Going Overseas

The steady murmur of the turbojet engines and the slight pulsations of high altitude flight were reassuring signs that progress was being made toward our destination. This aircraft was just another in a near endless chain of chartered Continental Airlines Boeing 707s, transporting an ever increasing number of individual replacements to Vietnam. What a way to go to war! Endless orders with endless endorsements of which one needed endless copies to substantiate nonreimbursable travel claims. From Travis Air Force Base, near San Francisco, to Kadena Air Force Base, Okinawa, all ranks, services, and sexes thrown together on this journey with but one common denominator—the happenstance of scheduling that put us on this airplane, this date, for a common destination.

The contrast with the way I had previously gone to war was immense. Little more than a dozen years prior, I, along with my entire regiment had embarked on a general class troopship, with all our equipment, to land with unit integrity upon the shores of Asia.

Perhaps it was the almost imperceptible unsteadiness of the 707s motion which suggested that we were riding an ocean of air as well as crossing an ocean, once again heading for the Orient. Vastly unlike travel aboard ship where one had a month to settle down, get to know and trust your charges and companions, cover last minute training or administrative deficiencies, spend hour upon hour of watching the endless sea while steeling oneself for the coming storm, and establishing and exercising the chain of command. Movement by air was over in a day or less. No time for mental preparation, the psyche to adjust, conjecture about the future or reinforcement from your peers and superiors—just Muzak, movies, and meals. The fleeting thought that as unsatisfactory a method of transportation to battle as this was, it was one hell of a lot easier than our adversaries departure down the Ho Chi Min trail—on foot—with all his belongings on his back as well as someone else's ammunition, and with little hope of either a safe- or scheduled-return.

As for myself, I had completed almost fifteen years in the U.S. Marine Corps, had a wife, two kids, a dog, and a mortgage, and was starting my third unaccompanied overseas tour. My feelings were extremely ambivalent in that I detested leaving my family, even overnight, yet looked avidly forward to flying in combat. If I let myself dwell on the enforced separation from family, I could easily succumb to the thousand yard stare in the ten-foot room, or what we termed "going Asiatic." Once west of Hawaii, one had to alter their outlook. Lock all the pleasant memories of home, heart, and family in a subconscious portion of the brain and store twelve months for recall. Think of it as a one year Certificate of Deposit and don't dwell on it while it earns and matures.

During the Korean War, I had been a rifle platoon leader in the First Marine Division. I enjoyed the independence and decision making but not the living conditions. I vowed that if I had to go to another battlefield, it would not be as a grunt. I applied for flight school, got my wings, and could at long last employ my years of training as an attack pilot. That is, I could if I could dodge the many rear echelon jobs that had to be filled. It is almost axiomatic that headquarters and staff billets must be fully manned before any thought could be given to filling tactical units.

My current rank as a major didn't enhance those odds as you were subject to assignment to any job that called for a captain to a colonel. Another hazard was having some kind of specialty tagged on to your records. Hmmm ... I see you have a Q clearance ... speak Swahili ... have a degree in Chemistry ... attended postgrad school: each can be the kiss of death toward assignment to a tactical unit. In turn, the specialty can relegate your entire tour to the third floor of some obscure building, where no one else is quite sure how to utilize the specialty that brought you there. The final hurdle is that of having a "friend" in personnel. By and large, escape from the drudgery of his job is dependent upon convincing whoever has "by Direction" authority that his ideal replacement has just walked in the door. Fat, dumb, and happy, you wander in and are delivered a fait accompli!

Approaching Okinawa, I have prepared myself to meet most of the aforementioned hazards. I have timed my arrival to very early in the month (3 November) knowing that most replacements come later in the month and earlier in the year. Most come during the summer, mistakenly thinking their priorities are to get the family settled and the kids in school by September. By autumn's end, the critical jobs should all be filled, and it's too early to begin replacements.

As to being a specialist, I have carefully excised any such information from my Officers Qualification Jacket during prior tours as either an administrative or commanding officer of former units. Thus, the official records which I must present, and are scrutinized by each headquarters through which I must pass, look as bland and unremarkable as the expurgated SS files of Kurt Waldheim. As a last resort, I am ready to feign amnesia, throw a fit, wait until everyone goes to lunch, or outright bribe an otherwise gung ho and straight forward clerk.

One nonadministrative hazard that one needs to trickle down to a gun squadron is to be current and qualified: in type (light attack), model (A-4), and series (E), of the tactical aircraft assigned to the unit. For the previous year, I had been the CO of a Marine Air Base Squadron, a nonflying unit that holds the deployable air field assets of an aircraft group. Not the ideal place to get current, much less transition to a different model aircraft, which I had to do. Ground school, emergency procedures trainer, ejection seat checkout, fitting out for equipment unique to the new aircraft, water survival, and a run through the high altitude pressure chamber all had to be accomplished before one could even interest the group operations officer into assigning you to one of the tactical squadrons to begin their checkout and familiarization flights.

The Douglas A-4 "Skyhawk" had been around for almost ten years and was up to their E series when I started this transition. Progressing through the familiarization, formation, instruments, and tactics syllabus, I even got to tag along with a gun squadron on its deployment to the complex of air-to-ground targets and ranges near Yuma, Arizona. I got about thirty hours and maybe that many hops in the various ordnance delivery patterns before I got called back to my home base in Beaufort, South Carolina, to put a steadying hand on my own squadron.

There were other requirements to meet or schools to attend, all of which simply got written up in my records ... sans attendance. Mostly there wasn't the time to crowd them in, the remainder were just plain odious. In either case, I could show that I had attended Survival School, Aircrew Escape...