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 Gulf 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.
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.
