity would be our friend. With the ascent to aid us, we again pushed, but still the pallet wouldn’t move.
God bless her, the girl gave me an idea! “Can’t we just dismantle the pallet?”
I could have kissed her. It was a dummy pallet stacked with nothing but wood. We opened the door again then cut through the restraint on the pallet. Removing the wood we chucked it out the cargo door to the ground below. Next we attempted to move the pallet, but it still wouldn’t budge. The only thing left to do was to winch the sucker. I already knew the problem lay with the pallet and not the aircraft. It was warped and so we were fighting against the guide rails. When we applied the winch it would rip out the railings altogether, but it would give us access into the floor.
An hour of our fuel had elapsed before we were ready to winch. Jimmy came down periodically to witness our efforts, but he was a pilot and the aft of the plane was little better than a mystery to him. He kept telling the students not to worry, and because he was an officer, and I enlisted, I couldn’t tell him to shut the hell up. Nothing spooks people quite as much as telling them not to worry.
With the snatchblocks in place and rigged, the winch hooked up I sent the students forward towards the cockpit. Winches have a way of snapping and releasing all their tension like a steel whip slashing across the entire cargo compartment. As the spool began rotating the rails released a groan. Then, like peeling back an onion skin the pallet, rails and all, lifted from its position on the floor and folded in on itself. I had never seen anything quite like it, the aluminum folding over on itself as the balsa wood interior spit and cackled. It burst forth from its grave and splintered out towards me. After thirty inches the rails pulled away completely, and the inch station I needed on the floor was revealed. I gave myself another thirty inches to work before cutting off the winch.
When the tension slacked the pallet groaned again, and I half expected it to leap back into its previous shape and position, but it merely drooped against a section of floor, defeated. I knew what had to be done at that point, but everything needs to be routed through the pilots. I didn’t bother with the headset. Pushing the students out of the way, I leaned forward into the cockpit.
Jimmy took one look at me and started spitting out directives. “We’ve been on the horn with Boeing. Someone came up with the idea of taking the crash ax…”
“And busting through the floor. I got it. How much fuel is left?”
He looked into the cockpit panel instruments drearily. There’s an hour left, but with the drag from the gears it’s probably closer to forty minutes.”
“We’ll need to refuel.” I told him overstepping my bounds.
He grit his teeth. “That’s the thing. They’ve rerouted us out to an airstrip in New Mexico.”
Jimmy didn’t need to explain. We were being sent out to the desert for only one reason. There must have been some problem on the ground. They obviously didn’t expect the aerial refuelers to stage and get up in the air in time to save us. I imagined they were scrambling anybody they could, but by directing us out to a flyspeck strip in the middle of nowhere, they were trying to minimize the damage we would cause on the ground when we crashed. There was little time to mourn. I returned to the cargo compartment and directed the young airman to take the crash ax to work on the floor.
To fly commercial one would never see a crash ax. They look like medieval torture instruments. With a sixteen inch blade extending out from a spike they were designed for chopping your way through the side of the aircraft. The hull itself is less than an inch thick. In my career I’d never heard of anyone ever using one. There are so many ways to escape should you find yourself on the ground without power. In most instances only a single blow from the ax would be required. But of course that’s because it would be used on the pilot’s windshield freeing those inside instantly. I wasn’t even sure if in the history of the Air Force the crash ax had ever been used for the purpose it was designed for, but there were contingency plans for everything. The literature said it would take two hours to chop through the side wall.
There was no literature on what we were about to do. Though the side walls were an inch thick, we needed to get through four inches of floor beams and support to the sheared cable. If I were wrong in its location- say it had recoiled when it sheared and wound its way forward in the compartment- we were doomed. If there was fuel enough to reach the wire on the first go, there certainly wasn’t enough for two attempts.
My heart sunk as I watched the male student at work. Bringing the ax fully above his head and crashing it down with all his might, I watched as tiny nuggets of indent appeared on the floor from each of the spike’s blows. It was that moment I knew we were going to die. Well, most of us were going to die. I could see the pilots landing belly heavy to save themselves, and it might work. With the nose and left side landing gears down we’d be tossed violently to the right. The wing would shear off and if we managed not to tumble, the right side of the belly would tear open and toss us about. Maybe one or both of the pilots would live. Maybe.
The fear hadn’t manifested itself yet. I hadn’t reached that survival mode you always hear about from people who’ve lived through desperate situations. As the airman went to town on the floor space all I could think about was the first flight I’d ever been on. When I was a child my parents had some type of business in Dallas. I remember the airport vividly. We’d driven all the way to Chicago for the flight, and the trip itself was at that point the biggest thing to ever happen in my life. I remembered all those people in O’Hare. It was the first time I ever saw black people, but more than that there were Indians with their head scarves, there were Arab women in their hijabs, there were people of all different types and stripes, speaking languages I’d never heard and dressed in fanciful costumes parading before my eyes, and then just past them, out the window lined up in neat rows were these fantastic machines. I couldn’t believe what was happening to me at the time, it all seemed like magic to my child’s mind. There was much waiting, sure, but after we finally boarded, breathing that stale air and feeling the vibrations rippling through the aircraft interior as massive engines started up—it was a little too much for me. I wasn’t sad, I wasn’t frightened, but I began weeping because I just couldn’t understand. As the aircraft taxied, then jerked forth on its path down the runway, the tremendous momentum working its way through me-- a body that had never gone faster than sixty miles per hour in a car- I felt something release inside me. There was a clutching in my chest as the barreling aircraft approached 80 knots, with the engine’s roaring and my heart beating so fast I couldn’t hear anything but the blood coursing through my ears as the horrible thrust of the engines rose to a screaming pitch. I was terrified at nose up, and I will never forget the first moment of lift when it felt like we should be falling—but instead, instead we slipped the bonds of gravity. Into the air it felt as smooth as a boat launched into water, and I knew in that instant it was the only thing I wanted to do with my life.
I couldn’t have been more than four years old. I couldn’t tell you now the name of a single teacher I had in high school. Several dozen birthdays have passed without a single memory from any of them, either happy or sad. I loved my grandmother more than anyone else on earth at that age, but I can’t anymore recall her face without the aid of a photograph. But that moment, the moment when we were supposed to fall but instead we rose into the air, I will remember that moment always.
Watching the young airman try to muscle his way through the floor of the aircraft I thought perhaps it was the most important memory of my life, because that life was surely ending. We had an hour of fuel left. We had maybe an hour of life left.
Watching his strength give out the female student took over. He’d only been able to create a little cavity in the floor which she worked on in turn. She didn’t last half as long as he had. And when her arms began to shake lifting the ax over her head I took over for her. There was little more I could do, and with every swing the ax felt a little heavier, with every swing my heart sank a little deeper. The look on those students’ faces was something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. They were so young. Seduced away from their homes by stories of travel, poor kids who didn’t go to college because of the families they were born into, they had thought they’d found escape with the Air Force. See the world, pay for college, and earn perhaps a better salary than your own parents. Yet, here they were, one of their first flights was also going to be their last. I didn’t kid them, I didn’t lie and tell them everything was going to be alright. I simply insisted we continue on with the plan of action. With my breath exhausted and the hole little bigger than when I’d started the young man took over again.
I’ll admit another fault now. I hadn’t been on the headset for a very long time. I take responsibility for this, also. The loadmaster works in direct liaison with the pilots, but from the excitement of the situation I purely forgot about the boys up front. They must have been calling me for an update, because Jimmy chose the worst time to come back and assess the situation for himself. No sooner had he come barreling out of the cockpit than the young man drew back for another blow. In anticipation of the sick thudding, my head jerked away from the sight when the sharp end of the ax connected squarely against Jimmy’s bald head.
He went down hard. On the ground convulsions began and I knew we were doomed. The landing was possible only with an experienced pilot at the stick. Without him what could the student pilot do? He’d landed a jet outside simulations maybe twice? How would a student land with only half his gear, no less on a runway designed for twin engine light aircraft?
I put my headset on only to radio up to the cockpit an additional in-flight emergency. If the student pilot was nervous and blathering before, he lost himself altogether when I related the news Jimmy was WIA. He screamed in baffled antagonism before the line was cut altogether. I would only find out years afterward why he’d disconnected. In the black box recording, not the one edited for later generations of students to study, but in the raw recording the student pilot began weeping. He cursed god. He cursed the Air Force. He cursed himself and everyone on the plane with him. He called out for his mother and invoked mercy from the god he’d just cussed. In the recording he cycles through the stages of grief with the speed of a finely tuned automobile racing through gears to overdrive.
The student pilot—now the pilot—come back on the radio in a voice that betrayed his fear. He informed us 20 minutes of fuel remained, the air traffic controllers had cleared the runway at the minor regional airport we were directed to, and that he could reach an altitude that would allow the student loadmasters to parachute out. I acknowledged before directing them to continue with our work. Without prompt the girl had begun applying first aid to the Colonel as the boy took up again the ax. He was a man possessed, perhaps a man for the first time in his young life. The fear had been replaced with determination as the ax come down faster, harder. He chipped away at the edges of the hole and after he’d spent himself, falling back onto his ass and weeping I went to him. I told him to don the parachute in the emergency locker. I told the young lady to do the same and that I would take care of Jimmy. The emergence locker only held two parachutes, and they both understood in that moment what it meant for us left onboard.
There was little I could do for Jimmy. He lay like in death, still save for the blood leaking through the shirt the girl had stripped him of and applied to the gash on his head. I took a tie down strap from the wall and placing the hook through a fixture point on the floor ratcheted his body down to the floor. It was the only thing to be done. I couldn’t move him, I didn’t know the extent of his injuries and strapping him into a seated position would have made as much sense as digging holes in water. We were gaining altitude, the students had their parachutes on, and Jimmy was restrained to the floor.
At that point I had given myself up for dead. It seemed like the only logical conclusion. I didn’t expect to survive an experienced pilot’s landing in this condition, and was certain of my mortality with the student at the stick. I smiled at the student loadmasters. The boy looked ill, he was pale and shaking. The girl was fine it seemed, but I knew neither had bailed out of a plane before. There certainly hadn’t been any training for it. Then staring at the hole we made it occured to me, I hadn’t yet bothered to look for the wire.
Leaning over it I peered into the hole. It was only after I took the flashlight from the breast pocket of my flight suit that I saw how far he’d really gotten. The shorn end of the wire was sitting there plain as day and the hole large enough a man’s wrist could fit through. I laughed then, weeping as I laughed. I reached my hand down and pulled the cord. You could hear the landing gear discharge from the body of the aircraft and almost immediately the student pilot came over the intercom. “Is that the gear?” He asked urgently.
In the blackbox recording you can hear me laughing as I reply, “That’s the gear!” The pilot leveled off then began an emergency descent. In the back we strapped ourselves into seats to await the inevitable. For an unaided, untrained landing though, I will say that student pilot did the trick.
I kissed the ground after the plane came to a stop. Emergency vehicles were waiting at the runway. We didn’t need the fire trucks, thank god, but the ambulance served a purpose. The Colonel was loaded up as we watched from the side of the plane. There would be no debrief. We were transported in separate vehicles to the nearest hospital to supply urine samples and undergo unnecessary medical evaluations. It was mostly for the urine test I think. At any rate I would never see any of them again.
Within the week they were all civilians and so it was me and me alone who went up before the accident board.
It was a witch hunt, pure and simple. A panel of disinterested bureaucrats grilled me for about four hours. There were certain questions I couldn’t rightly answer, but most were designed to simply make me look culpable. Why hadn’t I checked for the pry bar during the pre-flight? Wasn’t I aware it was in the checklist? Why had I gone off comms for so long? Didn’t I know that in emergency situations close communication was imperative? Couldn’t I have prevented the injury to the only qualified pilot had I just maintained comms? Why didn’t we dismantle the pallet earlier to give us more time to dig into the cargo floor for the wire? Why hadn’t the wire been inspected by maintenance in the six years previous to our flight? Why didn’t I verify with Lockheed the correct procedure for entering the aircraft floor?
They treated me like I wanted the plane to crash that day. They were cold, distant and acted as if my survival was something of an affront to good taste. I was commended for nothing. My repeated insistence that I was the only reason we were able to land in the first place was countered with the dollar amount of damage done to the aircraft. That was followed by a snide question of why I waited so long to inspect the hole for the wire. I had no counsel and was allowed no time to group my argument. I thought maybe they would recommend a discharge. I knew at the very least I would receive negative paperwork, but I was certain it would be worse than that.
I was given a hardship leave from base for two weeks. When I finally returned everyone in the squadron was quiet and indifferent towards me. No one asked what had happened though I’m sure it had been all they talked about while I was gone. No one was relieved I was alright. Despite the advanced airframes and lack of a proper enemy to fight and fly against, aircrew are still a deeply superstitious bunch. They must have thought I was bad luck. Maybe I was.
I had barely sat down at my desk that first morning back before our Chief Master Sergeant entered unannounced. I stood and said hello to him. He did not greet me. The only words to tumble from his mouth were, “You’re wanted by the Commander.”
The accident investigation team was a burden, but it wasn’t scary. All those suits, they meant less to me than air. The Commander was something real and tangible to be feared. He wasn’t a harsh man, in fact I’d had drinks with him many times. He was the good sort, old and salty, but personality or personal friendships mattered very little when the position obliged you to hand out punishments.
I entered the office meekly, using my gender to its full advantage. I stood at attention before his desk and feigned a whimper. Colonel Miller told me to relax, but he didn’t offer me the chance to sit down. “We’re glad to have you back.” He said without even a hint of a smile. “As you know, I’m required to go over every safety incident that occurs in my squadron.” He pulled a dossier from a desk drawer and laid it face down on the desk in front of me. “Unfortunately, the accident review board recommended severe discipline.”
I was beyond outrage. I simply didn’t care anymore. “What’s that, sir?”
“Well I’m sure you know that as a result of your actions the squadron lost a senior officer. Lt. Colonel James Sizemore sustained a traumatic brain injury. He’s been medically discharged. Greater than that, though, the Air Force lost two student loadmasters and a student pilot. Both the loadmasters voluntarily withdrew from the program and the pilot in training cracked up during a psychological evaluation after the incident.”
His eyes were tombstones. They rested on me without any spark of life and I was certain my own discharge was coming. “The board blames you. Because of your checklist failures a simple problem became grave. They say you’re solely responsible for the incident occurring the way it did and have recommended a stiff punishment. They say the reason the Air Force has lost four good airmen is a direct result of your actions.”
His voice was dire and his hand rested on the dossier. “They want me to ground you. They want me to bust you down to Senior Airman and dock your pay. I was told by my superiors a discharge would not be appealed should I decide it necessary.”
He tapped his fingers lightly on the folder containing the damning recommendations. “Do you know what I think?” He asked with a frown.
“What’s that, sir?”
“Fuck ‘em.”
He did not smile, but you could see a touch of rebellion at the corner of his lips. His uniform was as crisp as the words that had just fallen from his mouth and I was temporarily confused. “They say you’re the reason why the Air Force lost four good men, but I didn’t see any coffins. They say your actions caused a minor problem to become a major one. I say your actions saved the lives of everyone aboard.” He pushed the dossier off the edge of the table and into a wastebasket below. “They want me to take your rank. We both know that’s a coward’s way of forcing someone out. You get busted down a rank there’s no way you’d be able to reenlist.”
He withdrew from his desk a similar dossier. “Of course, my hands are tied here. I have to take the recommendations from the board seriously.” He chuckled to himself then, “But I’m retiring soon anyway and I’ve been in the game long enough to know a few tricks of my own. Relevant Air Force Instructions state that a service member cannot be punished and awarded for the same action. That is why I’m presenting you with the Distinguished Service Award in recognition of your heroic actions.” He opened the dossier, and flipped through several pages before signaling with his finger a signature line. “Just sign here.”
My heart sank. It was more than I could do not to shed a tear, and a real one. I signed with a shaky hand. He closed the folder and presented me with a tiny box containing the medal and its ribbon. “Now, as you’ve probably noticed you’ve ruined unit cohesion around the squadron. You’re of no use to us here anymore. We’re transferring you to a squadron in Germany, and I’m sure with this medal they’ll welcome you warmly.” He stood up then, the old, gray Colonel saluted and dismissed me. I was given two weeks to prepare for the move and the next thing I knew, I was in Europe! 
--- 

D’Arturo smiled fully for the first time. “So there are human beings left in this organization?”
We shared a laugh. “Well there was back then. I don’t know anymore. That was twenty years ago.”
“And you finished out?” He asked
. “I finished out. I met my husband in Germany. We had our first child in Japan and I retired as a Chief at Scott.”
“Good for you…” He said with a proud smile as if I were the student and he the instructor. “But I guess fate has a funny way of coming back around.”
“Well, I accepted the civilian position back here at Altus before I even retired. You know what they say about old soldiers. It was strange to come back, but it doesn’t even look like it used to. There was no-one from the old days here when I got back. So it’s like it never happened.”
“But it did happen. Did you have any other close calls?”
“No, I sure didn’t. Not even during the wars. But they teach that scenario in the pilot simulations. They even play the black box recording during the debrief if the pilot crashes the simulator. I sound so young it’s almost embarrassing.”
“Are you still afraid of dying?” He asked.
It took a moment of consideration before I could answer. “No.” I finally said. “Maybe the dying part, but I’m not afraid of being dead. Not anymore.”
He nodded slowly with that half smile.

****

Raymond Lee was politely asked to leave the Air Force. He lives abroad now and writes to fill up the small hours of the night.